I should have known to ask this first..

[Setsunaela]

My grandmother called me from her home office to ask me if I could bring her over the spare space heater from our basement so she could use it. She said hers wasn't working, and she'd tried plugging it into all the different outlets on the surge protector thing. (I know, I know. I should have asked.)
So, I go get the heater. I carry it over to her house (which is two doors down from my house) and bring it to the basement office. I hand it to my grandmother, who plugs it in to this surge protector thing right next to the other heater, and unplugs the other heater. She turns the new heater on..
And.. there is nothing.

NOTHING.

So I look at the plug, make sure it's pressed in.. and notice that the little red power switch on the surge protector is IN THE OFF POSITION! I start to and say "Hey Grandma, Maybe if you turned this ON the other heater would have worked, too!"
Yolanda, the office assistant, starts to and even my grandma has to
I let her keep our spare heater, because it's newer and more energy efficient, so maybe we'll save her a couple bucks on her power bill.

Turns out, when they were giving our heater back, they plugged their heater in, and it promptly smelled of smoke and then stopped working. So, they would have needed our heater anyhow, but still.

[wolfie]

I let her keep our spare heater, because it's newer and more energy efficient, so maybe we'll save her a couple bucks on her power bill.

Actually, all electric space heaters are 100% efficient. Newer models may be nicer looking, safer, or have other nice features (I like the oil filled ones - they have a large surface area at a relatively low temperature, unlike the "glowing coil" ones), but there's no gain in efficiency.

[Setsunaela]

her old "space heater" is technically not a "space heater" but a blower designed to dry wet carpets, that she keeps on the lowest settings.. and as such is far less efficient than an actual heater. ^^ but I didn't happen to mention that in the OP.