Only about 2.2 million of 'em. How is one to have faith in manufacturing anymore? At least the dates are relatively recent. Here is the link:

Siemens Recalls Circuit Breakers Due to Fire Hazard

I always wonder what percent of these things they actually get back.
You never hear about these recalls anywhere but in a few professional publications and they fly off the shelves of do it yourself stores.

I'm glad I still have Edison Base Plug Fuses. Those never got recalled, especially the ones with a penny installed behind them...

So your point being that the Edison based plug fuses effectively protect against overcurrent with the penny removed? Recalls are not contingent upon improper use of the overcurrent device.

This is another embarrassment to the quality of checks and rechecks that we have here, in manufacturing. Just like the G.F.C.I.s that didn't trip. These type incidents should not be the norm, especially in the U.S. This is not excusable, although credit is given for catching the mistake quickly.

This is another 2.2 million U.L. stamps that mean Jack.

Before we go to crazy about this read this line from the recall

I was just making a joke that I guess missed the mark...

It definetely seems like something is broken in the system, but I can't identify what it is. IT kust seems like there have been an aweful lot of recalls and counterfeit product discoveries over the last 2 years or so.

Are we just getting better at identifying counterfeit products and needed recalls, or is there just alot more of it in the market thus more discoveries?

I went to the local Lowes and Home Depot stores to see if I could find one of these recalled breakers. Of the 3 stores I visited, none had even ordered new stock of Seimens/Murray breakers in the 4 months. The most current date code I could find was 3/10. Most that I found were 09 codes.

I would be willling to bet the ones in that narrow of a date range, though 2.2 million, are located in a relatively bunched area. Meaning, they probably got distributed regionally, then sent out to the stores in that region.

Our region may have never even seen any of these breakers, where others regions have nothing but them...

Bryan I'm not sure if the system is broken. Even the point that Greg made - Do they recall 2.2 mil over one broken spring clip? Something smells fishy and I'm not sure what it is. I don't get it.

One possible problem could be that many "American" companies have corporate offices here in the states, but the manufacturing occurs ovesees, mann time in "third world" countries.

This is where the checks and balances may be breaking down. How much regulatory control do the NRTL's have over foreign manufacturing plants? How much control do corporate managers have over foreign quality control?

I am not saying this is the source of the problem, or even a symptom of the problem, just a thought...

I suspect that when they inspected the bad one, and looked at the rest in that lot they did see a problem, probably from a new spring vendor and they just put out a recall on all of them.

I'm not an accountant but if I'm not mistaken this would qualify for a business loss -- a TAX write-off -- 2.2 MILLION UNITS plus cost to produce and ship!! Must have been one heck of a bad clip. Snif snif