09:54 – I have this nagging sense that there’s something I should be doing this morning. I finally realized that it feels odd not to be going to the dentist this morning, as I’ve done four times in the last week or so.
It turns out that Ray is kind of right about cheap flashlights. I just got burned for the first time with cheap flashlights. I’d ordered a three-pack of these on December 10th. When they arrived, I installed batteries in them and put one on the marble-top table in the foyer for Barbara to use when she takes Colin out after dinner. The first one failed the second time she used it. She pushed the rubber-dome switch on the tail-cap to turn on the light, and the whole switch just pushed into the body of the flashlight. Then, the other night, she tried a second flashlight. This one failed the first time she pushed the switch. Two out of three immediate failures doesn’t bode well, so I started the return process with Amazon.
I also ordered a couple of name-brand flashlights to replace them. First, one $30 two-AA Streamlight, and one $13 three-AAA Anker. We’ll see how those do. Now to pull the new batteries out of the junk flashlights and get them boxed up to return to Amazon. I’m still happy with the $4 single-AA lights I’ve bought several of. Only one of those has failed, and that was my own fault. I was carrying it with a jumble of other stuff, and one of the other items ended up pushing in the lens and destroying the LED circuit board behind it.
My real problem with Amazon is that when you order something that’s sold by a third-party vendor but fulfilled by Amazon, you have no idea what you’ll actually get. There’s a lot of counterfeit product out there, and Amazon seems not to care whether they ship you genuine product or a counterfeit knock-off. Increasingly, I suspect that’s also true for items that Amazon both sells and ships themselves.