Every time I "buy 'Merikun," I get fucking burned. I buy Japanese, Korean, or German from now on (whenever possible)

The BBQ Pit
61

In the UK we’ve had Japanese, US, Euro and home grown production for many years.

There was some concern about rights of association - ie the right to join a union - when the Japanese opened up factories but they had no problems at all, they just had a single site union agreement - so you work at one place and you join the one union there, you can carry pre-existing membership of other union with you but it is just will not be recognised at the negotiations although it could represent you in company proceedings - but there is hardly any point, might as well join the on site union.

What we noticed as a massive cultural change was the removal of status on staff facilities - so in UK and US companies you’d have different levels of toilets, and canteen facilities, but in Japanese ones everyone has access to all the facilities - there is only one canteen, and everyone uses it. This really reinforces the idea that all of the workers are there for a specific collective purpose - high quality production.

Another aspect of Japanese factories is that absolutely everyone has worked on the production lines, including the directors, occasionally senior managers will return to work on the production lines every now and then if only for a couple of shifts.

My guess is the US experience of Japanese production culture is similar to the UK experience. It is very noticeable that using local UK workers produces equal quality (and sometimes even higher) that the parent factories in Japan.

My conclusion is that the only difference from UK/UK companies and Japanese ones is the management - the workforce is exactly the same and Japanese companies emphasise the need for harmony rather than competitiveness - where each departement is a contributor and not a stand alone part.

Sure I doubt that all in Japanese factory production is sweetness and light, but their management techniques with the same workforce produces a quantifiably better result.

62

I bought one of these and I hated it. It looked perfect in the store, but I had all kinds of issues when I brought it home. The track pad was not consistent and it kept shutting down without warning. Replaced it and had the same problem. I didn’t enjoy using it. Wasn’t nearly as fluid to use as a MacBook. After dropping $2k on a laptop I was pretty mad.

I had tried to abandon MacBooks when they had that issue with the butterfly keyboards - as a writer, I just can’t use a bad keyboard. I went through two or three replacement keyboards with the same recurring issue, and even though there were multiple reports of keyboard failure, Apple kept pretending it wasn’t a problem and charging me for the fix. So I rage quit Apple and bought that shitty XPS. Finally Apple came up with a permanent keyboard fix, and offered a free replacement to select models. So I am back to Mac, have not had any new keyboard issues and I’m so relieved to be using Scrivener for Mac again. Using any other kind of laptop has been a frustrating experience every time.

Does Toshiba still make laptops? I had good experiences with them before I switched to Mac. This would have been ten years ago.

63

The power button won’t turn the computer on; it turns on only when I open and close the lid. On day three. Apparently the fix involved draining the power, which I will attempt sometime today or tomorrow.

I’ve owned two very mid-quality Toshibas and one mid-range Sony. Never ever had a problem like this. I had a screen light go out on the first Toshiba after I dropped it on hard pavement, but…I dropped the machine on hard pavement.

Why? So I can be out $1,000 more on an equally shitty product? Okay.

I pretty much followed all of your well-intentioned advice, smartass.

64

Yeah, I actually did some homework and saw that Dell got good reviews. I’m just not a Mac person and am comfortable with PCs (maybe that’s my problem). Dell was at the top of the list in terms of reviews.

This is probably a minor, fixable issue, but it’s an annoyance, and as a consumer, I don’t like annoyances right out of the box. Make me wait at least 6 months or a year before I get annoyed.

65

Presumably many people are very happy with them. I don’t know why I got burned every time I tried to switch.

66

Never noticed a problem with them in the office laptops/workstations that I’ve used, but then again, I didn’t actually own them. Maybe I never cared to notice.

67

My organization just assigned everyone in our office a Dell laptop to work from home, and I also hate it. I just use my PC instead. Maybe you just get so used to something over the years that any deviation feels extra difficult. Another reason I hate it is the reason I hate grant writing on any laptop - you can’t effectively compare documents side by side. Only a wide-screen monitor can really pull that off. So that part is not Dell’s fault.

68

On the subject of Dell computers: There is no shortage of horror stories to be found on the internet that parallel those of @asahi and @Spice_Weasel, but I can only theorize that it’s at least partly because Dell makes a lot of computers and for one reason or another some are bound to have issues. But my anecdotal experience is that I’ve generally had quite good luck with them. When a friend needed a new laptop for her home business, I recommended a Dell Precision workstation, which is the high end of the business line. It’s solidly built and very fast and full-featured, and she’s very happy with it.

Likewise my current main everyday computer is a Dell Optiplex business desktop. I actually bought it used, as a refurb from Dell Financial, Dell’s leasing arm. I put a Samsung Pro SSD in it as the system drive and added more memory, and with the Intel quad i7 processor in it it’s very fast and rock-solid reliable. It’s also amazingly quiet. In fact the only thing you can hear is the gentle hiss of the spinning hard drive. I think it’s because it uses large and relatively slowly rotating fans. You can put your hand at the back and feel the airflow, but it’s virtually noiseless. Possibly the best computer I’ve ever had.

Those two things can both be true simultaneously. Those brands represent luxury and performance but also a lot of exotic engineering, making them finicky and expensive to maintain, and often unforgiving if you don’t.

69

My Dodge is still kicking at 15 years, so YMM literally V.

70

I nave worked in process improvement projects for automakers both foreign and domestic. There isn’t much difference between them anymore from a pure process standpoint. They are all trying to do the same things.

GM and other legacy domestic automakers face several unique challenges. One is that they had incredibly generous pension programs for their workers dating back to the 70’s, and there are a LOT of retirees. GM vehicles start with about a $4000 deficit each due to retirement costs (GM has been described as a retirement management company with a car business on the side - an exaggeration, but illustrative of the problem). GM had two choices - raise the price of their cars, and get eaten by their competitors, or cut back on material and labor costs. Hence two generations of GM vehicles with crappy plastic interiors and quality issues.

Another problem the legacy automakers had was huge investments in production processes that were becoming obsolete. The Japanese and Korean car industry was built modern from the ground up. Union labor in the big three was also non-competitive and pressure from the unions slowed the adoption of automation and resisted changes that would improve quality.

Protectionism didn 't help. The Reagan administration leaned on the Japanese to ‘voluntarily’ restrict the amount of vehicles they imported into America at a time when Japan’s vehicles were becoming demonstrably superior. This sheltered domestic automakers from competition and allowed them to drag out needed reforms, hurting both consumers and the car companies themselves in the long run.

This is why ‘Buy American’ is counterproductive, absent national security issues. America has to sell to the world to be competitive, and local ‘buy American’ campaigns just shelter them from world competitiveness, enabling them to remain globally non-competitive longer. And when people or corporations buy products of lower quality or higher cost for ‘patriotic’ reasons, it makes THEM less competitive as well.

And as others have said, it’s really hard to determine what ‘buy American’ even means. There are Toyotas built with more American parts and labor than some Ford or GM or Chrysler vehicles. Even the most ‘American’ cars still have large percentages of foreign components in them.

On a personal anecdote level, I have owned three 70’s era Datsun 240-Z’s, and all completely rusted out to the point where they had to be scrapped, less than 15 years after they were new. On the other hand, I bought a new Ford Escape in 2003, and drove it for 10 years with nothing other than scheduled maintenance. No major repairs whatsoever, and it didn’t even have a spot of surface rust on it when I sold it, and not even any rattles or sloppiness. It still felt like a new vehicle. I then bought a 2013 Escape, and so far the same thing - 8 years later, and it still looks and drives like new. No maintenance other than scheduled stuff and normal wear and tear like brakes and tires. I think this is a fairly common experience now with many modern vehicles both foreign and domestic.

71

It’s hard to say what’s “American” in the car world though; our VW Passat is made in Chattanooga, TN with a VW engine made in Puebla, Mexico. Is it an American car? And FWIW, the only part of my old Ford Ranger that I ever had trouble with was the manual transmission… made by Mazda in Japan.

I’ve had decent luck with American-made stuff. I haven’t found it to be better or worse on average than stuff from elsewhere, nor really more expensive. My KitchenAid dishwasher is spectacular, and is made in Findlay, OH. Same with my Cooper tires (also made in Findlay, OH).

72

Have you seen the new Ford Bronco? It’s getting raves for its off-road capability.

The problem I have with the Land Rovers and G-Wagons and such are that they are too bloody expensive. Are you really going to take your $100,000 SUV offroad? Maybe if you are filthy rich. The same goes for the Dodge RAM TRX and the Ford Raptor. Supremely capable off-road, but so bloody expensive you’d be crazy to go rock crawling with them unless you don’t care about money.

73

Car companies in general really didn’t get the grasp of underbody rust protection until the 2000s, hence why “California cars” (actually anything coming from the Southwest) are so valued by collectors. Most countries, Japan included, just don’t salt their roads with the frequency that US states and cities do, and many don’t use salt at all, so it isn’t an obvious problem for their domestic markets. The 240Z is particularly noteworthy for being literally destroyed by salt corrosion as the frame rusted throught but you see the same thing on many domestic automobiles made in the US in the same era, even ones that ostensibly had galvanic coatings. Growing up in the Midwest, it was common to see trucks only a few years old that had rusted completely through wheel wells or the bed, and the Chevy Vega was notorious for rusting out after just a couple of winter seasons.

Stranger

74

Yeah, I’ve had that argument with people who don’t realize that a lot of Fords are actually made in Korea (KIA was originally a company that assembled Ford vehicles, hence the very very strong resemblance of my Ford Festiva to a KIA vehicle) and the Toyota in the plant the next county over from mine employed a lot of our neighbors.

75

I haven’t been in one but it doesn’t surprise me. The original Bronco was a great little offroader; unfortunately, most of these have rusted away for the same reasons mentioned above. The new one seems to leverage a lot off of the new Ranger, which was always the light truck to beat until the Tacoma took over, and still had a good reputation for reliability and easy maintainability through the end of its life. I suspect Ford killed it off not because there wasn’t sufficient demand but because they could get more profit out of larger trucks for the same build labor effort. I’m glad they brought it back because I’m tired of hearing how the Chevy Colorado is the only competition for the Tacoma, and I suspect the new Bronco will re-energize that market as well, perhaps spurring Toyota and others to come back with a new FJ-type utility vehicle.

I completely agree. The Series 200 Land Cruiser is a marvel of technology and theoretically great at navigating offroad, but at a starting price of $85k and a curb weight of almost three tons, it just isn’t the vehicle I’d choose to take down the White Rim Trail Road. I know that a true off-road utility vehicle is a niche market but Toyota made out like a bandit on the FJ Cruiser and those things still hold their value at like-new prices with over $50k on them, which even for a Toyota is ridiculous. It seems like enough of a market is there, especially for a hybrid electric that could deliver both high torque and decent fuel economy, but thus far nobody has entered that space.

Stranger

76

I have supported Dell-standardized organizations as an IT professional for more than 15 years. Dell overall is pretty solid for a big box PC company, enough that I’ve bought multiple Dell systems for myself and my family and recommend them to friends and acquaintances.

But they do put out lemons now and then. I recall that they had an epidemic of Optiplex desktops (off the the top of my head I want to say GX270 models) where motherboard capacitors were popping like popcorn (literally, they looked like popcorn) and I was getting them swapped out a couple a week. Around the same time, their Latitude models had batteries that literally exploded in blasts of flame - there are some cool videos online if you search for it (but this was 15 years ago so they’re not so easy to find anymore).

Recently we’ve had a ton of Latitude 5285 computers fail and I’m pretty sure that model was a lemon. The later 5200 series have been a lot more robust and reliable, but I’ve had so many screens and hard drives fail on 5285s that I had stacks of them at work waiting for warranty repairs.

I don’t doubt that there are many legitimate horror stories about Dell. Every company is prone to put out a bad product now and then and if you’re unfortunate enough to buy one, you’re justified in having a negative opinion of them. But out of all the systems I’ve professionally supported I recommend Dell. I have not had as good of an experience with HP machines, and while I recommend Apple too (I grew up with Apple computers as a kid going back to the IIe and supported them professionally in the iMac days) you will pay a premium for it.

As to what I use myself, I built my own PC, and know every component in it. So I guess in that sense I use an American product, since I’m an American and built it here.

77

The capacitor issue wasn’t Dell’s fault, nor was it only Dell. As I remember, there was a bad batch of the main chemical in capacitors widely used by various companies, resulting in those problems. And lots of Dell computers are actually built by the same outsourcers that build computers for other companies, iPhones for Apple, network switches for Cisco and so forth.

78

It may not have been Dell’s fault, I don’t think the exploding battery issue was either (if anything I think Toshiba was to blame because they made the batteries going into the machines). But Dell put their name on the computers, and ultimately it was Dell that consumers blamed, because Dell has to stand by the product they sell you.

That’s part of the reason why this whole thread is somewhat moot. If you buy an American product that fails because it has a Chinese or Japanese or Mexican component that is flawed, who do you blame?

Honestly they’re all at fault; the person that made the part, the company that trusted that manufacturer to put the part in their product, or maybe the parts are fine but were assembled wrong, so it’s the fault of the factory worker or the QA person who didn’t test it properly.

You shouldn’t say “buy American” or “don’t buy American”. When you paint that wide of a brush and make sweeping generalizations that you base a prejudice on, you are using bad logic to make decisions.

What I do is not buy something when it first comes out. Let the early adopters suffer. Check out reviews from trusted analysts, see if you can get a highly-rated product at a good price, and make your decision that way. Don’t base your decisions on brand loyalty or disdain, or something as nebulous and arbitrary as what country supposedly “made” it.

79

I’m still driving an 02 Saturn. The plastic body still looks great, I’ve had to do some major maintenance to keep it going at 183K, but it’s still going strong.

80

I agree with nearly all of your post, but I’d like to elaborate slightly on one point that’s getting overlooked in the thread.

It’s absolutely true that any consumer-goods manufacturer that generates products at scale will have a non-zero failure rate. Which is why a major part of my pre-purchase research is not just product reliability, but the ease of engagement and the responsiveness of the company to fix the problem in the event something does go wrong.

This is a major differentiator between the various corporate cultures. Everyone’s pursuing the vague abstractions of process improvement in the factories, and our individual anecdotal experiences make it hard to compare how well the companies are able to deliver reliably functional products. The practical reality of problem-solving after the purchase, though, is something else entirely. Does the company make it easy and obvious to contact them? Do they have a solid, comprehensible, non-obfuscated warranty policy? Do they maintain a robust, well-trained service staff, and/or a network of independent specialists to whom you can be quickly referred?

This is why I’ve become a bit of a loyalist for Bosch appliances since moving to Europe. Back in the US, they’re still something of a specialized import line, with inconsistent support options depending on the region, but here in Europe, they’re an established brand, and they take their reputation in the market very seriously. Their products have occasional problems, just like any other. But when something breaks, it’s easy to get hold of them, and they bend over backwards to fix things as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I don’t expect everything I buy to work 100% of the time. But I do expect the company to stand behind what they produce, rather than take my money and then run away and hide.