(I’m trying to adjust my shopping habits for quality, long-lasting goods from reputable brands. This isn’t some hailcorporate thing)
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There are tons of great quality brands. Until capitalism kills them and they become the same as the rest.
I remember when Logitech was the stamp of quality in computer accessories.
Now? It’s trash!
This is so true and it hurts.
Have a mouse, keyboard and speaker set from 2004-2005. They all still work. I’ve bought several new Logitech products since 2015 and all have failed or have some defect. I’ve reached the point where I don’t buy anything Logitech.
Have they gone that far downhill in just a few years? I’ve got a g502 that I bought 5ish years ago and that mouse is solid as a rock. The g5 I had before that lasted over a decade before I got annoyed at the cord sheath trying to kill the mouse.
They still make some good hardware, but I wouldn’t trust the company one bit.
When the MBA’s take over, the company is sucked dry.
Take me over next, MBAs
Same happens every time I really take a liking to a restaurant.
Deliver a really good product with quality ingredients and become wildly popular, The shareholders will sell you down the road for a nickel and deliver a piece of crap product under the same name to cash out.
One of my favorite restaurants a couple towns over has been excellent for years, decades. T was always crowded and noisy, well known by everyone I encountered. It became my favorites on road trips from college, continued being my favorite as I dated and eventually married. It was still my favorite as I raised my kids to teenagers.
Then I really hadn’t gone since COViD, so my kids took me for Fathers Day this year. It should have been a red flag that the place apwas empty, quiet. Most of the microbrews were gone, service was horrible, half the menu was missing, they no longer put corn bread on the table. Then we got the food, and instead of home made everything, it all tasted like from a Sysco menu. They. O longer even had real plates or flatware. This all-star bbq place might as well be just dashing ketchup on top of microwaved food and opening a can of beans. What the heck happened?
Aww man, Play sounds like it was awesome what a horrible loss.
Covid destroyed a lot of restaurants. Without intimate details of the actual location and history I can only make guesses.
They might have changed hands due to money or an older generation owner might have passed. They might have just changed their business plan all together to stay open.
When COVID hit the first thing that generally happened was the wait staff was let go. Normally for a business that’s not a death sentence, but when it happened it happened everywhere and servers were more or less forced to find jobs not serving food. All the skilled labor exiting the work pool’s a big deal. It’s still rare, 5 years later, to find a restaurant that doesn’t have a now hiring sign out front.
Now you no longer have customer volume but you still have a fair amount of wages. You can raise prices but people aren’t going to put up with that a lot of them are out of work. You stop ordering the more expensive ingredients. You cut back portion sizes and stop freebies.
Congratulations you’re still operating but you’re only operating on the name you made for yourself your current menu is garbage. This is the end downward spiral phase. A mom and pop shop will barely recognize their customer base disappearing. You’re not going to go back there now, your kids probably aren’t going to go back there now. They’re going to struggle for three generations from alienating their current customer base.
Even if they could run a marketing campaign and get people to try them again, they’re not making enough money to rebuild the shop as it previously was. At this point you either sell it off or take on a financial partner who now has say in your business. If the financial partner doesn’t know what they’re doing with restaurants you’ll have a hard time convincing them to return the place to its former glory.
The best they can probably hope for is that someone like you comes along with fond memories of the place buys them out at a discount managers to hire a respectable cook and a decent weight staff and pours money into the place to bring it back to where it was. Assuming it was even operating at a reasonable profit back then…
The most memorable example of this for me was a long time ago. I was newly married and very poor. I was just starting to build my tool collection in the apartment.
I needed a circular saw to repair some craigslist furniture. So I carefully went around to the hardware stores looking at the prices. They were all more than I was willing to spend.
Then in Walmart one day I took a look at what they offered. It was pretty much an exact replica of the top of the line model at 1/4 of the price. The box was a bit dusty and next to another saw with the same name and UPC. It was obviously a newer box of the same item. It was the cheapest looking thing I could imagine. Completely different from the older one. It looked like a great way to lose some fingers and toes.
I grabbed the solid looking one and walked happily out of the store. It’s had a lot of use since then, and it’s still working flawlessly. I am still the proud owner of all my fingers and toes.
Ya I have found some ultra cheap gems from China that were either equivalent or surprisingly, superior in quality for a ridiculously low price. Makes “you get what you pay for” a little more of a blurred line.
Evaluating products based upon quality not being loyal to a brand ca save you a ton of money.
Brand loyalty is taking advantage of the brain being lazy. It doesn’t want to reprocess every little thing. So when something has worked well in the past, people tend to grab the same brand. It takes a lot for people to reconsider their choices again.
Once companies break the brand loyalty due to shit performance, it is extremely difficult to get it back. This is why mismanaged brands that have gone to shit, always attempt to rebrand themselves.
This is the truth.
I will never always trust a brand, there are some brands that have good trust, but I’ve seen too many brands screw people over for money.
I will say currently, Darn Tough Socks, Keen Shoes, EVGA, Milwaukee Tools, if you are in the cinema / live production world Teradek, and Yamaha.
My only complaint about Darn Tough Socks is that they never seem to wear in. I bought a half dozen pairs several years ago, and all of them are like brand new still, which is great, but they are also stiff and tight like I’ve never worn them. I wear them predominately for work, and I’m on my feet all day, so that’s a testament to their staying power, but damn, I wish they would stretch a little.
I use them too, but I guess I never really thought about socks “breaking in,” like shoes would. After 1-2 years of use, they are holding up like new.
Do you have lightweights? I find those to be tighter than midweights, which also seem a bit more plush.
I have the light hikers, so maybe that’s the deal. I’ll look into some mid weight ones.
Alongside darn tough, I love me some bombas.
Darn
Why they gotta swear haha
Darning is a method of mending socks. It is a nerdy pun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darning
Delightful
Oh my d*rn
Watch ur mouth lol
Fuck off
You’re going down 😎
I went through two defective EVGA cards within the original card’s warranty period. On the second card, EVGA tried to deny my warranty.
They eventually made it right, after I shamed them on Reddit.
Nah you can’t trust Keen anymore as of like 7 years ago. They switched to much cheaper shoe materials on their presidio walking shoe that was super popular, but the price didn’t drop at all. At the same time, they started inserting huge globs of rubber in the heel of their hiking shoes so you are forced to use their brand of insert that has a hole to fit said bump.
I’ll be honest, just recently bought new shoes from them haven’t gotten a chance to wear them in yet, the previous pair was pre-covid. But they look and feel exactly like my old pair did when I bought them, so maybe their work line hasn’t suffered yet.
And this is why I’ll never be loyal to a brand, as long as they’re good I’ll keep buying their product, when it’s not good I’ll stop.
I forgot it’s already bee n 5 years since Covid fuck. Keen definitely got worse way before Covid so it was probably 7 years ago. Updated. You honestly might just not know what you’re missing if you’ve only had shoes from them after the change. As I recall, almost every component of the Presidio got cheaper and it went from a nice leather walking shoe with a well padded tongue to just another synthetic sneaker with a thin tongue basically for the same $110
I’ll start my own thread with OXO for their kitchen goods. After a decade of dealing with subpar containers and utensils, I’ve slowly started to rebuild my set with OXO stuff and habe yet to be disappointed by anything of theirs.
Seconded with Knipex hand tools. They’re far pricier than the competition you’ll find on the store shelves, but the quality and engineering is better than anything else you can reasonably find (barring boutique toolmakers).
IIRC OXO measuring cups have raised lettering 1/2c. That’s so clutch, the painted letters seem to come out in the wash.
Le Creuset… but there’s a secret… They’re SUPER expensive.
So you find your local outlet store and sign up for their mailing list. You’ll regularly get 30%, 40%, 50% off deals.
Also thrift stores. The only Le Creuset pan I own cost me $7.
That’s a hell of a thrift store find.
2nd trick, they have an outstanding warranty. Bring it in, they swap it out.
I have an outstanding warrant …is that the same?
Not quite, but I encourage you to visit your warrant provider for more details to prevent loss of service.
There’s plenty of knockoffs brands that seem to be as hardy; might but be worth the premium anymore.
Lodge is also quite good and a fraction of the price.
Cuisinart makes a dutch oven that’s just as good but lighter somehow.
Not everything Le Creuset. They seem to be very similar to other kitchen brands (kitchenaid, Cuisinart, etc) in that they make a few excellent products, but the rest of their line is overpriced stuff that isn’t as good as other brands you could buy. Their Dutch ovens are good, for example, but not their French press so much.
OXO quality has tanked over the last 15 or 20 years since Helen of Troy bought them who source all of their products from Mexico and China using shady subcontractors. They had a lot of innovative designs when they started out, but don’t really invest in that anymore.
Knipex on the other hand is still pretty solid on quality. They’re still family managed and their manufacturing employees are primarily union workers, so they’re able to keep the skilled workers around.
The only OXO product I’ve had issues with is their rotating cheese grater, but it’s so nice to use that I just buy a new one every seven years or so.
My OXO kettle’s handle fell off during regular use, it’s just held on by a tiny clip.
Their conical coffee grinder is as expensive as a bur grinder.
I’ve used my Knipex 5” cobra pliers more than anything else in the toolbox, except maybe a torx set. Solid tools.
They’re great. As a line cook, I used to EDC a pair of the 4" minis in my pocket for taking off burner nozzles for cleaning. By the end of my year there, everyone else I worked with had bought a pair because they were so much better than dealing with the garbage Hart brand pliers the restaurant supplied.
Have you tried their cantilever grips? Thought they’d be a gimmick but I’ve stopped carrying spanners because they’re so good
I have a mini pair of those as well and they’re also great!
A lot of OXO stuff is cheap made in China junk these days.
Why would you trust a brand? The brand that you like wasn’t the same people 20 years ago, and that will change again.
there still are brands that make a good quality product and haven’t tried to scam customers. Leatherman comes to mind.
Hopefully they haven’t gone downhill lately but I’ve always gotten good quality products from Anker and one time they even sent me an “upgraded” set of headphones for free because I complained about the pair I bought having poor sound.
My history with anchor is varied. At one point they produced the finest of everything at the cheapest possible price.
Then for a couple of years they produced a bunch of garbage that would barely get the job done.
I was buying a lot of anchor products for work. About half the power delivery chargers I purchased over a three or four month period burned out at least one of the ports. I have a bunch of battery banks where the USBC port stopped working.
Now they seem to be back on top again, but I don’t just blindly trust them and buy from them anymore I’ll get one or two and test things out before I buy a bunch.
anchor
is tupperware
Yeah, i can second the power strip thing. I have three right now, one is completely dead, the usba/c ports don’t work on another, third one has been flawless so far.
I might look into the newer options, but I’m a bit skeptical now…
anker has a smart home division called Eufy that has some TERRIBLE software that ruins nice hardware like their doorbells
Indeed. I no longer buy Anker as a result.
We had a Eufy baby monitor that was so bad (replaced three times when trying to update firmware, the fourth time it died it was due to a drop) that it has actually made me think less of Anker as a company. If they stick to that being their low quality bargain brand, maybe I’ll consider Anker again, but for now I’m out.
They’ve been my go to for headphones & speakers for a while, but my last few purchases of different models all ended up getting returned due to the same connectivity issues. Sitting at home, the headphones are fine, but when I’m out for a walk, they experience some sort of interference that causes the music to skip/stutter. I still have an old, long discontinued, pair of Anker earbuds, and when I go for the same walk with those, there’s zero connectivity issues.
Regarding online services, Proton.
I love Proton’s mission just like all Lemmy users but I wouldn’t say you can trust them in terms of quality. Apart from Proton Mail and Proton VPN, most of their other products unfortunately have a deep lack of features.
I use Mail, Pass and VPN with no issues.
What lack of quality and features do you refer to?
I’m mainly talking about Drive and Pass. I don’t really remember as it’s been a while since I’ve tested them, but the situation doesn’t seem to have changed. Here’s a good thread for Drive. I remember Pass having problems with auto-fill which made it unusable for me.
I have Proton Unlimited but only use two of their services because of this, it’s pretty frustrating.
Merrell hiking boots.
I’ll second Merrell’s. I’ve worn the shit out of every pair I’ve had and they’ve lasted longer than any other shoe/boot I’ve owned.
Until they replaced gortex with a plastic grocery bag for water proofing. Now it feels like I’m walking in wet dog shit while making a constant crinkly noise.
My keen boots fit me better than Merrill.
I have a pair of Oboz that have held up for quite a while
Yeah. All my shoes are Merrels =)
I was looking in this thread for Brother printers. They are consistently OK, as all other printer brands have gone to shit.
My 15 year old brother color laser printer is still going strong after 78k pages printed. And they still sell replacements parts for it so I can repair it if there is ever a need for it
Arm and Hammer, solid products that aren’t overpriced. I use their laundry soap, deodorant, toothpaste, and previously, the cat litter. Seems they’re focused on doing a few things very well.
Church & Dwight is the conglomerate that owns Arm & Hammer, and they own some other cleaning product brands like OxiClean and OrangeGlo. They also own Trojan condoms and First Response pregnancy tests.
Are you promoting throwing those used condoms in the wash with a little oxy clean?
I know you’re joking, but no don’t do that.
has 21 babies from the same condom
NOW you tell me!
I use oxiclean to help clean gunky beer kegs. It actually works really well to put a scoop in, fill with hot water and let it sit overnight. By morning it’s like a new keg. I then finish sanitizing with StarSan
Man, oxiclean really is a life saver for me. No store brand has really been as good.
I really like Arm and Hammer’s scentless laundry soap and their baking soda/peroxide toothpaste.
I’ve been using both for years and feel no need to change.
Kirkland
Surprisingly good quality for just about everything except dishwashing and dishwasher detergent.
I use Kirkland dishwashing detergent; the new formulation is comparable to Dawn, at about half the price. The older, clear formulation was not quite as nice.
I haven’t tried it in several years. Like you said, the old stuff didn’t meet our expectations. Is it comparable to Dawn, or Dawn Platinum? We’ve found that Platinum stuff to be superior to everything else. Also, how about the dishwasher detergent? Have you tried that stuff recently?
I’m using Costco pods and they are the best I’ve used. I don’t pre rinse, I use it on old dishes. My dishes come out nice and clean. My sister cancelled her membership and now I have to find a new dishwasher pod dealer.
Why don’t you just get a membership? We save tons of money shopping there. The gas alone will save more than the membership fee if you drive a car.
Gas, paper products, salad, honey, cereal, bacon, snacks, even alcohol. It’s just me and my husband and we live pretty frugally. We opened a membership a few years ago and have never once regretted it.
The true answer is a bit embarrassing, but it’s because my husband does our grocery shopping and he is bad with money. He will buy too much stuff because it’s a “good deal” which just ends up costing more overall. I love him so much, and he has so many good qualities, but he’s a real sucker for “deals” and that’s all Costco is.
Darn Tough Socks, made in Vermont USA and guaranteed for life. If you get a hole in one, send it back and they give you a credit to pick any pair you want on their website.
That’s amazing. I’m going to look into this. I suppose they make this work because most customers actually find it inconvenient to send their destroyed socks back or the terms to do so make it difficult.
The socks are $20-27 pair, but they’re the most comfortable sock I’ve worn. I’m switching my whole wardrobe or socks over as I can afford.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’m definitely going to take a look.
Kirkland anything (nearly anyway)
Similarly, nearly everything made by H-E-B / Central Market. Save for maybe one or two things where I’ve been disappointed, I like and even prefer their store brand for many things.
If that’s all it takes for you to boycott, you should avoid everything. A few suffering pigs at one of Costcos suppliers is basically nothing compared to their size. It’s good it’s brought to light. But just like the article says, it’s legal to do what they did, and all they need to do is kill them faster.
It’s only a few pigs but they’re a huge company? This sounds like a rationalization.
Yes.
That is horrifying, what the fuck is wrong with these people? How hard would it be to get nitrogen?
People won’t stop eating dead animals so they don’t give a fuck.
it would be pretty tricky to eat animals alive, though.
Victorinox has never disappointed me. I own a few kitchen knives, their cutlery and an extensive collection of pocket knives. Everything is solid, dependable, arrives sharp and stays sharp. Plus they have good company ethics, as far as those things go. I like their products so much, I frequently give them as gifts.
I second this recommendation. They’re certainly not the best at anything, but they’re a good value for the money and good quality.
Opinel is amazing too for knives. Their pocket knives are cheap, sharp and easy to sharpen and durable.
Brother printers. I have 78k pages printed on my 15 year old color laser printer from them, and it’s still going strong. They still sell OEM toner and even replacement parts for it, although the only part that ever needed to be replaced so far was the drum.
This needs more upvotes. 6k pages from a single cartridge.
A brother laser printer was the best decision of my college career. I only wish I’d have bought it sooner
None. All brands will sell you out of they thought they could while continuing to be profitable after you realized
