Now that that is all sorted out; I would like to comment that I find it amusing that a company called just add power was having issues with the power that was just added to make it work. No we are not a dealer; yes I would still find it amusing if we were. I'm glad that in this case the manufacturer is actually taking care of things and airing out the dirty laundry in public...many other manufacturers would do well by following suit.

There's a problem with this discussion. My goal was good; his first post was good; his revealing the brand was good. The more we talk about this, the more it seems I slammed him. I just wanted to know which brand was bad!

I did accomplish something: you now know at a glance which power supplies should be replaced. Show yourself that this information is not valuable. Next time you see one of those supplies in the field, ignore that you know it's going to go bad -- act with the same level of information that he gave up in the original post -- and go about your business. You don't have to use the information just because he told you what brand will fail.

Ed,
How recently did you guys start shipping the PHIHONG power supplies?

I did an installation in may with JAP and it had the PHIHONG supplies

Well over a year ago. Unfortunately some of our distributors did not do so good of a job purging their existing inventory of the problem SAGE pieces.

You can't imagine how many times I've wanted to say "what part of the company name didn't you understand?"

Ed, do you have an dealer demo programs by any chance? I am going to be starting with the product, already have a system sold and would love to get it setup as part of my demo system to test with if possible. Figured I'd ask.

Most all of us distributors offer a demo program on the JAP products

I was in a training once where I was looking at schematic after schematic and I didn't get it until I asked. At that point I was told "just add power." Well, duh! It all made sense then. Looking back, I can't see how I misunderstood anything at all.

Chris, to be fair, Ed provides/designs the device and all you have to do is "just add power".
The way I see it, Ed providing power supply was a courtesy and any failures with said power supply are not his responsibility :-)

I'm J/K of cause but in this case Ed's company name would have gotten him out of any lawsuit :-)
Can you imagine Ed in front of a judge: "...but judge, my company name clearly states that while I provide the device, the end user needs to just add power" :-)

About a year ago I received a hobby item direct from China that required a 2A 12V supply to charge the battery. The adapter supplied, quite frankly, didn't work at all. The charger kept throwing error codes instead of charging.

It was eventually determined that the 2A unit they supplied was incapable of meeting the charger's demands. So, I dug around in my parts bin, found another old 2A 12V supply from something else (I think a router or something)... and it worked a charm.

The funny part? The working one's a Phihong too! The bad one... literally has no name.

Sad to say we're having issues again. 3 bad phi phong power supplies this week.

Sorry to hear this happened to your customer. Our overall experience with the new power supplies has been good, but I don't think perfection and eternal life is possible for any of the companies that build these AC adapters. That said, the reality of the situation doesn't make your customer any happier when they are the one with the problem.

Our first priority is to get your customer back up and running. The first thing I would advise you to do is call support (800-615-0206 Ext 2) and tell them how many, where to, and how fast you need them. The only power supplies we carry any more are the Phi Hong discussed above. If you have a preference for some other brand DC5V power supply, let us know and we'll go with the ones you prefer instead.

After your customer has been taken care of, I'd like to find out some more details. Did all three die recently, or was this over a period of time? What is the zip code where they are installed? Did the customer report any other electronic devices with problems at the same time? Were the power supplies on some sort of surge protection, or plugged directly into the wall? How many total Just Add Power devices with power supplies are in the system?

If you'd rather not reveal some of these details in the forum, please email me (ed @ justaddpower dot com) or send a PM. We'll do our best to figure out why this happened, and whether or not anything can be done to prevent it from happening again.