Sidenote to above post...

At the LBS I that I previously mentioned, a major bike line they carried (the fat-tubed aluminum ones we all know and love) had a rash of cheap crappy bottom brackets on thier lower-end models. They were not even Shimanos but some Taiwan-made crap. This was in the late '90s. We mechanics suggested to replace them with Shimano UN52s or 72s under warranty and have the customers pay the difference. The owners didn't initially want to do this because of some jibber-jabber about warranty replacement having to be the exact same. Yeah right!

They finally relented and had us install better-quality replacements, but from what I heard through the grapevine they wanted to just keep replacing the cheap BBs with more cheapies so they can keep these customers coming back into the shops so they can buy accessories and that will somehow generate more revenue!