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Rant Thread - What really grinds your gears?

Milo Williamson said:
Had loose stool and upset stomach throughout the day....BOOO!!!!
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disgusted i feel sick GIF
 
My wife wanted an item from Wayfair. I go to order it and they tell you that they will keep your credit card on file. You don't have a choice. I hate that. Wayfair could get hacked just like any other business online. Then the criminals will have my credit card number.

If I complain to Wayfair, they would just say it's not our fault, it's hackers.
 
Do not order anything from Project repat and expect it right away, it took them four weeks to send me a U.S. Postal office email left alone, have the shipment tracked, I send the material before Christmas and expect it would of come right away in Jan or something closer, my sister and her husband has about six different quilts from the company itself though, but I am sometimes cold at night even with the extra blankets on my matress sometimes, or I want a quilt for the couch though, but we have two Afgan's though, least they kept it warm up for a spell and.. Just how much they could of hacked right through my sister's card though.
 
AugieTN said:
My wife wanted an item from Wayfair. I go to order it and they tell you that they will keep your credit card on file. You don't have a choice. I hate that. Wayfair could get hacked just like any other business online. Then the criminals will have my credit card number.

If I complain to Wayfair, they would just say it's not our fault, it's hackers.
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That might be a good time to purchase a gift card with the minimal amount to cover the purchase.
 
AugieTN said:
My wife wanted an item from Wayfair. I go to order it and they tell you that they will keep your credit card on file. You don't have a choice. I hate that. Wayfair could get hacked just like any other business online. Then the criminals will have my credit card number.

If I complain to Wayfair, they would just say it's not our fault, it's hackers.
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Check with your card vendor. I have one company that lets me create vendor specific virtual card numbers, so I can have a virtual card I can use with say WayFair, that will only work with WayFair, and if there is a problem, the virtual card gets canceled and the primary account is left untouched.
 
olbriar said:
That might be a good time to purchase a gift card with the minimal amount to cover the purchase.
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That's always an excellent idea. I put the purchase on my Discover card and they advertise you are never responsible for unauthorized charges. Plus I have Discover card setup to send me a text message whenever there is a charge on it.

(Off topic) About 10 yrs ago I had an electrical job at Discover card. The contractor needed one more person for the job. I came in and filled out their forms and discovered there was a federal criminal check, FBI I would guess, before I could start work.
 
Unforgiven said:
Check with your card vendor. I have one company that lets me create vendor specific virtual card numbers, so I can have a virtual card I can use with say WayFair, that will only work with WayFair, and if there is a problem, the virtual card gets canceled and the primary account is left untouched.
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That's an excellent idea and I have heard of that before. My main bank is a not real big credit union. I'll have to check to see if they can do that next time.
 
When someone give me a task and forgets the take of another one, Sometimes I have to think about it first and have that part of my brain without really rethinking on my next task at hand too.
 
At least once a year I have an expensive problem with one of my mowers. This year it is my Grasshopper. It's a large cut rider and is the mower I use everywhere I can. It has an electric motor that changes the height of the deck and turns the deck up 90° so that the deck can be cleaned and the blades exchanged for a sharpened set of blades. My motor is unresponsive. It's a sealed motor that I can't open to check the brushes etc. A new replacement motor is $800 before labor. I've put off having it looked at all winter. I didn't know if I was going to be healthy enough to mow. I'm going give another season a try so I'm taking my mower in for repair in the morning.
 
While I'm ranting about lawn equipment I have another major rant. I have a backpack blower. The current blower is the third exact model that I've owned. They have worked great and have an output that allows the user to walk down the middle of a triple drive and blow all the clippings off in just one trip. The one I'm using now is starting to show its age. Towards the end of summer it became damn hard to start. Twice it stopped in mid rope pull completely locked up. I think it had pressure on the exhaust side of the piston. Whatever the reason, it messed up my thumb on my left hand holding the blower and my right shoulder I was pulling the rope with. After the second time it locked up it really hurt my shoulder and it's been sore ever since. Today I tried to start the blower. It locked up the first pull and I could feel my shoulder come apart. I can't even reach out and pick up my cell phone off of my desk with the bunged up shoulder. It's not a great time to have a separated shoulder right before mowing starts. My guess is it will take a couple of months to heal if I kept my arm in a sling. Not good.
Tomorrow I plan to pull the back off of the blower and remove the rope pull. I'll start out the season using my battery operated impact gun to turn the engine over.
 
Well just last evening, well yesterday morning about eight a.m., my sister's puppy went into my room for a second. Was nearly half asleep, so I only saw the carpet out of place,hit my left third toe, I did put on some ice on it and some medication on it, little did I knew I forgot a towel when I had it in my room, water dripped through the carpet, but I am glad to have these new floors that are esentually quickly non obsorbant, I took off the carpet, and got a microfiber cloth I cleaned that up, I accidently shook my rug in here, I swept underneath it once before, and the moment I swept underneath it, I just repeated the same thing, I shook the rug on accident, causing more debris, just mostly sand, and dirt. Underneath my desk though, least it is there, my art table has underneath it my painting supplies that is at least about oh two arm lenghts to carry up and toss it in a different direction...



I am feeling better though, least I am not yet exhausted from it though.
 
olbriar said:
While I'm ranting about lawn equipment I have another major rant. I have a backpack blower.
Tomorrow I plan to pull the back off of the blower and remove the rope pull. I'll start out the season using my battery operated impact gun to turn the engine over.
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Well that didn't work. First attempt the engine locked up and I stripped the nut that holds the starting lugs fastened to the crank shaft. My next attempt was to buy a socket large enough that it would go over the entire lug assembly and engage the starting lugs. ( 34mm axel nut impact socket)
After two piston cycles the engine seizes every time. I can wait and cycle it again with the same result. The e-drill jumps off the lugs leaving filings of shaved metal. No wonder it ripped my shoulder apart when pulling by hand. I've worn out another exact blower but it eventually lost compression.

I put the rope start back on the blower today. I'm taking it to a shop tomorrow to see if it's worth repairing. If not, they are the best local Shindaiwa dealer in my area. Not that Shindaiwa is the only game in town, but it is my preferred blower and string trimmer maker.

I dug out the paperwork for that blower purchase. It was bought for the 2017 mow season at a bit over five hundred bucks before tax. just doing a quick math, I'm guessing it has blown off over six thousand properties. I replaced the throttle cable once and the shoulder straps once. It owes me nothing.
 
AugieTN said:
Shindaiwa? Aren't there any USA made lawn trimmers anymore? Stihl, Toro, Troy Built? I'm guessing probably not.
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I honestly wouldn't know. Shindaiwa was recommended from a lawn care guy when I fist started mowing commercially. I had already used up a Wally world brand and wanted more than a home use tool. Echo may be mostly American made or at least built in the USA with foreign parts.
 
Are Echo trimmers made in the USA?


The Echo brand of hand-held petrol powered tools including chainsaws, brushcutters, hedge trimmers and leaf blowers are manufactured in Yokosuka and Morioka, with other major plants in Shenzhen, China and Lake Zurich, Illinois.
 
I see that Shindaiwa is a line manufactured and distributed by Echo. It may have always been the elite Echo brand, I have no idea. All I do know is they offer and honor a two year warranty of commercially used tools which is unheard of.

The prognosis on the old blower was not good. The shop pulled the plug and the rope starter with no resistance. The engine is definitely getting pressure on the exhaust side of the cylinder. The only cheap culprit for that pressure would be a total blockage of the exhaust. It's possible if the exhaust system had the spark arrestor installed but I always remove the arrestor before using any two stoke tool. If it were back pressure in the exhaust it would have been hard to start for some time and would run crummy and hot. That's not been the case. It ran great until I ripped my arm out of my shoulder last fall and again a week ago. He said I can fix it.. no matter what the problem is.. but the shop charges $125 and hour labor and it will take at least two if not three hours to access and address the problem if it's not exhaust blockage. He recommended I retire the blower.

On the strength of that, I put the old blower in my truck and bought another. They only had two Shindaiwa models in stock. One was the entry level backpack blower and the other an upper midrange backpack blower. I went with the higher output model EB770RT. It's actually lighter than my older blower but is rated for a higher maximum air output. It's too cold to play with it today. As soon as it warms up, I'll remove the spark arrestor, adjust the shoulder straps, gas it up, and give it a break in run.

Some nice warm day in the future I plan to attack the old blower. I work a lot cheaper than $125 an hour. :) I'll pull the muffler off and check for carbon at its intake. If I should be so lucky to put the blower back into service, I'll likely take it to the cabin if my son doesn't want it. As long as I keep it close so it can be pressed into a backup role if needed seems like good insurance. If I can't breath life into the old blower I'll simply toss it.
 
.....All I do know is they offer and honor a two year warranty of commercially used tools which is unheard of......

Exactly, unheard in the states

I was amazed when I was in France and discovered that a two year warranty was standard. They need to bring that here.

The legal guarantee of conformity is at least 2 years from delivery in most European countries (in France for example) but it can be longer : 3 years in Sweden for example.
 
Most everything today is designed to fail in short order. It's sad when a certain limited number of cycles is considered enough when much more could be incorporated at very little additional expense.
Greed my friend. When designed failure just beyond a warranty period is the norm, we live in a wicked greedy world.
 
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