Intermatic DT17C 7-Day Heavy-Duty Grounded Programmable Digital Timer

I bought the light timer and used it on a trip to NYC. It does what it promises so I give it an A.

units work fine ( got 2)read instructions carefully,be sure to install batteries correctly,play with the programming until you understand instructions. very nice timer

This timer has all the right features and isn't much harder to program than any other similiar timer I have experienced. However as appears is the case for other reviewers it does not seem to "stand the test of time." Get it? :) I have gone through two of these only to have both of them partially or completely go out over a fairly short period of time. The display seems to just start to fade away into nothingness and it's hard enough to program much less blindly program.

I purchased an Intermatic timer that looks exactly like this one at Home Depot years ago, when I first saw that digital timers were on the market. This was at least 12 years ago. I liked it so much I bought a second one about 8 months later. The difference I see is that my model is DT17, not DT17C, as is listed here. Perhaps changes were made that lessened product life, perhaps not. Mine were also made in China.

I've used these to turn on cassette recorders, which then start recording automatically. The second one purchased just stopped being able to turn on the recorder. It also had it's backup battery go dead after a year or two. The first timer is still working and has never had to have it's battery replaced!

I've seen that many of these reviews complain about short life, so I thought I would relate my experience with Intermatic timers. It could be that most people who buy a timer that does it's job don't post reviews and only those disappointed at short life do post negative reviews. As I've said, my model with a similar model number looks just like the photos of this timer, the only difference being the "C" on the end.

The digital timer model I had was the DT 17, not the DT 17C. It sounds as if they got worse with "progress." I really liked the DT 17 initially, so much so that I bought two more. They had three appealing features to me over the old-style (and less expensive)manual model: One, you could set a precise time, digitally, rather than guess "Oh, is that 6:54 P.M.?" Two, the battery backup worked great. Power goes out and one thing you didn't have to worry about when resetting the thousand clocks in your home was the light timers. They kept the memory with no problem. Third, when daylight saving time came, you simply pressed a button on the timer and, viola, the hour was changed easily and appropriately.

BUT, that said, after a couple of years I had the same problem identified below. The timer kept time, but it no longer switched the lights on and off and couldn't be set. So it was no longer useful! For the money, the quality needs to be such that they keep working for a decade, in my view Very frustrating. So far only one of my three has gone bad. But reading below I can see it is only a matter of time.

Curious if anyone has found a more reliable alternative that does all three of the things I mentioned above?