Batteries Not Included

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Half of all malfunctioning products that are returned
stores by consumers work just fine, if only the customer knew how to operate
the device, a scientist said on Monday.

Such product complaints and returns are often caused by poor design,
but companies often dismiss them as "nuisance calls," Elke
den Ouden found in her thesis at the Technical University of Eindhoven
in the south
of Netherlands

A wave of versatile electronics gadgets has flooded the market in recent
years, ranging from MP3 players and home cinema sets to media centers and
wireless audio systems, but consumers still find it hard to install and
use them, she said.

The average consumer in the United States will struggle for 20 minutes
to get a device working, before giving up, the study found.

from Reuters

And a study done by a Harvard-trained social scientist found
that the average consumer in Amsterdam will struggle for THREE minutes to
get a device working, or until he forgets what he was trying to do, whichever
comes first, unless
the device in question is some type of drug paraphenelia or sex toy.

No, seriously, what is the solution to this conundrum? Simpler gadgets?
Smarter consumers? Better-written instructions? In-store assembly? Still,
we agree that the predominant tendency is if it doesn’t work right out
of the box, take it back.