Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I ordered this for my parents. It looked like the perfect answer for them, big buttons, adjustable volume. I received it and tried it out at my house where it worked perfectly. I preprogrammed the keys, made a fancy photo template and inserted it, then packaged it up and mailed it off to my folks. I had a trip planned to visit them two weeks later, so they left it sitting there waiting for me to arrive and install it. Two weeks later, when I arrived, I hooked it up and it worked for a little while, then it stopped working. I fiddled with the wires and it hissed and crackled, worked a bit, then quit, worked and quit. After some more fiddling I figured out that the switch-hook on the phone was not working correctly. I would lift the handset, then touch the switch-hook and it would stop working, then touch the switch-hook again and it would start working. Something was definitely wrong with the switch-hook inside the phone. I disassembled the unit all the way down to the circuit board. Hey, I'm an engineer, if it needs a little soldering I am up to the job. But I found that the switch-hook component itself was defective. It would sometimes work, but then quit when I barely touched it, or tapped it on the side, then another tap and it would hiss and crackle and sometime start working again. Overall, this is a disappointing product. At the price it wasn't worth mailing it back home so that I could then prepare the paperwork and re-mail it back for refund. We just threw the thing away and got a big button phone from the local Radio Shack. If it breaks my parents can take it back.