Consumer Purchases

[meanderingja@aol.com]

Why is it that companies today do not stand by their products? Why is it that I am basically throwing money down the drain because a manufacturer expects their product to die at the end of a one year warranty. They won't even stand behind their products, and I am sick and tired of my calls being routed to India and the Philippines. I asked a manufacturer to speak with someone in corporate, and this is what they told me. "They don't talk to people. Their job is to manage people". I was told by two different retailers that Printers are throwaways. My Laptop will probably die in two years, the battery in one year. Given the political times, I think this extreme negligence of Companies to provide a product and stand by it should also be addressed. I am wondering if boycotts should be implemented. I am but one person. Does anyone else feel the same? No wonder our country is such a mess.....

[Cyros]

People want lower prices. The easiest way to lower prices is to lower the cost of your materials and invest less in employees.

[RickJay]

Why is it that companies today do not stand by their products?
Because it's not profitable.

And what makes you think it's just happening "today"? It always has.

[begbert2]

Why is it that companies today do not stand by their products?
Because it's not profitable.

And what makes you think it's just happening "today"? It always has.Well now, I actually believe the stories that the older stuff was made to last. It was expected, see; when a product rolls onto the market and then promplty falls apart, word of mouth defeats advertising, because there's nobody that likes it. And so companies were in the habit of making products that didn't fall apart when you kicked the tires.

Then came increased globalization, and the ability for multiple producers of the same product to compete side-by-side on the shelf. And somebody noticed that when somebody is looking a two toasters on a shelf, a difference in price stands out to some people, even beyond sturdiness and manufacturer reputation. So manufacturers found a different rainbow to chase.

That's my theory, anyway - and yeah, I *do* think that some things were better (well, sturdier) in the good old days.

I'm still holding firm about that whole uphill-both-ways thing though.

[Dallas Jones]

An update for this thread, Consumer Purchases-Great Debates ver. 1.0 is now available. Please follow the links to update to CP-GD ver 2.3.

We are no longer supporting ver 1.0, released 3 1/2 hours ago, and as a result some of your posts may not read properly if you do not update to ver 2.3. Please note the system requirements of 6 TB RAM, you may need to upgrade your system before downloading this upgrade.

CP-GD ver 2.3 addresses a number of security issues with ver 1.0 that should never have been there in the first place but have probably already caused loss of your identity.

ver 1.0 also just stole your car.

[GHO57]

Hah, my car has a Windows OS, it's impossible to steal. Just the updates required for opening the door take 4 hours every day.

[RickJay]

Well now, I actually believe the stories that the older stuff was made to last.
You can believe it if you want, but there's no evidence it's true.

Look, I REMEMBER how stuff used to be and it was just as crappy as it is now and in many cases crappier. No sane person can argue with a straight face that cars used to be built to last more than today, that's for sure.

[Mosier]

Well now, I actually believe the stories that the older stuff was made to last.
You can believe it if you want, but there's no evidence it's true.

Look, I REMEMBER how stuff used to be and it was just as crappy as it is now and in many cases crappier. No sane person can argue with a straight face that cars used to be built to last more than today, that's for sure.

There are a lot of counter examples to cars. Toys were much sturdier in the old days, for example. Radio fliers don't even exist anymore, presumably because it's cheaper to produce ultralight plastic wagons with plastic wheels than use actual metal and rubber. Tonka trucks are flimsy pieces of disposable junk now.

Another example is household items like dishes. You'd think something as simple as porcelain and glass couldn't really be made more cheaply, but I've seen a serious shift toward disposable flimsy plastic cups and dishes in peoples' homes. People WANT the cheaper stuff that doesn't last as long, and I don't understand why.

Clothing is probably the biggest example of "they don't make 'em like they used to". The shirts I tumbled around in the dirt in lasted longer than stuff I sit at a desk in today, and it's about as expensive. Clothing has definitely gone downhill.

Bottom line is you can't just point to one thing and say it's better now, so everything was better. Cars are only better now because making them smaller, lighter, and cheaper just happened to also make them more reliable and last longer. The same is not true for other products.

[Telemark]

There is plenty of high quality proof stuff out there today; clothes, toys, etc. Just be prepared to spend 3-4x the cost of the regular stuff. Most folks aren't willing to pay that, mainly because they don't need it. If you decide that you need that, spend the extra money and get something that will last longer.

[Mr Smashy]

It's a disposable society. Some of that is planned obsolescence, some is because of the complexity of the item, but mostly because of how much cheaper stuff is to make these days, given the globalization of the labor market.

I laugh when I remember the commercials of my youth, "Get training! Get a job in TV repair! VCR repair!".

Who fixes VCRs these days? They are $50 each, maybe less. DVDs are close to that. Blu Rays are what.. $125? Same with TVs - if the labor to get a guy in there plus the cheapest repair is going to be $400, why not just buy a new one for $700?

Consumers are idiots, or maybe more generously, they are simple. They will compare the base cost of the flight, then bitch because it doesn't include free meals, blankets, or maybe an extra row that now means an extra cost. It's what the market bases its buying decisions on, so it's what business will deliver.

[kunilou]

Well now, I actually believe the stories that the older stuff was made to last.
You can believe it if you want, but there's no evidence it's true.

Look, I REMEMBER how stuff used to be and it was just as crappy as it is now and in many cases crappier. No sane person can argue with a straight face that cars used to be built to last more than today, that's for sure.

I remember those days, too. What everyone tends to forget is that those old cars, appliances, TV's, hi-fi systems, etc., broke down all the time. When they broke, you called in a repairman, who put in some new tubes a set of plugs, a new thermostat in the dryer or whatever that held it together for another three months until something else gave out.

Shoes were designed to be re-soled and re-heeled, and re-dyed when they got too scuffed. Clothes may have lasted longer, but they were made of cotton or wool. Wool had to be dry cleaned, and my mother could spend a whole day ironing cotton (and an entire evening mending rips and darning socks.)

In other words, it's a tradeoff. In those days you had to keep fixing stuff if you wanted it to last. These days, stuff works perfectly right up until the day it dies.

[RickJay]

[QUOTE=RickJay;12842041]There are a lot of counter examples to cars. Toys were much sturdier in the old days, for example. Radio fliers don't even exist anymore...
Radio Flyer products are all over the damn place. Wagons, trikes, you name it.

See, we tend to remember the stuff that lasted, because it lasted. When I was a kid, most of my toys were junk. Some of them were decent, though, and so you saw them around a long time and might still see them today, and think "Boy, they made stuff that lasted in the olden days." In fact most stuff was shit, but it's in landfills.

It's telling that you think Radio Flyers don't exist when in fact the company's selling products by the boatload. When I was a kid most wagons, bikes, trikes et al. were absolute garbage. Kids were especially fond of Big Wheels, a 1969 invention that was completely plastic and would be consider a POS even by today's standards. All that crap ended up in the landfill, but the odd Radio Flyer wagon remains. 30 years from now today's kids will probably be saying "Boy, they don't make 'em liked they used to in the 2010s."

[runcible spoon]

Out of curiosity, I checked out how much an all-metal wagon cost in 1940 and now. In the 1940 Sear's Catalog (http://www.wishbookweb.com/1940_Sears_ChristmasBook/index.htm), you could get a metal wagon for $2.89 (marked down from the full value of $3.98) - which is roughly $44 dollars in 2010 (the full price would have been $60). By comparison, you can get a Kettler metal wagon for $75 from Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001AWQ1NW/ref=asc_df_B001AWQ1NW1222642?smid=A2OZ3LDXGFBD3X&tag=pgmp-1541-01-20&linkCode=asn&creative=395105&creativeASIN=B001AWQ1NW) (marked down from $100). No idea how shipping prices compare, though, the catalog didn't have that info.

So, it looks like in that case, at least, if you want the sturdy version, it'll cost you about 66% more now than in 1940. More expensive, sure, but hardly unavailable if you want it.

[Antinor01]

You can believe it if you want, but there's no evidence it's true.

Look, I REMEMBER how stuff used to be and it was just as crappy as it is now and in many cases crappier. No sane person can argue with a straight face that cars used to be built to last more than today, that's for sure.

There are a lot of counter examples to cars. Toys were much sturdier in the old days, for example. Radio fliers don't even exist anymore, presumably because it's cheaper to produce ultralight plastic wagons with plastic wheels than use actual metal and rubber. Tonka trucks are flimsy pieces of disposable junk now.

Another example is household items like dishes. You'd think something as simple as porcelain and glass couldn't really be made more cheaply, but I've seen a serious shift toward disposable flimsy plastic cups and dishes in peoples' homes. People WANT the cheaper stuff that doesn't last as long, and I don't understand why.

Clothing is probably the biggest example of "they don't make 'em like they used to". The shirts I tumbled around in the dirt in lasted longer than stuff I sit at a desk in today, and it's about as expensive. Clothing has definitely gone downhill.

Bottom line is you can't just point to one thing and say it's better now, so everything was better. Cars are only better now because making them smaller, lighter, and cheaper just happened to also make them more reliable and last longer. The same is not true for other products.

Actually Radio Flyer does exist and still made from steel. But it's a lot more expensive then the plastic. For example, here ishttp://www.walmart.com/ip/Radio-Flyer-Classic-Red-Wagon/932517#ProductDetail the Radio Flyer classic wagon for about $90.00. And here, http://www.walmart.com/ip/Little-Tikes-Sport-Wagon/14711876#ProductDetail is basically the same thing, but in plastic for about $50. Point being, you can get quality if you're willing to pay for it.

Edited - Bah. Messed up the coding and got beaten on making the point. I blame the heat.

[poker in the rear]

You can still buy steel Tonka trucks as well.

[Kobal2]

There is plenty of high quality proof stuff out there today; clothes, toys, etc. Just be prepared to spend 3-4x the cost of the regular stuff. Most folks aren't willing to pay that, mainly because they don't need it. If you decide that you need that, spend the extra money and get something that will last longer.

The thing is, in the long run the cheap stuff is more expensive, simply because you have to replace the dang thing so often.

[even sven]

For children's toys, the trend towards disposability makes some sense. People used to have much larger families and had kids much earlier, meaning that toys could get handed down pretty easily. Chances are someone in the family will still be using it up to the time the older kids start having their own families.

[Der Trihs]

Well now, I actually believe the stories that the older stuff was made to last.
You can believe it if you want, but there's no evidence it's true.

Look, I REMEMBER how stuff used to be and it was just as crappy as it is now and in many cases crappier. No sane person can argue with a straight face that cars used to be built to last more than today, that's for sure.
Books used to be much more durable; the old books that I inherited from my mother are in notably better shape than books that are decades younger. "Corningware" used to be made of an entirely different, much more durable substance that was pulled from the market specifically because it was durable; they wanted cookware that wore out so people would have to buy new cookware. And the first nylon stockings were much tougher than modern stocking; modern ones run all the time because they are deliberately made that way. Haven't you heard of planned obsolescence?

[godix]

You could choose to purchase an expensive printer that will really last. They cost a shitload more than $50. You have chosen to not fork over hundreds of dollars for a quality printer. Similar to other examples given in this thread, there are high quality clothes being made. They cost a lot more and you won't find them in Walmart or Target. Quality shoes can be found, but $20 for a pair that will fall apart in a year is so much cheaper. Good quality bound books are specialty items, but they do exist. They can't be had for less than $10 like a paperback can though.

Basically, choosing cheap disposable objects to buy is a choice. Granted, today it's the default choice in many cases and it can require a lot of effort to even fine the quality stuff. However, it's still a choice. A boycott is rather stupid when you made what you feel is a bad choice. Instead, just make a better choice next time.

[DrCube]

You can believe it if you want, but there's no evidence it's true.

Look, I REMEMBER how stuff used to be and it was just as crappy as it is now and in many cases crappier. No sane person can argue with a straight face that cars used to be built to last more than today, that's for sure.
Books used to be much more durable; the old books that I inherited from my mother are in notably better shape than books that are decades younger. "Corningware" used to be made of an entirely different, much more durable substance that was pulled from the market specifically because it was durable; they wanted cookware that wore out so people would have to buy new cookware. And the first nylon stockings were much tougher than modern stocking; modern ones run all the time because they are deliberately made that way. Haven't you heard of planned obsolescence?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book#Paper_and_conservation_issues

However pulp paper contained acid, that eventually destroys the paper from within. Earlier techniques for making paper used limestone rollers, which neutralized the acid in the pulp. Books printed between 1850 and 1950 are at risk; more recent books are often printed on acid-free or alkaline paper. Libraries today have to consider mass deacidification of their older collections. Every book I've read from before 1950 has been fragile and in danger of decomposing in my hands if I treated it roughly. For the most part, however, I agree that there is a lot more crap out there than there used to be. But I happen to think that's a good thing.

As others have said, quality products are still out there, however, unlike our predecessors, we have the choice to buy cheaper but lower quality products. People are much better off today with the choice to buy sweat pants and t-shirts rather than having to choose between a suit and rags like our great grandparents.

Poor people get the brunt of this benefit. Poor people today buy cheap Wal-Mart clothes and eat KFC. Do you really think they're worse off than great grandma who had to repair all her clothes because new ones were too expensive, and probably thought dough fried in lard was a luxurious delicacy?

[Deeg]

When my father was in college (in the late 50's) he would occasionally drive the roughly 400 miles back to his home. He says that he considered it a good trip if he only had to change one tire. Today I consider it a disaster if I have to change a flat tire before the tread wears out.

Some things are better, some things are worse. I've seen no evidence that things are overall worse today.

[Sage Rat]

Well now, I actually believe the stories that the older stuff was made to last. It was expected, see; when a product rolls onto the market and then promplty falls apart, word of mouth defeats advertising, because there's nobody that likes it. And so companies were in the habit of making products that didn't fall apart when you kicked the tires.
Quality assurance wasn't even introduced into industry until the 80s, as I understand it. The advantage that eras bygone had was that the engineering was worse. Tolerances were much wider and there was a lot of needless overbuilding. They didn't have modern computers to design and simulate hardware. To get something that worked most of the time, after coming out of a factory with low tolerances and a lot of hand-construction, they had to make it more durable than necessary. Even then, probably a good percentage of any production run would die immediately. But for every one that immediately died, you'd also have one that would just keep on chugging for 50 years -- far longer than necessary. Since people trash the things that break quickly, an evolutionary process would create the situation that nearly everything in their kitchen is stuff that's far more durable than it should be for the price.

These days, if you get two identical products, created in the same factory, and put them to the same amount of use, you're probably going to get nearly the same useful life. It's engineered to specific durability and manufactured to specific tolerances which let them target a specific usability without any need to waste material. You won't have any duds, but you won't have any superstars either.

[Kevbo]

For children's toys, the trend towards disposability makes some sense. People used to have much larger families and had kids much earlier, meaning that toys could get handed down pretty easily.

Preach it. I was the third and last kid in my family. Lots of toys, most of them broken, missing pieces, etc. It was a great day when my older cousin got too fat for me to wear his hand-me-down clothes....though the real Japanese silk PJs were pretty cool.

[Voyager]

Every book I've read from before 1950 has been fragile and in danger of decomposing in my hands if I treated it roughly. For the most part, however, I agree that there is a lot more crap out there than there used to be. But I happen to think that's a good thing.

Really? I have original Tom Swift book from 1910 - 1920 which are in excellent shape, and which weren't exactly kept in a temperature controlled room. I have an American rip off of a Jules Verne book from the 1870s which is also in great shape, and some Mr. Dooley books from the turn of the last century which are fine. All of these were mass market books and not especially expensive.

[DrCube]

Every book I've read from before 1950 has been fragile and in danger of decomposing in my hands if I treated it roughly. For the most part, however, I agree that there is a lot more crap out there than there used to be. But I happen to think that's a good thing.

Really? I have original Tom Swift book from 1910 - 1920 which are in excellent shape, and which weren't exactly kept in a temperature controlled room. I have an American rip off of a Jules Verne book from the 1870s which is also in great shape, and some Mr. Dooley books from the turn of the last century which are fine. All of these were mass market books and not especially expensive.

Well, I can only point to the Wiki article as a cite, and maybe I am exaggerating a little bit when I say "every". But I do think a majority of the pre-1950 books I've read have been in various stages of decay. A lot of the old books I've read have been cheap sci-fi paperbacks from the "Golden Age", which were probably printed on the cheapest pulp available. Most of those you can't dog-ear the pages without the corner coming off and if you lay them down while open to hold the place, you'll snap the glue and large chunks of pages will fall out.

I'm just saying, it's a real problem and there are analogues with other cheap products back then as well. Not to mention safety. How many kids' fingers were chopped off by those metal-bladed, guard-less electric fans before they wised up and stuck some bars around it? It wasn't really a good thing that those stuck around as long as they did.

Count me in with the group who says the stuff that sticks around is the cream of the crop as far as products from the past are concerned, and stuff we are throwing away today is a lot more memorable than stuff we threw away long ago and forgot about. And if we compare the crap we're throwing away today versus the things that have stuck around for 50 years, obviously the trash is going to come up short. But it isn't really a fair comparison. We should compare the trash of today to the trash of yesterday to make any meaningful conclusions.

[RickJay]

You can believe it if you want, but there's no evidence it's true.

Look, I REMEMBER how stuff used to be and it was just as crappy as it is now and in many cases crappier. No sane person can argue with a straight face that cars used to be built to last more than today, that's for sure.
Books used to be much more durable; the old books that I inherited from my mother are in notably better shape than books that are decades younger. "Corningware" used to be made of an entirely different, much more durable substance that was pulled from the market specifically because it was durable; they wanted cookware that wore out so people would have to buy new cookware. And the first nylon stockings were much tougher than modern stocking; modern ones run all the time because they are deliberately made that way. Haven't you heard of planned obsolescence?
No, I've NEVER heard of that. First time it's even been mentioned to me.

Have you ever heard of nostalgia making people misremember the good old days? Selection bias? Observation bias? I mean, you do realize that the old books that weren't well made just aren't around anymore? You inherited quality books because those were the only ones it was possible to inherit.

When I go into my grandmother's retirement home almost every resident is skinny; there are very few overweight people, very few smokers, and none that are both. That doesn't mean people in her generation were never fat or smoked; It just means the fat ones and smokers are dead. It'd be rather stupid to look around and say "I guess no fat people were born in the 1920s, and I guess those people never smoked, because I see none here." Same with products; the poorly made ones are dead. The fact that you don't see them anymore is because they're in landfills, not because they were never made.

[purplehorseshoe]

<hijack>

I didn't know they let you use an email address as a username here. Boy, that's gotta be a bad idea. Think the OP has had to close that account yet? I mean, it's gotta be all over the crawlers by now..

</hijack>

I was halfway on board with at least some of the OP until I got to "No wonder our country is such a mess..."

There's gotta be a name for the phenomenon of when someone takes a semi-legit complaint about a specific, concrete, but rather small issue (cheap printers die quickly) and then balloons it out until they've blamed war and an unstable economy and AIDS and everything else on those poor cheap printers.

What did those printers ever do to you? (Except poop out quickly.) :)

BTW, there's quite a bit of truth to that line you were given about how they "don't talk to people. Their job is to manage people." I've worked in corporate jobs where I was a zillion degrees removed from the actual product being produced. If you'd gotten my phone number, I couldn't have helped you either.

[Voyager]

Well, I can only point to the Wiki article as a cite, and maybe I am exaggerating a little bit when I say "every". But I do think a majority of the pre-1950 books I've read have been in various stages of decay. A lot of the old books I've read have been cheap sci-fi paperbacks from the "Golden Age", which were probably printed on the cheapest pulp available. Most of those you can't dog-ear the pages without the corner coming off and if you lay them down while open to hold the place, you'll snap the glue and large chunks of pages will fall out.

I have a lot of sf paperbacks from the 1950s, and they are generally in good shape, with those from the early '60s being in excellent shape. However the pulp magazines from the 1940s are showing wear. The digest sized magazines, especially F&SF, have stayed in quite good shape - much more than some of the cheaper, pulpier ones. So it really depends on the publisher.

[Voyager]

Quality assurance wasn't even introduced into industry until the 80s, as I understand it. The advantage that eras bygone had was that the engineering was worse. Tolerances were much wider and there was a lot of needless overbuilding. They didn't have modern computers to design and simulate hardware. To get something that worked most of the time, after coming out of a factory with low tolerances and a lot of hand-construction, they had to make it more durable than necessary. Even then, probably a good percentage of any production run would die immediately. But for every one that immediately died, you'd also have one that would just keep on chugging for 50 years -- far longer than necessary. Since people trash the things that break quickly, an evolutionary process would create the situation that nearly everything in their kitchen is stuff that's far more durable than it should be for the price.

Not true. First, my wife was the quality control director of a vegetable cannery starting in 1978, and it's not like she was a pioneer. She headed a lab which checked incoming cans for adherence to spec, and you had better bet they the can manufacturers had quality assurance, not wanting to get a railroad car full of cans returned - which did happen.

I started working in a quality related area for Western Electric in 1980, and the Bell System spent a bundle on quality. Phone switches even back then were highly reliable. However a lot of manufacturers traded off cost and quality more on the cost side. I heard an engineer from the Teletype factory say in 1981 that they had to record lot numbers of incoming parts, because certain suppliers would try to send them lots back that they had rejected. Demming taught quality to the Japanese long before this also. In the early 1980s people started listening to their quality assurance organizations (especially after the Japanese told them that their products were crap) but quality assurance was around long before this.