5 ms·
Only anecdotal evidence but in my experience price and quality (as in lasting) are only very weakly correlated. In the past I tended to buy expensive (in expect
by chopin 7y ago
Only anecdotal evidence but in my experience price and quality (as in lasting) are only very weakly correlated. In the past I tended to buy expensive (in expectation of lasting). The older I get the less I tend to do so even though I have now more money at my disposal. You're getting crap all the time independent of the brand.
- Gibbon1 7y agoI've noticed quality of ordinary things has been declining for a long time now. Some things are better due to new technologies. Lot of stuff has just regressed.
- denton-scratch 7y agoDon't know why you were downvoted; new technologies should make things both cheaper and more reliable, but it doesn't seem to be working, at least not for white goods.
- AdrianB1 7y agoI think in many areas it is just a race to the bottom, lowering prices at the expense of quality.
- burntoutfire 7y agoIt's probably the opposite in many cases - new technologies allow to build things that are significantly cheaper, but also less durable. For example, thanks to precise numerical simulations, you can be much more precise in designing the elements so that they are as thin/light and use as little materials as possible. Before the CAD era, you just did it "by feel" and, to be safe, made things much more sturdier (and more expensive).
- Gibbon1 7y agoI have an example of that. In the late 1980's early 90's read an fluff piece in Product Design News or some such about a team of engineers at GE that got an award for designing a washing machine tilt sensor. The article then gushed that the reason this was wonderful was the tilt sensor would allow GE to replace expensive metal washing machine drum bearings with inexpensive plastic ones. Without a tilt sensor they needed to use metal bearing because an out of balance load would break plastic bearings. But now with the tilt sensor plastic ones could be used.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoNew technologies add complexity. That always decreases reliability. Replace a robust button or mechanical timer mechanism with a touchscreen and now you have dozens of new components that can cause a failure.
- ghaff 7y agoThere are certainly a lot of cheaply/poorly build appliances covered in some shiny stainless or whatever the fashionable appliance sheathing of the moment is. New luxury developments have been pretty notorious for doing that sort of thing with the household appliances.
- adamlett 7y agoTry flipping it around. If I presented an product to you and were able to convince you that it was of significantly better quality (more durable, fewer bad surprises etc) than other products in the same category, would you be most surprised to learn that it was also more expensive or that it was less expensive than these other products? While it might be true that a higher price doesn't necessarily entail higher quality, it seems to me that higher quality almost always entails a higher price.
- blue_devil 7y agoThere's an (imperfect) cure for that - reviews.
- gpderetta 7y agoThat helps, but a) review are gamed extensively, b) a review usually can tell you that something has worked for a few days to a week after buying it. If you want to know whether a product has an high chance to work in 2-3 year time you are out of luck, especially with SKUs changing all the time.
- burntoutfire 7y agoYep. I'm fairly certain that companies change their SKUs all the time because they know that whatever they make will get a bad reputation (or neutral at best).