Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Caveat Emptor — Cooper Wiring Devices

Is THIS ‘stupid’ or what?

So one of the pull-chain ceiling lighting fixtures in the basement went ‘south’ on us. You pull the chain and the light doesn’t turn on-or-off. It seems to be stuck in the ‘on’ position. So the only way to turn it off is to unscrew it slightly.

In the first place, the old porcelain fixture will not readily admit to replacement of the faulty switch assembly. We obviously need to do a LOT of work with a soldering iron or get a new assembly.

Going to Lowe’s to get a replacement assembly we have two offerings. One plastic and the other porcelain. The porcelain opinion is clever in design, allowing for replacement of faulty switch elements. It’s only $1 more than the plastic option. So I get it.

Doing all the work to put it into place, I get to the final installation step…..screwing the new porcelain assembly onto the metal housing that holds it to the ceiling.

Guess what….

....the holes in the porcelain assembly do not match up with the screws in the metal box.

OH! There are a couple of plugs in the assembly that, if you remove them properly, you CAN affix it to the narrower metal box.

Wait a moment! In my dealings with ceramics, I’m somewhat familiar with dealing with porcelain. It’s not particularly keen on punching, hitting, or even drilling it. Better be careful…..

So, I just got off the phone with ‘Tim’ at Tech Support for Cooper Wiring Devices. In the discussion, it comes out that the probability of success in ‘drilling’ or ‘punching’ out the plugs in their porcelain assembly is rather ‘low’. He suggests I return the product and find something more amiable to the metal housing. Something with holes designed to go with the screws thereon.

My first question is if the idiot engineer at Cooper Wiring Devices KNEW there were two different standards for screwing their product onto the metal housing, why didn’t they leave BOTH pairs of holes open?

The second question is why haven’t they fired this dweeb?

And we wonder why we’re failing in competition with the rest of the world?

Somehow, I suspect it has something to do with our relationship with Communist China. This piece of s—- was built there. I suspect Cooper Wiring Devices was stupid enough to have it engineered there as well.

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