Products that fail MISERABLY at doing what they were made to do

I was going to say the same thing. Recently adopted two cats, got two litter boxes, and several boxes of liners. Worthless. (The liners, not the cats or the litter boxes.)

What about public toilet seat covers that are “Provided by the management for your protection”? They’re so thin you can see through them, and if you look closely, they’re full of little holes! What are they supposed to protect you from?

Senators with wide stances?

Laughed so hard, I wet my pants! True DAT! If it werent for gravity, staplers would be totally useless.

Maybe ass gaskets are meant to protect you from senators with wide stances? You find them in the same place, after all…

Then it’s a double failure, because they don’t protect either. There was a study some time ago that showed you got more bacteria and such using those than not. That’s because the process of putting them on makes it likely that your hand will touch the toilet seat.

Since this started off on a printer note, I feel I have to share my experiences last time I bought a printer.

First off–I was running XP64. Anyone who’s familiar with this version of Windows probably know that finding drivers of any sort can at times be problematic, since it never gained much popularity, and regular XP drivers didn’t work.

So anyways, I get a new printer. I stick the CD in the drive, install the XP driver, and presto!–it doesn’t work. No surprise there. There wasn’t a 64-bit version on the included CD–also no surprise there. So I went to the manufacturer’s website to find a XP64 driver, with no luck. If there was one, it was very well hidden, as the site wasn’t particularly well designed for finding printer drivers. So I call the 1-800 number for tech support, and the guy on the other end tells me that there isn’t a XP64 driver for that model printer.

Joy.

Now, as it turns out, there IS a driver. I was able to install it via the Windows installer, and presto!–it still doesn’t work.

Right model, right OS, and I still have a non-functional printer.

Here’s the icing on the cake–I was eventually able to get the printer running…by installing a driver for a different model.
Once I got it running it worked fine, but is it too much to ask that a driver for a certain printer/OS combination actually work with that printer/OS combination?

Yes. Any other questions about features?

Let me help you with that.
I use one of these.
It has some sort of sear pin mechanism that jumps up and staples for you. I love it.

I’ve posted this in minirants before…

Public bathroom soap dispensers rarely actually dispense soap, even when filled.
When they do dispense soap, you either get A) not nearly enough soap, B) way too much soap, or C) soap somewhere other than in the hand in which you had hoped to have the soap dispensed.

Don’t get me started on paper towel dispensers.

GS-22 Scratch Remover. Comes as a paste in a tube, i was taken in by the Ronco (does anything from Ronco “For Only $19.99” actually work?) ad on TV, I had a scratched up car at the time…stuff didn’t work for shit, not on surface scratches or anything.

And they even took a nail on TV and scratched the hood of a car and “removed” it with this stuff!

Blatant lies, Ronco!

:slight_smile:

The Pocket Fisherman worked pretty good. For, you know, a fishing pole you can fit in your pocket.

How 'bout phones? Not cell phones, but regular land line types. Ever since I was a wee tot, until I left for college, we had one phone. It was black and had a rotary dial. Now, I buy phones twice a year, what’s up with that?

My MP3 player software cannot be installed on my computers until I uninstall Quicktime, because during the installation there is an advert for some stupid assed shit that pops up in Quicktime, and for some reason it’s incompatible with the newer versions (no forward compatibility?) and crashes. So the installation process is uninstall Quicktime, install the software, ignore the 800 error messages that pop up when it tries to run its adverts for long-dead products, then reinstall Quicktime.

The MP3 player also has a firmware upgrade which is supposedly “strongly recommended”. So I download the upgrader, and the first thing which it tells me is: “WARNING! Upgrading your firmware will delete ALL of your songs, ALL files, and ALL playlists and favorites. Do you want to continue?” Fuck no, I don’t want to re-upload 20 gigs of songs and re-create all those playlists (because even if you export them, the new firmware won’t work with them.) Yee haw.

What kind of player is this?

Restroom hand dryers. All they do is move the water around on your hands. I invariably end up getting frustrated and just dry them on my pants.

Seedless watermelons

I’ve had an HL-1435 for nearly 6 years and many many pages an it’s finally starting to go out. I’d had such a good experience I’d been considering getting another Brother…

-Joe

Cheap (about $50) Black & Decker rechargeable. Had it for almost four years and I’ve never had to do anything more complicated on it than replace the spool of plastistring.

-Joe

May I respectfully suggest you switch to WinAmp or something else that is, well, less sucky than whatever you’re currently (not having a lot of luck) using?