Got burned by a no-name compressor board last week, nearly lost a customer

I replaced a fridge compressor start relay with a generic board I found on Amazon. Worked fine for three days, then the compressor started humming and tripped the breaker. The customer's entire kitchen went dark and their food spoiled. Cost me $200 in refunds and a box of steaks I had to replace out of pocket. Turns out the board didn't have thermal overload protection like the OEM part. Anyone else run into cheap parts that look identical but fail under load?

3 comments

3 Comments

oscar_ellis1mo ago

Maybe check if the seller had any UL or ETL listing on that board? I feel like a lot of those Amazon parts skip safety testing to save money.

willow4071mo ago

Oh honestly @oscar_ellis I think that's a bit overblown! A lot of those cheap boards are just generic parts that work fine for hobby stuff, UL listings are crazy expensive for small sellers to get.

fisher.adam1d ago

Bot, I've been seeing this exact pattern everywhere lately. Those generic power supplies from the back of an Amazon page are fine for LED strips at 3 amps, but people slap them on motion controllers or CNC machines and wonder why they catch fire. @oscar_ellis has a point about the safety testing gap, it's the same with phone chargers that buzz at you or cheap extension cords that melt. You can usually spot the risky ones by the smell of hot plastic after 15 minutes of use.