Why is it hard to buy things that work well? • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by city41 » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 1:24 PM UTC

pja wrote: post #301

namdnay wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many miles are you putting on that i10?! An oil change is every 2 years or 15k km. I think it’s a bad example btw, it’s a famously reliable car (the taxi of choice in Bogota fwiw)

For some reason people in the US are obsessed with changing the oil in their vehicle. Modern engines & oils don't need the oil changing every 3000 miles, but the folklore belief in the necessity of doing so rolls on unstoppably in the USA.

A factor is oil change shops still put a sticker on the windshield that says to come back in 3000 miles. It's of course in their interest for people to change their oil too often.

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

#392

Post by mbg721 » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 1:27 PM UTC

My theory is that it's because the end-user is less familiar with how household goods and machines work than in prior generations. With chips in everything, it's hard to tell at a glance what's good and what's rubbish; you can't kick the tires. Even if you could, there have been a couple generations where buying stuff new has been cheaper than repairing it, so knowing how to sew or fix a dishwasher isn't the value proposition that it once was--and that stuff has become as cheaply made as possible as a result.

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

#393

Post by mattferderer » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 1:28 PM UTC

angarg12 wrote: post #107

I just moved to the USA from the UK (having lived in Germany before) and the quality of the services I'm experiencing here is appalling. To get concrete, we submitted an application for an apartment let. After not hearing back for 4 days we reached out and it looks like somehow they misplaced our application. By then the unit we wanted was gone so they asked us to pay a holding fee to ensure they would keep another u…

As with many countries, the USA can be very different depending on where you live, even if you move from one part of a state to another part.

Moving from state to state can almost feel like moving to an entirely different country.

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

#394

Post by rjh29 » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 1:31 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #169

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…

> I will note that I often wish Dan Luu was a bit less apparently-uniformly-confident in some of the statements he writes. He does back up what he says, but he'll use the same tone for something he's seen anecdotally and something he's spent a month personally investigating. Dan Luu is one of my favorite currently-active bloggers. He's obviously a smart person with a good amount of experience in specific areas. Howev…

The most popular writers on this site (and others) have this habit of presenting their opinion as the ground truth and it annoys the heck out of me. There are VERY few things I can be confident about, I don't pretend to be that smart. Then you get people like Jordan Peterson who present a mix of truth and unsourced, unverifiable nonsense with the same confidence and charisma, who become thought leaders. Nobody is going to listen to the person saying "I'm not sure" or "I don't know".

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

#395

Post by ksec » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 1:32 PM UTC

Haven't seen anyone discussing it yet.

> For example, in my social circles, there have been two waves of people migrating from iPhones to Android phones over the past few years. Both waves happened due to Apple PR snafus which caused a lot of people to think that iPhones were terrible at something when, in fact, they were better at that thing than Android phones.

I wonder what Apple PR snafus is that?

>Amazon eventually solved this problem by having their own delivery people (and Apple has done this as well for same-day delivery)

Apple employs they own people for delivery ? That is news to me. And I cant seems to find anything on Google to confirm this.

Otherwise the article sums up, The world is largely run by Pepla, people who cant tell the difference between Pepsi and Coca Cola. And the Market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

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

#396

Post by gchamonlive » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 1:32 PM UTC

mbg721 wrote: post #392

My theory is that it's because the end-user is less familiar with how household goods and machines work than in prior generations. With chips in everything, it's hard to tell at a glance what's good and what's rubbish; you can't kick the tires. Even if you could, there have been a couple generations where buying stuff new has been cheaper than repairing it, so knowing how to sew or fix a dishwasher isn't the value pr…

Companies also actively make their products obscure or withhold replacement parts to force new purchases. This has a lot to do with right to repair.

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

#397

Post by mattferderer » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 1:33 PM UTC

I want to give a shout out to the Roomba designers. That is my favorite gadget. I have a very old one. The quality is awesome. The ability to clean & replace parts is easy.

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

#398

Post by NavinF » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

WWLink wrote: post #209

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…

> There’s a lot of stuff that works remarkably well even though it’s cheap. Even light switches are pretty cheap. You can get a basic single light switch for around $2. Sure there's decora switches, dimmer switches, and all kinds of other great things for $50+ but the basic $2 ones will still last decades.

If you replaced the contacts with a triac and replaced the switch mechanism with a thick bistable flexure, it would likely last centuries and have a BoM cost around $2.

I’ve had 2 switches fail over the last 2 years out of the ~40 switches installed in the house. One failed by welding itself closed and another failed by caving into the electrical box when I hit it too hard. Even though the 40 year life expectancy of a single switch sounds good, the reality is that one fails catastrophically every year. I’d love to get more reliable switches that last well over a century, but I’m not aware of anyone that measures this sort of thing.

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

#399

Post by overton » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

Modern western society has not built the social capital necessary to cope with its material complexity. It's built on an ethic of grifting, in the large or in the small. See the part of the piece where people think you deserve what's coming to you if you aren't assuming everybody's out to f* you.

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

#400

Post by CapmCrackaWaka » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 1:37 PM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #337

kccqzy wrote: post #242

> An example from another industry: when I worked at a small chip startup, we had in-house capability to do end-to-end chip processing (with the exception of having its own fabs), which is unusual for a small chip startup. When the first wafer of a new design came off of a fab, we'd have the wafer flown to us on a commercial flight, at which point someone would use a wafer saw to cut the wafer into individual chips s…

> In this particular example idling 99% of the time is cheaper, but even if idling 99% of the time is slightly expensive, it might still be a good idea not to outsource due to resilience. Or in some cases it might make sense to become an outsourcing destination. Your otherwise idle equipment & skills become a revenue stream rather than a cost when your need it low, your local equipment and skills are tested & re-enfo…

If you go through all this trouble, you have essentially added another business line to your company. This may or may not be where a company wants to spend their resources. Rolling your own XYZ will always be cheaper than paying a 3rd party vendor, _if_ you have the time, experience, money, and competitive advantage to do it correctly, which are pretty big iffs.