Quoted from pinheadpierre:
Yes - three years is a long time. 3 years is what Marco says. They base this off of all that I have to go on which is an order number on the bag that I keep this style of lamp sockets in. As a matter or organization, I tend to consolidate identical stuff in one bag from whatever vendor it came from. Under this system, multiple orders of a part can easily end up in the same bag. That's clearly a bad idea. Again, I don't think these are three years old, but I can't look it up like I could on PinballLife which allows customers to look back through old orders. Maybe they are that old, maybe not. I don't have a way of really knowing.
If only some of them had been defective, I would've just thrown them in the trash and carried on without much more thought about it. It was the fact that ALL of them were defective that made me give them a call.
I actually didn't ask for anything originally. What I did was call them and tell them what was going on. Maybe I was doing something wrong and breaking perfectly good parts? Maybe this was something that they know about and would be happy to help with? Maybe they would tell me what many of the comments here suggest and tell me to do a thorough quality check/stress test on all the parts I order rather than trust that they are all good? I felt it was worth a call. The result of the call with the weird photograph hoop jump prior to the half expected denial of exchange was what struck me as weird.
That's what I'm saying. Thank you.
I'm really not that ticked off. I mainly want to warn others not to buy parts in advance unless they are a professional repair business that mows through parts quickly. For the rest of us, our personal and professional lives often cause hobby projects to get shoved to the far back burner for longer periods of time than expected.
You are right. Anything would have gone a long way and this would not be an issue. The dollar amount doesn't matter. This is a matter of principle for me since I am talking about new, unused parts that could easily still be on their shelves.
Thanks for verifying that. I guess that's the crux of the matter for me. They know I bought these from them and very likely know they are defective.
Marcos told me to fix them with jb-weld.
This is what puzzled me, too.
I don't know about that, but it could be a win-win for them and other customers. Maybe a few people who have practiced the same dumb habits that I have will also change their ways and Marcos will have fewer calls about merchandise defects from guys like me after way too much time has passed.