Bad Business: Royal Shredder: VF1012MX - Plastic Gears?

About seven months ago, Mrs. Shambles and I purchased a Royal brand multi-shredder (VF1012mx) because we were long overdue for a decent shredder.



Brilliant! It was really a nice shredder. It was on casters, for one, but it had dedicated slots for credit cards and CDs. Up to 12 sheets of shredding. Woohoo!

And then, last month, after moderate usage, we got lots of the whirring, not so much of the shredding. Oh, man!

In order to figure out what the hell was going on, I was required to do some minor surgery. And what I found? Not so happy. It turns out that one of the major gears of the assembly, one in touch with a bunch of metal gears, was plastic.



FAIL.

So I did my research on the Royal Shredder VF1012mx and found that the failure of VF1012MX-08 Gear #2 (that plastic bugger) was the focus of abundant complaint. Not only that, but I could call their 1-800 number and get another gear.

And then I did call Royal's 1-800 number, and I found out a few things:

• The cost for me to purchase a new gear? $2.60
• Shipping and Handling? $4.00
• And because this dang thing is probably failing above projections, it's going to be 6 weeks on back-order.

I don't have a problem if a company puts something together and - oops! - they calculated something wrong or forgot to test something. But this is fraud. You don't design a gear assembly that is purposed to abuse and high torque and then make one of those main load gears out of plastic - unless you think the fail would be a cash cow in replacing $0.40 gears for $6.60.

And then what? I spend the $6.60 and *hope* *fingers crossed* that my mid-level mechanical savvy will be able to disassemble a gear assembly, replace a gear, and put Humpty Dumpty back together again?

And then what? In about 6 months, I get to do it all over again.

BAD BUSINESS to Royal Shredder VF1012mx. DO NOT WANT. They should've made it correctly the first time.