On 23/05/2014 12:10, Adrian Tuddenham wrote:
Arfa Daily wrote:


The permanent staff at their Bath branch are usually pretty
knowlegeable; some of the 'temps' aren't quite so clued-up, but they
are generally enthusiastic. Most importantly, none of them have tried
to pretend they understand things that they don't and nobody has ever
tried to bull**** me.


--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~


I have to say ditto for the branch near me ...

The weekend before last I needed a 24v DC power supply in a hurry for a
job that had to be installed the following Monday. There wasn't time to
order anything by post so I popped into the Bath branch of Maplins and
bought a plugtop SMPS. I PAT tested it with 500v DC and it appeared OK,
but I wasn't very impressed by the 200mV p/p sawtooth ripple on the
output (it said "low ripple" on the box), so I installed some extra
smoothing in the audio filter which it it powered.

While I was installing it, a colleague touched the metal box of the
filter with one hand and the metal casing of an amplifier with the
other, and received a substantial 'tingle'. I measured 80v rms between
the two and a leakage current of 1.4 mA on short-circuit. The equipment
had to be put into service immediately, so I made sure the two boxes
were properly bonded together and left the PSU working.

When I reported this to Maplins a few days later, the shop-floor staff
promptly referred me to the manager. He took down all the details in
writing and assured me it would be reported to the chief buyer in his
e-mailed report that evening.

The shop staff handled it perfectly properly, but I wait with interest
to see how their head office will deal with it.



At least Maplin policy on returns is to bundle them up and sell off at
the "trade" Nottingham auction house and the explicit caveat emptor that
goes with buying in that manner.
Compare with Aldi policy. My experience over the last year a Dremmel
like mains powered high speed drill. 13 GBP excellent value , at a 1/3
of the price of Dremmel and IMHO good engineering (just bad mains switch
position and speed control could be less prone to vibration movement). I
waited for them to turn up again , to buy a spare.
Bought a second one but one of the brass 1/8 & 3/32 inch collets was
missing. Returned it and got refunded but they were all like this in the
stock. Either security tab was obviously corrupted or like the one I had
bought was re-stuck (closer perusal showed they were not virgin security
tabs) and all were missing the second collet, ie returns by people like
myself I assume,
but Aldi trying to sell on regardless, at the same 13 GBP.
Next time they made an appearance, 2 weeks ago, now boxes themselves
obviously battered, as well as no second collet. But now the price was 8
GBP with marked down sticker and I bought one for a spare.