this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
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AssholeDesign

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This is a community for designs specifically crafted to make the experience worse for the user. This can be due to greed, apathy, laziness or just downright scumbaggery.

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This is the swivel mechanism for the high pressure air at the center of my Campbell Hausfeld automatic retracting air hose reel. That hose is crimped directly on the swivel mechanism instead of adding negligible cost with a threaded fitting.

The upshot is that the hose is not replaceable by itself if damaged. And of course parts are not readily available. Throw out the whole thing instead and buy something new. Assholes.

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[–] Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

That's replaceable, you just need a crimper. Much harder will be finding the fitting to replace it. I bet they'll sell you the whole hose with a crimped fitting attached. Then you can put a normal end on the old hose and have a spare.

This is quite low on the planned obsolescence conspiracy scale.

[–] watson387@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 week ago

I've fixed these with the fittings from a torch hose repair kit.

[–] trailee@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

I did look a bit to see if I could find that outer part of the swivel, but I was not surprised to come up empty handed.

Of course it’s able to be repaired anyway as someone else suggested carefully cutting the crimp and reusing the barb with a hose clamp. The assholedesign is making it difficult enough that many people won’t bother. And not readily selling the replacement part made critical by unnecessary design choices, for the thing most likely to suffer accidental damage. It’s only low in the planned obsolescence conspiracy because the overall product costs less than $100 and is entirely mechanical, but that’s no excuse.