3 ms·

Wow, I wish more companies had this mindset. When I'm shopping for anything, particularly a big-ticket item, I'll gladly trade a few 'cutting-edge' features fo

by m52go 11y ago

Wow, I wish more companies had this mindset. When I'm shopping for anything, particularly a big-ticket item, I'll gladly trade a few 'cutting-edge' features for solid build & longevity...and pay a lot more for it. Although to be fair, I'm not sure "arguments are a very rare occurrence indeed at Miele" is a sign of a healthy company.

Silhouette 11y ago
When I'm shopping for anything, particularly a big-ticket item, I'll gladly trade a few 'cutting-edge' features for solid build & longevity...and pay a lot more for it. I strongly agree. The trend for ever-cheaper, ever-nastier goods is understandable given the recent economic conditions, but very disappointing all the same. Personally, I will gladly pay a premium for things like good build quality and longevity. Sometimes that means I have to save up for something I want and can't just make an impulse purchase, but that's life. I suspect buying cheap and nasty is often a false economy in the long term anyway. If you pay twice as much for your washing machine but it lasts 20 years where the cheaper one would have made it to 5...
- pierrebai 11y ago
  The problem is that 'buying quality' is very hard to prove. For important purchases, like a car, there may exist guides that give you good record of past performances, but for most thing, its mostly hearsay. "Oh, I've been buying from X for years and they never break." The race to the bottom has the property that paying less is an easily provable fact. You can measure it. Quality is too hard to measure. There is also the possibility, for some classes of goods, to purchase the cheap ones and fix the bad bits. Like purchasing a cheap laptop and replacing the HD with a SSD.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    All true, but I'm still going to buy my expensive kitchen equipment or my new computer or my new car from a brand with a track record of consistently good reviews and reliable customer service. In the age of the Internet and modern consumer advocacy groups, it's not hard to know who those are. Of course, any business can have an anomalous bad product from time to time. But even if you're the unlucky one, I reckon you're probably still better off with a business that values its customers and its brand anyway. At least you're likely to get some genuine efforts made to put things right, maybe even a free upgrade to a better product from the range if there really was a design flaw in a new model or some similar hard-to-fix issue.
  - lotsofcows 11y ago
    which.co.uk has guides for virtually everything. A UK publication but there must be similar elsewhere. And brands are usually fairly easy to match across countries.
quesera 11y ago
> Although to be fair, I'm not sure "arguments are a very rare occurrence indeed at Miele" is a sign of a healthy company Here, it's supposed to mean "the co-CEOs are in broad alignment regarding the direction of the company". But the whole article is suspiciously fawning. And the timing is interesting. Miele makes decent stuff. My dishwasher broke too soon, but I bought another.

by m52go 11y ago

Silhouette 11y ago

When I'm shopping for anything, particularly a big-ticket item, I'll gladly trade a few 'cutting-edge' features for solid build & longevity...and pay a lot more for it. I strongly agree. The trend for ever-cheaper, ever-nastier goods is understandable given the recent economic conditions, but very disappointing all the same. Personally, I will gladly pay a premium for things like good build quality and longevity. Sometimes that means I have to save up for something I want and can't just make an impulse purchase, but that's life. I suspect buying cheap and nasty is often a false economy in the long term anyway. If you pay twice as much for your washing machine but it lasts 20 years where the cheaper one would have made it to 5...

pierrebai 11y ago
The problem is that 'buying quality' is very hard to prove. For important purchases, like a car, there may exist guides that give you good record of past performances, but for most thing, its mostly hearsay. "Oh, I've been buying from X for years and they never break." The race to the bottom has the property that paying less is an easily provable fact. You can measure it. Quality is too hard to measure. There is also the possibility, for some classes of goods, to purchase the cheap ones and fix the bad bits. Like purchasing a cheap laptop and replacing the HD with a SSD.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  All true, but I'm still going to buy my expensive kitchen equipment or my new computer or my new car from a brand with a track record of consistently good reviews and reliable customer service. In the age of the Internet and modern consumer advocacy groups, it's not hard to know who those are. Of course, any business can have an anomalous bad product from time to time. But even if you're the unlucky one, I reckon you're probably still better off with a business that values its customers and its brand anyway. At least you're likely to get some genuine efforts made to put things right, maybe even a free upgrade to a better product from the range if there really was a design flaw in a new model or some similar hard-to-fix issue.
- lotsofcows 11y ago
  which.co.uk has guides for virtually everything. A UK publication but there must be similar elsewhere. And brands are usually fairly easy to match across countries.

quesera 11y ago

> Although to be fair, I'm not sure "arguments are a very rare occurrence indeed at Miele" is a sign of a healthy company Here, it's supposed to mean "the co-CEOs are in broad alignment regarding the direction of the company". But the whole article is suspiciously fawning. And the timing is interesting. Miele makes decent stuff. My dishwasher broke too soon, but I bought another.