This is so true. I have some old shirts that are invincible. A lot of shirts now look like they are falling apart after a few washes and are made so cheap. A good example I have of this is some Old Navy shirts from way back then and they are much better quality than their shirts now. The ones now have a wrinkly neck and look bad within a month.
Old Navy's shitty hemming is really bothering me lately. I like their clothes because they sell women's tall sizes that fit me, but I've noticed more and more of them have that crooked neck and hemline. I think they may be using fabric scraps for their bias tapes instead of choosing the correct fabric grain.
They have different tiered warehouses (/sweatshops) that manufacture their products on a price:quality ~linear scale. If you buy the $30-60 jeans from Amazon or Macy’s or whatever, they’re garbage. If you spend $120+ from their website, they’re great and up to fantastic.
There are guides online with, like, which colored tags and materials indicate which quality, but I can’t be bothered to remember. It’s just one of those “get what you pay for” things.
Pretty sure that read somewhere how consumer electronics manufacturers like Sony, LG and Samsung make shitty TV models just for stuff like the Black Friday sales.
What’s even more insidious is that these brands will use model numbers that are almost identical to their regular non-Black Friday units. For example, and I’m just making up numbers here, if the regular model is TV8000J, the Black Friday version will be TV8001 or TV8000BF. The average person will be too distracted by the huge “discount” to pay attention to the subtle differences in model numbers.
They also sell the same model to different chains with slightly different model numbers so you can’t price match easily. I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to use it to get around laws on how discounts are advertised either.
It was either that or go out of business, sadly. They got in with Walmart or one of the other big box stores and most their sales came from there. Then the store said that they'd only pay half what they currently were paying.
So they had to make cheaper jeans or instantly lose most of their sales. They had no choice but to make cheaper crap or just fold.
I fucking hate Walmart.
Walmart did the same squeeze to Zenith and Zenith refused to make an interior product and folded.
I watched Walmart come into my small town growing up. We had always had a bustling down town with clothing, shoes toy and hobby stores etc. but now down town is dead and people keep shoveling Walmart crap into the landfill while riding their insulin scooters and sucking down Mt dew and Oreos. The writers of WALL-E weren't revolutionary in their thinking but they could extrapolate their surroundings into a future that's perhaps exaggerated but none the less accurate.
Fuck Wal-Mart, fuck them in their fucking faces.
This makes so much sense, thank you. I always get them directly from the store and they’re my most flattering, durable jeans. Yet I often see these complaints from people saying they don’t last and I find it so confusing! I’ve had mine for years and they still look great.
This is true!! And if you’re buying on their website: sign up for the free account and you get free shipping (it’s fast) and wait until they go on sale, they go on sale a lot.
I second this. Bought two pairs, the first one within 3 weeks ripped in the crotch. The second one just did the same. Levi’s replaced both for free. I did buy the “cheaper” of the options, but regardless, that shouldn’t happen that quickly.
I love their scratch and dent. I bought a couch from them that was bent in the middle. The main support for the couch was made of metal. I took the couch home, removed the main spar, pounded it straight with a hammer, and got a $2000 couch for 600 bucks
100% there's no major brand I can think of that's still good. Maybe it was years ago but everythings just becoming worse and worse.
I'm now moving to the lesser known brands because they seem to be better quality.
As far as stuff I use day to day items.. Dawn dish soap, Bounty paper towels, and Scrub daddy sponges are the few "name brands" I personally will still pay for. Can't say if any of them have declined as I haven't been buying them long enough to know.
Finally found someone else who likes Viva! Bounty is nice, but viva actually feels like cloth, and imo, you seem to require less towels to clean up as compared to 'paper'
For some stuff. I use to work at 3m and they private label a ton or buy the company that makes the thing instead of making the thing themselves.
"Made in the US from globally sourced material" means everything is made overseas but assembled in the US. So it's basically made overseas.
I want to boycott them because it was such a toxic company to work for, but they are everywhere.
I've got a cheap Canon printer that I like as well. Third-party ink tanks work just fine, they don't badger me for subscriptions, and it works when I need it too. It's slow and clunky and loud, but the whole thing was like $60 and I only print stuff maybe once a month. Had it for 5 years now and no issues other than some occasional fussiness while network printing. So I'm not complaining.
Canon bought my loyalty in 2015 when, on a holiday weekend, they overnighted me a new printer because the old one bricked as I was trying to print the programs out for my father's funeral. I'm usually the Printer Whisperer - even IT guys usually come snag me for printer issues wherever I'm working because, for some reason I just Vibe with them, so one dying on me was concerning and extremely upsetting, given the circumstances. They not only sent me a new machine overnight, but explicitly told me to *only* send back the defective unit - no power cable, no data cable, definitely not any ink tanks I may have or receive.
I don't buy anything but Canon printers now. I just upgraded to one of their tank inkjet printers and it's phenomenal quality, if a bit slow. The old inkjet one, I got about five years ago, and it still works fine, I just needed a tiny quality upgrade. I gave the old one to my daughter and it's still going strong.
Canon cameras are pretty damn good, too.
Hewlett Packard screwed me over by refusing to honor their warranty on a laptop 25 years ago, on which I had paid extra for their protection plan. They've missed out on selling me 7+ new laptops since then. I will never buy HP til the day I die. And not then either.
I was screwed over by Hewlett Packard too, and have also committed never to buy any of their products ever again. It was about 15 years ago, there were a load of faulty Nvidia GPUs, HP had a list of the GPUs, the same one was in my laptop, but they didn't consider my laptop affected. Had to take the retailer to court but it was made much harder than it needed to be because of HP's denial. I don't even buy HP printer paper now!
I wonder how many of us there are!
I had this same exact experience, the Nvidia GPU class action deal from about 15 years ago, only they didn't consider my model one of the affected machines. I ended up getting the mobo reflowed and the GPU reattached by a 3rd party, but it only lasted a few months until it popped off again.
Not only have I never bought another HP product again, but now I do IT for a multibillion dollar EMR company, and my experience with HP was the first thing I considered when we reviewed HP computers for our hardware lifecycle for 14 thousand employees. We now purchase zero HPs.
I also got screwed twice by HP.
The first time I bought a dvd/cd burner. I barely used it. After a year I went to burn a dvd. And it wouldn’t recognize the blank disc. Just kept spitting it out. I googled my model and yeah, it was a known problem, and HP refuses to acknowledge it.
But the worst was an HP laptop I had. It had this issue where yellow blobs would show up on my monitor but disappear if you tilted the screen.
I contacted HP with my model and issue. They said I needed to update my BIOS. I said “for what looks like a physical issue? You sure I need to update my BIOS?
They replied “yes. It’s standard procedure.” I thought this is weird. But I guess they are HP tech support. They fucking bricked my laptop. Luckily I had an old pc aI could email them back on. When I did and told them my laptop wouldn’t turn on etc. they had me try a couple things and then said “yeah. Looks like you need a new motherboard. That will be about $400”
I said WTF? This is 100% your fault. They said “yeah. But your laptop is not under warranty”. I emailed several times asking for a supervisor and they would not give me that information.
I contacted Ellen Roseman, a consumers affair reporter for the Toronto Star. She emailed me back and said she did a story on HP the year before and asked me to forward all my information. I did. She said she’d see what she could do.
The next day a manager at HP called me. I couldn’t believe it.
I sent my laptop in for repair. Not once, or twice. But 3-4 times. They kept fucking up the repair. One time I got it back with no O/S loaded. I asked the guy “don’t you check that the laptop is working before it leaves your repair facility?”
He says “no. We don’t.”
I was shocked.
In the end. They offered me a new laptop because they couldn’t fix my bricked one (that as they said. Simply needed a new motherboard). I picked one of two offered.
It’s shipped to me. I turn it on. And with 3 minutes
I get the blue screen of death. On a brand fucking new out of the box laptop that I haven’t installed anything.
Contact HP and I have to run another BIOS update to “declock my cpu” as they put it. Basically it’s running too fast so they had to dumb it down.
Just fucking unbelievably bad experience from HP. Refuse to buy their shit.
At one of my jobs I spent about a total of 8 hours on the phone with HP because my printer kept printing off the page.
They kept telling me it was the margin settings and I said it wasn't because it didn't print like that every time. After being transferred about 10 times and having to start from step one over and over and me repeatedly telling them that they needed to send me a new printer because they were incapable of fixing it and it was under warranty, they finally agreed. You'd think the stuff under warranty gets taken out of their salary or something.
I will never buy a HP laptop anymore. Mid scale to expensive ones, every one of them is having issues, especially the displays (4 laptops of me and my friends this year alone).
It's such a shame that a cheap Chinese lenovo turned out more durable than an expensive HP.
I ordered from them once and have never been able to successfully unsubscribe from marketing emails. I set up a script to forward any email they send me to customer service saying “please remove me from your marketing emails” and i still get them to this day. The whole company is a scam
I swore off buying any new hockey jerseys till they no longer have the contract. Same for any other items they make. Just a horrible garbage company when it comes to quality and quality control.
I couldn't belive when I saw one of the new jerseys up close in a store a couple months ago. It had the quality a $20 knock off but they wanted $200 for it.
What I've never understood.. Those pyrex (and also PYREX I think) have those little spouts to pour.. and it's just horrible at doing that. I always see people just throwing it everywhere. No matter if you go fast or slow. wtf is up with that?
The older generations will never understand the struggle of us youngsters. Going to garage sales and thrift stores looking for genuine PYREX for our.. chemistry projects...
Edit: honestly I'm surprised that 25+ people understood what I was talking about. Shout-out fellow degenerates!
Consumer Reports made a short video that shows the issue: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyhdMa1ikKM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyhdMa1ikKM)
PYREX (all caps) is the old glass that they used to use in their cookware. It's borosilicate glass, which is more resistant to rapid "thermal expansion" due to temperature changes. In other words, if you take a glass pan from the fridge and put it in the oven, there's a chance that it will shatter.
pyrex (lower case) is the newer formula, soda-lime glass, which has notoriously exploded in some people's videos.
Soda-lime glass has its uses, less likely to break if you drop it. Biggest problem is people treating pyrex the same as PYREX and subjecting it to thermal shock
Etsy. I uses to love shopping for unique handmade gifts for people but now it's all drop-shippers and Chinese knockoffs. It takes so long to sift through all the garbage resellers that just steal artists work and print it on cheap throwaway clothing.
100000%! I feel eBay has gone the same way, used to be full of second hand deals, now everything is brand new and expensive from drop-shippers and i hate it
Barilla.
It’s not horrible quality, but they make you think they are S Tier pasta when they actually are C tier. De Cecco for example is a much better alternative.
The main thing is how they're cut.
Most dry pasta is cut with teflon-coated dies. Those are easier for the manufacturer to maintain and clean, but at the cost of smoother pasta. This is a problem as the texture of the pasta is both what allows it to adhere better to sauce AND to release more starch in the pasta water.
If you want great sauce, you want to starchy water. That's hard with a teflon (barilla) cut pasta.
Bronze Die Cut is how you get S-tier pasta. The pasta has a coarser texture, and sheds more starch in the pasta water.
Great dry pasta is often better than fresh pasta and definitely easier to cook with.
De Cecco isn't always bronze die drawn, but something like Rummo is always Bronze Die.
I watch way too much cooking Youtube.
It's also about how long the pasta is dried for. The more yellow the pasta, the quicker it's dried and the worse the quality. The more pale the pasta, the longer it's dried for and the better the quality. It retains its shape better when cooked and has a better bite.
Also fresh pasta usually contains egg, whereas the dried stuff doesn't. A simple guide is to not use egg-based pasta in egg-based sauces (eg carbonara).
Source: Italian girlfriend
Try to choose dry pasta which is lighter in colour.
If it’s dark like Barilla is, it means it’s been dried quickly (often using heat) which affects the quality.
[Furosine](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239732790_Furosine_as_a_Pasta_Quality_Marker_Evaluation_by_an_Innovative_and_Fast_Chromatographic_Approach) levels in pasta has been used as a bench mark for pasta quality. Preferably want a pasta with low furosine. More furosine, more yellow, which happens when pasta is dried quickly.
Edit: rummo, Garofalo, Di Martino, Molisana are some brands which are on the higher tiers.
Bronze rolled vs Teflon rolled makes a huge difference too. Bronze rolled pasta is “rougher” and holds sauce better. It’s enough of a selling point that if the box doesn’t say it’s bronze rolled, it’s probably not. (De Cecco is all bronze rolled as far as I’m aware.)
Yeah all of the old Italian grandmothers I've known (and I've known a lot, on both sides of the family and multiple other families who were friends with ours) all used Barilla, because if they wanted "nice" pasta they *made it themselves*. But if they just wanted to buy pasta and make something they'd go Barilla.
Also as the only remaining maker of Pastina they have me on lock just for that.
If you really, really, really, really really like spending $200 for $15 headphones that sound like crap, Beats are for you.
I actually watched the video a while ago where they disassembled a pair of Beats headphones, and they were regular crappy headphones, but they added a weight to the earpiece to make them feel more heavy and solid.
I was trying to fix a coworkers beats several years ago and can confirm there's a lead weight in the head band. The main board burnt out and wasn't worth replacing. They are crap. Meanwhile I have a 7 or 8 year old pair of Sennheiser Bluetooth headphones and they work like brand new. They also sound amazing
Sennheiser should start to pay me because i wear these headphones all the time and tell everyone how amazing they are. Have had them for 3 years now and still looks brand new, sound is perfect and battery lasts 2 full days no problem. They weren't cheap, but worth every penny
Sennheiser have done some weird shit. I can't recall the model but they released 2 models with exactly the same sound quality but they added padding to the lower priced pair to degrade the sound quality. You could remove the inner padding and receive IRL DLC to improve the sound quality. Dunno why any company would release a product like that.
Beats spend more than most brands on advertising and the “unboxing” experience. Beats are packaged better than other brands, but that’s where the superiority ends.
At the exact same price point, you can buy significantly better headphones that just aren’t packaged as pretty as Beats.
My Sony WHX1000M5 were packaged well enough, but even if not, who cares, you unpackaged it once and then use it for years, the unboxing experience is totally meaningless to any sort of non-perishable product.
Yeah it’s crazy to me how many “luxury” brands have such awful quality. Can’t even fathom how people are so okay paying for that.
Coach is also expensive, but not nearly as high as Gucci, and every tear down I’ve seen has shown that they have excellent leather. Idk how true that is today, but it used to be the case for sure.
Nike, they are getting worse by the year, the shoes are so bad now, air max 90 are my favourite shoe but the feel so cheap now, my sister in law works for a massive sports team in merchandise, she said it was shocking how bad Nike felt when the team changed away from under armour in comparison
The sizing is different, too. I've worn Nike for decades, and now every pair I try on, I need a bigger size, but they still don't fit because they are too narrow. I do not have wide feet, so I'm baffled.
I played for a college team sponsored by Nike. The Nike Pro and Nike Team gear was a step above in terms of quality. I've since seen some Pro gear in retail stores, but rarely see Team gear in retail.
My guess is Pro/Team gear is held to a higher manufacturing standard than regular retail, and is probably made in different locations. The quality difference was remarkable (Pro/Team versus regular retail).
I think the difference is between their "normal person" stuff and the stuff that's geared for atheltic use, rather than just the stuff that's provided to Nike schools for atheletes or like for NFL teams and stuff. My college marching band gets hooked up via the school's deal with Nike and we'll get a couple team gear items, some Dri-Fit (the line of items from Nike, not just the material) that you can go buy yourself, and a couple things that are "normal person" stuff.
The team gear and Dri Fit stuff was all high quality matieral that felt good to wear and never fell apart, faded, shrunk, felt worse, etc no matter how many times you wore or washed it. The regular stuff was the opposite and had a massive drop off in quality almost immediately. Things started fading, peeling, and just generally falling apart on top of being uncomfortable to wear (and shrinking in the drier).
Most of them. The problem is that once companies go public they no longer have an incentive to innovate and create quality products, or even answer to the customer. They work for the shareholders and if they can up the stock price by making a subpar product that's what they'll do. Next quarter when it falls apart they'll worry about then. It's all about the personal wealth and comfort of the 2-10 people at the top of the corporate ladders, with those just under them neurotically ingratiating themselves with whomever they can so they can hopefully fill the void if a vacancy opens, while simultaneously stabbing them in the back to ensure a vacancy opens.
This is so true. I know that it’s always been about money. But the lack of ethics are insane. Everything is becoming more and more disposable and unfixable and run by subscriptions so you can’t even own it. I really am just so damn tired.
The thing I’ve noticed about eBay that annoys me now is almost everything is brand new and full price, second hand deals are few and far between now and eBay isn’t where I’m gonna go for expensive new anything
Thirty years ago, I used to be a professional geologist and surveyor in western Colorado. I spent my life outdoors in backwoods areas. The North Face used to make bar none the best outdoor clothing. It was always considerably more expensive than other similar brands but you knew you were going to get the absolute best materials, design and fabrication quality. The North Face was made for people who actually spent a lot of time in the wilderness. No longer. They're just another mediocre "outdoor-lite" fashion brand.
At least Patagonia is still mostly the real stuff...
Depends where you get it from. For some reason, here in the UK where it fucking originates by the way, it’s turned sub par. But jump on a ferry to Dublin and, my god, that’s the cadburys I remember.
Amen! Woolworths in Australia sells Whittaker's chocolate 🍫, was introduced to their chocolate recently (on a similar post to this I believe) will NEVER EVER go back.
Yea, that and zero care for customer support. The number of game-stopping issues reported by thousands of players that have gone ignored for years is shocking.
It's just push out product as quick as possible, that's it. Most effort just goes into the graphics to impress players visually and try mask the fact the game is shit. Brilliant example is CoD WWII. The graphics were phenomenal but the gameplay was horrible, and infuriating. The storyline was also very cringe, cliché and dull.
Need for Speed The Run had nice graphics and an epic sound score, but honestly it was like they had something big in the works that wouldn't be ready in time to release a year after the previous title, so they slapped The Run together as a filler. One long single race, you can't modify cars (which is one of the major features in a NFS game players look forward to), and a lot of the effort put in to win in the end makes little logical sense to be enjoyable.
That's why now I will always torrent a game first before buying it. If I feel the game is solid, and the player support is good, then I'll delete the torrent and buy the game. 99% of the time it's deleted the torrent and be glad I didn't waste money on that crap.
Doc Martens used to be one of the most reputable shoe brands in the game. I have a vintage pair I barely wear, and despite them being 20+ years old they're in perfect condition, and so comfortable. My newer pairs start falling apart after a year of _mild_ wear and absolutely tear my feet apart.
If you like the looks of docs, try out Solovair! They're the people that used to do all the production for Doc Martins, but when they split, they made the same boots under that brand name instead. They use green instead of yellow as their color, but they're high quality, and basically the same silhouette.
Starbucks coffee tastes terrible to me. Not trying to be edgy or contrarian but I prefer McDonalds coffee for black and Dunkin for flavors. Starbucks black coffee don't do it for me and they sweeten their drinks with pig shit as far as I can tell.
My understanding is that they over-roast on purpose, because it helps ensure consistency in every store. It tastes burnt to me too. And that's how it has tasted at every Starbucks I have ever tried, so I guess they're succeeding
Pikes Place is horrible, and I’m surprised it is their standard coffee. It always tastes burnt to me.
Their blonde roast isn’t terrible if you’re at an airport and Starbucks the only option, but they typically only have it as a pour over and generally they say it in such a way to dissuade you from ordering it.
Black and Decker, in my personal experience.
As per other tools, my uncle says craftsman tools nowadays are overpriced, in relation to what they actually are. A couple months ago, we were clearing my late grandma’s place and I found a tool box. I opened and loudly said “oh cool, American made craftmans”.
He yelled from across the place “I CALL DIBS, GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF OF THEM”
Got a pair of pants 2nd hand laser year. I like it as it's comfy and cute, but the quality is terrible. It's awfully thin fabric, of course it's polyester and it's badly cut/tailored. I take great care of my clothes, but here seams are already ripping.
Never ever Shein again, even second hand.
Samsung appliances. I love their phones, but their appliances are terrible. 5 years ago, I decided to replace my GE washer and dryer. Even after 20 years that set still worked, but I decided it was time to upgrade. So I bought a Samsung pair and within 3 years they completely broke down and had to be replaced. Total waste.
Didn’t HP literally get in trouble for planned obsolescence? It’s why they now just stop making certain printer cartridges instead of purposefully building the machines in a way that will cause them to break down
LG. Their appliances suck. The compressor for my last fridge died twice in about 5 years. My dishwasher didn't last 3 years. Both under warranty and they gave me shit when trying to get them to fix them. LG can eat a bag of dicks. I'll never by LG again. Fool me once, fuck you forever.
We got a full set of Samsung appliances when we purchased our new home. It was higher end stuff (at least for Samsung), and it cost a couple of grand for everything.
The dishwasher pretty much broke immediately. It tossed a 4C error and needed a board replacement. A year or so later the fridge died, and at the same exact time, the dishwasher died again too.
The second dishwasher repair took forever. We had no dishwasher for at least three weeks. And, even then, they were unable to fix it. So they ended up giving us a new one.
The stove died five years later and the dryer went after that. So our last appliances left were the washing machine and the swapped out dishwasher.
And guess what just died this past weekend? The stupid dishwasher again.
When we bought our house it came with a Speed Queen washer and dryer. Initially I was kind of bummed that we were getting such “basic” appliances since the modern ones look so cool and these are like what you’d see in a laundromat.
Yknow what? They ARE what you’d see in a laundromat. And by that I meant they’re damn near industrial grade. My clothes have never been cleaner, and I’m reasonably sure these machines are actually bulletproof.
My father had similar issues with Samsung appliances. He raised hell with customer service and they cut him some checks and he bought different brands. There was a class action for Samsung refrigerators but it got dismissed unfortunately.
I'm gonna have to disagree with you on ikea - partially.
I absolutely thought all of their furniture was particleboard nonsense but in the last decade or so they came out with a lot of "sustainable" options, which in this case just means stuff that can be refinished, repaired, etc. I absolutely love real solid wood as an option for as much as possible and appreciate how they have a decent amount of options of 100% solid wood. As for some of their other options that are more particle-board, I do not mind as long as it's sturdy and lasts long - I have a kallax shelf that holds a 20gal aquarium, gets water splashed on it all the time and I just wipe it off and it looks as good as the day I bought it. No bowing, no puffy water damage, I'm honestly pretty impressed by it. That tank was previously on a table that bubbled almost immediately.
I also appreciate being able to order spare parts, a lot of the time for 100% free, to repair or replace worn out items. For their couches you can order just an arm or a new set of legs if they get damaged, or even just the fabric covers. Our couch we currently have is from a typical furniture store and was about the same price as their options but we won't ever be able to just order one of the cushions or the fabric. When this couch is done we will seriously consider buying a replacement from ikea specifically for the option to repair.
They have a discounted "as is" section for items with damaged boxes, they do light bulb and battery recycling (as well as furniture recycling in certain areas).
They are no way a pinnacle of sustainability in the barren wasteland that is retail, but they're a lot better as an option.
Pretty much this. A lot of companies will resell refurbished items as new.
My partner was looking into getting a pair of doc martens and he noticed they were substantially cheaper, even from the company as the vendor. We went in store to try on the shoes he was wanting and basically got to talking to the employee about why they're so much cheaper on Amazon if still sold directly by the company. The employee explained that Doc Martens on Amazon are refurbished shoes. They make new shoes out of pristine parts out of returned shoes, and thus they can sell them off as new.
I also bought an automatic cat feeder, again, new. You could record a custom voice message to go off when the feeder went off if you wanted. I didn't do this but this is how I learned mine was used. When my cats feeder went off, some message of a man speaking Spanish went off. I kept it there for the humor. I named the man in the feeder Diego.
There is another possibility. They could be counterfeit.
Here is the thing, due to how Amazon sells products you may not be buying from the doc Martin stock.
Say multiple sellers sell the same product. Happens all the time. Doc martens and some independent shoe seller both sell the same exact shoe.
However, there may be a third unrelated vender who says the sell the same shoe, but they actually sell a counterfeit version of it.
Since Amazon holds the inventory in their wearhouses, in order to streamline things, and stock things in a way that allows for the quickest delivery times, they don't care which store supplied which specific shoe. They go "well they are all the same manufacturer, and the same exact SKU number, so they are all thrown in the same inventory list together,. doesn't matter which store actually provided which physical shoe."
So when you buy the shoe from any store, they just take it from inventory in a way that minimizes delivery time. It may not have been the able that doc martens actually provided to Amazon. It could have been some other seller, who provided counterfeit shoes to Amazon, whose shoe you ended up with.
That's why.
It's a huge problem for Amazon. And with the sheer volume of products. It is functionally impossible for them to validate items aren't counterfeit.
So the reason involves trademarks. In China, there is a govt. price scheme where if you get a US trademark, they’ll pay you more than the cost to encourage innovation. So all these companies churn out fake applications using odd names to get that cash. In reality, it’s one of a small set of large manufacturers in Shenzhen or other parts of the pearl river valley. They choose word salad to avoid confusion with existing marks.
Amazon exacerbates this by having a trademark policy of its own, making sellers on Amazon want marks to use all Amazon benefits. Amazon is basically using “do you have a mark?” as verification that the seller is actually producing.
So now you have a double-whammy of incentives to get marks out.
In reality, most of the gobbledygook is just a larger Chinese manufacturer that required a worker to make a fake brand.
Kleenex toilet paper. It's as if there's an extra seam that runs down the middle. It's the only toilet paper that makes me finger myself in my shitty arse, I'm not into that even when it's clean.
Charmin changed their formulation, at least for the version they sell at Costco, at some point in 2018. It started giving me contact dermatitis that got misdiagnosed as about a billion different things. I found out because I was shopping for some sort of cream to soothe the delicate skin and ease the constant itchy crawling sensation I'd developed, and someone who had figured out it was the Costco Charmin causing their symptoms wrote that in a product review. I started using the Kirkland brand TP and it cleared up in two days.
So Charmin.
qNAS, countless data breaches, ransomware, backdoors into users NAS devices. Just terrible problem with their management. Synology is significantly better
I might get fire for this but Microsoft, Xiaomi, and Transsion. Microsoft Windows and Office used to be great but enshittification went by so free and open-source software now seems better. Xiaomi used to make good phones but now, meh. I gotta give credit for their high-end ones though, but still can't beat Samsung for me. Transsion is like Xiaomi but worse.
Jaguar
Adidas
After reading this thread I realised I should buy! Nothing
Honestly it’s our only hope anymore
I've always worn Levi's and still do but they're no longer a durable brand.
When I was a kid they ripped in the knees and looked cool. Now the knees stay intact and the crotch rips.
Maybe it's not the jeans that changed
I know, i got a massive hog :(
A true curse. Which witch did you insult to get that? Just wanna...not do that.
*cackles*
So it’s not just me
Yup I wore a pair for work and in one day I had a two-finger sized fray right next to the zipper
It's the massive balls!
Most clothes have gone that way? My 10-15 year old t-shirts hold up better than ones I bought six months ago.
This is so true. I have some old shirts that are invincible. A lot of shirts now look like they are falling apart after a few washes and are made so cheap. A good example I have of this is some Old Navy shirts from way back then and they are much better quality than their shirts now. The ones now have a wrinkly neck and look bad within a month.
Old Navy's shitty hemming is really bothering me lately. I like their clothes because they sell women's tall sizes that fit me, but I've noticed more and more of them have that crooked neck and hemline. I think they may be using fabric scraps for their bias tapes instead of choosing the correct fabric grain.
They have different tiered warehouses (/sweatshops) that manufacture their products on a price:quality ~linear scale. If you buy the $30-60 jeans from Amazon or Macy’s or whatever, they’re garbage. If you spend $120+ from their website, they’re great and up to fantastic. There are guides online with, like, which colored tags and materials indicate which quality, but I can’t be bothered to remember. It’s just one of those “get what you pay for” things.
I have no way of verifying this, but if true this sounds like a horrible way to maintain a good reputation as a company.
Pretty sure that read somewhere how consumer electronics manufacturers like Sony, LG and Samsung make shitty TV models just for stuff like the Black Friday sales.
It's true, the TVs are usually missing features like true 120Hz and extra input/output ports. Similar, and cheaper, but usually less-featured.
What’s even more insidious is that these brands will use model numbers that are almost identical to their regular non-Black Friday units. For example, and I’m just making up numbers here, if the regular model is TV8000J, the Black Friday version will be TV8001 or TV8000BF. The average person will be too distracted by the huge “discount” to pay attention to the subtle differences in model numbers.
They also sell the same model to different chains with slightly different model numbers so you can’t price match easily. I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to use it to get around laws on how discounts are advertised either.
It was either that or go out of business, sadly. They got in with Walmart or one of the other big box stores and most their sales came from there. Then the store said that they'd only pay half what they currently were paying. So they had to make cheaper jeans or instantly lose most of their sales. They had no choice but to make cheaper crap or just fold. I fucking hate Walmart.
Walmart did the same squeeze to Zenith and Zenith refused to make an interior product and folded. I watched Walmart come into my small town growing up. We had always had a bustling down town with clothing, shoes toy and hobby stores etc. but now down town is dead and people keep shoveling Walmart crap into the landfill while riding their insulin scooters and sucking down Mt dew and Oreos. The writers of WALL-E weren't revolutionary in their thinking but they could extrapolate their surroundings into a future that's perhaps exaggerated but none the less accurate. Fuck Wal-Mart, fuck them in their fucking faces.
This makes so much sense, thank you. I always get them directly from the store and they’re my most flattering, durable jeans. Yet I often see these complaints from people saying they don’t last and I find it so confusing! I’ve had mine for years and they still look great.
This is true!! And if you’re buying on their website: sign up for the free account and you get free shipping (it’s fast) and wait until they go on sale, they go on sale a lot.
I second this. Bought two pairs, the first one within 3 weeks ripped in the crotch. The second one just did the same. Levi’s replaced both for free. I did buy the “cheaper” of the options, but regardless, that shouldn’t happen that quickly.
Ashley furniture. The dumbest thing they did was sell damaged pieces at a discount. It gave me a chance to see the cheapo materials used.
Furniture in general, anything you won't see will use cheapo materials.
I love their scratch and dent. I bought a couch from them that was bent in the middle. The main support for the couch was made of metal. I took the couch home, removed the main spar, pounded it straight with a hammer, and got a $2000 couch for 600 bucks
Anything by Hewlett Packard. Never again.
When Tom Morello formed Rage Against the Machine, he was thinking of a LaserJet.
"Wtf is PC Load Letter? "
Looks like somebody's got a case of the Mooondaays
I went through 3 HP laptops in 5 years (The 2nd 2 were gifts). Never again. I love my Lenovo.
I think all big brands owned by global corporations are suffering from 'shittification' as they are made ever cheaper to increase company profit.
100% there's no major brand I can think of that's still good. Maybe it was years ago but everythings just becoming worse and worse. I'm now moving to the lesser known brands because they seem to be better quality.
As far as stuff I use day to day items.. Dawn dish soap, Bounty paper towels, and Scrub daddy sponges are the few "name brands" I personally will still pay for. Can't say if any of them have declined as I haven't been buying them long enough to know.
I’m a paper towel snob and Sam’s brand paper towels are a great sub for Bounty. Have to buy 435 rolls at a time, but they are great quality
I only want the Viva paper towels.
If you were a real paper towel snob you would know Viva is king and there is no equal.
Finally found someone else who likes Viva! Bounty is nice, but viva actually feels like cloth, and imo, you seem to require less towels to clean up as compared to 'paper'
3m still seems to make the best of almost everything they make.
For some stuff. I use to work at 3m and they private label a ton or buy the company that makes the thing instead of making the thing themselves. "Made in the US from globally sourced material" means everything is made overseas but assembled in the US. So it's basically made overseas. I want to boycott them because it was such a toxic company to work for, but they are everywhere.
HP
At-home prinitng is the only technology that has gotten worse over time.
Amazing, isn’t it? FYI, Brother printers somehow broke the cycle. They’re cheap, reliable, and go forever.
I've got a cheap Canon printer that I like as well. Third-party ink tanks work just fine, they don't badger me for subscriptions, and it works when I need it too. It's slow and clunky and loud, but the whole thing was like $60 and I only print stuff maybe once a month. Had it for 5 years now and no issues other than some occasional fussiness while network printing. So I'm not complaining.
Canon bought my loyalty in 2015 when, on a holiday weekend, they overnighted me a new printer because the old one bricked as I was trying to print the programs out for my father's funeral. I'm usually the Printer Whisperer - even IT guys usually come snag me for printer issues wherever I'm working because, for some reason I just Vibe with them, so one dying on me was concerning and extremely upsetting, given the circumstances. They not only sent me a new machine overnight, but explicitly told me to *only* send back the defective unit - no power cable, no data cable, definitely not any ink tanks I may have or receive. I don't buy anything but Canon printers now. I just upgraded to one of their tank inkjet printers and it's phenomenal quality, if a bit slow. The old inkjet one, I got about five years ago, and it still works fine, I just needed a tiny quality upgrade. I gave the old one to my daughter and it's still going strong. Canon cameras are pretty damn good, too.
Hewlett Packard screwed me over by refusing to honor their warranty on a laptop 25 years ago, on which I had paid extra for their protection plan. They've missed out on selling me 7+ new laptops since then. I will never buy HP til the day I die. And not then either.
I was screwed over by Hewlett Packard too, and have also committed never to buy any of their products ever again. It was about 15 years ago, there were a load of faulty Nvidia GPUs, HP had a list of the GPUs, the same one was in my laptop, but they didn't consider my laptop affected. Had to take the retailer to court but it was made much harder than it needed to be because of HP's denial. I don't even buy HP printer paper now! I wonder how many of us there are!
I had this same exact experience, the Nvidia GPU class action deal from about 15 years ago, only they didn't consider my model one of the affected machines. I ended up getting the mobo reflowed and the GPU reattached by a 3rd party, but it only lasted a few months until it popped off again. Not only have I never bought another HP product again, but now I do IT for a multibillion dollar EMR company, and my experience with HP was the first thing I considered when we reviewed HP computers for our hardware lifecycle for 14 thousand employees. We now purchase zero HPs.
I also got screwed twice by HP. The first time I bought a dvd/cd burner. I barely used it. After a year I went to burn a dvd. And it wouldn’t recognize the blank disc. Just kept spitting it out. I googled my model and yeah, it was a known problem, and HP refuses to acknowledge it. But the worst was an HP laptop I had. It had this issue where yellow blobs would show up on my monitor but disappear if you tilted the screen. I contacted HP with my model and issue. They said I needed to update my BIOS. I said “for what looks like a physical issue? You sure I need to update my BIOS? They replied “yes. It’s standard procedure.” I thought this is weird. But I guess they are HP tech support. They fucking bricked my laptop. Luckily I had an old pc aI could email them back on. When I did and told them my laptop wouldn’t turn on etc. they had me try a couple things and then said “yeah. Looks like you need a new motherboard. That will be about $400” I said WTF? This is 100% your fault. They said “yeah. But your laptop is not under warranty”. I emailed several times asking for a supervisor and they would not give me that information. I contacted Ellen Roseman, a consumers affair reporter for the Toronto Star. She emailed me back and said she did a story on HP the year before and asked me to forward all my information. I did. She said she’d see what she could do. The next day a manager at HP called me. I couldn’t believe it. I sent my laptop in for repair. Not once, or twice. But 3-4 times. They kept fucking up the repair. One time I got it back with no O/S loaded. I asked the guy “don’t you check that the laptop is working before it leaves your repair facility?” He says “no. We don’t.” I was shocked. In the end. They offered me a new laptop because they couldn’t fix my bricked one (that as they said. Simply needed a new motherboard). I picked one of two offered. It’s shipped to me. I turn it on. And with 3 minutes I get the blue screen of death. On a brand fucking new out of the box laptop that I haven’t installed anything. Contact HP and I have to run another BIOS update to “declock my cpu” as they put it. Basically it’s running too fast so they had to dumb it down. Just fucking unbelievably bad experience from HP. Refuse to buy their shit.
At one of my jobs I spent about a total of 8 hours on the phone with HP because my printer kept printing off the page. They kept telling me it was the margin settings and I said it wasn't because it didn't print like that every time. After being transferred about 10 times and having to start from step one over and over and me repeatedly telling them that they needed to send me a new printer because they were incapable of fixing it and it was under warranty, they finally agreed. You'd think the stuff under warranty gets taken out of their salary or something.
Yeah, because of their printer scams, I'm never buying anything HP again in my life and I'm making sure none of my relatives will.
HP Sauce is good tho
I will never buy a HP laptop anymore. Mid scale to expensive ones, every one of them is having issues, especially the displays (4 laptops of me and my friends this year alone). It's such a shame that a cheap Chinese lenovo turned out more durable than an expensive HP.
Fanatics is straight ass. Everything they touch
What? You mean you *don’t* like being able to see which brand of underwear Shohei Ohtani wears through his pants?
Ah dammit, what are you, a fanatics salesman? I take it back, I'm sold again
“Feels like I’m wearin’ nuthin’ at all”
I ordered from them once and have never been able to successfully unsubscribe from marketing emails. I set up a script to forward any email they send me to customer service saying “please remove me from your marketing emails” and i still get them to this day. The whole company is a scam
Cc the CEO as well. Fuck em
Mark as spam in your email service. If it so unsubs you... Great! If you continue to receive emails, make an FCC complaint. Source: I work in MarTech.
I swore off buying any new hockey jerseys till they no longer have the contract. Same for any other items they make. Just a horrible garbage company when it comes to quality and quality control.
It was fun watching Riley Greene blow out a pair of pants per game last weekend, though!
I couldn't belive when I saw one of the new jerseys up close in a store a couple months ago. It had the quality a $20 knock off but they wanted $200 for it.
pyrex. But I will absolutely buy PYREX.
What I've never understood.. Those pyrex (and also PYREX I think) have those little spouts to pour.. and it's just horrible at doing that. I always see people just throwing it everywhere. No matter if you go fast or slow. wtf is up with that?
There's one exact speed that the liquid won't stick to the side, but it will never start or end that way.
In our lab, we came to refer to that rate of pour as “cautiously urgent.”
The older generations will never understand the struggle of us youngsters. Going to garage sales and thrift stores looking for genuine PYREX for our.. chemistry projects... Edit: honestly I'm surprised that 25+ people understood what I was talking about. Shout-out fellow degenerates!
This is glass, right? (I'm not thinking straight today) What's the difference?
Consumer Reports made a short video that shows the issue: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyhdMa1ikKM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyhdMa1ikKM) PYREX (all caps) is the old glass that they used to use in their cookware. It's borosilicate glass, which is more resistant to rapid "thermal expansion" due to temperature changes. In other words, if you take a glass pan from the fridge and put it in the oven, there's a chance that it will shatter. pyrex (lower case) is the newer formula, soda-lime glass, which has notoriously exploded in some people's videos.
IIRC, in Europe you're only going to be able to buy PYREX of these two, because our consumer protection agencies actually do their jobs.
Soda-lime glass has its uses, less likely to break if you drop it. Biggest problem is people treating pyrex the same as PYREX and subjecting it to thermal shock
Can confirm. I remember my mom grabbing a pyrex measuring cup out of the microwave with something in it and as she had it in her hand it exploded.
pyrex is cheap and mainly for home use. PYREX is industrial and used in labs and kitchens.
Adidas
100% big brands are becoming cheap
Etsy. I uses to love shopping for unique handmade gifts for people but now it's all drop-shippers and Chinese knockoffs. It takes so long to sift through all the garbage resellers that just steal artists work and print it on cheap throwaway clothing.
100000%! I feel eBay has gone the same way, used to be full of second hand deals, now everything is brand new and expensive from drop-shippers and i hate it
Barilla. It’s not horrible quality, but they make you think they are S Tier pasta when they actually are C tier. De Cecco for example is a much better alternative.
TIL there are tiers of pasta
The main thing is how they're cut. Most dry pasta is cut with teflon-coated dies. Those are easier for the manufacturer to maintain and clean, but at the cost of smoother pasta. This is a problem as the texture of the pasta is both what allows it to adhere better to sauce AND to release more starch in the pasta water. If you want great sauce, you want to starchy water. That's hard with a teflon (barilla) cut pasta. Bronze Die Cut is how you get S-tier pasta. The pasta has a coarser texture, and sheds more starch in the pasta water. Great dry pasta is often better than fresh pasta and definitely easier to cook with. De Cecco isn't always bronze die drawn, but something like Rummo is always Bronze Die. I watch way too much cooking Youtube.
It's also about how long the pasta is dried for. The more yellow the pasta, the quicker it's dried and the worse the quality. The more pale the pasta, the longer it's dried for and the better the quality. It retains its shape better when cooked and has a better bite. Also fresh pasta usually contains egg, whereas the dried stuff doesn't. A simple guide is to not use egg-based pasta in egg-based sauces (eg carbonara). Source: Italian girlfriend
i need this tier list
Try to choose dry pasta which is lighter in colour. If it’s dark like Barilla is, it means it’s been dried quickly (often using heat) which affects the quality. [Furosine](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239732790_Furosine_as_a_Pasta_Quality_Marker_Evaluation_by_an_Innovative_and_Fast_Chromatographic_Approach) levels in pasta has been used as a bench mark for pasta quality. Preferably want a pasta with low furosine. More furosine, more yellow, which happens when pasta is dried quickly. Edit: rummo, Garofalo, Di Martino, Molisana are some brands which are on the higher tiers.
Bronze rolled vs Teflon rolled makes a huge difference too. Bronze rolled pasta is “rougher” and holds sauce better. It’s enough of a selling point that if the box doesn’t say it’s bronze rolled, it’s probably not. (De Cecco is all bronze rolled as far as I’m aware.)
Everything has a tier list, this ain’t the 80s.
Yeah but De Cecco costs twice as much. For the major brand pastas it’s the most reliable.
Yeah all of the old Italian grandmothers I've known (and I've known a lot, on both sides of the family and multiple other families who were friends with ours) all used Barilla, because if they wanted "nice" pasta they *made it themselves*. But if they just wanted to buy pasta and make something they'd go Barilla. Also as the only remaining maker of Pastina they have me on lock just for that.
Beats headphones
Beats makes great products for people who wanna turn up a party but don’t actually wanna hear music
If you really, really, really, really really like spending $200 for $15 headphones that sound like crap, Beats are for you. I actually watched the video a while ago where they disassembled a pair of Beats headphones, and they were regular crappy headphones, but they added a weight to the earpiece to make them feel more heavy and solid.
I was trying to fix a coworkers beats several years ago and can confirm there's a lead weight in the head band. The main board burnt out and wasn't worth replacing. They are crap. Meanwhile I have a 7 or 8 year old pair of Sennheiser Bluetooth headphones and they work like brand new. They also sound amazing
Sennheiser should start to pay me because i wear these headphones all the time and tell everyone how amazing they are. Have had them for 3 years now and still looks brand new, sound is perfect and battery lasts 2 full days no problem. They weren't cheap, but worth every penny
Sennheiser have done some weird shit. I can't recall the model but they released 2 models with exactly the same sound quality but they added padding to the lower priced pair to degrade the sound quality. You could remove the inner padding and receive IRL DLC to improve the sound quality. Dunno why any company would release a product like that.
Beats spend more than most brands on advertising and the “unboxing” experience. Beats are packaged better than other brands, but that’s where the superiority ends. At the exact same price point, you can buy significantly better headphones that just aren’t packaged as pretty as Beats.
The second HP laptops had “beats audio” I knew it had to be bottom tier trash
My Sony WHX1000M5 were packaged well enough, but even if not, who cares, you unpackaged it once and then use it for years, the unboxing experience is totally meaningless to any sort of non-perishable product.
Everything is shit now
And twice as expensive!
It’s even twice as expensive to shit now
Gucci. Everything Gucci that I have seen up close is the same bog standard quality that I can find for $40.
Isn't Gucci just over marketed shit designed to make poor people feel richer?
Just like every other "luxury" brand covered in tacky logos.
Yeah it’s crazy to me how many “luxury” brands have such awful quality. Can’t even fathom how people are so okay paying for that. Coach is also expensive, but not nearly as high as Gucci, and every tear down I’ve seen has shown that they have excellent leather. Idk how true that is today, but it used to be the case for sure.
Nike, they are getting worse by the year, the shoes are so bad now, air max 90 are my favourite shoe but the feel so cheap now, my sister in law works for a massive sports team in merchandise, she said it was shocking how bad Nike felt when the team changed away from under armour in comparison
The sizing is different, too. I've worn Nike for decades, and now every pair I try on, I need a bigger size, but they still don't fit because they are too narrow. I do not have wide feet, so I'm baffled.
Maybe they're trying shrinkflation in shoes. It's a bold gambit.
Was looking for this one. Also the way they make everything clinches it for me. No Nike, ever.
I played for a college team sponsored by Nike. The Nike Pro and Nike Team gear was a step above in terms of quality. I've since seen some Pro gear in retail stores, but rarely see Team gear in retail. My guess is Pro/Team gear is held to a higher manufacturing standard than regular retail, and is probably made in different locations. The quality difference was remarkable (Pro/Team versus regular retail).
I think the difference is between their "normal person" stuff and the stuff that's geared for atheltic use, rather than just the stuff that's provided to Nike schools for atheletes or like for NFL teams and stuff. My college marching band gets hooked up via the school's deal with Nike and we'll get a couple team gear items, some Dri-Fit (the line of items from Nike, not just the material) that you can go buy yourself, and a couple things that are "normal person" stuff. The team gear and Dri Fit stuff was all high quality matieral that felt good to wear and never fell apart, faded, shrunk, felt worse, etc no matter how many times you wore or washed it. The regular stuff was the opposite and had a massive drop off in quality almost immediately. Things started fading, peeling, and just generally falling apart on top of being uncomfortable to wear (and shrinking in the drier).
Really depends on the Nike shoes. It’s so hit and miss. Just wild swings with not so wild price changes.
HP Started with their printers and locking people into their HP brand ink. But I'm not buying anything from them ever.
Most of them. The problem is that once companies go public they no longer have an incentive to innovate and create quality products, or even answer to the customer. They work for the shareholders and if they can up the stock price by making a subpar product that's what they'll do. Next quarter when it falls apart they'll worry about then. It's all about the personal wealth and comfort of the 2-10 people at the top of the corporate ladders, with those just under them neurotically ingratiating themselves with whomever they can so they can hopefully fill the void if a vacancy opens, while simultaneously stabbing them in the back to ensure a vacancy opens.
This is so true. I know that it’s always been about money. But the lack of ethics are insane. Everything is becoming more and more disposable and unfixable and run by subscriptions so you can’t even own it. I really am just so damn tired.
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The thing I’ve noticed about eBay that annoys me now is almost everything is brand new and full price, second hand deals are few and far between now and eBay isn’t where I’m gonna go for expensive new anything
Thirty years ago, I used to be a professional geologist and surveyor in western Colorado. I spent my life outdoors in backwoods areas. The North Face used to make bar none the best outdoor clothing. It was always considerably more expensive than other similar brands but you knew you were going to get the absolute best materials, design and fabrication quality. The North Face was made for people who actually spent a lot of time in the wilderness. No longer. They're just another mediocre "outdoor-lite" fashion brand. At least Patagonia is still mostly the real stuff...
Cadbury; in New Zealand there's a brand called Whittakers and it is 200x better
Depends where you get it from. For some reason, here in the UK where it fucking originates by the way, it’s turned sub par. But jump on a ferry to Dublin and, my god, that’s the cadburys I remember.
In the US Hershey’s own the Cadbury brand, and it tastes like dogshit
Greatest chocolate on earth (Whittaker’s)
Amen! Woolworths in Australia sells Whittaker's chocolate 🍫, was introduced to their chocolate recently (on a similar post to this I believe) will NEVER EVER go back.
Even know I'm about to do it, never mention Cadbury and Whittakers in the same sentence again.
Obligatory r/FuckNestle
EA, Activision, Ubisoft games Unfun, money-grabbing, unfinished games
Yea, that and zero care for customer support. The number of game-stopping issues reported by thousands of players that have gone ignored for years is shocking. It's just push out product as quick as possible, that's it. Most effort just goes into the graphics to impress players visually and try mask the fact the game is shit. Brilliant example is CoD WWII. The graphics were phenomenal but the gameplay was horrible, and infuriating. The storyline was also very cringe, cliché and dull. Need for Speed The Run had nice graphics and an epic sound score, but honestly it was like they had something big in the works that wouldn't be ready in time to release a year after the previous title, so they slapped The Run together as a filler. One long single race, you can't modify cars (which is one of the major features in a NFS game players look forward to), and a lot of the effort put in to win in the end makes little logical sense to be enjoyable. That's why now I will always torrent a game first before buying it. If I feel the game is solid, and the player support is good, then I'll delete the torrent and buy the game. 99% of the time it's deleted the torrent and be glad I didn't waste money on that crap.
Doc Martens used to be one of the most reputable shoe brands in the game. I have a vintage pair I barely wear, and despite them being 20+ years old they're in perfect condition, and so comfortable. My newer pairs start falling apart after a year of _mild_ wear and absolutely tear my feet apart.
If you like the looks of docs, try out Solovair! They're the people that used to do all the production for Doc Martins, but when they split, they made the same boots under that brand name instead. They use green instead of yellow as their color, but they're high quality, and basically the same silhouette.
Gillette, how have they monopolised so much of the disposable razor market? High end Bic razors are better and slightly cheaper.
Anything under the Chrysler brand
Jeep managed to turn me from a kid who grew up always wanting a jeep to someone who can't stand the brand in 3 years of vehicle ownership.
You too huh? My dad ran two cherokees dependably over 300k miles. His third and fourth drained his bank account and fell apart in 6 years.
Stellantis in general
Starbucks coffee tastes terrible to me. Not trying to be edgy or contrarian but I prefer McDonalds coffee for black and Dunkin for flavors. Starbucks black coffee don't do it for me and they sweeten their drinks with pig shit as far as I can tell.
Some of the roasts just taste burnt
My understanding is that they over-roast on purpose, because it helps ensure consistency in every store. It tastes burnt to me too. And that's how it has tasted at every Starbucks I have ever tried, so I guess they're succeeding
That’s why many people call it ‘charbucks’ Just say no to corporate coffee.
Pikes Place is horrible, and I’m surprised it is their standard coffee. It always tastes burnt to me. Their blonde roast isn’t terrible if you’re at an airport and Starbucks the only option, but they typically only have it as a pour over and generally they say it in such a way to dissuade you from ordering it.
Black and Decker, in my personal experience. As per other tools, my uncle says craftsman tools nowadays are overpriced, in relation to what they actually are. A couple months ago, we were clearing my late grandma’s place and I found a tool box. I opened and loudly said “oh cool, American made craftmans”. He yelled from across the place “I CALL DIBS, GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF OF THEM”
Anything that claims to be military grade. All of those things are trash haha.
Remember, military grade just means that it was the cheapest bidder who met minimum specifications...
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Literally designed to be worn once by rich influencers and thrown away. An environmental catastrophe. Edit: original commenter saod "Shein".
Got a pair of pants 2nd hand laser year. I like it as it's comfy and cute, but the quality is terrible. It's awfully thin fabric, of course it's polyester and it's badly cut/tailored. I take great care of my clothes, but here seams are already ripping. Never ever Shein again, even second hand.
Samsung appliances. I love their phones, but their appliances are terrible. 5 years ago, I decided to replace my GE washer and dryer. Even after 20 years that set still worked, but I decided it was time to upgrade. So I bought a Samsung pair and within 3 years they completely broke down and had to be replaced. Total waste.
Beats by Dre. And I don't "believe" it's bad quality, it's been demonstrably proven.
On a deployment, a buddy of mine picked up a pair of Beats by Drew in Djibouti for $10. Bought em just for the knockoff logo and brand name.
Beats by Dre *by Apple
Dre sold the company. They’re just “Beats” now.
HP
Didn’t HP literally get in trouble for planned obsolescence? It’s why they now just stop making certain printer cartridges instead of purposefully building the machines in a way that will cause them to break down
Hp always hp I hate their printers, their laptops, their internet routers
I love how HP is popping up here more than once.
Nike
Samsung appliances except their TVs which aren't too bad
modern disney. they jack up their prices like crazy yet it seems like their movies, shows, and parks just get worse and worse every year
LG. Their appliances suck. The compressor for my last fridge died twice in about 5 years. My dishwasher didn't last 3 years. Both under warranty and they gave me shit when trying to get them to fix them. LG can eat a bag of dicks. I'll never by LG again. Fool me once, fuck you forever.
I love my LG TV tho
I feel this way about Samsung appliances.
We got a full set of Samsung appliances when we purchased our new home. It was higher end stuff (at least for Samsung), and it cost a couple of grand for everything. The dishwasher pretty much broke immediately. It tossed a 4C error and needed a board replacement. A year or so later the fridge died, and at the same exact time, the dishwasher died again too. The second dishwasher repair took forever. We had no dishwasher for at least three weeks. And, even then, they were unable to fix it. So they ended up giving us a new one. The stove died five years later and the dryer went after that. So our last appliances left were the washing machine and the swapped out dishwasher. And guess what just died this past weekend? The stupid dishwasher again.
When we bought our house it came with a Speed Queen washer and dryer. Initially I was kind of bummed that we were getting such “basic” appliances since the modern ones look so cool and these are like what you’d see in a laundromat. Yknow what? They ARE what you’d see in a laundromat. And by that I meant they’re damn near industrial grade. My clothes have never been cleaner, and I’m reasonably sure these machines are actually bulletproof.
My father had similar issues with Samsung appliances. He raised hell with customer service and they cut him some checks and he bought different brands. There was a class action for Samsung refrigerators but it got dismissed unfortunately.
I believe there’s a class action against them for their compressors, if I’m not mistaken
Their OLED TV's are amazing though !
Merrell shoes. Used to be reasonable price and good quality. Price has doubled, quality is way down. IKEA: cardboard furniture at inflated prices.
I'm gonna have to disagree with you on ikea - partially. I absolutely thought all of their furniture was particleboard nonsense but in the last decade or so they came out with a lot of "sustainable" options, which in this case just means stuff that can be refinished, repaired, etc. I absolutely love real solid wood as an option for as much as possible and appreciate how they have a decent amount of options of 100% solid wood. As for some of their other options that are more particle-board, I do not mind as long as it's sturdy and lasts long - I have a kallax shelf that holds a 20gal aquarium, gets water splashed on it all the time and I just wipe it off and it looks as good as the day I bought it. No bowing, no puffy water damage, I'm honestly pretty impressed by it. That tank was previously on a table that bubbled almost immediately. I also appreciate being able to order spare parts, a lot of the time for 100% free, to repair or replace worn out items. For their couches you can order just an arm or a new set of legs if they get damaged, or even just the fabric covers. Our couch we currently have is from a typical furniture store and was about the same price as their options but we won't ever be able to just order one of the cushions or the fabric. When this couch is done we will seriously consider buying a replacement from ikea specifically for the option to repair. They have a discounted "as is" section for items with damaged boxes, they do light bulb and battery recycling (as well as furniture recycling in certain areas). They are no way a pinnacle of sustainability in the barren wasteland that is retail, but they're a lot better as an option.
Godiva chocolate
Yes. I remember when Godiva was a premium chocolate only sold in high end stores. Now it's everywhere and tastes like a step above Palmer's crap.
Literally anything from Amazon now.
It's like if outlet mall stores had outlets for the rejects of the rejects.
Pretty much this. A lot of companies will resell refurbished items as new. My partner was looking into getting a pair of doc martens and he noticed they were substantially cheaper, even from the company as the vendor. We went in store to try on the shoes he was wanting and basically got to talking to the employee about why they're so much cheaper on Amazon if still sold directly by the company. The employee explained that Doc Martens on Amazon are refurbished shoes. They make new shoes out of pristine parts out of returned shoes, and thus they can sell them off as new. I also bought an automatic cat feeder, again, new. You could record a custom voice message to go off when the feeder went off if you wanted. I didn't do this but this is how I learned mine was used. When my cats feeder went off, some message of a man speaking Spanish went off. I kept it there for the humor. I named the man in the feeder Diego.
There is another possibility. They could be counterfeit. Here is the thing, due to how Amazon sells products you may not be buying from the doc Martin stock. Say multiple sellers sell the same product. Happens all the time. Doc martens and some independent shoe seller both sell the same exact shoe. However, there may be a third unrelated vender who says the sell the same shoe, but they actually sell a counterfeit version of it. Since Amazon holds the inventory in their wearhouses, in order to streamline things, and stock things in a way that allows for the quickest delivery times, they don't care which store supplied which specific shoe. They go "well they are all the same manufacturer, and the same exact SKU number, so they are all thrown in the same inventory list together,. doesn't matter which store actually provided which physical shoe." So when you buy the shoe from any store, they just take it from inventory in a way that minimizes delivery time. It may not have been the able that doc martens actually provided to Amazon. It could have been some other seller, who provided counterfeit shoes to Amazon, whose shoe you ended up with. That's why. It's a huge problem for Amazon. And with the sheer volume of products. It is functionally impossible for them to validate items aren't counterfeit.
My friend gifted me a set of knife, which is a nice gift, but the brand name is evdrtverh. I don't have much faith they're gonna last long.
What's up with those names? So many of them sound cheap and shitty. Why wouldn't they use more Western names to trick people?
So the reason involves trademarks. In China, there is a govt. price scheme where if you get a US trademark, they’ll pay you more than the cost to encourage innovation. So all these companies churn out fake applications using odd names to get that cash. In reality, it’s one of a small set of large manufacturers in Shenzhen or other parts of the pearl river valley. They choose word salad to avoid confusion with existing marks. Amazon exacerbates this by having a trademark policy of its own, making sellers on Amazon want marks to use all Amazon benefits. Amazon is basically using “do you have a mark?” as verification that the seller is actually producing. So now you have a double-whammy of incentives to get marks out. In reality, most of the gobbledygook is just a larger Chinese manufacturer that required a worker to make a fake brand.
It's just AliExpress at twice the price with half the shipping time
Tesla
Beats. Do they still even sell those? Bloody awful.
Chicken produced by Tyson
It was tested and proven that Beats 🎧 by Dre head phones are really cheap and bad quality head phones yet pretty pricy
Samsung appliances (such as washer/dryer, refrigerator, etc)
Samsung appliances. I like their TV’s, but not the appliances
Razer
Dyson.
Kleenex toilet paper. It's as if there's an extra seam that runs down the middle. It's the only toilet paper that makes me finger myself in my shitty arse, I'm not into that even when it's clean.
Charmin changed their formulation, at least for the version they sell at Costco, at some point in 2018. It started giving me contact dermatitis that got misdiagnosed as about a billion different things. I found out because I was shopping for some sort of cream to soothe the delicate skin and ease the constant itchy crawling sensation I'd developed, and someone who had figured out it was the Costco Charmin causing their symptoms wrote that in a product review. I started using the Kirkland brand TP and it cleared up in two days. So Charmin.
qNAS, countless data breaches, ransomware, backdoors into users NAS devices. Just terrible problem with their management. Synology is significantly better
I might get fire for this but Microsoft, Xiaomi, and Transsion. Microsoft Windows and Office used to be great but enshittification went by so free and open-source software now seems better. Xiaomi used to make good phones but now, meh. I gotta give credit for their high-end ones though, but still can't beat Samsung for me. Transsion is like Xiaomi but worse.
r/fucknestle
[удалено]
Nike. I won’t touch their trash anymore.
Victoria’s Secret underwear is expensive cheap trash. Also don’t want to buy Louis Vuitton anything it’s the ugliest stuff I’ve ever seen.