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Home Depot = Good, Pegasus brand = Bad

October 22, 2008 in Homestead by MAD | 3 comments

Once upon a time we bought a new kitchen faucet. We didn’t go all out, but we did spend more than we wanted. We bought a Pegasus Brand faucet. It looked good, and felt nice. Retail at the time was around $180. Similar faucets by Mowen and Delta cost about 20% more or $10-$40 more than the Pegasus.

The one we purchased was this one:

Well, not exactly this one. Ours is model K-300 but it looks exactly the same but the new model is K-700.

We had it a few months and the pull-out handle thing literally broke off, as in the plastic that screwed into the hose snapped. Granted our son got a little frustrated and banged on it, though it should have taken more abuse.

Since my son did the breaking (or so we thought) we made him pay for the faucet, or at least 1/2 if I recall correctly.

We couldn’t find parts online anywhere so we went to the Home Depot and purchased an entire new faucet to get the parts. That was less than a year ago (I think).

Well tonight, Maggie while washing some dishes, pulled the handle out and it snapped right off, just like the last one. Only this time, well there wasn’t any abuse or force.

Needless to say we (at least I) was a tad frustrated. Again we looked online. Turns out Pegasus is a home brand for Home Depot. There is no obvious way to get parts and I’ll be damned if I was going to cough up another $180 for another faucet. If that was the case I was getting something else.

So, long story short, we called Home Depot and told them our tale of woe. The kind return lady said, no problem if we have the same thing come in and get the parts.

When we got there, she looked up the price of the faucet and was shocked. “There’s no way you should have had to buy another one last time. I’m giving you refund for the 2nd faucet.” (Score).

So we picked up the new handle, and got a store credit for the new sale price ($149) which, in my book is a good thing.

Home Depot did right by us tonight and we’ll continue to shop there because of it. We will budget for a new faucet, I have no doubt we’ll be in the same broken faucet boat in another 6-9 months. It’s a poor design. Perhaps the new K-700 is different, but I’m not taking any chances.

(Searching the net you can find a lot of people complaining about Pegasus faucets, so buyer beware).

Duke Update V

September 19, 2008 in Commentary, Homestead, Miscellaneous by MAD | No comments

Down to 113,000 Customers.

I understand some folks are getting mighty testy out there… Just keep in mind there are folks in Texas who won’t have power for a month.

It sure would suck but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Man-Up folks.

Duke Update IV

September 18, 2008 in Commentary, Homestead, Miscellaneous by MAD | No comments

Now down to 212,000 Customers out.

Note there are far fewer of these:

Which means the job is only getting harder for them to make headway. I feel for those who still don’t have power.

We hope to get our cable/Internet up today, they’ve scheduled a visit between 11am and 1:30pm. I’m not expecting much though as they think my area is clear…

Duke Update III

September 17, 2008 in Commentary, Homestead, Miscellaneous by MAD | No comments

From 529,000 yesterday at this time to 311,000 customers aint too shabby.

I understand that by the end of today they expect 85% of the 300k left to have power restored. The bad part is that will be the bulk of the low hanging fruit though. (That being affected areas or damage that fixing will restore a larger number of homes/businesses). The remaining <100k will be smaller individual outages at the residential level. Our neighbor seems to be one of those as they are still running on a generator from time to time. Those individual outages will remain through next week (or so I hear).

I think we’ll be looking to upgrade our generator. I found the integration panel that I never installed and will figure out how to get that baby hooked up.

Duke and the outages II

September 16, 2008 in Commentary, Homestead, Miscellaneous by MAD | No comments

Yesterday on the way home I was listening to the radio and people were bitching that you couldn’t find a Duke truck with a search warrant.

At that time two very large trucks were working on the transmission lines that run through our property. We were kind of hoping that once they fixed those we’d have power but that wasn’t the case.

We had beefed up our preparedness though. On the way home I bought a few more bigger, better extension cords in preparation to move the generator out into the barn so that it could also power the well pump.

I also bought the necessary wire to hook that up too. Then the need became fuel. We used to keep fuel on the property, in fact we have a 275 gallon tank for the mowers/tractors, dirt bikes and cars. But we hadn’t used that in a couple years.

We had called a couple gas suppliers and the only one that answered the phone said he had to deliver to all the municipalities and business he was responsible for first but that he’d call us back at the end of the day to see what he had left.

So I grabbed 3 of our 5 gallon jugs and headed north for fuel. In Camden, the one gas station was upon and the line was reasonable. Of course as soon as I started filling them the guy from the fuel company called. He said we could have the last 70 gallons from his truck if we wanted it.

Well, hell yeah.

So I beat feat for home to pay him for the fuel. So here we were, on generator power, backups for the grill, and we had water. What did this mean? It meant we’d get power that evening, I was sure of it.

On the way to get gas people were calling in on the radio saying that there were caravans of utility trucks heading up I-75. One person counted 42, another over 200. That made me feel pretty good that we’d get power back soon. I know those guys normally slack off, I’ve witnessed that myself on our property when the service the main transmission lines from time to time. But I know when the @%$# hits the fan, those guys do get it done, and I’m thankful for that.

So as anticipated at 1am the power came back on. It took about an hour to unwind all the generator stuff I had previously wound up. But it was quiet, and that was awesome.

Here’s today’s outage map. No visual change but the count is down by 60k customers out.