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O Holy Crap

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Re: O Holy Crap

#51

Post by rzzzt »

wincy wrote: post #7

My $4000 GE refrigerator has broken twice now in the five years we have owned it, both times in the exact same way. The way the fridge works seems simple: the cold freezer is on the bottom, and then a fan blows air up through a shaft to the relatively warmer refrigerator as needed to keep it just above freezing. Instead, the failure state is that the fan that handles this broke with no warning. I lost a bunch of groc…

We got a compressor fridge from the now non-existent GDR 50-ish years ago, and it finally broke this year. Still cools, just non-stop (the temperature sensing switch gave up the ghost). I occasionally think about cybernetically enhancing it with an ESP8266, a relay and a sensor.

Re: O Holy Crap

#52

Post by robinsonb5 »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #35
robinsonb5 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty is that the abundance of cheap crap often makes finding the good stuff like finding a needle in a haystack. Yes, price is the first indicator, but there are plenty of chancers who are quite happy to sell the cheap crap at the premium price point.

I am surprised that nobody pointed out the obvious : avoid items with the minimum legal manufacturer warranty. Though this too can become hard in categories dominated by cartels : warranties for (magnetic) hard drives have been going down (not to mention the recent frauds by Western Digital, how they have fallen, sigh...), or, for (non-related) reasons, boycotting Intel and Ryzen CPUs (or Android an iOS smartphones)…

> I am surprised that nobody pointed out the obvious : avoid items with the minimum legal manufacturer warranty.

I have to admit that particular strategy hadn't occurred to me - but it's a good idea. Of course, it has to be an actual part-of-the-standard-deal warranty, not the hard-sell extended warranty that's really just an add-on insurance policy...

(Wondering where I find a box of staples warranted to pierce more than five sheets...)

Re: O Holy Crap

#53

Post by feet »

collinvandyck76 wrote: post #38

Under the Christmas tree this year: another Cuisinart electric kettle. Same model as always, this year recommended by wirecutter. They last two to three years and then break in various ways. This is our third one :( My dad gave me the advice "buy cheap now and be guaranteed to buy it again at least once if not more, or wait, save up, and buy the more expensive thing only once" as I was becoming an adult. I've tried t…

Get a Zojirushi water boiler. They're fantastic and high quality, you also don't have to wait for water to heat up every time you want to use it

Re: O Holy Crap

#54

Post by eternityforest »

I just don't see it. Were I to go shopping at wal-mart, and if I didn't understand anything about failure modes, I might, but I find it very easy to find things that last.

Partly because out lifestyle now is lighter on things, and we need fewer of them. I don't need a juicer because... I don't juice.

Another factor might be that we still have an obsession with "Power". Look at how impact drivers are reviewed, based on how fast they screw some insane fastener most people won't ever need.

If consumers prefer and recommended more powerful stuff rather than stuff that's better at protecting itself, stuff is gonna break.

My vacuum does shut off if you run over the wrong thing. That's not a case of clogging and choking, that's a sensor detecting that I've given it something it's not meant for, protecting itself. I would take that any day over something that would happily self destruct on something, or even chew up whatever it hit.

My Rite in the Rain pen never has issues and very well could last my whole life with no refills. There are bad pens out there, but I have no memory of any time when cheap ballpoints actually worked correctly.

I have not had any experience with a new washer or dryer for very long.

However, new appliances are lighter, cheaper, and more efficient. If the scrap is recycled, they may well be just as good as old ones in terms of cost and environmental concerns, even if they break faster.

There are certain categories of things that may be worse overall, but in general, there's close to nothing I'd prefer the old version of.

However, there are probably lots of things where the cheap version now is worse than the old version. But that old version probably cost $40 in today's money and the cheap version cost $20.

Re: O Holy Crap

#55

Post by JKCalhoun »

lordgroff wrote: post #31
bambax wrote: post #8

> Many blamed these problems on the government. They believed it had crippled certain products (major home appliances, especially) This is a claim that was already present in Death of a Salesman . Here's the quote: > I am always in a race with the junkyard! I just finished paying for the car and it's on its last legs. The refrigerator consumes belts like a goddam maniac. They time those things. They time them so when…

It's a matter of shopping wisely and, at least sometimes, of spending more money up front. People always reach for the smelling salts when I tell them how much my (hand) coffee grinder cost, but that thing is almost certain to outlast me.

I've got my selling salts, please tell me which coffee grinder you own?

And by the way, since the topic of "where do I find the good stuff" keeps coming up, why is there no site that is your one-stop recommendation destination for finding quality appliances, tools? We all know we can no longer trust Amazon reviews.

Consumer Reports has been around for ages but I don't feel they've kept in lockstep with the changing times. Maybe the Cool Tools site? But it seems a little too casual and not as rigorous as CR, too eager to direct you to Amazon as well. I don't know really. Just spitballing.

Re: O Holy Crap

#56

Post by yetihehe »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #36
yetihehe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Metal, vs plastic gears. Sintered metal gears, last only a little longer than plastic and then fail catastrophically destroying half of the device so that you can't repair it. But at least they are much cheaper than proper machined gears.

My KitchenAid mixer ate a gear many years ago. They would lead you to believe they are a high quality brand, no? After disassembly, it turned out to be perhaps the only plastic gear in the thing. It occurred to me that it was perhaps designed to fail rather than the mixer continuing to break the bones of the person who got their hand caught in the paddle. So, I throw the engineer a bone for that one. I was bummed tho…

Yeah, sometimes there are plastic gears designed in specifically for this, in blenders and kitchen appliances, some lathes even have a set of several copies of one plastic safety gear. But sintered metal gears in planetary gearbox of a cordless screwdriver which fails faster than it's battery (Einhell) - not acceptable.

Re: O Holy Crap

#57

Post by pmarreck »

When everyone is manufacturing crap, there's value in non-cheap, good, honest products.

Too bad all of our manufacturing went to China, a culture that has no concept of honesty. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/in-china-honesty-is-not-th... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1879850/chinese-most-...

I recently replaced a knockoff Leatherman (which of course broke without being old) with a real one. It worked so well, I bought two. https://www.leatherman.com/ I first discovered these when I worked in the USAF in the 90's. They're not cheap, but one should support quality products with your hard earned cash.

I also needed to replace my belt recently. Discovered https://ansonbelt.com/. I'm not sure where they're manufactured, but they're quality belts with a unique self-measuring system and a latching mechanism.

Re: O Holy Crap

#58

Post by PopAlongKid »

theK wrote: post #23

Who was the guy that said "humanity signed its death certificate once MBAs found out that they can literally sell trash as long as it is cheap enough to make it inconvenient to return"? No one? Was it just me then?

What the MBAs "found out" pertains to the consumer, not the product. Discovering that something exists is not the same as creating it.

Re: O Holy Crap

#59

Post by Jupe »

teekert wrote: post #45
Jupe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LED's will last 25,000 hours. The drivers (the components that convert AC to the required DC, at a constant/steady rate) however, apparently die long before the actual LED does. I've replaced many so far. It's not hard if you can use a soldering iron (and the light in question supports it). If your LEDs are blinking, that's a sure-fire sign that the driver is bad (not the LED). And, from my experience, it's probably…

It keeps the vacuum, it's really the brush head with the rotating brush and leds that fails periodically. Feel like as I move some conctact are broken and restored.

Sorry to hear that.

We had a few cordless vacs - each one has died due to the battery. No replacements available :/ Even the very expensive Dyson.

So far, my Dewalt cordless vac (which has a replaceable battery, by design, since it's a Dewalt) works OK. It's a mini shop-vac, but we pull it out for various household uses as needed.

Re: O Holy Crap

#60

Post by BlueTemplar »

bitexploder wrote: post #28
bambax wrote: post #8

> Many blamed these problems on the government. They believed it had crippled certain products (major home appliances, especially) This is a claim that was already present in Death of a Salesman . Here's the quote: > I am always in a race with the junkyard! I just finished paying for the car and it's on its last legs. The refrigerator consumes belts like a goddam maniac. They time those things. They time them so when…

Check out the history of light bulbs, an actual amazing conspiracy few people know about :)

One perhaps continued to this day, if maybe in a different way (we'll know in a few decades) : toxic fluorescents and most diode bulbs not having separated transformers (they are DC !)
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