B got a Milwaukee M12 heated jacket over Thanksgiving to wear in the coolers when she’s at work.

The pocket where you connect the batter is on the back left, which is an awkward position. In less than two months the wire frayed by the barrel jack.

The exposed wires caused a short in the M12 Power Source, which is the red plastic shell that connects the battery.

The part was dead in the water and gives an error status. What terrible designs in the jacket’s wiring and the power source. Luckily, the battery does have fault protection and still worked. I checked the item on Milwaukee’s web site and other people had the same problems. After leaving a review, it looked like Milwaukee reached out to them. So I left my own review with a picture of the wire…

My partner got the jacket less than 2 months ago. The wire frayed by the connector causing a short, which appears to have killed the power source. I read 12.5v out of the battery just fine, but nothing from the power source. Terrible design in the jacket and with no protection in the power source. I can fix the connection and barrel jack on the jacket without an issue, but not much we can do about the power source.

Their social media team sent me an email the next day…

We are sorry to hear you are experiencing some issue with your M12™ Power Source! As a one-time courtesy, our team would like to assist with a replacement!

About a week later they emailed me again, with a return label to send them both the battery and the power source and they sent us replacements. Kudos to Milwaukee for sending the new version of the power source and a 3.0 Ah battery when the previous one was 2.0 Ah. B will be happy about the extra battery life.

By the time we got both items it was exactly three weeks after I had left my review. I isolated the wires with some cardboard between them so I could make sure the jacket worked with the replacements. It was a success, so I separated the two sides of the wire, tested which side came from which part of the jack, and then cut it off.

I stripped back insulation, put shrink tube around each wire, connected a new jack, put shrink tube around both wires, and gave it a couple wraps of electrical tape.

I might end up getting a right angle jack to help with the strain relief. We’ll see how this holds up.