Wednesday, March 22, 2017
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Right now I am seeing a slew of ads for a hand-held air compressor that goes under two names, the Air Dragon and the Air Hawk. I have not purchased either item. However, the ads are so convincing that I was sorely tempted. So I went onto Amazon and looked at the user ratings for those items. For the Air Dragon, there were 18 reviews: one 5-star, one 3-star and sixteen 1-star (one star is the lowest rating you can give an item on Amazon). Most people who gave the Air Dragon one star didn't say much (beyond that the device is a piece of "junk"), but a few people made detailed comments. Despite the fact that the ad for the Air Dragon shows it being used to blow up a car's flat tire, several people said that the air dragon wasn't able to inflate anything more than 20 psi (pounds per square inch). It would inflate up to 20 psi, and then the tire would not inflate any further. In other words, the compressing device inside the Air Dragon is not powerful enough to apply more than 20 pound of pressure (most tires need more pressure than that, especially bicycle tires). The reviewers also said that the Air Dragon got very hot during its attempts to inflate things, and also that it seemed to be made of flimsy plastic. (The Air Hawk didn't have enough reviews to be meaningful.)
The point of this article isn't to besmirch the Air Dragon, but to point out that a lot of the items sold on TV are poorly made and do not work well. The commercials, of course, make the item look wonderful, but that is all promotional gimmickry. I don't know anything about compressors, and I would never have imagined that the compressor in the Air Dragon was too weak to do the job. Indeed, in their commercial, it shows the Air Dragon blowing up a car tire -- and not just blowing it up, but blowing it up quickly.
At the start of this blog, I wrote an article about the Snuggie (a blanket with arm holes) and explained why it would be a pain in the ass to use. I myself fell for a string mop which could be wrung out without pulling it through a wringer (it didn't work well). I have a friend who bought a $500 space heater which worked for only two seasons (you can buy well-made space heaters which cost under $100 and will last a lifetime). My friend, sadly, doesn't always have good judgement. Indeed, it appears that a LOT of people don't have good judgement given how many lousy products sell in the millions. In the case of the heater, it was large and square and fancy-looking, so she assumed it had to be good. In other words, she was deceived by appearances.
Too many people are fooled by appearances -- which is why, incidentally, we have a president named Donald Trump. We all have a lifetime of experiences, but we don't stop to think things through. We have only ourselves to blame.
The point of this article isn't to besmirch the Air Dragon, but to point out that a lot of the items sold on TV are poorly made and do not work well. The commercials, of course, make the item look wonderful, but that is all promotional gimmickry. I don't know anything about compressors, and I would never have imagined that the compressor in the Air Dragon was too weak to do the job. Indeed, in their commercial, it shows the Air Dragon blowing up a car tire -- and not just blowing it up, but blowing it up quickly.
At the start of this blog, I wrote an article about the Snuggie (a blanket with arm holes) and explained why it would be a pain in the ass to use. I myself fell for a string mop which could be wrung out without pulling it through a wringer (it didn't work well). I have a friend who bought a $500 space heater which worked for only two seasons (you can buy well-made space heaters which cost under $100 and will last a lifetime). My friend, sadly, doesn't always have good judgement. Indeed, it appears that a LOT of people don't have good judgement given how many lousy products sell in the millions. In the case of the heater, it was large and square and fancy-looking, so she assumed it had to be good. In other words, she was deceived by appearances.
Too many people are fooled by appearances -- which is why, incidentally, we have a president named Donald Trump. We all have a lifetime of experiences, but we don't stop to think things through. We have only ourselves to blame.
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