On Mon, 15 Sep 2014 22:58:07 -0700, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Mon, 15 Sep 2014 19:20:24 -0700 (PDT), Phil Allison
wrote:
...snip...
How common is this very annoying Chinese practice ?

I don't know. My problems don't arrive in pairs and I don't fix
...snip...

Back in 70's when HP held monthly meetings of the 'Electric Car' group,
there was a guy giving a presentation on making his electric care and
describing his experience at getting a 'custom' motor from China. At that
time all the electrical enthusiasts were grabbing the starter motors out
of the discarded WWII bombers. Seems the motor had great specs for running
a car. This guy sent the specs to China and had a Manufacturer make one
for him, copying the 'design of those starter motors, with improvements.
He showed his first shipment motor and its serial number. He noted that
here in the US, EVERYBODY obfuscates the fact that something is one of the
first of Production so invent very long, meaningless string of numbers,
like 11001001 to be the first unit and so on. But this Chinese unit
clearly showed 002, and the guy made the comment he didn't know where 001
was, perhaps failed, perhaps kept. But he he was as surprised as everyone
there that they clearly showed how non-mature the product was with a
serial number of 002.

He also showed pictures of his visit to the Manufacturer. There was a huge
warehouse type room of very expensive winding machines, huge, costly
machines, but the overall space was so dark with only tiny little lights
showing, looked like starbrights across this cavernous space. He explained
that they had all this expensive capital equipment, but ONLY the work
spaces for threading the machines were lighted, ...whith what looked like
singer sewing machine light bulbs! He also lamented it was often too dark
to even get a useable photo.