Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Parable of the Sofa

tbray.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 357 posts

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#321

Post by db48x »

portaouflop wrote: post #169
db48x wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can recognize particleboard, can’t you? That’s low quality. Cardboard covered with wood veneer is another trick, but you can recognize that by its unnatural lightness. Low quality again. Then look at the joints between pieces. If the wood is shaped so that the pieces fit into each other, then that is high quality. If they are joined by screws, metal plates, or glue, then that is low quality (or medium, in some ca…

Fair enough. I do know that heavy furniture is probably higher quality. But that’s about it. Not sure if I would spot particleboard, since it’s hidden under paint or as you said veneer. My only realistic quality criteria are: - does it look old? - is it very heavy?

FWIW, MDF with a veneer is a higher quality than MDF with paint. Also, you can tell when there is a veneer by looking at the edges and corners.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#322

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

Spivak wrote: post #317
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>when i need a sofa, i want to be able to “just” get a sofa Which is understandable, and also the whole problem. Everything that used to go along with getting that sofa, like the human interaction, is thrown out in the name of efficiency, and eventually we all end up locked in our houses with nowhere to go but our jobs.

It's not just efficiency, the very last thing I want to do when buying any good or service is talk to another human being. Hell if self checkout is any indication people will trade efficiency for not having to talk to a person. Eventually we'll all end up conserving our social battery for friends and loved ones rather than work and shopping.

Where do the friends and loved ones come from?

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#323

Post by switch007 »

seer wrote: post #247
istultus wrote: post #171

Let me posit an ad-hoc theory built on our anchoring bias in regards to price and our inability to think in terms of inflation/hyperbolic discounting: tl;dr - Once a cheap alternative is on the market, us frugal folks can't imagine paying for what was once the default and only option, distorting our understanding of what constitutes good quality * He says buying a new sofa of the same quality today would cost upwards…

I don't know why HN has the idea that IKEA is cheap trash - yes some of the things in their catalog are not very high quality, but they seem to be very consistent. But more importantly (for me), because they have such a huge catalog, and a propensity to optimise, they ended up with a supremely hackable furniture - everything fits together with everything else, whenever you want to build something - there are tons of…

It is mostly cheap trash, especially these days. You admit it yourself - honeycomb, particleboard etc. Saying "some" things are not high quality is being very very charitable

There used to be a better mix of cheap, mid and slightly upper mid. And they often pulling crap like swapping out for cheaper materials but calling it the same model name

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#324

Post by nakedneuron »

card_zero wrote: post #298
nakedneuron wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point to the example you mentioned, I couldn't find it.

Seems to have vanished somehow. In short: person visits Greece, finds nasty Xmas baubles on sale among tourist items, mind boggles that people buy these and furthermore that there are enough sales to justify bringing them to Greece from China, postulates some logic like a 1000% profit per sale making it worthwhile even if only 20% ever sell.

Thanks for pointing out, I see now what you meant. Also thanks for sharing the Wiki article.. it was a difficult read with, I think, sometimes overly simplified examples that to this day seem to be mere hypotheses. But it also provided some valuable insights.. It's one of those rare reads where afterwards you see it everywhere.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#325

Post by fragmede »

hansvm wrote: post #297
wanderingstan wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a key factor: businesses have learned to “optimize” by cutting corners wherever people can’t perceive the deficit. The product just has to last long enough.

In the off-chance this is a good place to ask, how does a consumer (or, ideally, the existing governing body) fight back? I'll briefly walk through a hypothetical scenario to have something concrete to talk about, then ask about the normal alternatives? Say you have an IoT device. It's marketed as a device capable of doing a task (e.g., scanning car OBD codes). That task can be done offline. The device initially does…

Hero pill dispenser is currently pulling this play. They're pairing a monthly service fee with a device that doesn't need one.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#326

Post by shellfishgene »

alerighi wrote: post #230
Micoloth wrote: post #110

Every time I read takes like this I think people forget why big brands exist? Small business (or “lifestyle business”) vs big brand is often framed about being high quality vs cheap price, because in practice it often is. But in theory the two things are completely unrelated. Yes fixing stuff is good for the planet. But big brands could offer customer service just fine if people wanted it. Small business vs big brand…

> Yes fixing stuff is good for the planet. But big brands could offer customer service just fine if people wanted it. They could but they won't. Because they realized (and probably all agreed) that it's far more profitable to sell the customer a new product, rather than fixing the old one. And since they are the big brands, and they have practically a monopoly (think about big tech companies) they make the rules. The…

My backpack wore through the back of my 2 year old Patagonia down jacket. They have a repair program, and fixed the jacket for free, didn't even pay shipping. So some large companies actually do this.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#327

Post by m463 »

shellfishgene wrote: post #326
alerighi wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes fixing stuff is good for the planet. But big brands could offer customer service just fine if people wanted it. They could but they won't. Because they realized (and probably all agreed) that it's far more profitable to sell the customer a new product, rather than fixing the old one. And since they are the big brands, and they have practically a monopoly (think about big tech companies) they make the rules. The…

My backpack wore through the back of my 2 year old Patagonia down jacket. They have a repair program, and fixed the jacket for free, didn't even pay shipping. So some large companies actually do this.

I wonder if they're a specific outlier. Remember they didn't want to sell their jackets to wall street folks.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#328

Post by m463 »

II2II wrote: post #319
alerighi wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes fixing stuff is good for the planet. But big brands could offer customer service just fine if people wanted it. They could but they won't. Because they realized (and probably all agreed) that it's far more profitable to sell the customer a new product, rather than fixing the old one. And since they are the big brands, and they have practically a monopoly (think about big tech companies) they make the rules. The…

You don't even have to go the conspiratorial route to realize that repair doesn't make sense to big businesses. The cost of diagnosing the problem, performing the repair, and validating the repair is fairly high. It is also difficult to ensure consistency in the quality of repairs. Then you have to consider that they think about things on a large scale, while repair is an individualized thing. Just look at how comput…

I think it depends on the business. Maybe fixing 20 year old electronics might be hard, but it still work for (overengineered? underchanged?) herman miller aeron chairs.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#330

Post by csomar »

Micoloth wrote: post #110

Every time I read takes like this I think people forget why big brands exist? Small business (or “lifestyle business”) vs big brand is often framed about being high quality vs cheap price, because in practice it often is. But in theory the two things are completely unrelated. Yes fixing stuff is good for the planet. But big brands could offer customer service just fine if people wanted it. Small business vs big brand…

> If you have many independent small businesses, NOT all of them will be good. It will be a mixed bag what you get in your area. OP has felt so fortunate with his local highly-skilled asian-owned small business that he felt compelled to write about it on the internet. Not everyone will be this lucky.

I don't really agree with this. Unlike big corporations that stick around despite bad service, small businesses have a reputation to maintain. The only bad small businesses that can remain long enough are ones in high density, high turn-over areas (ie: high tourism, fast changing populations like NYC). For sleepier places, these businesses rely on word of mouth and repeat customers.

The reason why people buy a sofa from a generic corp rather than this kind of shop is price.

Post reply on HN