Customer Service Rant

Another one from the archives. Sometimes it's good to rant:

Dear Customer Service,

I purchased 2 of your heating pads today.

My old heating pads failed and I needed some new ones.

I was dismayed and disappointed to find out that you have put an automatic shut-off feature in the heating pads, which I did not discover until they shut themselves off.

Is there a way to disable this feature? Tomorrow, I am going to open up the controller and attempt to do this modification myself, but it would sure be easier if there is some button that I could push to turn off the automatic shut off.

I use the pads to keep some outside cats warm. I built these little houses for them, and they are heavily lined with old towels and blankets. The heating pad in the bottom really helps them through the winter. It's going to get down to 3 degrees tonight. I read the manual and see that the pad will shut off every hour. That is unacceptable. Obviously, I'm not going to wake up every hour and go outside to turn the heating pad back on.

Why must consumer choices be taken away in the name of safety? Once I've purchased the equipment, it's mine and if I want to use it as I see fit, why should you be so paranoid of a lawsuit that you don't even offer me the option to use the product this way? Isn't a warning label enough to get you off the hook on a lawsuit? I can understand if some old or disabled person was using the pad and was incapable of realizing the pad was burning them or incapable of turning the pad off, that an automatic shut off would be a necessary feature. That's got to be rare. In all other cases, this feature is not required. This is really ridiculous when the lawyers are preventing us from doing what needs to be done.

I assume I can figure out how to modify the controller to leave it on, but it would be nice to get your help with this. After all, I'm supporting you with my purchase and as it stands, you can count me as a very unhappy customer.

[They wrote me back and politely told me tough shit. They also mentioned something about cooking my cats, which I did not think was necessary.]