Joe - I would have to agree with you. Most of the large appliances I see do not have any type of connector on the cord. I think part of the reason for this is that the connectors they include with the cords many times will not work well with the hole in the appliance but that is no excuse for not installing one that will work. If new appliances are being installed at a project we are working on I always tell the general contractor to pay us to install the cords. I often use a standard 3/4" or 1" 2-screw cable connector. Another problem that I am starting to see when unqualified people install the cords is that they fail to remove the jumper from the neutral to the frame when installing 4-wire cords. Failing to remove this jumper turns our equipment grounding system into a parallel neutral path.
As far as installing other appliance we will always make the electrical connections but that's as far as we go.
Curt
