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Why is everything you buy such rubbish!!

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Eddie	08/11/2010 14:03:10
56 forum posts	Hi There is always a choice, Take it or leave it. Don't expect Quanlity at a cheap price. If we stop buying cheap and complain to ourselfs it will always be in stock, as soon as something does not sell, the suppliers witll have some dead stock on hand and they will eventualy dissapear from the shelves. My Dad always said, If you buy a screwdriver at the Toy store, it will be a Toy. Buy the best Quality you can afford and expect the quality what you pay for. It is your choice, buy Junk and get Junk Quality... Eddie
Richard Parsons	08/11/2010 16:14:22
645 forum posts 33 photos	Eddie all you can get these days is JUNK! No one sells good stuff any more the 'Account-ants' see to that.
Chris Trice	08/11/2010 18:13:54
1376 forum posts 10 photos	It doesn't make much difference where the factory is. The factory that employs the cheapest labour force will always out price the rest. That's why everyone goes to China. They work for peanuts by comparison.
ChrisH	08/11/2010 18:22:17
1023 forum posts 30 photos	The Account-Ants, and some very senior managers, have very much a fair share of the blame to take as well as greedy short sighted unions and workers. In the 1970's I stood by the building of a (then) very large container ship. Had 2 main diesel engines each of some 26000 shp each, plus 5 generators of 2500 shp each - we were a total refrigerated cargo ship. The obvious solution would have been to put a nice efficient exhaust gas boiler in the chimney to take all the heat from the exhaust gasses we chucked up into the sky to generate steam to run a turbo-alternator, but no, the account-ants ruled. Payback on this had to be 3 years or no-go. The building team got the payback down to 5 years, but it was not good enough, so no steam driven T-A. Given the life of that ship, like most ships, would have been at least over 25 years, was that short sighted or what? The building team would spend 2 weeks deciding on whether pump A was better in performance, delivery, price etc etc than pump B. Then in the final meeting the account-ants would come in and say you are having the rubbish pump C because it is cheaper! And so it has gone on ever since. We are surrounded by water, we need and once had a strong merchant navy supported by a strong shipbuilding industry supported by all the relevant manufacturing and engineering industries to be able to survive by ourselves. All is now gone. In the 1990's I worked for a horticultural company and what an eye-opener. Nothing of quality was ever bought if an alternative was available that was cheap - Crap was King! I now live in France for part of each year. We haven't got a car company left to shout about in the UK, but France has. Most of the motors on the road here are French. Reason, the French, despite being big in the EU, first and foremost look after the French, France and all things French before considering the EU or the rest of the world. Why can't our politicians do the same in the UK? But as for working on any modern car, forget it. I have an old Renault 4 as a fun car and it's great, I can work on all of it. My Renault Scenic by comparison, needs a garage to change the headlight bulb. (well, OK I have done it, but you have to take a load of covers off and then it helps if you have one inch diameter arms fitted with universal joints, and it takes about an hour to change one bulb.) The stupid thing is, in France you have to carry a bulb kit around with you in case one light goes out, despite the fact that changing a headlight bulb by the roadside is a total non-starter for 99.99% of the motoring population. I agree with most of what has been said above. You get what you pay for, buy crap and crap is what you will get, and twice off as you will buy twice. I lament the fact we now have a throw-away society and cannot /will not repair anything, and that stuff is such rubbish that it lasts no time at all. Our resources are not infinite, eventually we will have used everything up and then we will HAVE to start repairing stuff. And that time is not that far off, maybe not in my lifetime but not long after when the oil runs out. Just think of stuff that needs oil either as a material or as an energy in it's manufacture. Frightening, or what? Ho humm, so endth the rant for today, feeling better now! Chris
Terryd	08/11/2010 22:40:44
1946 forum posts 179 photos	Lots of rose tinted specs around here methinks. I have a modern car, just 8 years old. It is Korean and has a lovely silky smooth V6 2.4 L engine, power steering, auto box, cruise control, climate control, ambient temp sensors, Leather seats, electric mirrors, windows and drivers seat adjustment, window mist sensors etc etc. it is also economical, It has let me down only once but has no sign of even one spot of rust. It starts first time every morning despite being left out in the cold etc. It runs on the original battery and drives so beautifully, my dad could only dream of such a car. But it was not expensive and will last for many years yet and I don't need to lie under it every weekend. My washing machine was bought 15 years ago and shows no sign of wear, My microwave oven was bought when I was divorced 20 years ago and I have no problems with it, not even the interior lamp, despite daily use. My last television lasted 12 years without a blink until it gave up (unlike my parents 405 line valve TV where we had the technician out every few weeks and had to keep a stock of EL84 valves in) They lasted about 3 years on average and cost a fortune, I have the invoices. I have just bought a 46" plasma which I believe will see me out for less than the equivalent price of my dad's Murphy in 1957. My Chinese machines are not of industrial quality but are streets ahead of many of the offerings of western industries previously at a fraction of the cost for domestic hobby machines. My computer has run day and night for years on end with no complaints, a computer which NASA would have been jealous of a generation ago. and it sits on my desk. I have Rolex, Rotary and Accurist watches, the latter costing a couple of pounds but they all keep just about perfect time - what's the problem? Sorry guys I do think that times are better now. I could go on and on There was an awful lot of not very good products made in the west in the past just remember that. Mind you Germany doesn't seem to do so bad, but they haven't slavishly followed the free market capitalist route of the bean counters have they? Regards , Terry
Steve Garnett	08/11/2010 23:47:32
837 forum posts 27 photos	It's true about the stuff you could buy 15-20 years ago - we had a washing machine that lasted ages and didn't actually cost that much, but - to get even close to the same build quality now you have to pay a fortune. Same with the microwave - we had a Philips one that lasted for about 20 years, but the new one is showing signs of distress already, and it's only a couple of years old. Yes, when industrial manufacture in this country started to die out, there was some rubbish built, but generally nowadays you get your rubbish from abroad - well, you do if you're a cheapskate. SWMBO is gradually learning this, unfortunately the hard way. You can't really make a case about TVs - they've all been more reliable since valves stopped being used, but I think you're mistaken about it being an EL84 in a telly - that was an audio output pentode with a 6.3v heater used in Hifi and record players. The ones that packed up regularly in TVs were the PCL84 frame output triode-pentodes, and these had serial heater chains that used to run directly from the mains via a large green dropper resistor. What was defined about those heaters was the current they drew, not the volts that appeared across them, but they were the ones that were generally used in TVs of around that vintage. I can't really comment about the Chinese machinery at home thing, because I don't have any, apart from an X-Y vice, and that had to be treated as a set of castings. There's a Chinese Warco Major mill/drill at work, and now it's had a good going over, it's not too bad, considering. But I did tip quite a bit of casting sand out of it, and the quill required a rework. We don't need to use it for anything precise, so it's hardly a problem. I don't think that times are better or worse - I just think they're different, and sure, some of it's better. It's just that some of the other differences ain't so good... So no rose-tinted specs here... Edited By Steve Garnett on 08/11/2010 23:52:47
Nicholas Farr	09/11/2010 09:34:25
3988 forum posts 1799 photos	Hi, I do to a certain degree think that you get what you pay for. If you buy at dirt cheap prices then you get sub quality stuff. That isn't the same as buying cheaper than someone else. I usually buy at a mid range kinda price and have generaly found that it performs and lasts to what I would expect of it. When I was devorced around 24 years ago and strarted to live a quiet life, I bought a Service washing machine, not cheap but not dear. It had in its life time a new rubber around the load door and a set of brushes for the motor, however it only lasted 23 years. I have two microwave ovens, the fist one is a Matsui which I've had for 24 years and is still going strong, which has been in vertual daily use (they tryed to get me to buy extra insurance cover at about half the cost of the oven for that) the other one is a Kenwood which was my mothers before she passed on which is about ten years old, but that has some of the paint peeling off inside and I had to do running repairs on it the other week. I don't expect it to last much longer, I think this one might quit first. but this was a cheapie one. They are both turntable types. On the other extrem where things are expensive I believe that the extra cost is somewhat cosmetic or the item is over complicated for its use. As an example one of my sisters used to buy the more expensive wasing machines and found more often than not that they often went wrong, had features she never used and lasted only four years or so, she now buys cheap ones and just replace them when they go wrong. She says its cheaper that way, than having higher priced ones repaired even with extra insurance cover on them. Regards Nick. Edited By Nicholas Farr on 09/11/2010 09:38:14
ChrisH	09/11/2010 09:42:34
1023 forum posts 30 photos	My daughters washing machine is now 7 years old. When it was 5 years old she had to get the repair man out. His comment was she should be lucky that it was 5 years old not 3 as the 'new' ones can't be repaired anymore. Says it all really.
Steve Garnett	09/11/2010 10:28:54
837 forum posts 27 photos	Unfortunately, Nicholas and Chris, this is exactly what the manufacturers want you to do - not repair anything, and just buy new stuff. That way, their production line keeps going, and their employees remain in work, and they cream more profit. The whole idea of buying a decent product at a realistic price, keeping it and repairing it where necessary to get a good life out of it, and then purchasing another one when it had finally had it does not pay for their expensive lifestyles at all. Mind you, bankers are worse! There's a whole development style (unfortunately aided somewhat by CAD/CAM) that revolves around making damn sure that component life is limited, and when they can't realistically do this, then they just make sure that there are no spares available for the few things that will inevitably break, to force the scrapping issue with the rest of the product. And of course it's all this that has given rise to all these new regulations about recycling materials - it really has got somewhat out of hand.
JimmieS	09/11/2010 10:34:37
310 forum posts 1 photos	I let my son read this thread and his comments were 'the reason we're in the state we're in has little do with losing jobs to lower cost economies. But much more to do with losing jobs to higher cost economies. The main beneficiaries of the demise of MG Rover were French and German manufacturers; many of of our trains from Germany and Japan; our ferries and cruise liners tend to come from France, Germany and Scandinavia; many of our domestic appliances come from Germany; a lot of industrial equipment comes from Germany, Italy and France; our aircraft tend to come from France and the USA.... and that's the frightening part - if we were losing industry to lower cost economies, that would be understandable and avoidale. When we're losing them to higher cost economies it's not understandable, but it is avoidable!' Jim
Ian S C	09/11/2010 10:54:56
7468 forum posts 230 photos	When I was last in the UK, 1984, I stayed with one of dads war time mates (they were radar mechanics RAF/ RNZAF), im Sheffield, I was in a large retail tool and machinery shop, and was talking to the shop assistant, he was bemoaning the fact that you wont find much here thats made in England. He'd been made redundant from Record tools.Ian S C
ady	09/11/2010 11:04:37
612 forum posts 50 photos	The european higher cost economies have been heavily subsidised by their governments over the decades in various direct and indirect ways whenever there was a rocky patch. So they survived to see the better times. After 1980 our own governments simply let everything crash and burn and anything which DID survive was flogged off to overseas interests. Sheffield forgemasters had their loan pulled by this administration and it would have given them the opportunity to be one of only two plants in the world which could make large castings for the nuclear industry, creating some seriously unique engineering skills for Britain. Why we live in bye bye Britain
Nicholas Farr	09/11/2010 11:23:01
3988 forum posts 1799 photos	Hi Steve G, I'm not sure I entierly agree with you. When I was in maintenace with a previous employer, spares were always available even for machines for way back. However the cost of the spares plus my labour of fitting the spares to some smaller units made them more expensive than replacing with a new unit. The size of units I mean were about the size of a 1.2 litre car engine and smaller, but spares were still available. My first washing machine plus the spares cost me around the £450.00 mark, devide that by 23 years, thats about £20.00 a year, not bad value as I didn't have to pay labour costs to fix it. I've yet to see how long my current one lasts of course. Regards Nick.
Peter Gain	09/11/2010 12:04:06
103 forum posts	As we live in a society where "out-sourcing" is much in favour, I propose that the govermnent of the UK should be out-sourced to Angela Merkles & Co. Peter Gain.
Steve Garnett	09/11/2010 12:17:13
837 forum posts 27 photos	Nicholas, that's a lot of past tense. Yes it used to be true that you could get spares, and fortunately for a lot of car owners, when it comes to cars you still can - even though they have to be imported in from all over the world. To most other stuff it simply doesn't apply any more. It's always been true that you had to vector in the cost of a repair in staff terms, and the more wages rise, the more significant this is. It's generally agreed around our way that if you can get the spares, most machines will stand the cost of one repair only before this becomes uneconomic, and that figure has gone down significantly; it used to be three. But it's when it's a small essential part that this becomes really annoying. And weird stuff happens. Recently our local vet asked me to look at one of his very expensive German veterinary animal scales - dodgy LCD display on it. Took it to bits and discovered that it was a unique multiplexed display made specially for the manufacturer. Would they supply me with a spare part? Would they hell... So this is best part of £1000 of scale written off for one display component - and of course they made quite an attempt to sell me a new set of scales... But amazingly enough, in this instance the Chinese have triumphed! I wasn't happy at all with what the Germans had said, so I characterised the load-cell bridge in the scale pan, and did some searching around. I then found a manufacturer of scale displays that would work with the existing scales, and the complete new unit with additional functions and gawd knows what else came in at about the same price that a replacement LCD would cost. It's pretty well built as well. And the vet's dead chuffed, and telling all his mates that when their identical scales pack up, not to bother with the original manufacturer, because I can fit something better! So that is why I'm saying that things aren't necessarily better or worse, but different. In general, spares are much harder to come by these days, just like cheap labour is, as well. Jimmie's son has sort-of got a point, but really we are losing manufacturing to countries with better protected manufacturing, and probably less greedy banks - hasn't really got anything to do with the economic costs as such, except inasmuch as it's clearly bank-related. British governments have never liked what they regard as the 'dirtier' aspects of what as a country we might be pretty good at, and accordingly have never looked after it. Indeed, that's pretty much an article of faith with them, whatever flavour they are. Edited By Steve Garnett on 09/11/2010 12:20:38
Peter G. Shaw	09/11/2010 13:50:18
1531 forum posts 44 photos	Two points: 1. Unless I've missed it, nobody has reminded us that when the Japanese first started selling over here, they were rubbish. But then they realised, cleaned up their act, and we now know the result. 2. British governments have never liked what they regard as the 'dirtier' aspects of what as a country we might be pretty good at, and accordingly have never* looked after it.* Maybe then, what we need are politicians who have served a stint in (heavy) industry rather than the career politicians we now have. On a more general basis, someone has said that the manufacturer's do not want us to repair, but as has been said, when the raw materials do eventually become prohibitavely expensive, then we may see a changing attitude. There is, though, another point - that of environmental efficiency which means that in an attempt to make equipment more efficient, then it is having to be electronically controlled which in turn means unrepairable specialist integrated circuits which in turn become obsolete and hence render the complete item unusable. Cars are an example, which is why maintaining a modern car properly is now beyond the reach of the average DIY home mechanic. I also think that in this modern world of quick and cheap transport, it is inevitable that the work will go to those places with the lowest costs, ie wages. Only if these costs rise dramatically will it become economic again to manufacture in the same country as the items are used. In the short term, I feel it will be necessary to depress wages to such an extent that it becomes economic to retain the work here. But that, frankly, will cause one heck of a lot of possibly civil unrest. Regards, Peter G. Shaw
KWIL	09/11/2010 14:12:15
3681 forum posts 70 photos	Posted by Terryd on 08/11/2010 22:40:44: Lots of rose tinted specs around here methinks. I have a modern car, just 8 years old. It is Korean and has a lovely silky smooth V6 2.4 L engine, power steering, auto box, cruise control, climate control, ambient temp sensors, Leather seats, electric mirrors, windows and drivers seat adjustment, window mist sensors etc etc. it is also economical, It has let me down only once but has no sign of even one spot of rust. It starts first time every morning despite being left out in the cold etc. It runs on the original battery and drives so beautifully, my dad could only dream of such a car. But it was not expensive and will last for many years yet and I don't need to lie under it every weekend. I have a similar car 2.5L V6, do not have auto box, it is nearly 11 years old, everything else as good as Terryd's and it is a Rover 75!!
Robert Miller 1	09/11/2010 15:16:19
19 forum posts	KWIL wrote: [quote] I have a similar car 2.5L V6, do not have auto box, it is nearly 11 years old, everything else as good as Terryd's and it is a Rover 75!![\quote] I guess Rover made some improvements. Years ago I bought a new Rover 2000 TC. According to the car mags, this was the apex of automotive engineering. Ha! Despite the advertised factory undercoating, in one year there were rust perforations in both front fenders. In the course of the next two years, the starter's Bendix drive disassembled itself into the clutch housing, the fuel pump fell off, the clutch throwout bearing failed, and the differential started making strange noises. My new bride, who has no comprehension of things mechanical, finally put the poor thing out of its misery by trying to climb an icy hill with it floored in first gear. This was an expensive car and it went from new to the wreckers in only three years!
Andrew Evans	09/11/2010 17:48:34
366 forum posts 8 photos	I think that modern goods are generally much more reliable than those made earlier in the 20th century. Cars are a case in point - they go for 10000 miles between services, rarely breakdown, are more affordable and are in a different league to cars from the 60s or 70s. The price you pay is they need specialists to perform basic maintence. Take machine tools - yes some of the cheap chinese machines are poorly finished but there are plenty of modern machine tools of extremely high quality (and will last a lifetime) - but they are expensive. Good quality tools have always been expensive - there have always been cheap tools so whats changed. Don't look back with rose tinted spectacles!
chris stephens	09/11/2010 18:49:48
1049 forum posts 1 photos	Yes indeed cars are more reliable but when parts fail, as any mechanical thing will sooner or later, the cost can be prohibitive. An example I heard of was a just out of warranty V8 Audi cam chain tensioner failing and a nearly £4000 quote to change it., and before you ask, no, there was no other damage . Another was when the clutch failed on a CVT gearboxed Fiat, quotes approaching £2000 to fix it. The exact same thing happened to my Sister's Nissan Micra, the local Dealer quoted £1600 odd for the repair, muggins here a new one for a few hundred plus as many coffees as I could drink. The list goes on and I am sure you all have your examples. I ask, how can it be environmentally sound for it to be cheaper to write off an otherwise sound car (the Fiat) for want of what would normally be considered a routine mechanical repair. Did I hear you say "that's Progress for you" Grumpy Old man of London, formally known as chriStephens PS the Audi owner ended up paying, I seem to recall, a few hundred after much negotiation with the manufacturers.

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