Deteriorating quality

[dave1251]

Originally Posted By: GiveMeAVowel
Originally Posted By: dave1251
Oh the good old days where a 23 inch color RCA televison cost the equivalent of $2275 dollars today. A dryer $1350. A crock pot $55.


At the above prices they had better be good and still operating until at least 1990 daily.

I am using a 1970 catalog for the prices.


And I would bet you if those products were not abused they will ALL STILL BE WORKING PERFECTLY TODAY....see paying more is worth it.
I would also bet that all of them were MADE IN THE USA! So not only do you get a higher quality more reliable, longer lasting product you keep your neighbors employed as well, that is truly a win win.

As for complaining about Breyers Ice Cream....unless you are very industrious it takes a lot of effort and time to hand crank ice cream
and do it very well.

Breyers had been selling 100% ALL NATURAL ice cream for over 125 years before changing the ingredients, and while slightly more than completely inferior product loaded with artificial additives and chemicals, the very modest extra cost was absolutely worth it!



Yet antiqueshell the products did not last longer without repairs and periodic maintenance. Not only the initial cost to own was much higher, more maintenance and time needed to be invested. I have a Panasonic 42 inch in my living room I bought on sale back in 06 for $684 including tax it still works and it is good. But it was obsolete when I purchased it. No maintenance has been done and it uses a fraction of the material, manufacturing resources, electrical energy, and having a family of 5 I am certain it has more hours of operation versus a television of the same era. Would a RCA TV which has nearly 1/2 the picture area and only a fraction of the capability from 1970 worked for 10 years? It probably would but the investment would be a lot more besides 300% the initial cost.

 

[GiveMeAVowel]

Originally Posted By: dave1251


Yet antiqueshell the products did not last longer without repairs and periodic maintenance. Not only the initial cost to own was much higher, more maintenance and time needed to be invested. I have a Panasonic 42 inch in my living room I bought on sale back in 06 for $684 including tax it still works and it is good. But it was obsolete when I purchased it. No maintenance has been done and it uses a fraction of the material, manufacturing resources, electrical energy, and having a family of 5 I am certain it has more hours of operation versus a television of the same era. Would a RCA TV which has nearly 1/2 the picture area and only a fraction of the capability from 1970 worked for 10 years? It probably would but the investment would be a lot more besides 300% the initial cost.


Perhaps you are correct, but I doubt the cost of general repairs of those products back then would have been that steep. Something that you might not think of, it might be too much of a good thing when reliability becomes very high....because when something actually NEEDS a repair it is going to be very difficult to find that service you need. I like reliable products but from time to time, it is still important with many items to have skilled repair and maintenance folks available when you need them, and they do provide livelihoods for your neighbors too. You see life is a balancing act, and many aspects like the ones I have mentioned have been forgotten.

 

[grampi]

Originally Posted By: supton
Originally Posted By: grampi
Where else am I supposed to eat when I'm on the road? Sure, I could go to a better place, but when I'm eating on the road almost every day, I also have to watch the budget...


If you're on the road "every day" then surely you can plan ahead. Are you home each night? If so, you can easily pack food. Get a cooler, get some cooler packs, and it ought to keep cool long enough in the car. Or get one that runs on 12V and find a source of switched 12V.

PB&J goes a long ways. Carrots sticks probably aren't the cheapest but are still cheap enough. I can't, in good faith, recommend crackers, soda, chips and stuff like that--but obviously you can buy in bulk and toss into the cooler on the cheap. I used to keep a flat of water bottles in the trunk in the warmer months.

With a bit of effort you might convince your body to get by on a smaller lunch while compensating with a larger breakfast & dinner.

If you are on the road for days then that is harder. I usually do Subway or grab a pre-made sandwich from the larger fuel stations. Neither is cheap but either is going to be better (and faster!) than a sit down meal. Alternatively... if you are ok with sitting for 30+ minutes at a dinner, then you have plenty of time to hit up an actual grocery store. With today's GPS & smartphones then surely you can find easily accessible grocery stores on the way; and most of the ones I've been in have sandwiches, salads and other kinds of premade food available.


Some good ideas here. I am going to start packing my own food. It'll be both better food, and less expensive. It's just gonna take some getting used to remembering to pick up all this stuff at the grocery store, and planning what I'll be taking every day...

 

[grampi]

Originally Posted By: alarmguy
Originally Posted By: hatt
IHOP is crazy expensive for what you get. Pancakes are like $7-8. Prices go up from there. You'd be better off going to places like Chili's or Olive Garden that at least try to have something good ...

The only restaurants that are a good deal in my opinion are the higher end steakhouses and seafood places. A prime dry aged steak would cost me more to cook at home than I can get it in the steakhouse with a pro cooking it over wood.


^^^^^ this, I was going to suggest to grandpa to go to many of the national steak houses such as Longhorn, Texas Road house, Fatz, Ruby Tuesday, Outback, etc, etc.
Many of them sell a good 6 ounce steak dinner for around $10 including baked potato, veges, and some include a salad... Skip the soda, get water.
Also as another in here posted, Subway.



All true, but none of these places serve breakfast, and I don't care for what Subway offers for breakfast...

 

[supton]

Wife bought me these egg cookers a year or so ago; I see they are $5, which seems expensive, but IMO they work good enough. I nuke an egg every morning, just spray with Pam, nuke for 45 seconds, cooked. [Once in a while it'll blow the lid off in the microwave, though.]

Wife tries to buy turkey breakfast sausage when it's on sale. Cook up all of them up at once and put into Tupperware.

For breakfast I would flip the coffee pot on, put a piece of bread into the toaster. Pack my lunch. As the coffee and toast got close to the end, I'd put the egg into the microwave, hit "quick minute". Open door with 15 seconds left. Take the lid off the above egg cooker, drop one sausage into the lid, nuke that for the remaining fifteen. Butter the toast, drop the egg onto it, slice the sausage in half and put it onto the egg. Voila, open face egg sandwich.

In about 5 minutes I could make both breakfast and lunch by raiding the fridge, while waiting for my coffee.

 

[supton]

In general, if you can, cooking more and making leftovers can be a great way to economize. Cook the whole box of pasta, divide into portions, refrigerate the rest in Tupperware. Same for rice or actual meals (stews, soups, etc). I find frozen soup is a great lunch; no spillage on the way to work.

 

[CKN]

Originally Posted By: GiveMeAVowel
Originally Posted By: Jarlaxle


Plastic impellers are not bad...if nothing else, they will not corrode!


Yes, they don't fail slowly by corroding, the plastic gets brittle and suddenly cracks and the fins drop off without warning, and you just happen to be in the middle of nowhere and your engine overheats.
Yes, plastic isn't that bad...

True-but the great thing about the Internet is information sharing. There is usually a mileage limit those plastic parts fail at. Preventive maintenance is replacing them before that.

 

[Al]

Just did IHOP today. 5 pancakes $6.29. I was more than stuffed on 5. They were very good as usual.

 

[hatt]

Al. If you like pancakes you should take a trip to Gatlinburg, TN and go to the Pancake Pantry. The pancakes are so fluffy they don't bring then out. They simply float them throughout the room and you reach up and grab them.

 

[dave1251]

Originally Posted By: GiveMeAVowel
Perhaps you are correct, but I doubt the cost of general repairs of those products back then would have been that steep. Something that you might not think of, it might be too much of a good thing when reliability becomes very high....because when something actually NEEDS a repair it is going to be very difficult to find that service you need. I like reliable products but from time to time, it is still important with many items to have skilled repair and maintenance folks available when you need them, and they do provide livelihoods for your neighbors too. You see life is a balancing act, and many aspects like the ones I have mentioned have been forgotten.


Like everything there is tradeoff's. It is very rare we eat the cookie and have the cookie. Today we have serious issues that should be resolved that being said there was not been a better time to be living. Overall the quality of our good have not been better, some brands have gone to the pits and there will be someone who steps up to provide a higher quality product for the ones who wishes to purchase them.

 

[grampi]

Originally Posted By: Al
Just did IHOP today. 5 pancakes $6.29. I was more than stuffed on 5. They were very good as usual.


I can't eat pancakes...too many carbs...

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: grampi
Originally Posted By: Al
Just did IHOP today. 5 pancakes $6.29. I was more than stuffed on 5. They were very good as usual.


I can't eat pancakes...too many carbs...

Yea..you are right. I don't put any syrup on them. Just butter. Even so..not too healthy.

 

[DoubleWasp]

Originally Posted By: grampi
Why does it seem the norm these days with companies is to produce a quality product, gain a reputation for producing quality products, then either resting on their laurels, or purposely cutting corners to reduce the quality of the products? This doesn't seem to be restricted to only the auto industry either. We all know that companies like Honda and Toyota have done this to a certain extent. While they still produce decent vehicles, most people would agree their quality has dropped off some compared to the vehicles they've produced in the past. This also seems to be taking place in the restaurant sector as well. It used to be that IHOP had excellent food. Lately, I find their quality is just not there anymore. Their portions have shrank, and the quality of the food just isn't very good anymore. It seems to me like a company would want to avoid this as it takes a lot less time to destroy a good rep than it does to build it up. What is going on with all of this stuff?


1. You are 100% correct.

2. It's following the old method of finance: Invest, and then profit-take.

Build a rep, and then suck it dry for everything it is worth. Or buy a good rep, and then suck it dry for everything it is worth.

 

[Shannow]

Pulled down the old 240V doorbell that we inherited with the house, annoyed the BJs out of us, disconnected, and never got around to removing.

Here's how they did it in the good old days.

Button closes on coil, forcing striker to hit one tone bar (think xylophone)...movement of plunger operates mercury switch, which cuts current, rinse and repeat.

Honestly...modern in much better even if it's only got 2 minutes of labour in the final product.

Another thing that we inherited was a JVC TV, replete with tubes and all...we used it for the Nintendo 64 for giggles...the colours were superb...when it went out, we donated it to the local repair man who relished the hardware spares.

 

[Cujet]

Bose earbuds, are A) expensive and B) deteriorate rapidly.

This is clearly by design. They last the warranty period and no more. They continue to make the wire insulation from a material known to "revert" (meaning it reverts back to it's primordial, gooey state) and continue to sell them at a premium.

A business decision, clearly.

Could you imagine if aircraft wiring deteriorated in one year?

 

[Drosselmier]

If it's labeled Frozen Dessert, It's not Ice Cream.

 

[dlundblad]

Originally Posted By: Cujet
Bose earbuds, are A) expensive and B) deteriorate rapidly.

This is clearly by design. They last the warranty period and no more. They continue to make the wire insulation from a material known to "revert" (meaning it reverts back to it's primordial, gooey state) and continue to sell them at a premium.

A business decision, clearly.

Could you imagine if aircraft wiring deteriorated in one year?

I've had quite a few electronic cables do that looking back.

Playstation 2 controller cables are notorious for this.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted By: Cujet
Bose earbuds, are A) expensive and B) deteriorate rapidly.

This is clearly by design. They last the warranty period and no more. They continue to make the wire insulation from a material known to "revert" (meaning it reverts back to it's primordial, gooey state) and continue to sell them at a premium.

A business decision, clearly.

Could you imagine if aircraft wiring deteriorated in one year?

Yeah...Bose seems to have gone downhill, lately!

 

[grampi]

Originally Posted By: Jarlaxle
Originally Posted By: Cujet
Bose earbuds, are A) expensive and B) deteriorate rapidly.

This is clearly by design. They last the warranty period and no more. They continue to make the wire insulation from a material known to "revert" (meaning it reverts back to it's primordial, gooey state) and continue to sell them at a premium.

A business decision, clearly.

Could you imagine if aircraft wiring deteriorated in one year?

Yeah...Bose seems to have gone downhill, lately!


I've never been that impressed with Bose anyway. To me they're more of a gimmick company...always producing equipment that produces decent sound from really small components, however, there is better sounding equipment available...the home theater system I have now will blow away anything made by Bose...

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: grampi


I've never been that impressed with Bose anyway. To me they're more of a gimmick company...always producing equipment that produces decent sound from really small components, however, there is better sounding equipment available...the home theater system I have now will blow away anything made by Bose...

Yea..I think Bose was once a good product. But they lost their way. Capitalised on their name and went for mass marketing.

I have Polk stuff. I am not gonna' says the best, but its pretty good.