Lights, Lights, and more freakin X-mas Lights

I now know the meaning of the phrase in the song "and those damn Christmas Lights".
Never in the past have I had a problem with my Christmas lights. I have always done all of my decorating and plug in the lights at the end and presto! the Lord said let their be light.
This happy memory for me has now ended and I am joining the group that says "those freakin Christmas lights".

Problem 1: Dan takes out our pre-lit X-mas tree and plugs it in and there are 3 places the tree is lit, the top, the middle, and the bottom, but not the middle section of the top? When one bulb goes out in a section the lights are supposed to flash to let you know one needs to be changed, but this is not the problem, it's something electrical, Dan proceeded to take lights out, replace lights, plug different sections in - nothing. After 2 days of messing with this top section of our tree we finally gave up and added colored lights to the entire tree to try and hide its imperfections.

Problem 2: 2 years ago I bought the pre-lit evergreens to wrap around and down our banister, I have always loved the look of these when you walk into someone's house. I have 3 total to wrap around mine and it takes time and makes a mess pulling these needles (even though they are fake) through the bars. I finish this task and plug the last one into the outlet and NOTHING, I am thinking "you have got to be kidding me, there was not one thing wrong with them last year when I unplugged them and stored them away". So, I double-check that I have them all connected correctly, I get an extension cord and plug each one in separately and still NOTHING. I unravel one of the section and take it to Dan, "Help me". He does his thing again of trying to change out lights, plugging into different outlets, etc, etc and still Nothing, he tells me the bulbs are all dead, you need to get replacements. So the next morning I go to the store and buy replacement bulbs and they are the wrong size - it's the only ones they had? The next day I go to a different store and buy different ones, nope still wrong size, after 2 more days of messing with these damn lights I have given up and wrapped the one I took down back up and bought a separate strand of lights to wrap around the whole damn thing.

Our lesson learned - we will not be buying anything else that is pre-lit. If the lights don't work you can buy another strand and throw the old one's away!