All posts by Olivier Mehani

About Olivier Mehani

Just another random geek.

Eaton 5E 850i UPS: belated sign of life; avoid

Accounts, Australia, Bad experiences, Consumer Electronics, Satisfactory outcomes, Tedious processes

tl;dr: If you’re looking for a functional UPS, avoid the Eaton 5E series. And if you want customer service, avoid Eaton.

In an attempt to make my network infrastructure more resilient, I decided to get an uninterruptible power supply, to keep the Wi-Fi on during power cuts. After some comparisons, I settled for the Eaton 5E 850i. It was a mistake.

UPDATE (2022-12-08): After a phone call, and another follow-up message, I finally got the support escalated to a product manager, who was quick to confirm that, indeed, the UPS was defective. It took another follow-up email to get a replacement actually sent to me. Fortunately, this time, it was detected.

Continue reading Eaton 5E 850i UPS: belated sign of life; avoid →

Product Reviews: Smart Home

Australia, Consumer Electronics, Good experiences, Product reviews, , , , , , , ,

A bit more than a year ago, I finally fell onto the Smart Home and automation bandwagon. I wanted to monitor temperature and humidity in a few spots of the house. I ended up using Aqara Temperature & Humidity Zigbee sensors. I set up Home Assistant to keep everything local, and used a Nortek HUSBZB-1 Zigbee/Z-Wave adapter (affiliate link).

It didn’t take long until I frantically was adding more stuff: Mirabella Genio and Kogan Smart Bulb light globes, a Genio Power Plug with 2 USB ports and a Davis AirLink air quality sensor.

The rest of this post reviews all those products, with pros and cons. All in all, they are generally positive.

Continue reading Product Reviews: Smart Home →

Netatmo Smart Home Weather Station: not as local as they say

Accounts, Bad experiences, Consumer Electronics, Product reviews

Due to heavy fire smoke in the area, we recently needed a way to monitor the outside air quality. Amongst the few devices that caught our eye, the Netatmo Smart Home Weather Station stood out as a decent compromise between features and price.

Until it turns out half the features (including outside air quality) aren’t measured locally, and instead obtained from other data sources.

Continue reading Netatmo Smart Home Weather Station: not as local as they say →

Jimmy Stuart: weird smell, poor quality, and terrible customer service

Australia, Bad experiences, Clothes, Tedious processes, Unsatisfactory outcomes,

A few months ago, I received a fancy shirt from Jimmy Stuart for my birthday. I had confirmed with the gifter that it was the pattern I wanted, but we were both quite disappointed with what we found, and smelled, in the box.

We decided to request a return for a full refund but the company refused. Not even the intervention of an NSW Fair Trading mediator helped, and we find ourselves having paid ~$115 in total (with return postage) for a ~$80 shirt (due to second postage), that we probably would not have paid more than $30. Also, the smell is still there.

Lesson learned: don’t buy clothes online without making sure you can get a refund if dissatisfied, as Fair Trading mediators bear little weight against bad-faith vendors.

Continue reading Jimmy Stuart: weird smell, poor quality, and terrible customer service →

HP: Vendor lock-in as a standard, and deprivation of consumer choices

Bad experiences, Consumer Electronics

So I was in the market for printers. Having had good experiences with HP for printing in the past, I looked at their offering.

But then, something struck me.

Cartridges using a non-HP chip may not work, and those that work today may not work in the future.

I feel like, to future-proof my printer purchases, I now need to strike HP from the list of decent manufacturers.

Continue reading HP: Vendor lock-in as a standard, and deprivation of consumer choices →

Australian Geographic: poor quality items, poor customer service

Accounts, Australia, Bad experiences, Online services, Shopping

We just posted this review over at ProductReview.com.au. This experience doesn’t seem to be a rare occurence…

We have ordered from here twice – once the Galileo thermometer, and secondly, a space-projector thing, and both items have been terrible. The thermometer wasn’t actually calibrated, and didn’t go above 28 degrees (useless in Sydney) so was basically something decorative, and the projector wouldn’t actually project onto anything further than 50cm away in a darkened room.

We had no troubles returning the thermometer, but we have been having some problems with the projector. Firstly, they were difficult about returning it if it wasn’t resalable in its original packing – it makes me shudder that they would resell this thing that doesn’t actually work – and then, when they refunded it, they refunded the wrong amount. They rectified this, but have still not paid for return postage. They say that they will only refund return postage if the item is damaged. I would say that not working as one would reasonably expect (i.e. project onto walls in a dark room from further way than 50cm) would indicate that a product was a bit damaged… We will wait to hear back from them regarding the postage, but really, we are not going to order from here again. The products have been a bit crap, despite costing a reasonable amount of money ($70~ and $60) You’d probably be be better off going to your local $2 shop.

Continue reading Australian Geographic: poor quality items, poor customer service →

Europcar Car Rental Cork Airport: Disappointment, Promises, and More Disappointment

Accounts, Bad experiences, Car Rental, Ireland, Letters, Unsatisfactory outcomes,

On a trip to Ireland in October, we had to rent a car to see ourselves around. We booked the car online from a website called “Irish car rentals”, but it turns out to be a front for europcar.ie.

We had been warned about hidden charges for additional collision insurances (Collision Damage Waiver, CDW), and that one way to avoid those charges was to pay with a credit card offering some sort of coverage.

So we had this covered, but the pain did not stop here.

Continue reading Europcar Car Rental Cork Airport: Disappointment, Promises, and More Disappointment →

Australia Post’s consistent performance

Accounts, Australia, Bad experiences, Courriers, Online services, Unsatisfactory outcomes

A few hours ago, I had to look up the details of an Australia Post outlet, on my phone. Fortunately, Australia Post has a rather slick and to-the-point mobile website.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work…

Continue reading Australia Post’s consistent performance →