[Vigilanteman]

See my previous post. As a reasonably good amateur electrician, I'd sometime lend a hand to my brother's business. It took me nearly 5 minutes extra per outlet to secure them with loops rather than just push the wires in.

Eventually, the push in wired outlets are vulnerable to shorts or, even worse, a fire because someone thought saving the cost of that extra five minutes was so damned important.

The Chinese millionaires actually hired my brother's company for exactly that reason. There just weren't enough of them to keep him in business.

[Paladin2]

There are commercial grade outlets that take more connection make/breaks on the front side and have none of that straight wire insertion kr@p on the back. They do cost more.

[mad_as_he$$]

My nephew makes a very good living as the guy that fixes flaky outlets. Word of mouth only. He will get a call to do one - usually the microwave outlet and wind up doing the whole house once the home owner sees the potential for fire.

[jimbug]

I had an electrician go through and rewire every outlet in the house; the builder 'speedwired' everything by just shoving the wires in the terminals without wrapping them around the posts.

The event that prompted the rewiring was an outlet in an upstairs office that had black soot around it.

The office was located over the garage, and the vibration from the garage door opener caused the wires to loosen and short out.