I recently purchased a 12-port, powered USB hub – because you can never have too many USB ports!

I ordered it from monoprice.com, as I’ve had good luck with them many, many times – if you buy cables from anyone else, you may as well be flushing money down the crapper. Good stuff, and cheap.

So, I got the hub, hooked it up.

Almost immediately, a problem: Any shift of the hardware would make the power flicker in/out or just out. And this is a device that one’ll be nudging a lot, plugging in/removing USB devices.

Not good.

The problem is that the power connection to the hub – on this particular unit – is poorly designed/manufactured. The power connection is a female, which slides over a male prong that is housed in the hub. But the fit isn’t snug: There is wiggle room both in the male/female connection and, most problematic, in the hole in the hub the female end plugs into.

Disaster.

I bent the male plug, which fixed the problem, but … for how long?

I wrote to monoprice.com (and yes, I did point out my long history with them), and very shortly thereafter received an email saying they were shipping me a new unit, and providing an label to ship the bad unit back.

Nicely done!

Sadly, I got the new unit, and it’s a product design flaw. Same “lack of tightness” issues. I’m going to return the new one (the old one has been working fine since my “fix”).

So – kudos to Monoprice for acting so quickly and decisively to address a customer concern.

And a wag of the finger to Monoprice for selling this flawed a product. Monoprice 12-Ports USB 2.0 Hub, MG_HB2012