Absolutely! Think attic apartment with no oven.
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Deductible or not. It still is proper and more effective to go through hour insurance. Let them fight the battle. That’s what you pay them for. But people keep seemingly arguing otherwise.
All evidence to the contrary
Ooh, that was quite a rabbit hole. Official site, merch, New York Times, SS Morro Castle, Bruce Springsteen. . .
OK, I’m back. What were we talking about?
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I don’t think they even ship these to the US.
Mostly what I buy at aliexpress are parts for repairing electronic devices, and odd bits of hardware. I suspect that if the power tools they sold ran on US current, I would have tried some of those and injured myself.
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With power tools I’d be a bit afraid of electrical issues, I try to buy these only through trusted local importer. Also tools that store lots of kinetic energy in moving parts, like angle grinders, can be deadly dangerous when mechanical failure happens (for example gearbox breaks and locks itself). In such case a trusted brand would be best choice (I prefer Makita).
Compressors made in China are kinda nice (again bought from local dealer, so the safety features are there), but it’s good to place these in a separate room or basement, so flying shrapnel won’t hurt anyone when the compressor inevitably tears itself apart.
It’s not that clear, and we don’t have enough details about her insurance to know.
- What’s the deductible?
- If it’s below the deductible, the insurance company isn’t likely to do anything.
- How good vs just cheap is the insurance company?
- If they’re mostly cheap, it could be a “1 claim” type of policy where they drop you the next year and you need a new insurance company then.
We have a good insurance company where a claim wouldn’t impact us. But, it has a deductible for most perils, but not all. For something like this, if the deductible applied and I wanted to recover part of it, going to the manufacturer is exactly the right thing.
Conversely, if the deductible didn’t apply, then direct to the insurance company and they can figure it out. Which they probably wouldn’t, because figuring it out would cost more than they would recover.
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happened to me with a plain old toaster…didn’t flame, but melted into a hot lump in the middle of the night. This after my sister always warning me not to leave counter-top appliances plugged in. Now all our counter-top appliances are on switched outlets, only turn them on when needed. Leads to lots of “I don’t know what time it is so I’m gonna flash my digits at you” but much less “I’m MELTING!!”
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Replacement Part: $11.56 + Tax: $1.29 + Shipping & Handling: $7.95 = Total: $20.80
A new blander of the same model would have costed > $100.00
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There’s a UK youtuber i watch that does cooking videos and i’ve long been interested to see how in the UK all outlets have their own individual switch that’ll cut power to whatever is plugged in. Pretty excellent safety-wise and some day far off in the future when i buy a house i’m absolutely putting those in the kitchen.
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I used to have a friend that would have wanted that “nail unbender” . He owned a few houses and did repairs on them himself; he would recover the used nails, straighten them, and sort them into tobacco cans (he didn’t smoke, he had people give the cans to him). When he died (he was murdered in his forties) he had something like half a million cash on hand, plus lots of material assets. And no heirs
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Unfortunately, NEMA-type outlets with built-in switches are all too rare here, and usually take the form of the toggle switch taking up a full outlet’s worth of space, leaving you with just one socket. The BS1363 socket is huge enough that adding a toggle switch is no big deal.
The other thing lacking on this side of the pond: fused plugs. Only once have I ever seen American fused plugs; they were on desk lamps in a modular cubicle system, and they were chunky enough (wall-wart size) that you would not be able to plug two of them into a standard duplex socket.
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Electrical standards are one of those odd areas where the UK is obsessively concerned with getting things right:
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That is one helluva story–it needs its own movie! Wow.
Please accept my condolences. He sounded like someone I would have enjoyed meeting. Thanks for posting.
We do a lot of home repairs ourselves, and I salute him, his frugality, his talents.
Our family has a love-hate relationship with Harbor Freight. I admit it’s convenient to swing by there to replace the umpteenth 10mm socket I keep misplacing, when I am already grocery shopping at our co-op a few doors away.
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Interesting guy alright…Mensa member, for what that’s worth. He was working as an intercept officer at the time of his death, back in the days you had to go to the far north to listen to the Russians because of lack of high speed data links. The guys that killed him were itinerants who he let stay in one of his properties. Beat him to death. If the police got the right people; they did one of those elaborate “Mr Big” sting operations that were conducted in Canada for a while. Those operations were sometimes criticized for providing questionable evidence because there could be incentive for the subjects to lie about their “achievements” . ( police would create elaborate fake crime organisations, usually sustaining the operation over months, involve the subjects in fake “crimes” that gave them a reward, promise them more action if they could prove they were “badass” : “Say bud, ever kill anyone?” )
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Thank god I live in Australia. There is no way the company could have got away with refusing your warranty claim here. Companies can’t put a time limit on warranties, though the continue to try. Consumer law says that a warranty time period is determined mainly by the cost of the item and how long it can be expected to last.
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