Several months ago, we had a problem with our cordless toothbrushes. The batteries would no longer charge. We had them for several years, so I was not surprised that the batteries were going bad. I did the normal troubleshooting. I cleaned the base of the charger and the bottom of the toothbrush and tried to charge them again. Later in the day, I noticed one toothbrush was fully charged and the other was not. Aha! The charger was bad. I put the uncharged toothbrush on the “good” charger and would return in an hour to see if that was the problem.
After a couple of hours, the toothbrush was fully charged. Solution: bad charger.
In two weeks, we needed to charge our toothbrushes. This time we would only charge one at a time with the “good” charger. For fun, I used the “bad” charger to see if it was still bad. Later that day, the toothbrush on the “good“ charger was still charging, but the toothbrush on the “bad” charger was fully charged. You could imagine my confused state. I stood there in disbelief. Ohhh, I switched the chargers. That had to be the answer. So, I put the uncharged toothbrush on the now “good” charger and I would return.
I returned later in the day, and… the toothbrush did not charge. It must be the toothbrush, I think. As I explained this story to Efiwym, my wife, she offered some suggestions and wanted to explore the problem more before we went out and bought new toothbrushes. She is usually good at slowing down my manic behavior when I decide to unnecessarily spend money on an unsolved problem.
I tried again to charge the toothbrush with the original “good” charger and that worked. I would have to wait another two weeks to continue the troubleshooting process.
After another two weeks, I plugged in both chargers and placed the toothbrushes in the chargers. I will return after our Saturday grocery shopping. When I returned to the bathroom, both toothbrushes were flashing their green lights. Neither one was fully charged. I left them on the rest of the day and would check them before we went to bed. When Efiwym and I went to bed, I checked the toothbrushes. They were both still charging. In bed, we talked about our toothbrushes, and we decided to buy new ones.
We did our shopping due diligence and found the same toothbrushes online and bought them. We received them and I immediately plugged in the chargers to charge the new toothbrushes. Before I went to bed, I checked the toothbrushes. The green lights were still flashing. Maybe these new toothbrushes need more charging time. I will wait until the morning…
When I got up that morning, the toothbrushes were still flashing. I started getting suspicious of the GFCI outlet in the bathroom. I moved the charger into the other bathroom and started the charging process. Guess what? The toothbrushes were fully charged in an hour. I took our old toothbrushes and chargers to the same bathroom. Guess what? The toothbrushes were fully charged in an hour. Was the GFCI outlet bad?
(We did not return our new toothbrushes. We gave our “good” old toothbrushes to our grandkids. Yes, we put new brush heads on them.)
