Rant: That $20 outlet tester took me 3 hours to figure out was wrong

I spent an entire Sunday tracking down a dead outlet in my living room only to discover my outlet tester was giving false readings because the ground screw was loose on the tester itself, has anyone else had a tool betray them like that?

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1 Comment

drew_chen28d ago

My neighbor Rick had THIS EXACT same problem last year with a voltage detector pen. He was chasing a phantom short in his garage for TWO DAYS, replaced a whole junction box and everything, then realized the pen's battery was just dying and it was beeping at random. The thing that gets me is how these little tools just sit in our drawers for months and we ASSUME they work perfectly. I had a laser level once that was off by a quarter inch because a bubble in the vial had shifted and I hung an entire shelf crooked before I noticed.