On or around Wed, 13 Oct 2004 20:04:53 +0100, "Larry" enlightened us thusly:
I bought one (wipers) via Paddocks and had no hassles with it. Mind, I also bought a main lighting switch and had slight trouble with it as the contacts were iffy where they were rivetted together. quick go with the soldering iron fixed that though.
It seems to be popular to whinge like a whingy thing about cheap pattern parts being defective in some way - granted that they shouldn't be, provided the supplier is prepared to exchange them at no extra cost (I've never known Paddocks not to and in all truth rarely had to ask) then you have a simple choice: chance yer arm with the pattern one, or buy the genuine article at
3 times the cost: And, to be fair to Britpart et al, the light switch I had slight problems with as above was to all appearances identical to the lucas one that I'd just taken off cos it had melted. As was the wiper stalk/switch, too; except that the new one didn't flop all over the place due to being broken.I put elcheapo 12-quid-a-time dampers on the back of mother's disco. They're not as good as, for example, blisteins, or pro-comp, they're probably not as good as OEM, but they are about a third of the price. One of them doesn't damp quite as well as the other, presumably down to average quality manufacturing tolerances. But for the use the vehicle gets, it's no problem, and they both work better than the leaky ones, and will pass an MOT to boot.
in short, then:
If you buy a cheap part and it doesn't work, AND the supplier refused to refund or exchange it, you've a legitimate complaint.
If you buy a cheap part and it only lasts 2 years, then what did you expect?
and lastly... if you buy a genuine part, you've no guarantee that it wasn't made by the same supplier as the cheap one, and equally naff.