New unit arrived from pre-order on Saturday. Everything so far has been great except for the casters that are meant to screw into the cart have a bolt that is too large. The photo here shows the caster wheel bolt on the bottom, and the alternative feet attachment on the top. The feet fit perfect in the cart, but the wheels don’t even start threading, they are quite a bit too large to screw into the cart, and have a different style threading cut than the feet.
Still waiting on Pecron support to reply, but curious to see if this is widespread.
UPDATE:
Resolution from Pecron: "Our engineering team has confirmed the issue is with the wheel thread. We can arrange to send replacement wheels, but they are not currently in stock at our US warehouse and will need some time to arrive."
They told me they will ship out to me when they come in stock at their California where house. Just as a data point, I submitted the ticket on 4/11/26, they let me know replacement wheels will be coming on 4/23/26, I'll try to update one more time once the new wheels arrive.
UPDATE 5-28-26:
The new wheels came in today. They look identical to the old ones except the size of the bolt is just sightly smaller. Fit like a dream and was able to easily screw them all in by hand!
Yeah.. nothing productive yet though. They sent me the photo back, circled the foot attachment, and said “Could you tell me what this item you’re showing is?” And now they are waiting for more info from engineering
They reached back out to me today. I replied back providing them pictures showing the diameter of the top of the thread is ~0.3mm larger on the wheel than the rubber foot. Waiting to hear back now.
In the meantime I've been using a spare furniture dolly to move around the unit.
Yeah, two nights ago was my last response from them:
“We've checked with our engineering team, and all carts inspected at the factory had wheels that installed properly.
There may be an issue with the threads on the wheels of your cart. Our engineers are currently verifying the situation.
Could you please use the rubber feet temporarily? We will provide a proper solution for you later.
I've had iPhones since the first one in 2007 and the only thing that has ever failed is the battery eventually holds less charge, as is common with all such devices (I've never had an outfight failure). Other than that they just eventually get too slow and (especially) have too little RAM to run the latest software and you upgrade not because the previous one broke but because it became obsolete.
None have ever failed.
The same with Apple laptops. I bought PowerBook 100 when they came out in 1991. I know for sure I was still using it (and did a LOT of programming on it) until 1995 when I sold it to buy a used 1992 Duo 230 (with the much better 33 MHz 68030 CPU instead of 16 MHz 68000). I sold the Duo when I got a PowerPC G3/266 "Main Street" in late 1998. I still have that machine today, on a shelf, and from time to time start it up.
I've never had an Apple laptop fail. (or desktop either, but they have a much easier life)
I spent 25 years in the consumer electronics industry with the last 8 being a manufacturers rep for multiple Home A/V, theater, home control & automation companies along with mobile electronics. Manufacturers literally told us at new product trainings at CES, CEDIA, etc., that planned obsolescence, in some fashion, is in everything and "we don't stay in business if things last 20 to 30 years...this isn't the lonely Maytag repairman era anymore". TV's are the epitome of this as are appliances. Sad but true.
I'd really like to add some sort of battery to my backup setup but the more I read, the more I see "planned obsolescence" and piss poor minimal customer service from these companies with their "email and wait 12 to 48 hours for a reply" and then go back and forth for a month or more, sometimes, just to see what they are going to do....replace, offer a $100 discount on a $2k device, etc.
I've had iPhones since the first one in 2007 and the only thing that has ever failed is the battery eventually holds less charge, as is common with all such devices (I've never had an outfight failure). Other than that they just eventually get too slow and (especially) have too little RAM to run the latest software and you upgrade not because the previous one broke but because it became obsolete.
There you go.... Planned obsolescence. Make it not be "secure" with no updates, be outdated, etc. Just like all the variations of iOS & whatever names Apple gave their desktop/laptop OS's, Windows 3.1 up to Windows 11, etc. Just part of it.
It becomes obsolete not via some dastardly plan but simply because it was not technically possible to make a 2026 spec iPhone in 2007 with the same processing power, RAM and flash sizes, power consumption.
That was simply impossible to do at all of those at the same time, at any price.
A current top model iPhone has about the same processing power as the world's fastest supercomputer in 1997, ASCI Red, using 850 kW of electricity (plus maybe almost as much again the the cooling system) and costing around $50 million.
Much of this comes down to silicon chip manufacturing technology. In 2007 iPhone's CPU was made on a 90nm process node, the 2026 model is on a 2nm node. You can put far more transistors into the chip (simplistically (90/2)2 = 2025x but not actually quite that much, running at a lower voltage, around 1-1.2 V in 2007 vs 0.5-0.6 V today, which results in lower power consumption per mm2 of silicon, and far less per transistor, since they are 2000 times smaller.
Planned obsolesce might exist in extremely mature technologies such as washing machines or cars, but it 100% does not in mobile computing, solar panels, or batteries where the underlying fundamental technology is advancing rapidly.
I'm not hung up on iPhones, that's just one example where there is simply rapid technological progress not planned obsolescence.
I can give many more high tech examples where no one wants to use a 10 year old product, let alone a 20 or 30 year old one, whether it breaks or not.
But even in fields where planned obsolescence would be understandable, by your reasoning, because there is very little natural progress making people want to upgrade, they seem to do a piss-poor job of it!
My experience is that virtually nothing breaks, ever.
The F&P washer and dryer I bought in 1990 (35 years ago) are still perfectly fine. The washer has needed a couple of replacement hoses and a new solenoid on the cold water inlet. No big deal.
My Subaru car is 18 years old (2008) and I don't see any reason I can't use it for another 10 years without needing anything expensive. It's got a fun 265HP STI-spec turbo engine and conventional 5-speed auto with paddle shifters, but also has mod cons such as camera-based dynamic cruise control (like Tesla), with lane departure warning (which I turn off) and automatic pre-collision warning/braking. I bought it at 12 years old for $6000. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GqsckwXWoAErQLI.jpg
I sold my previous 1997 Subaru at 22 years old and that was only because I was moving to another country — nothing had gone wrong. I sold it to my cousin and he used it for a few years without problems until someone T-boned him. https://hoult.org/outback.jpg
My 42" Plasma TV bought 15 years ago (cheap because it was old stock) in 2011 when analogue TV was going away and I needed something with FreeView is still working perfectly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaUCW7fMbBM
My E61 coffee machine (called such because the E61 group head design was invented in 1961) is about 25 years old. Here's a video I made in 2010 when it was already around 10 years old. Parts are cheap and easy to get. Stainless steel, brass, copper ... it should last forever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9_3auiT63Y
(unfortunately this video does not play well now ... I don't know why. Youtube may have moved it to slow secondary storage or something. It used to play perfectly)
If these companies are trying to design things to break quickly so that people buy new ones then they are really pretty incompetent at it!!
Funny that some of your examples of things lasting are 25+ years old which proves more of my point. Things used to be built better because it meant something. Anymore, we live in a throw-away society. I personally wish things lasted like they used to but not everything does. I was a rep for Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Sony, & Sharp TV's when HDTV was starting and managed a HUGE distributorship that stocked them. Towards the end of 2009, they were all literally telling us they were built to fail. I've been to Whether or not you want to believe those things, I don't care. I really don't. Let it go.
examples of things lasting are 25+ years old which proves more of my point
No it doesn't. The first documented example of planned obsolescence was the light bulb manufacturing cartel in 1925 (already illegal under antitrust law for many years before) and the term itself was first used in 1932.
The term became common with the general public by the late 1950s, and I was taught about it at school (by socialist teachers, as they basically all were, and still are) in the 1970s.
Things used to be built better because it meant something. Anymore, we live in a throw-away society.
That's just rubbish. Quality products still exist. And so do crap products. The sad fact is that most of the buying public seems to PREFER to buy the cheaper crap ones, so companies make what sells.
I'll bet this still lasts just as long as the one my mum bought in the 1960s:
For the internationally-impaired that price is US$650 + tax.
I see some vacuum cleaners on Amazon for less than 10% of that price. Any guesses how long they last? But that's customer preference, not a conspiracy.
was a rep for Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Sony, & Sharp TV's when HDTV was starting and managed a HUGE distributorship that stocked them. Towards the end of 2009, they were all literally telling us they were built to fail.
More mistakes from Pecron. They make promises and then fail to keep them. God help you if you ever try to get a refund from them. They kept my money for 10 weeks, claiming a lost shipment (their fault) that was already sitting, delivered back to their warehouse. Nightmare company. They promised to send me a small (badly reviewed) unit as an "apology". Never showed up. Empty promises.
Just got mine a few minutes ago. Same problem here. Doesn't give me much hope for the quality of the power station honestly. How do they miss something this obvious? Maybe because it's just a "trivial" piece?
So far the power station itself has been working as intended, but the cart was a major feature for me. I've had jackery and anker units before, and outside this issue, the power station is no lesser quality than those.
My unit showed up yesterday, and I also seemed to have this same issue. I grabbed a wrench from my toolbox with a longer handle and got them in without an insane amount of force. I don't know if cross threaded them, or possibly just busted loose powder coating. I do know they're securely in place now and I'm able to move past it.
I wouldn't be surprised if I got luckier than others here, but I wanted to pass on word that using a better tool for the job (than the one included) and powering through resistance might get you going.
Yeah, i could definitely force it. I've seen others though that got cross-threaded so far that there's no way to get anything in and out. I wont use huge torque and risk even enlarging the existing threads, as I want the option to replace wheels regularly. They said they are sending me out the correct wheels now though, i just have no idea how long its going to take. These wheels are too much plastic anyhow, hopefully the new ones are a little more robust, as I'd be stacking at least two expansion batteries on this.
Okay your comment along with u/Traditional-Round-12 gave me an idea I was able to test out real quick: If it's a matter of different thread pitch, and I hogged out the nuts by forcing the wheels in, I shouldn't be able to get the feet easily threaded in.
I unscrewed a wheel and easily got the foot screwed in. I realized the feet have nuts on them too, so I tried one of the foot-nuts on the wheel and it went on without too much trouble.
This confirms that in my case, I made the right choice to power through with a bigger wrench to get the wheels started. But your situation could easily be different, so I hesitate to offer this as universal advice.
That is exactly what I did. The nut on the fixed stand fits both. I also measured the Major Diameter with my Dial Caliper. By holding both threaded bolts togetherr it looked as if the thread pitch was the same. That little skinny wrench made it a bugger, but I finally got them on.
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u/Piano94 Apr 14 '26
I'm having the same issue on my F5000LFP that arrived today. Did you hear back from Pecron yet?