Looking at that “screenshot”, you might wonder what I’m on about. It seems perfectly normal. It might even leave you scratching your head as to why it could ever be a problem.

It’s not just that button: The entire Roku app is awful. Among other things, it now forces your home screen to present Plex-corporate-specific-content, and buries your own libraries in a very irritating menu at the top of the screen.

The library selection menu. Imagine if there were 10 libraries here. I pared it down to the two I use most to cut down on button presses.

From a UX perspective, it’s horribly optimized (or not optimized at all) for quick and easy navigation. The prior version of their Roku app wasn’t perfect, but Plex is clearly aiming for a use case other than consuming one’s own content.

So let’s look at that button again, and compare it to the button on the Plex web interface:

Watch versus Play.

One of those words is the app telling you what to do (watch), while the other is you telling the app what to do (play).

Yep, that’s it. That’s the reason for my annoyance. It emphasizes their philosophy: Plex will now order you around, rather than being ordered around by the user.

You want to watch your own media libraries? Buried. Watch Plex-branded monetized content instead.

Play means “commence presenting the media”. Yet, Plex feels confident enough to redefine it as watch.

However, I often don’t watch visual media. Sometimes I just have it on in the background and I listen. But I’ve always starting it playing by pressing the play button.

Sometimes I leave the room while something is playing, even though I’m no longer watching.

So not only is the button labeling instructive rather than receptive, it’s also just plain wrong in common use cases.

On top of that, it’s unnecessary.

Obviously this is a “play” icon, identifiable even in a logo.

The sideways equilateral triangle pointing to the right is universally understood to mean “play”, across just about all languages and cultures of Earth. Why Plex bothers to label the button is strange, as perhaps their time could be better spent on other areas.

Sure, it doesn’t take a lot of time to label a button, but probably more than you’d think.

Aside from the fact that their codebase needs to contain what are ultimately pointless conditionals to decide whether “watch” or “play” should be shown depending on the type of media, there’s also localization. A simple play icon by itself needs no localization.

But the text accompanying it must be made available in every language supported by the Plex app. Adding text to a universal symbol is just wheel spinning. Moreso when that text actively redefines the meaning of the symbol.

Bizarrely, in a music library, the button isn’t labeled “Listen”. No, it simply says “Play”.

Not only is Plex wrong (IMO) in their button labeling, they’re also inconsistent.

Getting back to iconography, there’s these gems on the left-hand side of the interface. If you’ve never seen them in this context, try and conjure in your mind what they might do in reference to your media library before you scroll any farther:

That top one? I thought it was an eyedropper icon at first, viewing a 2160p 42″ screen from perhaps 3 meters away as I was.

Nope. That’s intended to be a magic wand.

Or rather, I think it’s meant to be a magic wand. It’s a bit oddly proportioned, the top segment isn’t filled in with white as with a stereotypical magic wand, and the spacing of the “magic radiance dots” is too uniform. (Perhaps 4 dots would be better?)

The bottom icon is clearly a grid, which I suppose is at least recognizable. Though, a grid of what? And magic for what?

I polled a few people around the office, showing them an image of the entire screen. No one could correctly identify the purpose of either icon, even in context.

Fortunately, hovering over the icons reveals their purposes:

My question here is: Why persistently label something obvious like the play icon, yet create two extremely vague icons and leave them unlabeled by default?

What’s even more baffling is that the Plex web interface uses a very similar icon to the “Browse” above, yet for a completely different purpose. The grid is used to represent — get this — a grid view. That makes sense.

All design issues aside (and there are more — I’m still on the home screen at this point!) there are major bugs in the Plex Roku app.

For example, twice today the interface froze while I was listening to music. (I use the Roku when working out.) In both instances, it occurred when I was navigating between albums under a couple of different artists. Not selecting anything, mind you. Simply using the arrow buttons on the remote was enough to freeze the UI.

And it was just the UI; Music was still playing, and hitting the remote’s Home button brought me back to the Roku home screen to re-launch the Plex app, indicating that the Roku OS hadn’t seized up. (I was able to reproduce that problem on a completely different type of Roku device, so it’s almost certainly an app bug and not specific to my one device.)

Tonight, when launching the Plex app to get the above screenshots, it greeted me with a black screen. Oh, the volume keys on the remote still worked and the volume indicator popped up on screen. The Roku home button worked. The Plex app did not.

I never had those kind of problems on the old, better Plex app.

In conclusion, my take is this:

Plex initially went in with a very consumer-friendly business model, offering lifetime subscriptions at a reasonable price. This, though great for me and many others, was clearly unsustainable. There’s a certain addressable market for personal media server subscriptions, and they probably addressed all of it.

Now, they want to become some kind of half-assed media company, pulling in revenue from wherever they can, forcing their existing customers deeper and deeper into the Plex content ecosystem. A place none of their users want to be. This is also an unsustainable business model, but meanwhile they’re spending significant money on re-developing all their beloved apps, removing valuable features and rendering others inconvenient.

Why, oh why, do I need 2 different apps on my phone for music and video? Often when listening to music, I’ll play the music video when that’s available and otherwise listen to the MP3/FLAC. It was great when that could be done within the same app. Now, not so good.

I’d move to Jellyfin, but Plex’s web interface is by far the best in the industry. And by “industry”, I don’t just mean that of personal media servers. Plex’s web interface is superior to any video streaming service out there, paid or otherwise*. They had a top design team at one point. Maybe they still do, but that team is being crippled by management. I have no way of knowing.

Jellyfin is (for now) very immature by comparison (though philosophically much, much better).

*Though I wager Plex’s web interface won’t be aces for long. It might even be enshittified by the time you read this. I’d promise to update this post to reflect that, but by the time they kill off this generation of the web interface, I won’t care about this anymore because I’ll be using something else. Probably Jellyfin.)

Of course, I only use Plex for my personal consumption of content which I purchased and ripped from my own hard media.

A.I. generated video content presents plenty of problems in the short and medium term: Job loss in the commercial, TV and film industries. False or misleading information. Dystopian idolatry of fake celebrities.

But IMO people are missing the really frightening aspect of all of this. The road leads to bespoke content generated for each viewer in any given moment. Once it becomes cheap enough, why would a company spend 0.5 cents to create a commercial to show to 100 million people when they could create 100 million commercials to show to each person individually? And why wouldn’t streaming platforms create content on-the-fly to cater to each individual’s preferences? It’ll lead to cultural isolation wherein all of us consume only our own media, in an infinite feedback loop. We each become an echo chamber of one, disconnected from our fellow humans.

I look at automatic transfer switches from Server Technology, Inc. and TrippLite and describe why you might want one.

This is another backing-up-your-data rant, but even though I’m posting this second it technically comes first in the order of shooting. And I think it’s a bit more informative and organized. So if you only watch one rant about backups this year, make it this one.

Viva 2018.

I converted an older HP DL380 Gen8 (aka a StoreOnce 2900) from using a hard RAID controller to an HBA for software RAID. The conversion is simple, but the video is long af because I spend a lot of time discussing the “why” more than the “how”.

In this excerpt from the below video, I talk about the total cost of ownership of RAID arrays.

This describes why I created the RAID HDD TCO Calculator which helps you figure out the total cost of ownership of a RAID array, inclusive of stuff like electrical and cooling costs.

Dear “New Media” Companies,

Two years ago I decided to take the plunge and purchase a UHD TV.

But I thought twice about it, deciding that I would hold off until there was adequate 4K content available. At that time the 4K market was weak. UHD Blu-rays had yet to be released, and other than some YouTube content and perhaps a few shows from your companies, there wasn’t much available.

Finally at the cusp of 2018 I decided to make the move. There’s much streaming media currently available in UHD (as you’re obviously aware), as well as a plethora of UHD Blu-rays.

So I now have a very nice Sony OLED hooked up to my HTPC.

But the sad part of the story is that you lost me at “HTPC”.

I’ve used a computer to consume my “TV” media since the heady days of 2003, when I needed component cables to hook it up to a rear-projection 720p monstrosity of a television. It was a more flexible DVR than the TiVo, it was a DVD player, a streaming media player, an MP3 player, a gaming platform, and yet more!

A computer has, is, and will most likely remain the best tool to hook up to one’s television.

So it was that I excitedly loaded up the Netflix website and started watching a video. The contrast and color of the OLED TV made it look fantastic! Only… It wasn’t all that sharp. So I investigated, and I can say without irony that I was shocked to learn that Netflix intentionally doesn’t allow its customers to stream 4K content to their computers. And then my surprise was doubled when I learned that neither does Amazon.

This, despite the web browser being the first (and at the time, only) vehicle on which your content could be viewed. The web browser was your stepping stone into the streaming world, and your raison d’être in that space. (Or more accurately your capacité à être.)

Yet for reasons that seem to have more to do with protecting your intellectual property than providing your loyal customers with cutting-edge content, Ultra HD video is not available in the browser. Hell, Netflix doesn’t even go above 720p (welcome back to 2003) on anything but the dreaded Edge.*

I’ll get to why that’s ridiculous and self-defeatist in a moment.

First I’d like to point out that I am indeed a loyal customer. I’ve been using Netflix since the DVDs-by-mail of the late 90s, I’ve been a regular Amazon customer since around that same time, and a Prime customer since it was first offered. You both have shows that, in my opinion, are some of the best available from old media and new media alike.

Speaking of the 1990s, I was one of the first users of that new-fangled MP3 format. The first album in my collection was Tool’s Undertow, ripped by me from my very own CD sometime in 1995.

I had a portable MP3 player before the iPod even existed, and watched with a heavy heart as Apple and the RIAA tricked millions of consumers into jumping down a deep pit of DRM-protected music. A pit from which some still haven’t clawed their way out.

It’s important for you to know that I’m not a pirate. I believe that people should pay a fair price for the work of others, and in that spirit I don’t participate in peer-to-peer (nor other) file sharing arrangements. I have a large collection of music and videos on my file server, all of which were purchased (or recorded from TV) by myself over many years, solely for my own consumption.

Yet I have a great interest in — and some sympathy for — the people that illegally share and copy media. Whether you like it or not, those pirates have shaped the current media landscape, and I take a great deal of schadenfreude from the consternation they’ve given to media conglomerates. Their actions are, in large part, due to those media companies not giving customers what they want and deserve.

You see, I have a special hatred for DRM.

Digital rights management has never worked. It has done little to nothing in protecting the rights and revenues of corporations, yet it has done a great deal of damage to the law-abiding consumer.

In an age where almost every person has a smartphone, smart speaker, smart TV, plus a tablet and computer (or tablet computer), it can make for a frustrating and confusing landscape. Yes, one can login to Netflix or Amazon on all of those devices and stream your shows.

But are your apps stable and fully functional on all of those platforms? Do all of those apps and platforms have a unified user experience? Is the media downloadable and portable across all those devices? Do you guarantee that users will be able to go back and watch episodes of their favorite shows ten years from now?

You already know that the answer is “no” to all. Those questions are the height of rhetoric, yet they shouldn’t be! An affirmative answer to each of those questions would benefit the consumer: Your customer, your reason for being, and the source of your revenue.

Yet you confuse and frustrate your customers in the name of “digital rights”.

Are any of you old enough to remember the days of the Betamax/VHS wars? That’s when TV and movie studio executives in starched shirts chomped on cigars and worried over the impending downfall of their industries, wrought by the boogyman of recorded video.

Yet their old-media empires wore on.

I’ve already mentioned the era when the RIAA wrung its hands in disgust at the possibility of people actually bringing their entire collection of music with them wherever they went, and how their gross restrictions wrangled a generation into proprietary and perpetual music licenses. I remember that a certain colossal “new media” company began selling DRM-free MP3s on their website. Do you remember that, Amazon?

Yet the recording industry is alive and well, even without DRM.

The irony is that the internet allows budding artists to bring their music directly to their fans. As of late, I’ve spent more money on Bandcamp than on Amazon for MP3s (well, FLAC, which Amazon fails to provide). Artists can enjoy nearly 100% of the revenues without the spectre of stuffed shirts pilfering “their share”. Artists have done more damage to the recording industry over the past few years than pirates ever have.

It’s been a similar thing lately for the video industry on YouTube. In fact, some weeks I consume more well-produced YouTube shows than content from either of your companies.

And surely you’ve heard the tale of the horrid illegal number. I won’t bore you with that one. Yet DVDs still sold by the millions.

In fact, your companies did more damage to physical media sales than any internet pirate ever could.

And despite your being founded by (and full of) fresh young faces who have Wikipedia at their beck and call to dredge up all this history, you insist on strangling your customers with encryption, proprietary apps, sub-par hardware platforms, and other useless nonsense.

“It’s certainly not useless! It protects muh rights!”

I can hear you right now. And no, it doesn’t.

Every single Netflix and Amazon original show is available right now on The Pirate Bay (and likely elsewhere). Every single one. Your hamstringing of customers and your willful disregard for history (even for your very own histories!) is plain baffling.

It doesn’t matter how clever your teams of DRM engineers might be. They are hapless compared to the thousands upon thousands of worldwide “hackers” that can crack any scheme you might invent. I don’t say that as a pirate. I say it as an observer of history.

I pay for your services. I enjoy your shows and products. I am a loyal customer. Yet I cannot watch the 4K content of which you are so proud.

The built-in software and interface on my high-end, brand-new Sony “smart” TV is feckless, slow, and difficult to navigate. Can you imagine how awful it will be in five years, when the rest of the world has moved on but my TV remains staunchly bolted to my wall? Yet it’s one of the few only devices I own that can play your 4K videos.

Yes, I can buy one of Amazon’s Fire products and watch your shows in UHD. I in fact have a Fire box, and it’s not all that bad! (For Amazon content.)

But Plex runs like shit on it. It can’t stream Netflix UHD content, and the Netflix app isn’t very good. Why would it be? They’re a competitor.

Yes, there are Rokus and a plethora of other streaming devices, many of which may or may not be able to play your content in UHD. Some cannot stream both your companies’ content in UHD, however. It’s a quagmire for the average consumer.

My HTPC is a fairly old HP Z420 workstation. It cost about three-hundred bucks on eBay, has an E5-1620 processor, 16GB of RAM, a Samsung Pro SSD, a GTX1060 video card, optical audio out to a proper surround sound system, and a 10GbE fiber connection to my file server. Overkill? Perhaps. But there’s simply no way a tiny little box with a purposefully low-powered Atom or ARM processor can compete. Oh, and it can play PC games (are there any other kind?) at high resolutions and reasonable framerates.

It’s also the best possible platform on which to consume every provider’s content.

Just not in Ultra HD. (And, again, sometimes not even in plain ol’ FHD.)

Yet some of your shows are available on Torrent sites right now, in 2160p quality. All are available at 1080p.

So I, as one of your loyal customers have no way to legally watch your content in 4K. Yet I could easily watch it, were I to participate in your nemesis, P2P file sharing.

Do you realize how stupid that sounds? That illegal downloads are of a higher quality than what your paying customers can access on your own websites? Do you really think that slightly-lower-resolution torrents are going to cause people to give up on pirating your content?

That’s “old media” thinking.

Don’t punish your fond and loyal customers for the misdeeds of others.

Strip out your DRM and let us breathe.

I’d even pay you a couple of more bucks a month for the privilege.

Sincerely,

Scott

* Netflix does not make it obvious at what resolution a customer’s video is streaming. In fact, the only way to find out is to hit Ctrl+Shift+Alt+D: An intuitive key combination that surely any layperson would know! I’d be willing to wager that you, Netflix, have customers paying for your “4K” plan who aren’t even aware that they’re viewing 720p or 1080p video on their computer (and possibly on other devices). It’s deceitful and it borders on a scam. You need to make it plainly obvious to consumers when they’re not getting what they paid for.

Contrast that to free YouTube, wherein which they put a plainly visible icon in the lower-right corner showing the streaming quality. They also let the viewer explicitly change resolutions. It’s shameful that you don’t give your paying customers the very same.

Amazon’s player does explicitly provide the resolution, but doesn’t allow it to be changed. That’s fine for me, because I have an unmetered internet connection. Others may actually want the option for a lower-quality feed, if not because their connection is metered but because they don’t want to interfere with other network activity. I’d rather explicitly set it to 2160p in perpetuity, which obviously I cannot.

PS (for those pedants out there):

• I understand the difference between DCI spec 4K and UHD. I use the terms interchangeably here for variety, and because they are regularly bunged together in marketing and hence in the mind of the average consumer.
• Before anyone strings me up for mentioning TPB or torrenting in general, I seriously doubt that this is revelatory to Amazon and Netflix. If somehow they didn’t know about it, they really do need to hear it from me so that they can get their heads out of their respective asses.
• All dates are approximate and off the top of my head. My point remains, even if the dates are slightly changed.
• I’m sure XYZ Company makes ABC Box which can be re-imaged with GHI Open-Source-Magic-Software, and it will play everything in perfect UHD from every content provider and also make your shits smell like flowers. The purity of a standard Intel/AMD computer with a decent video card cannot be beaten. I don’t care about small and low power consumption. I want a big fuck-off piece of hardware that’ll last me 8 years and won’t get lost in the couch cushions.
• Netflix will let you stream UHD content on a PC. Providing that you have an i7 Kaby Lake CPU (presumably for DRM-related extensions), Windows 10 with the latest Creator’s Update (whatever the hell that means), and that you use the Edge browser (the most hated browser in the world). While I embarrassingly do use Windows 10 for my HTPC**, I think a bleeding-edge i7 machine is needlessly expensive for the purpose. It’s a ridiculous requirement, and barely worth mentioning.
• **Sigh. If you think I’m complaining now, how about the history of trying to view legal DRM-protected content in Linux? There’s also the gaming market. Those are rants for another day. FWIW I run about 35 Linux machines (many virtualized) plus a couple of FreeBSD boxes in my house. I use Windows for many desktops for mainstream compatibility reasons. The right tool for the right job. E.g. I hate my dishwasher because it’s a poorly-engineered worthless piece of LG trash, but I still use it because at the end of the day it does wash dishes (with some cajoling).
• I was being somewhat facetious about my “PC master race” gaming comment. I don’t care all that much. But my arguments against proprietary gaming consoles are similar to my arguments against proprietary streaming hardware/software.

PPS (for every company that makes a remote-controlled “smart” device):

Look up the Gyration Air Music Remote.

They don’t make it any more, and you can get one on eBay but not the necessary USB receiver dongle. Aside from a touchscreen and/or full keyboard and mouse, it’s hands-down the best way to navigate “smart TV”-style platforms. It’s also the best way to navigate around an HTPC from the couch. It basically lets you wave your remote around, and a mouse cursor follows your hand movements on screen. It uses a simple accelerometer (AFAIK).

Someone needs to rip off their design. Simplify it. Take off 80% of the buttons. Leave the volume buttons, a few programmable keys, a home button and probably a couple of others. Needless to say also leave the accelerometer-driven pointing capability and the right- and left-click “mouse” buttons. Make it interface via Bluetooth rather than some proprietary crap.

It takes a little while to get accustomed to using it, but it’s fantastic once you do.

Make that the interface device for a Fire TV, Roku, smart TV, or whatever-the-fuck and I might actually consider using one.

Arrow keys are a bullshit way to navigate any menu system and voice commands make you look like a fool in your own home.

Another sh*tty power strip

Welp, they’ve done it again. Any by “they”, I mean people that make poor quality electrical devices. Specifically Yellow Jacket, which is a Woods brand, which is a Coleman Cable brand, which is probably somehow owned by either Warren Buffet or the Koch Brothers.

I got this for $16.22 during an Amazon lighting deal, and even though that’s not a terrible price, the poor quality construction and the basic lie about the materials is what really angers me.

Join me as I disassemble and then curse at this poor excuse for a power strip, in my newest installment of first world problems.

The HP Procurve 5406ZL and…

…a whole lot of other crap, vis a vis my opinions on used enterprise-grade networking hardware for the home (or small-ish business).

I purchased an HP Procurve 5406ZL on eBay mainly because I “need” 10GbE on my home network, which is almost recursive because it’s for editing 4K video, which I need for editing this video.

The bottom line for me is that you can’t beat the feature/price ratio when it comes to equipment like this. That is, if you can afford the resultant power bill.

Download It

Yemememememeh

If it opens in your browser as a sound file, just right-click and hit “Save As..”, or whatever the equivalent might be on your system.

Huh?

This is a bit unusual for this site, but I decided to create a ringtone from a brief clip of audio on The Ricky Gervais Show. I figured I’d share it, in case anyone else wanted this kind of nonsense in their lives.

Why?

In the episode, Mr. K. Dilkington argues that every noise has been used at least five times. He then goes on to ask why things can’t be made to make a different noise to the ones they make.

Ricky insists that things make a noise because the noise is a byproduct of function, and that “they” don’t pick the noise. He gives the example of Stephenson’s Rocket making the noise of a steam engine, rather than someone having asked Stephenson to make it go “yememememememeh yememememememeh yememememememeh“.

Hence this ringtone.

What?

In accordance with the wishes of Karl Pilkington, I have used this noise at least five times in the MP3.

If you want to look back on it, this was from Season 2, Episode 11 (“Mrs. Battersby”), with the relevant segment starting at 19:40.

Don’t Sue Me

I’m pretty sure this would be considered to be fair use. I’m not making a dime on this, and if anyone (other than Gervais / HBO) tries to sell this to you then they’re probably full of crap.

I was looking for a super bright projector to use for in-camera visual effects or even simple presentations. I found one for under $150 on eBay that was 5100 lumens! That’s an AMAZING deal, but the projector was a bit more than I bargained for.

Check out the video for a more in-depth description of the problem, but the short of it is that most smart thermostats (and a lot of smarthome devices) rely on someone else’s servers in order for them to be accessed remotely. And because of this, “remotely” doesn’t just mean when you’re out of the house, but inside the house as well. If the “smart” device company ever goes out of business or decides to stop supporting whatever you own, then you effectively will no longer have an internet-enabled thing.

This isn’t true for all devices. Some do not require servers-that-are-elsewhere (or “the cloud” as it’s known) so that they can operate. But a surprising amount do, and that’s something to consider when buying an appliance, thermostat, Echo, or full home automation system. Will the company running those servers still be around in 5 years? In 10 or 20 years? And even if they’re in business, will they support it? With something like the Amazon Echo, that’s not much of a concern. But with a $250 thermostat from a “new” company it could be a factor.

I decided to start another YouTube channel. Not because my main channel was getting out of hand, but because I want to bang out a bunch of quick videos just to get practice. And also there’s stuff that I cut out of some of my main videos that I wanted to share.

Annywhoo.. This video is about an Anker Powerline+ USB cable that came in a needlessly elaborate package.

Here’s the thing: I don’t need to contact Amazon’s customer service often, but when I do they’ve always been responsive and extremely helpful. So I’m not going to lambaste Amazon in this post, but I do want to tell a story of a horrible customer service experience that’s not just a result of a bad rep but is indicative of a deeper problem.

The Toilet

In an incident that was far less dramatic than you’d hope, my toilet tank cracked and was leaking slowly onto the floor.

Obviously the ideal solution would be a new tank, but I had an Eljer triangle toilet that’s discontinued, and there aren’t a ton of options for a triangular corner toilet.

Needing to have a working crapper, I ran out to Home Depot and bought a relatively cheap standard toilet as a temporary solution. It works fine, but the placement isn’t quite as nice as that of a corner toilet. Hence I went to my favorite online retailer and found an American Standard Cadet 3 Triangle Toilet that looked like it would fit the bill.

Amazon’s product photo of the toilet. Looks like an elongated bowl, right?

It turned out to be the wrong toilet for me. I’m not exactly a small guy at 6’4″ and 220lbs. I constantly have problems at hotels where my .. carriage .. doesn’t fit inside a toilet without .. dipping and/or touching the front. (I’m trying to be polite, which is hard to do when talking about why a toilet doesn’t suit my needs. Not that you really needed to know, but whatever.)

The point is that I hate round bowl toilets because there’s not enough space front-to-back for my taste.

The full name of the toilet on Amazon is American Standard 270BD001.020 Cadet 3 Right Height Round Front Two-Piece Triangle Toilet with 12-Inch Rough-In, White. When I read “round front”, I thought that meant the front was rounded for aesthetic reasons as opposed to another hypothetical model which might have a more squared-off front. I’m no expert on toilet styles. Besides, “round front” sounds different than “round bowl”.

And to be fair it’s also the wrong picture of the toilet on Amazon’s product page. But to be super duper fair to Amazon, it’s probably American Standard’s fault because they have the wrong photo on their website. Check out this side-by-side of the “Round” version versus the “Elongated” version:

It’s rather hard to read, but you can click on the image for the full-size version.

Both of these pictures look the freaking same, and both look like elongated bowls. The point of my telling you all of this is that I don’t think it was 100% my fault that I ordered the wrong thing. But because I felt somewhat foolish at misunderstanding the “round” terminology, when it came to giving a reason for the return I put something like “I no longer need this item”. At any rate, I indicated that the return was my fault and so I was charged around $40 for shipping (which is pretty reasonable for a heavy, bulky, two-package order).

Lord of the Toilets: The Two Packages

I was issued a pre-paid UPS label for return because I’d opted to drop the toilet off at my local UPS Store. Pickup was quite a bit more expensive, even though I thought that it would be way easier.

But there’s the crux of the problem: I was issued one label for two packages. That didn’t seem right to me, so some communication ensued:

July 30

Hi,

I’m trying to return order [order number redacted], and the return was approved and a UPS label issued. However, the item (toilet) is split into 2 packages, so I need two return labels. (Unless I can use the same one twice, but I don’t believe UPS allows that.)

Thanks & regards,

Scott

Amazon replied promptly with the following:

July 30

Hello,

Thanks for contacting us.

I understand that you want to return the item and the item was split in to two packages.

In this case, you can use the same return mailing label twice on the both packages and you can return the item. There is no need to concern. UPS will accept the package.

If you want free UPS pick up to return the item, please let us know using the below link. We’ll create free UPS pick to return the item. So that UPS will pick up the item from your shipping address.

Please visit the following link to provide the information we requested:

http://www.amazon.com/rsvp-mi?c=[redacted]&q=o2r

We look forward to seeing you again.

We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the links below to tell us about your experience today.

Best regards,
Reshmi [redacted].

The link provided in that last message was some kind of generic feedback form. It’s not valid anymore and so I can’t get a screenshot, but it basically asked for information that was redundant to what Amazon should already have in relation to this return. It had a comments field where I explained that I’d like to change from a drop-off to a pick-up on that order.

Then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. After 10 days with no response, I contacted Amazon customer service again:

August 9, 2016

Hi,

I used the link provided in your email, filled out the form, and requested a UPS pickup. But I haven’t heard anything back yet. This item is pretty bulky, so I’d much prefer a pick-up rather than having to drop it off at a UPS Store. If it’s not going to happen, please let me know before the return window is over.

Thanks & regards,
Scott

Amazon responded to that message right away with the following: (You don’t have to read the whole thing, just look at the bold bits.)

August 9

Hello,

Thank you for taking out time and writing back to us.

To make this right for you, I have arranged a UPS Pick-up for the item “American Standard 270BD001.020 Cadet 3 Right Height Round Front Two-Piece Triangle Toilet with 12-Inch Rough-In, White”.

UPS’s first attempt is typically made the first business day after a request is made, but it can take up to three business days for them to receive the pickup request. UPS will attempt the pickup at the address where the items were shipped. They’ll make three attempts to pick up your return if you aren’t available when they arrive.

When you request a UPS pickup for your return, the UPS driver will bring a pre-addressed, authorized return label. If the package has been opened, please repack it in a way similar to when it arrived.

Don’t worry; packing slips aren’t required to make a return.

UPS does not provide unattended pickup. You can contact UPS to see if they can give you more specific information about the timing of the pickup; their phone number is 1-800-PICK-UPS (1-800-742-5877).

Please reference this tracking number if you call them: [redacted]

We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding.

We look forward to seeing you again soon.

We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the links below to tell us about your experience today.

Best regards,
Divya K

I was quite grateful that they finally arranged the pick-up, but was still a bit concerned that they were still talking about “a” return label. I figured that wasn’t really my problem (yet). I was a bit bummed that I’d have to be home, but fortunately my UPS driver usually comes between 6PM and 8PM.

But my next message to Amazon 6 days later sorta summarizes what happened in the meantime:

August 15

Hi,

This has turned into quite a problematic return process. I really do appreciate you arranging the UPS pick-up, because this is a bulky item and it saves me the hassle of bringing it to a UPS Store.

However, a couple of things: The instructions from Amazon said that I’d have to be home for the pickup. Unfortunately my UPS driver came at 5PM one day, 2PM the next, didn’t come at all the following day, and came today around 7PM. So it was difficult to coordinate. I contacted UPS on Twitter, and they said that I would NOT have to be home, and that I could leave the packages on my porch for pickup.

Today the UPS driver happened to come when I was just getting home from work, and he told me that he was only issued one return label — but this order came in 2 packages. If you look back in the history of this inquiry, you’ll see that I started off by asking if I could use the same UPS label for both packages. You guys said “yes”. The UPS driver says that cannot be done, and two separate labels with different tracking numbers would have to be issued.

He cancelled the pick-up in the meantime.

I really want to get this returned, so whatever help you can give me would be appreciated. Either I or the UPS driver would need to have 2 return labels issued.

Regards,
Scott

In my irritation, I also took to Facebook. I tagged UPS and Amazon, but they couldn’t be bothered:

But in the end Amazon really came through, offering to let me keep the toilet and the refund! It’s really generous, though I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do with the toilet. Also that’s not the end of the f$(*!ng story.

August 16

Hello Scott,

I am sorry to hear about the problem you had in returning the item “American Standard 270BD001.020 Cadet 3 Right Height Round Front Two-Piece Triangle Toilet with 12-Inch Rough-In, White “.

As you are our valuable customer I request you not to return the item back now as we do not want to cause you more trouble in returning this item to us. You’re welcome to keep donate dispose the item according to your choice.

Also you can see that already a refund is issued to you for this item.

Rest assured that you will not be charged for the same. Please do not sorry about the same.Your issue will be taken care of.

It is our privilege to have you as our valued customer and we want to make sure you are always taken care of.

If there is anything else you need help with, please feel free to contact us at any point of time. We are here 24 hours a day and 7 days a week for your assistance. Here’s a link to our Contact Us page:http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html

Thank you for choosing Amazon. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you again in the near future.

We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the links below to tell us about your experience today.

Best regards,
aditi

Of course I responded with a very kind thank you note! I felt like that went above and beyond what I expected, and was a ridiculously good example of Amazon’s customer service.

But I don’t think it’ll take much imagination for you to guess what happened next, though it moves our story forward by almost a month:

September 16

Hi,

Again, I really appreciate the sentiment. But I was just re-charged for the purchase.

If you want me to send the toilet back, I’m still OK with that, but please let me know.

Regards,
Scott

The Refunded Refund

That’s right, Amazon unceremoniously pulled $270.74 out of my checking account a month after saying that the matter was settled.

The transactions related to all this nonsense.

Look, I’m not trying get one over on Amazon. I wanted to return the toilet. I really did. It’s been sitting in my living room for over 2 months, having not been pooped in at all.

But they offered to let me keep the it. That was their choice. But notice they kept the $39.04 for the return shipping. I mean, fair enough, because 40 bucks is a cheap price for a toilet. But for a toilet that I don’t want and will probably just donate to Habitat? Meh.

But they’ve now charged me $309.78 for an order that was originally $270.74. (Two $270.74 charges minus just $231.70 in the refund.)

The worst part is that their customer service has responded to my other emails in a matter of hours, yet it’s now been 4 days, and I’m starting to get worried.

I’ll update this saga when there’s some kind of resolution. I’m happy to return the toilet. I’m happy to donate the toilet. Whatever you want, Amazon. Just please let me know so I can put this to rest.

Here’s A Bullet List of Issues for People That Like Lists

• The photo on the Amazon product page was incorrect.
• Amazon only issued one shipping label for a two-package return.
• Amazon never responded to the feedback form that I was superfluously asked to fill out.
• Amazon insists that one shipping label can be duplicated onto many packages. UPS strongly disagrees.
• UPS says that I can leave return packages on my porch for unattended pickup. Amazon strongly disagrees.
• Amazon was quick to promise that I wouldn’t be charged for the toilet, but I was. A month later.
• Amazon still charged me the return fee of $40, even though I never returned it.
• This whole thing started with an order on July 4, and it’s now September 20.

I started off this post by saying that this indicates a deeper problem than just a bad rep or a one-off experience. Amazon really needs to get on the same page as UPS. I don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong, but I’m thinking that Amazon is wrong. If they’d issued two labels and let me leave the packages unattended for pick-up, this would have been resolved over a month ago with minimal fuss.

Then again, since I’m dealing in hypothetical “what if” scenarios: If they’d simply shipped the toilet pictured in the listing, I’d probably be pooping in the corner of the room like god intended instead of jammed up against the wall like an animal.

There’s a fundamental accounting problem if their system can bill me an extra $40 in this way. If this was my credit card and not my debit card, I might not have noticed the discrepancy because the transaction volume is higher and it would’ve spanned two statements.

And finally, I don’t think that the feedback form in question actually does anything. To this day I’ve received no acknowledgement of having sent a message, aside from the confirmation page on Amazon.com after I submitted it.

Some of This is My Fault

In fairness to Amazon, I did slow down this process a bit on my own. I didn’t unpack the toilet until a couple of weeks after delivery — I’d been waiting for a spare weekend to install it. In retrospect I should have taken it out to inspect it right away, but I didn’t.

I also took a while to get around to actually trying to bring the thing to the UPS Store. My car isn’t big enough for both packages, so it was going to take me two trips and over an hour. I procrastinated out of laziness, and I was really grateful for their offer of a free pick-up.

(Incidentally, I would have made the cutoff dates for the return despite my delay.)

My UPS guy also came at weird times when I was trying to give him the package. I couldn’t take a full day off of work just to facilitate this return, and though I did leave work early on those days, he came even earlier. It’s not his fault, of course, but it’s just one of those flukes of bad timing. I’ve seen him in my neighborhood after 7 PM quite a few times afterwards.

Also, I take some of the responsibility for ordering the wrong item. However, even though it said “round front”, the picture clearly shows an elongated bowl. It looks nothing like the actual item. American Standard’s site seemed to back up the fact that I was ordering an elongated bowl.

Your Feedback is Important to Us…

…and will be answered in the order received.

Seriously though, if you think I’m being an ass about this, let me know in the comments. And regardless of the long rant, I’m not all that worked up about it. I have confidence that Amazon will come through in the end.

Just for reference, here’s a screenshot of the Amazon listing with the incorrect picture. Looks like I bought at a good time, because it’s now $100 more expensive!

The Background

The Missus and I flew to Florida a couple of days ago, and as usual we took JetBlue. The only eventful part of the flight was a pleasant arrival 30 minutes ahead of schedule. The flight crew had mentioned that the satellite TV was out of commission, and that all in-flight movies would be free for the duration.

I thought that was a good way of handling the issue, and figured that was the end of that.

However, the next day we both received emails from JetBlue stating that we’d been signed up for their Travel Bank, and that a $15 credit had been applied to both of our Banks in exchange for the inconvenience of the malfunctioning TV service! That kind of proactive customer service is fantastic, and one of the main reasons that we fly JetBlue.

Hello SCOTT

Thank you for choosing JetBlue.

The following credit has been applied to your Travel Bank account number: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ^{(Ed. Note: Account # redacted)}

Service Credit: InFlight Entertainment 15.00

We‘re sorry that DIRECTV® service didn’t work during your flight—we know this is one of the many reasons our customers choose to fly with JetBlue. Please accept our sincere apologies and this flight credit for the inconvenience you recently experienced with us.

This credit, which expires 365 days from the date it is issued, is available for use on future travel with JetBlue and is non-transferable.

To book a flight using your Travel Bank credit, visit jetblue.com and choose Travel Bank as your form of payment.

You can check the balance and transactions of your Travel Bank account by clicking here. For more information about Travel Bank and your credits, please visit jetblue.com/help/travelbank. We thank you for your understanding and look forward to a future opportunity to welcome you onboard.

Sincerely,

JetBlue Airways

Plain-Text Passwords

Here’s where the story turns dark, at least from a security perspective: Because this Travel Bank was a new service for both of us, and because JetBlue likewise had to create accounts for us, they sent us a password to get started.

Unlike — oh, I don’t know — every other website in the world, they didn’t send us randomly generated passwords. No.

THEY RE-USED OUR OUR TRUE BLUE ACCOUNT PASSWORDS, AND SENT THEM TO US IN PLAIN TEXT.

Click on this image for the full-size version.

This is a big deal for three reasons, the last of which is maybe a little less than obvious to most:

When emails are transmitted across the internet they are generally not encrypted. This means that your password would be visible to any server or router between JetBlue and your email service. It might be stored, intercepted, or otherwise snooped at any point along the journey.

Perhaps more importantly, anyone that gained access to your email account would know your password. That may seem unlikely (after all, you probably don’t have a crack team of international hackers trailing your every move), but anyone that happened across your phone could see the password.

If that doesn’t sound important, then in my opinion this last point is the worst faux pas of all. Wait, it’s not a faux pas. It’s more an act of pure ignorance and/or negligence: It’s obvious that JetBlue is storing your password in plain text, or at the very least with reversible encryption.

This means that, were hackers to get access to JetBlue’s user account database (unlike you, JetBlue may indeed be targeted by their friendly neighborhood team of international hackers), they could see your password.

And you may store your credit card info in your True Blue account. If so, anyone with access to your account could book flights to your card. Moreover, how secure is your card number if your password isn’t properly secured? That’s the kind of question I shouldn’t have to ask of “New York’s favorite airline”.

And I’m betting that you use that same True Blue password for at least one of your other accounts, perhaps even something critical like your banking or credit card accounts.

Change your Password

The moral of this story is that you should change your password. Not just with JetBlue, but make sure you use a different password for JetBlue than any of your other accounts.

Actually, it’s a best practice to use different passwords for each of your online accounts. Realistically that can be a huge pain in the ass, so even I don’t do it 100% of the time.

The moral of the story for JetBlue: For the love of internet security, use non-reversible encryption to protect our account information! You should never be able to know my password. That principle comes straight out of a community college Web Design 101 course, and you’re an international airline!

Air in a Can

This is a follow-up of sorts to my Bullsh*t Product: Boost Oxygen video. If you don’t know what that is and you’re too lazy to click the link (is that click-baiting or just click-dicking?), Boost O2 sells oxygen in a can for various phony baloney health benefits.

I mentioned in the video that Boost wasn’t the only company shilling this sort of thing, and indeed I was right: News stories about Vitality Air have been making the rounds on social media in the last few days. And the stories are on relatively legitimate websites like CNBC, Fortune, and CNN.

Fortunately the stories have primarily been about how clever a business model it is to sell cans of air to dying Chinese people, and have not been about the “health benefits” of sucking down air or O2 from a can.

Are they Serious?

According to the story in Fortune, Vitality Air got its start selling Ziploc bags of air on eBay for 99 cents as a novelty.

A space emperor inhales from his can of Perri-air, circa long ago.

Eventually the founders of the company moved up to compressed air in cans (along with compressed O2) with a direct-to-customer sales strategy. They changed from a “novelty” company to a “kinda sort health” company, business has picked up, and Vitality Air can’t ship this stuff out fast enough. And it’s becoming popular in the Chinese market.

As I long belabored in my Boost Oxygen video, cans of Oxygen (let alone regular air) like the ones sold by Vitality Air, Boost Oxygen, Oxygen4Energy, and Oxygen Plus are completely useless. They won’t help a beleaguered middle class Chinese guy as he hacks his way towards an agonizing and cancerous death.

Their Pitch

Vitality Air looks like they cribbed their pitch directly from Boost Oxygen. Or maybe it was the other way around; I really have no idea, but I’m pretty sure that Boost came first. Either it’s a case of the one ripping off the other, or (more likely) there’s only so much to say about supplemental oxygen that a lawyer will let you put on a website.

Here’s what they have to say for themselves, taken right from their homepage:

The human body, and all living organisms alike cannot function at its best without a regular supply of high quality air/oxygen. The human body can easily live without food and water for weeks, and without sleep for around 7 days, however the effects of lack of oxygen can happen within minutes!

That’s almost an exact quote from Boost. And so I’ll inexactly repeat myself, too: We’re not living in an Oxygen-deficient environment. Neither are people in Beijing. So while you’re not wrong in those claims, they are completely irrelevant.

Our bodies require a regular supply of premium oxygen in order to function at its peak performance. By supplying our customers with fresh clean air as well as oxygen, we allow them to boost energy levels in a natural way, helps with hangovers, alertness, and working out!

“Premium oxygen”? What the shit is “premium oxygen”? Oxygen gas is specifically something that cannot come in varieties of “premiumness”. It’s either O2 or it ain’t.

And once again: For a healthy individual, supplemental oxygen does not provide any additional energy. A normal, healthy individual in a non-oxygen-deficient environment will have all 100% of their hemoglobin bound to oxygen. The best thing that they will accomplish by using supplemental O2 is to significantly increase the dollar (or yuan) cost of their exhalations.

Inhaling “fresh clean air” likewise will do absolutely nothing to increase energy.

And no, hangovers are not an illness that can be cured or improved by supplemental oxygen. (The placebo effect? That works wonders!)

As we continue to live in highly polluted areas, we are your solution to pollution!

YOU ARE NOT THE SOLUTION TO POLLUTION. If you want to argue this point, then answer these two questions: What is “tidal volume”, and how many liters of oxygen (or air) are in your cans?

For those of you that don’t know, tidal volume is the quantity of air that you inhale (and exhale) with each breath. Your own tidal volume will mostly depend upon your lung capacity and your level of activity. For example, a person with a lung capacity of 4 liters can inhale 4 liters of air (or oxygen) on each breath: That’s if they breathe in fully and deeply. At rest they will inhale and exhale a lower quantity of oxygen. Let’s say 1 liter.

If these cans of bullsh*t oxygen had a flow rate that matched the rate of a user’s inhalation (they don’t), and if their delivery mechanism allowed for a tight seal to the user’s face (they don’t), the user would get about 8 inhalations from one of their large 7.7 liter cans, at rest. At a cost of ten, twenty, or thirty dollars for each can, that’s a hell of a way to waste your money. A few extra lung-fulls of oxygen or clean air isn’t going to help you out in a toxic environment.

The reason that Vitality, Boost and all the others make grand claims such as “lasts up to 150 one second inhalations” is because the nozzles on the cans put out gas at such a low rate that barely any gas is emitted. So even if you believe the hype that oxygen or fresh mountain air is good for you, remember that you’re hardly getting any of it into your lungs on each breath.

Meaning that if you’re in a polluted environment and you’re sucking on one of these cans, you’ll be breathing something like 95% polluted air and 5% clean air (or oxygen) each time you inhale.

Oh, and that’s to say nothing for the oh-so-ironic environmental damage that results from shipping cans of air all around the globe.

Speaking of Irony…

I myself have been obsessively critical of FedEx on this very site. But S.co.tt is branded as some random jerk on the internet, not a snake-oil salesman trying to appear legit.

And so that’s why I don’t think it’s too hypocritical to share one of Vitality Air’s Twitter rants:

I’ll just leave that there. Take it for what you will.

If you have any experiences with Vitality Air’s products, good or bad, I’ve love to know about it in the comments!

I get it. At this point you’re probably thinking “What the hell is this guy’s problem? Two videos??“

It’s not like I’m obsessed with Boost Oxygen. In fact, I’ve already moved on to my next fecal-laden product. But when I was shooting the Boost video I decided to go over some of the incoherent ramblings of idiots reviews on Amazon and Sports Authority that I found while doing research on this product. (Yes, I did a modicum of actual research believe it or not.)

What is This Thing?

Hopefully you haven’t heard of Boost Oxygen. Hopefully you haven’t been tempted to plunk down your hard-earned cash on a useless tin can containing 95% pure nonsense.

Did I say “nonsense”? Sorry, I meant that’s it’s full of 95% pure oxygen. According to the manufacturer it’s the “source of life”, so you better go out and buy it now!

The manufacturer also loosely implies benefits to sports performance, general health and wellness, hangover recovery, and altitude sickness. That’s all bullsh*t, of course. Watch the video to find out why.

And Another Thing…

The video discusses two main reasons why this product is unadulterated B.S., but one thing I didn’t mention was the Food and Drug Administration.

You see, supplemental oxygen is used in medicine for all sorts of valid and useful reasons. In fact, it can save the life of someone if they’re ill. But medical oxygen requires a prescription, and Boost Oxygen, LLC is more than happy to point out that they can now sell oxygen in a convenient and practical manner — over the counter.

Yet they fail to mention that oxygen can be used to help you if you’re sick.

If they made a claim like that, then they would be selling a medical product and the FDA would be entirely up their ass about it. Instead, they can only make vague and unsubstantiated claims about the product’s benefits. The FDA exists for a good reason, and although they might be poorly funded and their enforcement powers may have been robustly castrated, they prevent companies like Boost Oxygen, LLC from promising life-saving effects that they can’t deliver. And that avoids killing the suckers that might buy it instead of their prescribed O2.

The bottom line here is this: Do your own research into any “health and wellness” product before you buy it. Hopefully that’s why you’re here, reading this post.

Don’t Forget the Links

I referenced some research papers, reviews, and websites in my video. You can find all of them here, which I’ll try to keep up to date when I get more information.

http://plr.io/1rb

And last of all, please let me know if I’ve made any mistakes or left anything out either in the comments below or on my YouTube video.

Apparently I was so distressed by the non-metal “metal” Defiant power strip from Home Depot that I made a video about it.

If you hate videos but love text, then mosey on over to my previous post about this travesty of a product, and follow my adventures getting pissed off about their HDX Whatever Something Light.

If you want to see a man in a basement ramble on about monitors for over an hour, this is the video for you!

I cover a wide variety of monitor specification-related topics, and how they all come together with the Crossover 404K. But don’t worry, even if the 404K is obsolete by the time you find this, it should still be helpful! (Maybe.)

They’ve Rejected Another of My Fine Reviews

As regular readers of s.co.tt already know (basically just me), Home Depot had previously rejected my valiant attempt to warn other consumers about the fire hazard posed by one of their crap lamps.

Now, I’m publicly complaining about it being done yet again. This time they’ve rejected my upstanding and surely excellent review of their "Defiant Metal Surge with 4 ft. Cord".

Two Days Ago…

Before I present my review, let me take you back to a special and turbulent period of time in my life: Two days ago.

I went to my local Home Depot to pick up a couple of power strips. Rather than go for the cheaply-made five dollar plastic ones, I spotted a couple of power strips that were made of metal.

Not only are metal power strips more durable, they’re also safer in the event of an internal short. Metal doesn’t burn (at least not at reasonable temperatures) unlike the plastic of a lower-quality strip. So a short circuit doesn’t necessarily mean an electrical fire: It more likely would mean a short to ground and a tripped circuit as the insulation melts off the internal wiring.

Hence I was willing to spend about three times the price for a metal power strip (not all surge protectors are power strips, and not all power strips are surge protectors, by the way; This one just happens to be both).

Here’s the item that was on display:

This is taken straight from HomeDepot.com, and is exactly what I saw in the store. Click image to enlarge.

See that? Clear as day it says Metal Surge Protector. That grey top part of the power strip is clearly made of metal.

Yes, there are obvious plastic end caps covering the metal both at the top and bottom, but to me it seemed wise to wrap the metal in dent-resistant plastic. Surely that was an extra sign of quality.

Then I took the power strips home, and here’s what one looks like out of the box:

Needless to say, I was pissed off. This is not a metal surge protector. This is a plastic surge protector with a thin bit of metal over the top.

In of itself I have no problem with this product. Plastic power strips aren’t the worst thing in the world. My problem is that it’s clearly advertised as being made of metal when in fact less than 30 percent of the casing is metal.

At what point does a power strip start being "metal"? I mean, does the copper in the wiring and contacts count? Because if so, then all power strips are "metal".

To my mind a "metal" power strip is one in which the entire shell is made of metal. Such power strips do exist; I didn’t just invent the freaking concept so that I could get myself all frothed up. A little bit of decorative metal on top does not make it a "metal" power strip.

The Review

Needless to say, I gave this a 1-star review on HomeDepot.com. Here’s the original text that I submitted:

I prefer the durability and safety of metal surge protectors/power strips.

I bought this instead of a less expensive power strip because it proudly proclaims on the box that it is a “metal surge protector”.

Well, it has a metal cover plate. And that’s the only part of the power strip that’s visible from outside the packaging, so there’s no reason to believe that every other part of it is made of plastic.

There are two plastic end caps, and the entire base/chassis is plastic. Otherwise it seems like a power strip of reasonable quality. But I can’t recommend it because it’s sold as a “metal surge protector” and the majority of it is plastic.

Home Depot clearly did not agree with my stance on this issue, because they rejected my review a couple of days later.

I understand why they wouldn’t want to publish the review. It’s not flattering in the least. But that doesn’t make it any less of a valid review. Let me explain:

When reviewing a product, it has to be judged on the basis of reasonable expectations. In other words, it would be completely unfair to give a poor review to a Honda Civic simply because it won’t go 190 miles per hour like a high-end Ferrari. Yes, they’re both cars, but there was never a reasonable expectation that a Civic could go that fast. And so each car could receive an equally valid 5-star review because they meet (or exceed) the relative expectations of their respective customers.

Likewise, if Honda claimed that the Civic could go 190 MPH and someone bought it solely on that basis, they’d be perfectly justified in giving it a bad review when it could barely reach 125. (This is in my most humble of opinions, of course.)

So, if this product never said that it was a "Metal Surge Protector" then I may have given it a decent review, or at the very least left it alone.

However, they set a clear expectation that it would be made of metal, yet it was not. That means that the product doesn’t live up to the manufacturers claim, and it fails to deliver on expectations. It fails hard.

What do You Think?

Am I being too curmudgeonly? Would this product meet your expectations based on what you see? Let me know in the comments.