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Business in the time of coronavirus update

By on May 2, 2020 in Amazon, RevereWareParts.com

Stock levels

Orders from our website continue to ship without issue and we are able to keep the stock at our fulfillment contractor at sufficient levels.

Amazon.com has opened up the ability to send restock for non-essentials, but they have placed limits on restocking shipments on items they consider to sufficiently stocked, which are levels below what we prefer.

We have always tried to aim for a 3-months supply on hand with Amazon.com when we plan restocking shipment quantities;  we typically check stock levels once a month, it typically takes a month for items to get into stock, and that gives us an extra month buffer in case of issues (like a global pandemic).

Now it seems they really only want you to have a months inventory on hand, so they limit incoming inventory until the stock levels are below something like a 30 day supply, and they limit the amount you can send.  The bottom line is that some of our Amazon.com listed items may end up out of stock over the next month or two.

Shipping speed

As anyone that has been buying from Amazon.com over the last two month knows, the prime shipping landscape has changed dramatically.  While some items are shipping faster now than a month ago, for many items, delivery is still quoted at two weeks or more, and many items take 1-3 weeks to arrive. The upside is my children are learning to be more patient. 🙂

Shipments from our website on the other hand typically ship the next business day and are for the most part sent USPS first class mail.  In normal times, the quoted delivery time for first class mail to anywhere in the US is 1-3 days. The USPS is now quoting 3-4 days for this service, which is still not bad.

So if you order from our website, you will pay a little more for shipping, but will get it there faster.

USPS delivery

But beware that there is an increased incidence of mis-delivery by USPS postal carriers.  I’ve experienced this personally with packages and letter mail delivered to the wrong address on our street or the wrong street entirely, and we’ve had customer reports of missing packages.  I suspect this is due to some USPS personnel calling in sick for personal safety reasons, and being replaced by personnel less experienced with a particular route.

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Microsoft doesn’t like us, part II

By on May 2, 2020 in RevereWareParts.com

We took another stab at adjusting our email system settings to get Microsoft to play nice, but they continue to reject emails from our server to any of their email systems – outlook.com, hotmail.com, msn.com, and probably others.

We will continue to try to figure out why they are rejecting our email server, but in the meantime, we created a Gmail customer support email to use for customers that get their email through Microsoft.

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Spot welding handle separation

By on April 19, 2020 in Repairs

Reader Brian was kind enough to fix a handle separation for a friend by spot welding the handle back on.

I just fixed a frying pan for a friend by spot welding. less then 2 minutes, back in business.
If the material on the pan fails, and holes are left in the pan, simply reattach like a puzzle piece
and put 8 new spot welds in 8 new places, there’s plenty of material.
Hope that helps.
I’ve fixed many pans and tea pots over the years by spot welding, with no problems.

We have been told that the stainless steel on the pans is too thin to spot weld reliably, but Brian has shown us otherwise.  The result, much like the brazing test we did, isn’t perfect, but it is functional.  Thanks Brian!

Here is the original broken handle:

And the repaired handle:

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What to do if one of our replacement lid knobs won’t screw all the way on

By on April 14, 2020 in Tips

Having sold tens of thousands of replacement lid knobs at this point, we’ve only have a few reports of the embedded nut not having any threads.  Obviously, that defect is a show stopper and you should contact us for a replacement.

However, you might discover difficulty screwing the knob all the way down like customer Frank did. At first we thought it might be defective nut threads.  But then Frank figured it out.

After I wrote this morning, I had the inspiration to shoot some WD-40 on the threads of the lid and into the threads of the knob.  I unscrewed the knob, put the lubricant on, and tried again — and it went further.  I did that several more times and each time it got closer to the bottom of the threaded post… and finally got the new knob to go all the way down to the surface of the lid.  Hooray!

Turns out that when the old lid knob nut inserts rust to the screw, some of the rust can remain behind and impede the new  knob from screwing on all the way.

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Microsoft doesn’t like us :(

By on April 5, 2020 in RevereWareParts.com

Believe it or not, we run our own email server, and have been for 20 years or so.  There are benefits to running ones own email system, such as flexibility and privacy, but it comes at a price; namely keeping up with all manner of attempts at hacking the system, and, once in a while, one of the major email providers decides our email server is no longer safe.  Last month it was the AT&T system that stopped accepting emails from our server.  This time it is Microsoft.

Microsoft isn’t presently accepting emails from us from any of their email domains (msn.com, outlook.com, hotmail.com).  We’ve contacted their support for such things and while they have pointed us at a page that lists best practices for email servers that communicate with them, we are unable to find anything that seems awry, they won’t tell us specifically what the problem is, and they say “we are not a candidate for mitigation” of the problem.

We reviewed our mail logs since the beginning of the year and have sent a whopping 30 or so emails to any of the Microsoft email services, which means we definitely aren’t a source of spam email.

We’ll continue to try and figure out what the issue is.  In the meantime, please be aware that if you are contacting us from one of those domains, you may not get a reply from us, or you might not receive order confirmations from our system.

Ah the joys of being a small independent business.

Please feel free to tell Microsoft you are unhappy with them blocking email from us. 🙂

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When your replacement lid knob won’t screw down all the way

By on March 26, 2020 in Tips

Customer Frank received a lid knob from us and it would not screw down all the way.  We have had the occasional report of defective threads on the nut inserts, so we sent another.  That one had the same problem.  But then Frank had an idea.

After I wrote this morning, I had the inspiration to shoot some WD-40 on the threads of the lid and into the threads of the knob.  I unscrewed the knob, put the lubricant on, and tried again — and it went further.  I did that several more times and each time it got closer to the bottom of the threaded post… and finally got the new knob to go all the way down to the surface of the lid.

Corrosion on lid knob screws is common, as water gets trapped under the lid knob and around the screw, and the dissimilar metals used between the screw (stainless steel) and the factory nut insert (sometimes aluminum) can promote corrosion.  That happened to be the case for Frank and a little WD-40 helped the knob go down all the way.

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Nearly new Kettles on eBay

By on March 23, 2020 in Ebay

For the last 10 years or so, while Revere Ware copper bottom cookware was still being produced, tea kettles were the only product I recommended to anyone to buy new.  Unlike the rest of the copper bottom cookware, using less metal in the tea kettles (which I’m not even sure Revere Ware did) doesn’t really reduce their effectiveness.  Additionally, we’ve not heard of reliability issues with newer kettles vs older ones.

But now that Revere Ware is no longer producing any cookware, you can’t easily buy new kettles anymore.  So when a couple of pristine looking used kettles appear on eBay, we take notice.

Here are a pair listed by the same seller that don’t really look used, and are pretty reasonably priced.  My recollection is that a new kettle cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $35 when they were being produced in the last 5 years, so these two, at $49.86 shipped, aren’t that much more, especially when $10 of that is shipping.

So get yourself one of these great looking kettles (one and two).

 

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Parts shipping and inventory status

By on March 18, 2020 in Amazon, RevereWareParts.com

We received this notice from Amazon.com yesterday:

We are seeing increased online shopping, and as a result some products such as household staples and medical supplies are out of stock. With this in mind, we are temporarily prioritizing household staples, medical supplies, and other high-demand products coming into our fulfillment centers so that we can more quickly receive, restock, and deliver these products to customers.

For products other than these, we have temporarily disabled shipment creation. We are taking a similar approach with retail vendors.

This will be in effect today through April 5, 2020, and we will let you know once we resume regular operations. Shipments created before today will be received at fulfillment centers.

Currently, we have approximately three months stock for all parts for typical sales volumes for this time of year at both Amazon.com and our websites fulfillment contractor.  While we can’t currently send inventory to Amazon.com, it seems likely that sometime over the next two months that restriction will ease.

Our fulfillment contractor tells us they are operating at full capacity, accepting new inventory, and have no plans to shut down.

So, for now, we can provide all of our parts without interruption. 

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