Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality • Hacker News Board

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#91

Post by _DeadFred_ » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

bsenftner wrote: post #12

comrade1234 wrote: post #3

I read years ago about a drill which was sold at Walmart with the same sku as in higher-end stores but the Walmart version had plastic gears. This was due to pricing pressure by Walmart on the manufacturer. Me, personally, I seek out first Swiss brands then German brands when buying most things. I'm willing to pay extra. In fact I'm a little pissed off this week because I ordered some oxygen absorbers off a Swiss web…

I did a little research study back in 2003 where I went to various grocers and purchased the same product at these grocers and compared. Walmart has larger boxes, and less contents, universally, for pretty much everything in a box, and they charge 1/3 more for their 2/3rds of what you get everywhere else. They make nearly 50% more profit from that little slight of hand. And try discussing this with any shoppers and t…

And a ridiculously high percentage of the time markdown prices on the shelves at Walmart are not reflected at checkout. Happened to me just this weekend. Walmart, one of the largest companies in the USA, whose job is to sell items, can't do the basics of keeping pricing/signage in sync? BS.

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#92

Post by eszed » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:46 PM UTC

anal_reactor wrote: post #70

comrade1234 wrote: post #3

I read years ago about a drill which was sold at Walmart with the same sku as in higher-end stores but the Walmart version had plastic gears. This was due to pricing pressure by Walmart on the manufacturer. Me, personally, I seek out first Swiss brands then German brands when buying most things. I'm willing to pay extra. In fact I'm a little pissed off this week because I ordered some oxygen absorbers off a Swiss web…

Yes, I've heard of this effect in marketing. If you make any reference to Switzerland, it's instant sales bump, even if you hold everything else equal. This is also how you got "Häagen-Dazs" ice cream brand. It's fully American, but the name sounds vaguely Scandinavian, so it has to be better, right? Well, customers sure do think so, and are willing to pay the premium.

Not challenging your marketing presumption; I've noticed, and seen pointed out, the same thing.

As a side note, years ago Häagen-Dazs was better (high milk-fat, etc) than the other widely-available brands. It's now owned by Nestlé, so I don't buy it anymore. How much has it been enshittified?

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#93

Post by dan_hawkins » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 3:43 PM UTC

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #5

comrade1234 wrote: post #3

I read years ago about a drill which was sold at Walmart with the same sku as in higher-end stores but the Walmart version had plastic gears. This was due to pricing pressure by Walmart on the manufacturer. Me, personally, I seek out first Swiss brands then German brands when buying most things. I'm willing to pay extra. In fact I'm a little pissed off this week because I ordered some oxygen absorbers off a Swiss web…

There are Chinese machine manufacturers who use fake German brand names because for a long time Germany was selling the manufacturing machinery to China and they have a good national brand image.

You don't need a fake brand: use Philips.

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#94

Post by xnx » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 3:52 PM UTC

kevincox wrote: post #78

xnx wrote: post #23

This entire site can be boiled down to: products get decrease in quality when customers don't know or don't care what quality is. Price is a clear and obvious thing to measure, quality is much more difficult. Consumers get little or no formal education in quality, and advertisements (and even review sites!) almost never address it properly. Any review site that is paid for by ads or affiliate links has the default po…

> and advertisements (and even review sites!) almost never address it properly The thing that annoys me the most is when the reviewer opens the box, shakes it gently and says "feels well built" or "plastic build". It is actually harmful. Weight doesn't equal quality (there is some correlation, building well often results in more weight, but it is unreliable and easy to game) and plastic is a huge range of materials a…

> The only really good test is to use the product for many years

Agree. However, a good reviewer should be able to transfer knowledge from many years of use about a similar product to a new product and give an insightful evaluation. This type of reviewer is exceedingly rare.

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#95

Post by kevincox » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #94

kevincox wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and advertisements (and even review sites!) almost never address it properly The thing that annoys me the most is when the reviewer opens the box, shakes it gently and says "feels well built" or "plastic build". It is actually harmful. Weight doesn't equal quality (there is some correlation, building well often results in more weight, but it is unreliable and easy to game) and plastic is a huge range of materials a…

> The only really good test is to use the product for many years Agree. However, a good reviewer should be able to transfer knowledge from many years of use about a similar product to a new product and give an insightful evaluation. This type of reviewer is exceedingly rare.

I think a very knowledgeable reviewer can make a decent guess. But to really know you would need to tear it apart and analyze all of the materials used (maybe the metal or plastic has been swapped to a slightly different material which is very hard to identify by just looking or touching). You need a team of engineers. Probably the best you can hope for is noticing a part is changed and make an educated guess why it was changed.

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#96

Post by mindslight » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

1970-01-01 wrote: post #20

One massive unmentioned counterexample: High quality Chinese tools continue to proliferate and sucker-punch these brands for being so egregious with quality. They are now the high quality standard if you know what brands to look for, and not because their competition got worse as mentioned here, they are simply iterating and improving and making better tools and designs than they did 10 years ago. Sometimes you are g…

I recently bought one of the Yukon tool chest / benches and the experience totally flipped my opinion of HF. I've been a customer for a while, but always considered them lower-quality in the back of my mind. The tool chest came in perfect condition, easy purchase. Whereas the Huskies I had bought previously were a hassle that involved returning multiple damaged-in-box units back to the store, driving an hour to another store with stock, dodgily swapping parts (drawer slides and top) to make a good one, etc.

It's of course never just one thing - I had been waiting for the Husky to show up in stock again (it has a 24 inch depth vs 18), but at this point it seems like HD has discontinued the 24 in favor of enshittifying with 18 inches instead. And of course I've been shying away from HD recently because of the F-word. It's like these companies want to self-immolate (or put more technically, they create short term boosts by arbitraging away their reputation).

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#97

Post by GeoAtreides » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

bsenftner wrote: post #12

comrade1234 wrote: post #3

I read years ago about a drill which was sold at Walmart with the same sku as in higher-end stores but the Walmart version had plastic gears. This was due to pricing pressure by Walmart on the manufacturer. Me, personally, I seek out first Swiss brands then German brands when buying most things. I'm willing to pay extra. In fact I'm a little pissed off this week because I ordered some oxygen absorbers off a Swiss web…

I did a little research study back in 2003 where I went to various grocers and purchased the same product at these grocers and compared. Walmart has larger boxes, and less contents, universally, for pretty much everything in a box, and they charge 1/3 more for their 2/3rds of what you get everywhere else. They make nearly 50% more profit from that little slight of hand. And try discussing this with any shoppers and t…

>Walmart has larger boxes, and less contents

in EU labels must show prices per kilogram of product, to make this kind of fuckery harder

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#98

Post by krackers » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 6:12 PM UTC

docjay wrote: post #72

xnx wrote: post #23

This entire site can be boiled down to: products get decrease in quality when customers don't know or don't care what quality is. Price is a clear and obvious thing to measure, quality is much more difficult. Consumers get little or no formal education in quality, and advertisements (and even review sites!) almost never address it properly. Any review site that is paid for by ads or affiliate links has the default po…

That might be an outdated accusation. There was a time when a touch of research or “caring about quality” was enough to avoid the pitfalls of garbage products, but I don’t believe that to be a fair statement anymore. The website details the history of some examples, but the implication is between the lines: the only reason you used to know a product would last 20 years is because that specific product with those spec…

>reading are for a model that doesn’t exist anymore

It's worse than that, the _same model_ from the same company can be quietly changed.

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#99

Post by bitmasher9 » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 6:45 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #61

ramgine wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like what he said but less words

It feels like this observation should be in Marx somewhere (but in way more words badly translated from German)

It’s a more acute observation about market dynamics than what is usually found in Marx. Marx heavily discusses how humanity interacts with capitalism, and focuses its market analysis on the labor market.

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#100

Post by pandaman » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 6:46 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #23

This entire site can be boiled down to: products get decrease in quality when customers don't know or don't care what quality is. Price is a clear and obvious thing to measure, quality is much more difficult. Consumers get little or no formal education in quality, and advertisements (and even review sites!) almost never address it properly. Any review site that is paid for by ads or affiliate links has the default po…

It's the third or fourth time I see it on HN, I have not read anything other than the first two, which were more of complaints about tiered products. E.g. one was about backpacks and how a $40 backpack from Walmart is not going to last 20 years of summiting Mt. Everest like the $400 backpack of the same brand sold elsewhere...