I think
Brinsea is having some quality control issues lately. They are going to loose their reputation as being good incubators if these things continue. Customer service can only go so far if you keep getting more junk as replacements. I've had the same kind of issues with kitchenaid. I had ordered a very expensive grain mill attachment for my big mixer. I got sent three of them and every one had the same problems. I noticed that they were sending me like new units but you could tell that they had been cleaned up and pre used. Every one of them had marks on the shaft that indicated they had the exact same problems I did with all of them. (although the service people swore I was the only one with the problem and I must have just happened to get the only 3 in existence sent to me that had this problem.) I finally got the caliper out and took measurements and sent all the replacement units back with a letter explaining what was wrong with the stupid things with exact measurements of what needed done.
They said they would be looked at by their engineering department, but obviously if they were sending them back out to other customers the engineering department hadn't figured out what was wrong. I kept the original one I got and I am just going to have to take it to a machinist to get it fixed. It was a simple matter of a bump toward the end of the shaft that was like 2 mm larger than the shaft on other attachments I have. It wouldn't go into the attachment hub all the way so it would seat right so it would fall off. I doubt if they even read my letter cause it will probably go through lots of hands before it gets to the engineers.
I suspect they hired this part manufactured somewhere for cheaper at some time and their machines aren't set just exactly right. These things have to be so precise.
I am thinking that maybe
brinsea has outsourced where their components are coming from and that may be their problem as well.
So it probably means some more workers were laid off from their jobs so they could have the parts produced in Mexico or China to save a dollar or two over all. If you pay attention to lots of things these days, they will say Assembled in USA but that doesn't mean the parts came from here. Or they might even say assembled in Mexico. But that means the parts probably came from china and they put it together in Mexico. Only if it says Made in the USA is it actually an "American" made product.
Sorry this is a sensitive subject with me right now in the whole. I spent many hours on the phone on this grinder deal and got absolutely no where. Had I not had the equipment to figure it out on my own they would have just kept sending me unit after unit and I would have wasted more time. I haven't lost any money other than for the original grain I was grinding when the first unit went flying across the room. But if you have eggs in your incubator that is another matter. I would be so upset.
I hate it when I get on my speech podium and I apologize in advance. But I don't see why the government doesn't realize that they could give companies incentives to produce parts and hire people to do the work here in the U.S. The only way to make the tax dollars work is to put them to use to put American workers back to work. Then the tax dollars will come back in in the form of income tax. Companies survive and people have jobs and the government recovers to some extent. So you might pay more for your products. But we are doing that anyway regardless of who is making them. I know it would take years at this point to recover but look at the billions being paid out in unemployment. I think it would be so much smarter to use that money to put these people back to work.
Another pet peeve of mine is that people refuse to take a job that pays less than they are used to. They'd rather live off their unemployment benefits but when they run out of them, then they loose everything any way. I saw that happen full swing in Oklahoma when the Opec thing happened and the banks went insolvent and all the oil people lost their jobs. I had a neighbor who kept her job but went from making a very lucrative salary to making minimum wage for the same work. Engineers and geologist who had made a couple hundred grand a year were then making like $20,000 a year but they still had a job. The rest that were too proud to lower their standard of living were just out of luck. They lost their homes, the real estate market crashed with every thing else. It was awful. People literally would stand lined out into the street for every open job that was advertised. It was pretty sad. Back then unemployment benefits never went for over 6 months so people didn't just sit back and reap benefits and wait to look for work.
Those that did keep their jobs were actually able to buy nicer homes eventually because the banks owned all of them and were selling them for pennies on the dollar. I know my home went from a value of like $85,000 to $29,000 in about 6 months time. And that was back in the early 80's. Thank goodness I purchased it at a low price and made improvements but I still lost at least $20,000 on it in the end. It could have been a lot worse.