How much of it is confirmation bias? Pens, I use various Uni, few $10 fountain pens and my son as 40c fountain pen. All of them work decently well, some break when we drop them or loose the cap but nothing egregious. My wife is using 6 year old Oneplus which give no sign of needing replacement. I have 20 years old toaster. I used my LG washing machine for ~12-13 years before replacing it, same for my AC (>15 years)/fridge (~15 years) etc. Now I have had few bad apples, laptop that was junk in 2 years. AC that kept giving trouble.
Generation Junk
221–230 of 471 posts
Re: Generation Junk
#222So this article implies that a number of things that we buy previously were built to last longer, and indeed did last longer. The first few examples are kitchen appliances. In this case I don't really know, but I'm at least willing to listen. Ultimately the evidence is people responding to a thread on Twitter where he solicited complaints. Not so compelling. But then he mentions a "hybrid sedan". Here I'm aware of th…
Well, the explanation that people are getting exactly the dirt-cheap shoddy crap they demand is correct. You can buy a nice burr grinder from a company that not only sells spare parts for at least 5 years after they stop selling the model, but who also shares youtube videos on how to disassemble and repair the grinder. Mine is 11.5 years old and I replaced the central gear when it stripped around year 7 or 8, after g…
Baratza owner here echoing your sentiment.
There's still plenty of manufacturers out there today offering quality products, but in almost every market there are clones and cheap imitations.
The poor man pays twice is a motto I often recall as I grit my teeth and hand over my credit card for appliances.
Re: Generation Junk
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't buy the survivorship bias thing for the most part. My mother has her original dryer, washer, deep freezer, and refrigerator all running at her house. These are all 40+ years old except for the washer which is probably 30ish years old. Also her furnace + water heater are 40 years old. If it was survivorship bias some of these appliances would've died.
Are you saying that none of their original appliances have died? If not, do you realize that you claiming " If it was survivorship bias some of these appliances would've died." When "these" refers exclusively to those who haven't died is the very definition of survivorship bias?
I think a washer died around 35 years ago and her current washer is 35 years old. It seems improbable that so many 40+ year old appliances survived in one home if reliability rates or ease of repair were not significantly better in the past.
Re: Generation Junk
#224I’ve had to buy a lot of furniture and other things for my new house this year, and one of the things that really sticks out to me is that practically every category of product seems to be split into a bimodal distribution: cheap crap & luxury boutique. There are practically no entries occupying the middle of the market that are on the basic end regarding features & frills but also high-quality. It’s incredibly annoy…
I lived my whole life using cheap Ikea furniture and have zero complaints.
Re: Generation Junk
#225My grand parents live in an old farm-house, 100 years old or more. When that house was built - there was no electricity. That had been added later - and you could still see where channels had been hewn into the wall to put in cables and later plastered over again.
But everything electrical in that house was repairable to a degree that seems unimaginable today.
For example, every single power plug had screws. If you removed those, it would come apart in two halves, to reveal another set of screws that held the cable in. If you undid those screws, you could easily shorten or replace the cable - in case it was broken. There was no glue, no solder, and most of the plugs had even metal inserts for the screws to go into.
The appliances on the other end of the cables were just as easy to take apart and put back together. And their insides were (mostly) free of proprietary parts - almost everything was "standard" stuff, that you could get replacements for, from a supplier of your own choice.
Many of those appliances still worked perfectly fine, after my grandparents had died, and the house had been torn down. That doesn't mean they never broke - but if they did, my grandpa was able to easily fix them himself. And if he could not fix something, he still was able to salvage it for parts that then could be used to fix other things.
Re: Generation Junk
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
On average they didn't (oh no, that repair costs more than the "car is worth" as if that's a metric that actually means anything) but it was far easier to keep one running indefinitely. You could take an engine to a small machine shop and get the head and block resurfaced, valves reamed and cylinders lapped. Without any electronics to fail it was just a block of metal that was slowly losing material and a quick hit w…
As someone who drives an “old” Honda 2006, I’m surprised that this machine is still running very good. I could just take it to my local shop and had it fixed in 1-2 days. Based on my logs, I took the car for repair on average of 3-4 times a year. I am looking to purchase a new family vehicle in the future but with all the softwares, screens, and fancy stuffs I am not sure if I liked it. Anyone feels this way?
I really wish there was a new car that I wanted to buy, because my 1998 Jeep isn't getting any younger. But holy crap is the modern car a dumpster fire of shit from a UI perspective. Although it looks like at least some manufacturers are starting to take note: https://futurism.com/the-byte/car-touchscreens-buttons-back
Re: Generation Junk
#227We have friends that just laid out $3000 for a new washer drier set and washer is already leaking from the front door. Pursuing warranty repair has been a major hassle. My wife and I use a washer and drier set from the late 90's that are nothing to look at but work really well. They appear to be designed with service in mind and changing components is usually extremely easy - something I have done infrequently. These…
I use the cheapest washing machine with A+++ rating that I could buy about ten years ago and it shows no signs of aging so far.
Re: Generation Junk
#228I’ve had to buy a lot of furniture and other things for my new house this year, and one of the things that really sticks out to me is that practically every category of product seems to be split into a bimodal distribution: cheap crap & luxury boutique. There are practically no entries occupying the middle of the market that are on the basic end regarding features & frills but also high-quality. It’s incredibly annoy…
I'm curious. My previous soft was from Ikea. Of course Ikea makes cheap disposable furniture but this sofa, IMO, was not one of those. It was made of real wood, not particle board. It was super well designed. It assembled into 4 parts using slots and a few very large steal bolts and was also easy to disassemble for moving. It's entire cover was easy to remove so you could clean stains or easily replace it. Same for the cushions. And it was comfortable. It was under $1000 (note: I know Ikea redesigns things so the same soft today might not be as good as that same model from 2016)
Moving overseas I had to buy a new sofa in 2021. Middle of COVID, Ikea didn't have any I couldn't wait. The sofa I ended up with is the cheapest shit sofa I've ever owned. The materials are clearly inferior. No part of it is cleanable. The cushions are one sided so can not flip them in 4 directions, they only fit one way. I got tired of looking and settled on these though, expecting to replace them.
Anyway, my point was (a) I understand your POV but also (b) there are possibly some good under $1000 sofas. I've had similar luck with a few Ikea dining room tables that were solid wood, not particle board.
Re: Generation Junk
#229I would add that not only the quality in general is degrading, but also the treatment of the brands and manufacturers to the customer. I believe that the feeling of abandonment (sometimes even scam) in which the brands subject their customers further deepen the feeling of lack of quality in general.
A few years ago I bought a Samsung refrigerator. It came with a big "10 year warranty" sticker. After a couple of years or so, one day it stopped cooling. I thought what a piece of crap, but at least it had a warranty. I found out, over the phone, that the 10 year warranty was only for the compressor. Still, I was lucky because it was the compressor that had gone bad. But there was more fine print in the 10-year warranty: it only covered the compressor and only the price of the part. In other words, I had to pay for the technician to come to my house and replace the part. Almost 200 dollars for a refrigerator that had cost 800 and was supposedly under warranty.
Re: Generation Junk
#230I’ve had to buy a lot of furniture and other things for my new house this year, and one of the things that really sticks out to me is that practically every category of product seems to be split into a bimodal distribution: cheap crap & luxury boutique. There are practically no entries occupying the middle of the market that are on the basic end regarding features & frills but also high-quality. It’s incredibly annoy…
I'm happy with my Article sofa and coffee table set. Real wood and marble, but foam & polyester upholstery.