Why I HATE things made in China...

Today we went up to Tin Can Bay to do a job on a phone quote (the owner called up a few days before and requested a quote for installing 4 fans plus lights). The quote Dad gave was a little under what we would normally charge but I figured that just meant we would have to work a little faster than normal to make a decent profit. What we didnt know at the time of the quote was that the owner had bought the cheapest, nastiest fans on the market at BIG W!!!!

I didnt even know that you could BUY fans at Big W!! (Thanks China!!)

Here I was, thinking how much I HATE it when people buy a cheap and nasty $60 fan from Bunnings...but I was in for a surprise, that's for sure!!

Anyway, when the customer purchases a decent fan from a proper electrical outlet (say, a lighting specialist like Cooloola Lighting, or World of Lights) it takes me approximately 10 minutes to have the whole thing put together (while Dad organises the cable to wire it in). When I have to put together a dodgy fan from BUNNINGS, it takes a bit longer...like, 20-25 minutes. In this particular case...featuring rubbish Big W fans...it took significantly longer again!!!!!!!
Dad had all the cables ready to be pulled through (up into the ceiling) before I had even finished 2 of the fans!!

Added to that, when I pulled apart the plastic bag with all of the nuts, bolts, fibre washers, flat washers and spring washers (that are used to attach the part that goes on the fan itself to the blade)...may I also add that said plastic bag is usually made from quite dense plastic and so requires a bit of force to tear it...it practically EXPLODED when I had put quite a small amount of pressure on it...this resulted in all of said contents flying accross the room (and even into 2 other rooms!), under chairs, behind doors, etc!

This wasnt going to end well...I could see it now...and this happened in the first 5 minutes of being there!!

Big W really came into their own though when I found that one of the screws that holds the blade onto the fan was stripped...BEFORE I had removed it!! This then required me to swap that screw with another and then found that the thread on the screw hole was also stripped!

Also, the fan controls cannot be removed from the supplied plates and put into one of our much nicer looking Clipsal 2000 Series plates! I hate things made in China...
This means that we had to mount the fan plates separate to the existing light switch plates... = povo looking work!

On a plus note, the ceiling was wonderfully roomy (ok, there were some majorly MASSIVE spiders in there, but no snakes, and I was able to walk around almost uprightly the whole time) but there were those mongrel yellow fibreglass bats in the ceiling...very itchy, and bad for the lungs. I realise this had nothing to do with China, but by this stage I was ready to blame China for the 38 degree temperature too!

Then, of course, we then striped out one of the screw holes for the stupid-made-in-china fan control plates, which then caused more headache! But not before we realised that one of the fans DIDNT TURN!! Now, there's quality for you!! Straight out of the box, and it already doesnt work!! Stupid China!

So then we had to wait while the owner ducked back into Gympie to the Big W there, to pick up another crappy made-in-China fan!

All Im saying is, is that if people just spent a little more time and money when they choose a fan, they would in fact SAVE money on the poor electrician who has to install it!

To top it all off, when I was trying to separate 2 of the flat metal washers (by squishing them end on with my pliers) when they did give way, the pliers slipped and gave me an instantaneous blood blister on my palm...Im sure its all China's fault!!