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Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

danluu.com

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Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#91

Post by cyounkins »

Great article! As a consumer that cares a lot about buying long-lasting quality products, here are a few resources:

Project Farm (youtube.com/projectfarm) - Great independent reviews of tools

Mcmaster.com - Higher quality products than you can get at your local hardware store and excellent customer service. When I've gotten the rare incorrect or damaged item, 1 email gets me a refund and a replacement overnighted.

Wirecutter - Not as go-to as it used to be in my mind, but great for background

ConsumerReports - Check if you can get free access through your local library website

ReviewMeta (reviewmeta.com) - Analyzes Amazon reviews for authenticity

All of these have problems but they are still good resources. Any others I'm missing?

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#92

Post by fendy3002 »

hodgesrm wrote: post #79
massysett wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of stuff that works remarkably well even though it’s cheap. I just came from a supermarket. It’s filled with items from around the world, of which most are very inexpensive. The consistent quality of these products is astounding—a bag of potato chips or a box of crackers tastes exactly the same, anywhere in the country where I buy it, year-round. A can of Coca-Cola tastes exactly the same even though th…

Conversely there are lot of things that are expensive and work very badly. "Designer anything" as for example, designer light fixtures. I've had terrible experiences with these.

It happens to almost anything creative products, stylish, custom made, and services.

I guess because there isn't enough time and money to assess the quality and optimize them.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#93

Post by throwaway0a5e »

tashoecraft wrote: post #89
bombcar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why the only signal that customers used to have got removed - a refrigerator that had the same design and components for twenty years is likely well made (if it weren’t people would have found out or changed the parts). But these are rare (one of the few I know of is Speed Queen but I suspect there are others in other industries, mainly commercial/industrial products). Amusingly enough these work best when in…

Except being made well isn't the only criteria. From what I understand, speed queen uses so much water compared to a more modern machine that you could buy a new machine on the cost savings. There are a multitude of reasons, companies no longer make products to last. Watch videos where they dissect products, you'll find machines are designed to fail after a certain amount of time. Motors that only contain a certain a…

You wind up double and triple washing things with the new machine in order to get equivalent cleanliness to an old style machine.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#94

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

fouc wrote: post #87
______-_-______ wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, 90% of everything is crap, both then and now. And thanks to Lindy's Law, you're usually better off buying something old than something new. But that's not how most people think :( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

> Thus, the Lindy effect proposes the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, it is also likely to have a longer remaining life expectancy. Makes sense! I was also thinking there's a related rule - something worth buying used has proven itself to not be crap.

People still try to sell their used crap. So how do you define if something is worth buying used ? For some people everything is worth buying used, even crap

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#95

Post by Retric »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #59

Looking through old Sears catalogs and seeing the prizes on older game shows, I think some of our memory is selective. Even in photos and SD video you can see the terrible build quality on many consumer products from those earlier times. This seems to be especially true for furniture and exercise equipment. When you convert into current dollars, this low quality junk often is more expensive than what is available tod…

Looking like crap says very little about utility.

It’s standard practice to reduce safety margins when build quality increases. If you think in terms of expected lifespan, when the company has little control over how long things last and wants a minimum of say 1 year then some fail at 1 year and some fail after 20. As their process improves the minimum stays the same, but maximum lifespan decreases.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#96

Post by mpalczewski »

fouc wrote: post #87
______-_-______ wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, 90% of everything is crap, both then and now. And thanks to Lindy's Law, you're usually better off buying something old than something new. But that's not how most people think :( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

> Thus, the Lindy effect proposes the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, it is also likely to have a longer remaining life expectancy. Makes sense! I was also thinking there's a related rule - something worth buying used has proven itself to not be crap.

Another way to look for non crap, is to check the used value of something. E.g. check swappa. If people are still paying a lot for an item after it is used, usually a good sign. If they are not and you still want it, get it used and save a ton.

Another good way, check how much insurance costs. e.g. How much is that extended warranty going to cost on one car vs another. How much is home owners insurance in one neighborhood vs another. Insurance companies that make mistakes here go out of business.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#97

Post by rascul »

chii wrote: post #44
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #2

Because we have unreasonable expectations. Making things work well is hard, and thus expensive. Take a chair, for example. Anyone can make a chair: just get a bucket, turn it over, and sit on it. Boom; backless chair. Want a backrest, arms? Get a 2x4, a saw, a drill, and some bolts. An hour later: Boom; chair. You want a chair that works well? How do you even define works well for a chair? Do you need cushioning? Do…

an aeron chair costs about $2000 dollars (give or take). The construction is sturdy, so i expect it to last at least 10 years, if not 20 (you take care of it etc). So the amortized cost is some 100-200 dollars a year for an excellent chair. If you buy a crappy chair, i bet that the cushion starts failing after a year or so of constant sitting. So you'd probably replace it yearly, or suffer a bad chair for a few years…

My $60 office chair from Walmart has lasted five years so far.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#98

Post by FanaHOVA »

> You might think that, if a single person can create or maintain a tool that's worth millions of dollars a year to the company, our competitors would do the same thing, just like you might think that if you can ship faster and at a lower cost by hiring a person who knows how to crack a wafer open, our competitors would do that, but they mostly didn't.

He mentions a small chip startup he worked at for these examples, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Did those companies beat out their competitors and win their market?

Seems like his point is that "We did this optimally and competitors didn't even though you'd expect them to", but if that company didn't end up being the best one it's not really proving the overall point

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#99

Post by civilized »

Strilanc wrote: post #88

It's pretty depressing how many of the comments are purely answering the title and not discussing the content of the article. In particular, the comments seem mostly focused on consumer product build quality whereas the article is more focused on e.g. businesses trying to outsource something (like same day delivery) and getting a worse result even when they pay more than doing it internally. And the cultural obstacle…

> It's pretty depressing how many of the comments are purely answering the title and not discussing the content of the article.

This is a HN pattern as old as the hills. If the headline invites bikeshedding, most people will bikeshed. If the article is long and complex, almost no one will read the article. This one has both.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#100

Post by Aeolun »

Strilanc wrote: post #88

It's pretty depressing how many of the comments are purely answering the title and not discussing the content of the article. In particular, the comments seem mostly focused on consumer product build quality whereas the article is more focused on e.g. businesses trying to outsource something (like same day delivery) and getting a worse result even when they pay more than doing it internally. And the cultural obstacle…

> he'll use the same tone for something he's seen anecdotally and something he's spent a month personally investigating

At least the parts about build vs buy sound extremely familiar to me. Setting up and integrating something you’ve bought often takes as much or more time than building it yourself.

The best argument for buying is that you’d make all stakeholders equally unhappy.

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