It used to be that manufacturers made stuff that lasts -- whatever happened to those days? I have a silverware set that mom and dad got when they were first married (that's something like 35 years ago) and it's still in great condition. I've got a working blender from the 60s which I use to make malts and mixed drinks with; works wonderfully! All sorts of things built back in the day are still really useful today. None of it was ever considered high quality stuff, but it all managed to last for a long time.
Fast forward to now. I bought a knife set from Target for like 30$ last year. Said "stainless steel" and I knew it wasn't high quality (it was 30$ after all). But when something says stainless steel, I expect that to be marginally accurate. I think what they really meant was "someone else owns stainless steel knives." Less than a year old and every knife is rusting. Some of them haven't even been used before. What the hell is so "stainless" about them?
I bought a can opener from there as well around the same time. Also stainless steel, and totally rusted through. Essentially, it's only good for occasional use on things which you don't wish to eat.
That sort of thing really bugs me. I can't stand throwing things away until I've squeezed every ounce of life from them, and these are two purchases which I expected to last for about 5-10 years which lasted about 1 year. But, if the quality was the same as it was when my parents were my age, I could probably give the damned things to *my* kids!
People think this whole "global economy" thing is great because it drives prices down due to competition. I call bull shit -- it drives prices down due to driving the quality of goods down. Let's face it, the only one who wins are the corporations. The 30 little Chinese kids who made my knife set are getting paid squat. The materials are the cheapest humanly possible. And the price of the goods isn't terribly low given those two factors.
Someone's making a mint (and it's not the workers) and I'm left with rusty kitchen utensils.
There is an old adage that says, "Buy cheap, get cheap". You wanted a cheap knife set and that is exactly what you got, next time, buy a good ceramic knife, and treat it like the craftsman's tool it is. Expect to pay $300-$400 for a good chefs knife, then when you get the hang of using a quality tool, add to your knife collection as you see fit (Ilike a thin bonig knife and a general paring knife to go with the chefs knife). Expect to invest in quality, as anythign else buys you problems.
I hate to say it, but it is all part of growing up, right?
Just to add an almost on topic response (as opposed to my diatribe), did you know that we *can't* build battleships anymore? All the people who knew how, died. It isn't the lack of engineering knowledge, it is the lack of craftsmanship. Sad and scaery at the same time.
Not if it's impossible to afford...
BAM! That was like 3 comments all within about 5 minutes. I'm impressed.
Wham, bam, thnak you ma'm!
It cost smore to buy 4 or 5 cheap, disposable things, than paying once for quality and taking care of it, no?
I still think there's some middle ground. My $200 knife set has been great so far and I imagine it will be for some time. Maybe I'll have to replace mine at some point, but I still don't think it will cost that much. Now aaron on the other hand...$30, what were you thinking? I remember when you bought that set, I was very dissapointed.
I turn around for two minutes and a flurry happens on my blog! ;-)
@Bill -- I agree, you get what you pay for. But it used to be that you got a lot more for what you paid, which is what I'm lamenting. 30$ is probably about 30 times the cost of manufacturing that knife set. I expect to get more than a year out of it for those kind of margins.
@Lis -- Disappointed, eh? See if I cook for you! ;-)
two words: planned obsolescence
Now, Bill, the way you argue it sounds as if you sanction the false advertizing Aaron complains about.
Sure, cheap is cheap, but if the product is advertized to do something it does not, and then the general response is: "well, it's the fault of the consumer to have believed it", then something's wrong with that society...
@ Aaron : I have a perfect use for that type of stuff: Go back to target and find the salespeople who sold you it, or the nearest manager. Then, each time they tell you they can't help you, thwop them on the head.
(Do it as if it were a soon to a child's behind: hard enough to let them know that's not an acceptable answer, and not hard enough to break skin or cause legal harm.)
(Also, Don't use the sharp ends, as they could potentially get you for attempted homicide!)
(P.S. DON"T ANYONE TAKE THAT THROPPING ON THE HEAD SERIOUSLY - I'm not responsible if you actually decide to do it!) :-P
Seriously, though, look at the used places like the Salvation Army or Goodwill, if you get a chance. Yes, most of it should be filling a landfill sompelace near Bush's post-White House home, but every so often they get those older items that you described, where you can tell that the person who brough them in actually put some care into it. This does require time and patience, though, which is why I can understand why you wouldn't.
@ Bill: Careful with the "Wham Bam"-ing - you may hurt someone! :D
@Thomas: Of course I sanction the advertising that Aaron is complaing about? It is not up to the seller to know the needs of the customer, it is up to the customer to know his needs. Hell, it goes back thousands of years, you remember the little dity, Caveat Emperor? Just because somethign is boxed on your local china-mart shelf, doesn't mean it is suitable for your purposes.
It boils down to personal responsibility for ones decisions. Deciding ahead of time that what are the qualities, features and makeup of the product you plan to purchase, doing the research and then making up your mind, sans advertising, or convience.
Anyway, with the kind of cooking Aaron does (Does cutting store bought pies count as cooking?) the set of knives he has is quite suitable, even if they are unattractive. .
@Bill -- I disagree; if something says "stainless steel", then it damned well better be stainless steel, which means it won't rust for many, many years (or unless I abuse it). That's not caveat emptor, that's simply false advertising. It's not like Target's going to give me a knife from the set so I can test it out. Caveat emptor really only applies to goods you purchase which you have a reasonable way of testing. That's the reason for false advertising laws in the first place.
This is the Wal-Mart society. It doesn't matter how crappy the product is as long as the smiley face made it $.16 cheaper than the competition.
You can still get quality goods in this country, but you have to pay more for them. (As you'd expect.) Nothing from China is quality-- NOTHING. If it says "made in China" on it, it's crap.
China's gonna be the next superpower in less than 20 years for 2 reasons:
1) They don't really give a crap about civil rights, and therefore can complete huge productions without any political bullshit. (The Three Gorges Dam, for instance.)
2) The US is basically shovelling every dollar we spend on products their way. Remeber that factoid that came out after 9/11 that there wasn't *one single* American company that made US flags anymore? They were all being shipped from China? That should scare the crap out of you.
We're financing their rise to power via Wal-Mart. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, huh?
And I have to call BS on that battleship factoid, unless you have a good reference for it, Bill. We can easily build cruise ships three times the size battleships were, so we can handle the size. We can build armored aircraft carriers with as much armor as battleships ever had, so we can handle that. The only thing we're missing is, possibly, the mounting and loading of huge guns...
But the main point is that if we wanted to build a battleship, we could without much trouble. But since they're utterly obsolete, it'd just be sunk by a cruise missile that cost 1/100th the cost of the battleship in 5 minutes. We don't build them because they're obsolete, not because we don't know how.
(A better example might have been the Saturn V launch system we used to go to the moon. Still, we *could* build one, but it would be a long, long hard process and probably as expensive as they were to design and build in the first place.)
Ah, yes, the old "things used to be great - see how much they suck now" complaint. *sigh* The problem with these examples (the 40 year-old blender, etc) is they don't tell the whole story. The other half (or more) of the story is all the crappy junk that got made in the '60s and only lasted a year before being tossed. Essentially, you are saying that 100% of all the good stuff that wasn't junk remains non-junky good stuff, an obvious truism. I remember my mother telling me about some 1000 year old bridge in France that survived a bunch of floods/wars/etc. She used this an example of how well people used to build things and how modern building techniques suck since bridges made today fall down during floods/wars/etc. Of course, this entirely misses the 20,000 (+/- some big number) bridges built 1000 years ago that got washed away during brief summer showers. The argument is, everything that is old and still of use today lasted a long time, therefore everything built in the same time period was good and built to last. The reality is, most people *don't* have 40 year old blenders, because most of the blenders made in the '60s broke and are sitting in landfills. In 40 years, I expect there will still be people using blenders made today, but most people will be using the latest junk.
@Brady -- Hah! That's the first explanation that's made any sense to me yet. Thanks for that! :-)
It does make sense, evolution in action!
(Warning, I'm wearing my cranky pants today.)
I agree with the sentiments, Aaron. How can the foreign car companies be hurting American car companies? Every time I get in a foreign vehicle, the workmanship feels cheap. On a similar note, I had YET ANOTHER Western Digital drive go down yesterday. Today I got my OWC battery for my G4 iBook and the freakin color doesn't even match. More of my complaints regarding the last two items at pariahware dot com slash blog. Where is the quality? Businesses know that us Mac people are snobs. Don't sell me a battery with a grey case when my iBook is white! ARRGGG!!
I am *so* not a friendly person today. I should have a Yosemite Sam sign like those mud flaps "back off!". Maybe I'll change into my "Go away or I will turn you into a very small shell script" shirt to warn people of my attitude today.
James wrote: " If it says “made in China†on it, it’s crap."
I learned that as well very soon after coming to the US to live there for about 5 years. So much crap you could buy there, while here in Germany hardly any of it sold (but that has changed recently here as well, I have the impression).
The most obvious experience I had when I bought a quite heavy (big) table vise from a Home Depot store. At home, the thread broke out the very first time I used it! I only never returned it because that store was so far out, and the piece to heavy.
OTOH, Fry's electronic also sells a lot of cheap stuff. But at least, if you want to return it, they usually take it back without any discussion. Even if you broke it - they do not care much, because they make so much money selling, it's not worth the hassle of investigating it. Unfortunately, they usually put the brought-back stuff right back into the shelves, often with missing pieces. I as a customer had to learn the hard way to check the contents of a box I'd buy BEFORE I paid for it or at least before I drove home. So, I learned to work with that system. But not everyone does or wants to.
The thing is: An economy and society that's healthy can also afford high-priced and good quality products. Because if you pay a lot of money for something, someone else earns it, and can spend it again. It can work, but not in society where there's such a big gap between rich and poor, causing high demand for cheap stuff, forcing the more expensive high-quality producers out of business because their sales decline heavily in comparison.
Yeah, while installing an aftermarket mod on my Radeon 9800 (a quieter cooler-- they put LOUD ASS fans on those things!) I, uh, accidentally hooked up the fan backwards so that it was blowing hot air back onto the card. Result? Destroyed card. I did my best to 'reinstall' the stock cooler and took it back to Fry's, and they did an exchange without even looking at it! I was really surprised.
So in short, Fry's will exchange electronics even if you destroy them by installing a third party mod and screwing it up. Good place to shop.