My HP 110 Mini netbook’s battery pack suddenly failed (0% available, charging… forever). Finding an official HP brand replacement battery turned out to be nearly impossible, not to mention it would cost at least as much as the crappy netbook was worth. So, I got a replacement from one of the second string, ebay store, non-OEM battery manufacturers. Even though, yes, I know it’s got like a 90% chance of exploding or slagging my desk. What else could I do apart from just pitching the whole netbook?

But that’s not what I want to rant about. This manufacturer, unlike most of the other Chinese companies on eBay, was shipping from the USA. Great news! Less chance of import hassles. Then, when I received the package, it was put together in a nice box, with little sealing stickers and foam, anti-static bag, the whole 9 yards. It even came with a warranty card!

Well, it says “Pay Attention”, so of course I did 🙂 Apart from the obviously poor translation-ese, here’s a big red flag: the email address ending @gmail.com. I do not GET THIS. Why does a person (or people) go through all the effort to put together such a professional looking package and then FAIL so obviously on what must be the simplest, most inexpensive thing they could have done: use a real email address!

So just for grins I figured I’d get a look at their US corporate headquarters:

Back “in the day” the email domain you could count on to mean “not a serious company” was reliably going to be AOL. So I guess for clueless entrepreneurs, gmail has become the new AOL.