Great Concept; Design Flaw; Bad Customer Service
I bought this product for my boat. The idea was to jack into the AUX of my boat's car stereo have TuneView Dock plug into that and remotely control the iPod out on the deck via the TuneView remote.
Initially it seemed to work fine. I even updated the firmware without a hitch. However near the middle of the boating season for me (May-September) I noticed that the batteries housed in the unit (2 AA) started to rattle around and if I shook it they'd easily lose their connection and the remote would go black.
I opened the battery door and looked a little closer. It appears that the actual housing for the AA batteries is physically larger than it should be and and the battery terminals have the sole purpose of holding the batteries in place - and thus keeping the power source in tact. This is a pretty serious design flaw. What ends up happening is that over time those slim metal terminals bend (its not like they are spring-loaded) and eventually the two AA batteries just jostle around in there and its up to the alignment of the moon and stars whether you end up getting power. I tried bending the terminals forward. This is a hack and did not work in the end...as one of them just broke.
Here's my other issue with the unit: about a month after I had it a black horizontal line showed up on the LCD and would not go away.
Now here's my big issue with the company: Keyspan was purchased by Tripp Lite recently (2008). I bought the unit summer 2007. I *should* have contacted Keyspan immediately when I started to have issues...but I did not and this is my fault.
I contacted Tripp Lite support and I was told that I could ship the unit to them at my expense and if they thought I had dropped it then they would simply return it to me. I explained that I felt the battery terminal issue was a design flaw and I failed to see how that could ever be the result of dropping the unit and they told me that "Past experience has shown us the bent battery terminals is sometimes a tale (sic) tale sign of the unit being dropped."
Given that and the fact that I was 2 months past the 1 yr warranty I did not ship it back. They indicated that if it was not in the 1 yr period they were not liable to do anything anyway. I can understand that and it is my fault for not taking more timely action but still...I paid $170 USD for this thing and now it is pretty much worthless.
One end of the battery terminals is a removable piece that I can probably re-inforce. The other side is soldered to the PCB so I have fewer options there.
I felt compelled to post my experience here so others would be warned. I really feel the customer service at Tripp Lite could have taken the high-road here but they chose not to. Your mileage may vary.More detail ...
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