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A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
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Previous: Hotel room control panel | Main | Next: Overly aggressive sales clerks
November 15, 2005 12:03 AM
Broken: Nokia charger
Alison Y. points out:
This is a Nokia charger with non-rigid prongs. This is fine in a regular wall socket, but on a horizontal power strip, the charger falls out and needs to be artificially propped up by a phone book or another item. This is broken!
I also love the warranty sticker, which voids itself if the sticker is removed.
What's wrong with the sticker? The idea is that the warranty is void if you open the thing up to screw with the electronics. The sticker is placed so that you have to rip it to open the unit.
Kenton is right about the sticker.
In the UK they ship these with converters so that they don't have to provide two completely different sets of cables (because we use a three-pronged plug) and you can take your phone to another country and not have to worry about buying a converter etc.
For the UK, this design is brilliant.
Question: does it fall out becasue the prongs aren't "grippy" enough? I would have thought that, folding prongs or no, the plug would be seated tightly enough to hang on.
Sticker: Not broken, that's common.
Prongs: broken. Sounds like they're too thin to grip properly (or a worn out power strip maybe), but also, the folding prongs should bend in the other direction so that the stresses presented work against the hinge, not with it, making it more stable. Or at least a stiffer hinge where the prongs "click" into place when folded or extended. Poorly designed indeed.
As the formerly extremely disgruntled owner of this lame device, I can set a few things straight. It worked fairly well for a short while - though as some posters have surmised, it never really fit snugly into the outlet. However, after a few months of use the hinge on which the prongs are mounted could not be coaxed to stay secure in the extended position. Thus it eventually failed to function even when plugged into a wall socket. The last time I allowed myself to be tormented by this blasted apparatus was during my best friend's bachelorette party, when I was relegated to standing in the bathroom and physically adhering it to the wall in order to receive a call. SO broken!
I suffered with one of these plugs also. The fix is obvious - folding plugs should have a detent to hold them in the open position, so that a little force is required to fold them. They will come to purchasers in the folded position, so that we'll know they CAN be opened and folded, and we'll figure out how to do it.
- The Precision Blogger
My battery charger for my camera (Canon) has the same style of folding prongs, only they never fall out of sockets. So it's a design flaw apparently. I personally LOVE this feature because I can fit my charger into my camera bag so much easier- no prongs to worry about! I agree with the Brit- brilliant!!
I simpathise with the owner of this thing. I have encountered many items which function, but have somthing fundamentally wrong with them. I think this may be a marketing ploy to supply the consumer with a piece of junk, just to get them to buy the more expensive version-thus more money for the company.
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Previous: Hotel room control panel | Main | Next: Overly aggressive sales clerks
phone book printers paid 'em off.
Posted by: gmangw at November 15, 2005 12:19 AM