Bought one of these vacuum bag kits for 3d printing filament

[WobblyHand]

Seems the hand vacuum pump didn't work... Actually, it felt like someone assembled the pump and forgot to install the o-ring. There was zero resistance in pumping, either the up or down stroke. There was no vacuum being generated, nor any positive presssure. And it appeared the pump was sealed and non-serviceable. Or at least not obvious to me how to disassemble it. So immediately initiated a return stating the pump didn't work. A few days later, A***** sent a replacement. I decided to test the new one, if I have to return them, it's better to do it in one trip.

This pump seems to work. Don't know about the bags how well they hold, but at least one of the bags was pump-able. Guess I should check them all and keep the good ones. Pretty bad quality control if they left out the pump seal. I don't understand why the unit is sealed, why not make it serviceable? A freaking o-ring is a simple, inexpensive repair. Even I can do that!

 

[WobblyHand]

Well, returned the first kit after testing every single bag in the second kit. Wanted to get what I paid for. The bags and pump (when functional) are pretty decent.

Returning the kit was interesting and not an experience I'd care to repeat. Went to a Whole Foods store, aka Whole Paycheck. They have replaced any human contact with a computer driven returns kiosk. Using the touch screen wasn't so bad, but the ergonomics of the return were poor. There's no place to put your item down, the item you soon find out that they want you to stuff in a plastic bag. But you need to let go of the item, because you need to pull out and detach a plastic bag. It also when you find out that the bag is a wee bit small for your item. Oh yeah, you need, in your other spare third hand, to play with your phone to find the darned QR return code. Then to put the darned phone away and drop your item to pull out a label that comes out of the machine. You need to put your phone down because you need two hands to peel off the dumb sticker and stick it on your bag, which is on the floor because you don't have the now required 6 hands! You see this was the good part. Actually in retrospect it was almost comedic.

The bad part was watching the young ladies ahead of me, at this single return station, doing what I just described with five individual items. Every time I thought they were done, one of them pulled out another single item and to do all that nonsense again. And then it was my turn.

By the time I was finished, I wanted nothing to do with the store, and just walked out. The experience was really unsatisfying. Wasn't the worst experience in my life, but it was awkward and some darned fool had designed it that way on purpose and it was approved by multiple idiots. I don't need to keep on rewarding organizations like that... I'm going to severely ratchet down doing business with them, they no longer offer value to me.