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Let's make quality the norm again

forbrukerradet.no

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Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#91

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

Gigachad wrote: post #81
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #73

The answer is competition. Quality declines when companies no longer have to meaningful compete in the marketplace. The only other solution is regulation and force quality through punishment for noncompliance. Competition works better.

Competition partially causes this though. When you have 100 brands selling the same thing it became a race to the lowest price.

My experience is competition invokes two races happening at the same time, one for lowest price and one for highest quality. You can get a cheap car or really high quality car. Same goes for clothes, restaurants, basically anything where there is lots of market choices and competition.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#92

Post by austin-cheney »

dgarciaf18 wrote: post #39
austin-cheney wrote: post #11

There are economic impacts to raising quality: 1. Higher quality requires better trained technicians. That means fewer people will be able to participate due to any of missing experience, costs of training/education, and opportunity costs. 2. Higher quality generally requires third party certification, such as the CE or FCC identifiers on electronic equipment. Certification costs time and money resulting in a form ex…

I don't think the idea of circular economy, where goods are produced with high manufacturing quality standards, applies to software. In the sense that producing high quality physical goods may not be beneficial for the producer. But producing high quality software is rarely not beneficial for the developer, specially in the long term. Maybe idea could be maybe applied to the offering of long-term technical support an…

One of the greatest challenges for software as an industry is for the developers to consider the role of the user. In my 20 years of doing this rarely have I seen a developer advocate for the users over themselves. Instead the developer imposes themselves as the primary user and the actual users as a secondary class. This is where most tech stacks and design decisions come in at every step.

I can also remember when I worked at Travelocity a million years ago and they actively tried to fight this insanity with exhaustive A/B testing.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#93

Post by johnnypangs »

pif wrote: post #88

Quality was never the norm: cheap always beat quality with a hand tied behind his back! Western working class has spent decades complaining about cheap imports from China... while feeding that market with their own money. Western frequent fliers keep reminiscing about the grandiose pre-deregulation era or air travel, but cry a river when their low-cost carrier of choice actually enforces the limit on cabin baggage. E…

Even this site on mobile has issues with unnecessary horizontal scroll.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#94

Post by loloquwowndueo »

Saline9515 wrote: post #66
stabbles wrote: post #26

With sufficient competition, the incentives of companies would change if consumers would be willing to rent instead of owning products. Then planned obsolescence is not to their benefit.

Most cars are rented nowadays and they are less durable than ever. It's better for the manufacturer to lease and then get you to upgrade periodically to keep you as a novelty-seeking consumer. Long warranty is better as there is no other incentive who has to pay if the product breaks down. Cars should have a 7 years warranty by default for instance.

Aren’t newer cars more reliable than older ones? Back in the day it was a feat to get a 200000 km car and these days it’s like not that big a deal.

I wouldn’t really know, I’ve only used car share for the past 10 years shrug

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#95

Post by loloquwowndueo »

altern8 wrote: post #7

I think about this a lot because I try to never buy anything Chinese or low quality unless I have to. Unfortunately, from my experience artisans aren't willing to do the work anymore, even if you pay them premium. For instance, a carpenter here in Poland that decided to be a carpenter would rather cut up pre-made cabinets to your specs than make them from scratch using wood, even if I pay them 10x. Then, people aren'…

Curious where your entirely 100% not-made-in-china computer and/or smartphone come from. Taiwan perhaps?

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#96

Post by alright2565 »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #27
piker wrote: post #3

While it does relate to price discovery--i.e., some folks just aren't willing to pay for an additional unit of quality at 10x--my theory is that the decline in quality is another hidden form of inflation. Thing continues to cost X even though regulations have increased costs Y, ship production to China and scrimp on the inputs. (Or have market forces do that for you.)

To me, this is why we have regulation. The CE mark in Europe and the UL mark in the US is supposed to provide a floor on quality. That floor can be increased if we as a society decides that this is required. You might be unwilling to pay for this increased quality, but you don't have a choice.

The CE mark is worthless, since it is a self-certificaton.

The UL mark is valuable, as are the other test lab marks. However, while an ethical storefront would require it, Amazon does not. I've bought plenty of things that are not listed, and if I want safe products I generally have to include "UL" or "ETL" in my search. Even that doesn't always work, I've seen products on there claiming a listing in the title but photo shopping the place where the UL logo ought to be off of their product images.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#97

Post by Paul_Clayton »

eru wrote: post #20
austin-cheney wrote: post #11

There are economic impacts to raising quality: 1. Higher quality requires better trained technicians. That means fewer people will be able to participate due to any of missing experience, costs of training/education, and opportunity costs. 2. Higher quality generally requires third party certification, such as the CE or FCC identifiers on electronic equipment. Certification costs time and money resulting in a form ex…

I don't buy your list. For example, higher quality doesn't require third part certification. Reputation (and warranties) can work without third parties. I do agree that third party certification is one possible avenue.

I think reputation and warranties are insufficient. While building a reputation may be expensive, destroying a reputation can be profitable (in the short term). Warranties can also be made less effective by making the buyer spend excessive time and effort to enforce the warranty. The company sets the terms and effectively their interpretation, so after two years of waiting, nudging, waiting, complaining, waiting, threatening, and waiting one finally gets an "equivalent value" replacement (and the warranty clock was running during that time).

The company might also go bankrupt with much of its profits having gone to owners and decision makers who are not bound to honor the warranty.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#98

Post by alansaber »

eru wrote: post #59
alansaber wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, they're lax on regulation. Hence the association with bad quality.

Regulation doesn't have much to do with quality. For example, there's plenty of regulation to make food safe, but almost nothing about making your food high quality in the sense of taste and texture. You get quality from competition and customers opening their wallets for quality. Another example: Apple assembles some nice consumer hardware in China. Their quality doesn't depend on regulation.

The regulations often change the economics of production to favour improved quality/attempting to sell upmarket.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#99

Post by juleiie »

alansaber wrote: post #84
juleiie wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why this supply chain hangs by a thread and progressively produces shittier and shittier results?

Because everyone at every step of the chain is primarily incentivised by money.

That is the opposite of resilience.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#100

Post by altern8 »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #95
altern8 wrote: post #7

I think about this a lot because I try to never buy anything Chinese or low quality unless I have to. Unfortunately, from my experience artisans aren't willing to do the work anymore, even if you pay them premium. For instance, a carpenter here in Poland that decided to be a carpenter would rather cut up pre-made cabinets to your specs than make them from scratch using wood, even if I pay them 10x. Then, people aren'…

Curious where your entirely 100% not-made-in-china computer and/or smartphone come from. Taiwan perhaps?

Not sure, it's a Google Pixel. But a smartphone would probably fall into the "unless I have to" category.

What's your point?

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