14 ms·

This is mostly the result of our checkbox-grid comparison shopping culture. "Features" like extra coats of paint and thicker metal cost the manufacturer more t

by kd5bjo 9y ago

This is mostly the result of our checkbox-grid comparison shopping culture. "Features" like extra coats of paint and thicker metal cost the manufacturer more than they increase the market value. On the other hand, throwing in a dozen cheap bits of plastic with every vacuum cleaner pays for itself because it can now ostensibly do a dozen more things.

Nition 9y ago
I wish there was like a rating system for how well-built appliances are. I guess the poor man's version of that is looking at how long the manufacturer's warranty is.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Even better would be to get ahold of the price list of a 3rd party warranty company. The manufacturer warranty is just as likely to be a financial product as it is to reflect product quality.
- icantdrive55 9y ago
  Yea, I've been wanting something like this for awhile. We have Consumer Reports, but they don't do the job like I would like. Actually, it wouldn't be a bad choice to build a company around? Maybe better than another clone.com of a monopoly.com? I've given up on appliances that last a long time, and there's always a mechanical engineer that tells me they do last longer, and work better. I don't want to argue, but their duty cycle might be a few days longer, but they aren't easily repairable. That's the rub. We used to be able go fix t.v.'s, most appliances. Now--it's just junk it. I'm looking for a new car. Even the mechanics I've talked with don't know what to recommend. Most just say look for a vechicle that isn't too exotic. Meaning a older Toyota, with a manual. Soo--I am waiting for a list. I even thought about a list. "What kind of list dude? A list that would identify quality products, along with fair companies. Just a honest list. Thennchithonestlist.com
- dlgeek 9y ago
  www.consumerreports.com
  - coldpie 9y ago
    I'm actually on the market for a new kitchen range and I bought a CR subscription last night. I was disappointed. Almost none of the ranges have textual reviews, just a 5-star rating on about 6 different feature points. They each have a User Reviews section, most of which were unpopulated, and the remainder having one or two one-star reviews cursing it for falling apart in the first month. CR has a short blurb about reliability across entire brands, but the range was between 10% and 16% expected failure rate across the small subset of brands that were listed; most of the manufacturers were not even on the list. I'm left about as clueless as when I started.
- bitJericho 9y ago
  I'd look for the repair manual.
- gorkonsine 9y ago
  Well these days, with Amazon, that's what the reviews are for. I've passed on lots of purchases because I looked at the reviews and saw too many negative ones, and bought other things after seeing almost all glowing reviews. A bad-quality product can lead to poor reviews, and this can affect sales. Manufacturers' warranties are only so useful; a lot of companies make you jump through hoops to actually make use of them. If the product isn't that expensive, you'll end up paying so much in shipping that it just isn't worth bothering with when you can go buy a new one. And you always take the chance that they'll simply deny your claim and then your recourse is to sue them (not worth it for anything under a few thousand dollars) and to post bad reviews.
  - kqr 9y ago
    I'd like to point out an addition to this. Always read the negative reviews. Don't just count them. I put much more weight on the negative reviews than the positive ones. You can frequently tell if the bad experience is due to a user error or if it's a systematic fault in the product. If a product has 70% negative reviews, of which 90% are operator error, I'll probably still prefer that product to the one with only 30% negative reviews where only 30% are operator error.
    - gorkonsine 9y ago
      That's a good point. A lot of bad reviews are clearly user stupidity: I even see ones where they obviously bought the wrong thing, had unrealistic expectations, etc., and then gave a poor review based on this. Or reviews where the merchant (usually Amazon) screwed up somehow, so they give a poor review to the product. On the other hand, positive reviews are frequently either lies or fluff, so you're exactly right to weight them much less. A lot of them look like they're written by shills, some of them even clearly say they got the product for free or cheap in exchange for a review, and many are written shortly after acquiring the product so they really haven't had enough time to fairly test it and see if it's reliable long-term. Also, well-written negative reviews will go into great detail explaining exactly why the product is crap, so look for those. I'm remembering a great (and long) review I read for an automatic cat litterbox which attaches to a toilet here, and sometimes ends up cooking cat turds...
jonawesomegreen 9y ago
This frustrates me to no end. I don't mind voting with my wallet and paying for more expensive things if they are better and built to last longer. However it seems a lot of things these days are just more expensive to be fashionable, to sell you a lifestyle full of expensive things that break easily and are not actually built better. I would love to be able to buy more simple, well made things.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  > I would love to be able to buy more simple, well made things Problem is, if we are a minority of folks thinking this way, it won't make sense financially for manufacturers. What's happening with the buy-and-dispose generation is that nobody really cares about quality anymore - which is why the market is going in this way.
  - bigtunacan 9y ago
    I don't think we are in the minority. I think most people would prefer to buy a better-made product that lasts even if it costs a bit more as in the long run it ends up being cheaper. This isn't in the manufacturer's interest though. They would rather sell you 5 or 10 vacuums over your lifetime rather than just 1. This puts more money in the manufacturers pocket and they have zero incentive to keep repair shops in business. These days it is problematic to even know what products one should be buying because the quality of more brands than not is bad and many of these were well-designed products in the past that come from trusted name companies.
  - Pxtl 9y ago
    Minority or majority, to me the problem is the impossibility of determining what's quality anymore. "buy the expensive one" gets you plastic crap with more frills. "buy a trusted brand" doesnt' work when all the infinite brands - even formerly reputable ones like GE - are now just stickers for Chinese factories.
    - kqr 9y ago
      Impossibilty is a strong word. Sure, there are no standards bodies rating the quality of a product (those that exist tend to rate it as a "pass/fail" sort of thing.) But there's this thing called the internet where for any item you can think about you can find a tiny group of people obsessed about that item and ask them. It's the modern day "ask a repair shop"!

by kd5bjo 9y ago

Nition 9y ago

I wish there was like a rating system for how well-built appliances are. I guess the poor man's version of that is looking at how long the manufacturer's warranty is.

maxerickson 9y ago
Even better would be to get ahold of the price list of a 3rd party warranty company. The manufacturer warranty is just as likely to be a financial product as it is to reflect product quality.
icantdrive55 9y ago
Yea, I've been wanting something like this for awhile. We have Consumer Reports, but they don't do the job like I would like. Actually, it wouldn't be a bad choice to build a company around? Maybe better than another clone.com of a monopoly.com? I've given up on appliances that last a long time, and there's always a mechanical engineer that tells me they do last longer, and work better. I don't want to argue, but their duty cycle might be a few days longer, but they aren't easily repairable. That's the rub. We used to be able go fix t.v.'s, most appliances. Now--it's just junk it. I'm looking for a new car. Even the mechanics I've talked with don't know what to recommend. Most just say look for a vechicle that isn't too exotic. Meaning a older Toyota, with a manual. Soo--I am waiting for a list. I even thought about a list. "What kind of list dude? A list that would identify quality products, along with fair companies. Just a honest list. Thennchithonestlist.com
dlgeek 9y ago
www.consumerreports.com
- coldpie 9y ago
  I'm actually on the market for a new kitchen range and I bought a CR subscription last night. I was disappointed. Almost none of the ranges have textual reviews, just a 5-star rating on about 6 different feature points. They each have a User Reviews section, most of which were unpopulated, and the remainder having one or two one-star reviews cursing it for falling apart in the first month. CR has a short blurb about reliability across entire brands, but the range was between 10% and 16% expected failure rate across the small subset of brands that were listed; most of the manufacturers were not even on the list. I'm left about as clueless as when I started.
bitJericho 9y ago
I'd look for the repair manual.
gorkonsine 9y ago
Well these days, with Amazon, that's what the reviews are for. I've passed on lots of purchases because I looked at the reviews and saw too many negative ones, and bought other things after seeing almost all glowing reviews. A bad-quality product can lead to poor reviews, and this can affect sales. Manufacturers' warranties are only so useful; a lot of companies make you jump through hoops to actually make use of them. If the product isn't that expensive, you'll end up paying so much in shipping that it just isn't worth bothering with when you can go buy a new one. And you always take the chance that they'll simply deny your claim and then your recourse is to sue them (not worth it for anything under a few thousand dollars) and to post bad reviews.
- kqr 9y ago
  I'd like to point out an addition to this. Always read the negative reviews. Don't just count them. I put much more weight on the negative reviews than the positive ones. You can frequently tell if the bad experience is due to a user error or if it's a systematic fault in the product. If a product has 70% negative reviews, of which 90% are operator error, I'll probably still prefer that product to the one with only 30% negative reviews where only 30% are operator error.
  - gorkonsine 9y ago
    That's a good point. A lot of bad reviews are clearly user stupidity: I even see ones where they obviously bought the wrong thing, had unrealistic expectations, etc., and then gave a poor review based on this. Or reviews where the merchant (usually Amazon) screwed up somehow, so they give a poor review to the product. On the other hand, positive reviews are frequently either lies or fluff, so you're exactly right to weight them much less. A lot of them look like they're written by shills, some of them even clearly say they got the product for free or cheap in exchange for a review, and many are written shortly after acquiring the product so they really haven't had enough time to fairly test it and see if it's reliable long-term. Also, well-written negative reviews will go into great detail explaining exactly why the product is crap, so look for those. I'm remembering a great (and long) review I read for an automatic cat litterbox which attaches to a toilet here, and sometimes ends up cooking cat turds...

jonawesomegreen 9y ago

This frustrates me to no end. I don't mind voting with my wallet and paying for more expensive things if they are better and built to last longer. However it seems a lot of things these days are just more expensive to be fashionable, to sell you a lifestyle full of expensive things that break easily and are not actually built better. I would love to be able to buy more simple, well made things.

ekianjo 9y ago
> I would love to be able to buy more simple, well made things Problem is, if we are a minority of folks thinking this way, it won't make sense financially for manufacturers. What's happening with the buy-and-dispose generation is that nobody really cares about quality anymore - which is why the market is going in this way.
- bigtunacan 9y ago
  I don't think we are in the minority. I think most people would prefer to buy a better-made product that lasts even if it costs a bit more as in the long run it ends up being cheaper. This isn't in the manufacturer's interest though. They would rather sell you 5 or 10 vacuums over your lifetime rather than just 1. This puts more money in the manufacturers pocket and they have zero incentive to keep repair shops in business. These days it is problematic to even know what products one should be buying because the quality of more brands than not is bad and many of these were well-designed products in the past that come from trusted name companies.
- Pxtl 9y ago
  Minority or majority, to me the problem is the impossibility of determining what's quality anymore. "buy the expensive one" gets you plastic crap with more frills. "buy a trusted brand" doesnt' work when all the infinite brands - even formerly reputable ones like GE - are now just stickers for Chinese factories.
  - kqr 9y ago
    Impossibilty is a strong word. Sure, there are no standards bodies rating the quality of a product (those that exist tend to rate it as a "pass/fail" sort of thing.) But there's this thing called the internet where for any item you can think about you can find a tiny group of people obsessed about that item and ask them. It's the modern day "ask a repair shop"!