Please get your act together and stop putting defective products on the shelves.

Sincerely,

The Consumer.

PS: I had to go through 5 digital scales of different makes and models before finding the 6th scale that actually displayed my weight properly. It is yet to be seen if it breaks in a week, or if the body fat % measurement works. Here is the winning product so far:

That's the Weight Watchers WW31X by ConAir. I like the small well-placed contact pads. These are the kinds of pads I can make complete and repeatable contact with to achieve consistent measurements. And now, here are the losers in chronological order of their disappointing me:

1) WeighMax W-BF440:

This scale worked for about 3 days before telling me I lost 50lbs overnight. At the return counter I just happened to be next to a guy that fixes scales for a living (imagine my luck!). His diagnosis was that one of the four pressure sensors died. This makes sense since I'm a little over 200lbs.

2) Weight Watchers WW67T by ConAir:

This one came pre-broken in that it showed my weight minus 50lbs. Back it went, and I set out to not leave the store until I saw a scale working in front of my eyes.

3) Homedics HealthStation Body Composition Scanner:

This one is the WORST. The two random samples I and a sales man pulled off the shelf failed to work in two different ways. The first failure mode was displaying 0.0lbs as the weight measure no matter what. The second failure mode was the display not coming up, except for brief flashes of blue. After the two defective products of this type, I switched models yet again.

4) American Weigh BioWeigh-IR BMI Fitness Scale:

This one did not fail to work per se, but after a good 5 minutes between a computer programmer (that's me) and the store sales rep trying to figure out how to get a weight reading, we both failed at operating this device. I have to say it's kind of a neat idea to have the display be portable and disconnected from the scale. Especially if you're extremely fat. But it's not a good idea to make a product so counter-intuitive that a technically inclined person can't figure out how to get a basic weight reading within 5 minutes. The manual was even consulted!

One point on quality of this product. The sales rep stepped on it with his heeled shoes, and weighing in at 170lbs, managed to deform the metal contacts on the face of the device. Do not leave empty spaces beneath thin metal surfaces when those surfaces are meant to take pressure.