Was premium quality an illusion?

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by pmmunro

Look for companies whose principle directors have the title "Dr. Ing" or similar, in other countries. e.g Robert Bosch

Unfortunately, Bosch domestic appliances (manufacturer BSH Hausgeraete) are at best hit and miss in the quality department and have been for at least the last 15 years. For example their dishwashers from certain production years are prone to catch fire. Their preventive fix for that is flimsy at best and they won't work on appliances that have already begun to fail (you have to pay). Their refrigerators use cheap steel tubing, which will rust in an inaccessible place causing the refrigerant to leak out.

Might not be planned obsolescence, but more likely stupid cost cutting not unlike the Lopez effect that plagued Opel and VW a few years earlier.

[russell_w_b]

Originally Posted by Maarten

Might not be planned obsolescence, but more likely stupid cost cutting not unlike the Lopez effect

This will always happen in the capitalist society to which we are all accustomed as long as there are shareholders to appease and cats to fatten.

When Russia was the Soviet Union and Germany was split into West and GDR, the consumer equipment on 'that side' was less sophisticated than its western equivalent, but was of way better quality for the price. The forty quid that bought my GDR Carl Zeiss Jena binoculars woulod not have bought anything as well made from the West. My Praktica MTL3 had a shutter you couldn't sneak up on anyone with, but by crikey, was it solid and well built! And way cheaper than an Olympus or Canon.

My dad's 'Sekonda' wristwatch was beautifully made: production subsidised, I believe, by the Communist machine. My 1970s Vega Selena radio with clunky turret-tuner was of better quality for the price than sets made in the West.

[unitaudio]

Hi Maarten. I agree with regard to Bosch appliances. I inherited my parent's Bosch washing machine. It's 19 years old now and has never missed a beat. They paid £600 for it new at a time when they could've bought another make from about £250 upwards. They made a point of paying a premium so the item would last and it seems in this case they did the right thing.

However, this approach is now no better than a second guess. A few years later, because of the trouble-free nature of the washing machine they bought a Bosch dish washer. Within 2 years I was sticking the door back together with epoxy, an exercise I had to repeat every year or so until it terminally cooked it's control board at about 4 years old. It was as if it was made by a different manufacturer in terms of quality and longevity. This situation has progressed to the point where you simply can't take anything for granted any more.

Regards,
Paul

[Radio Wrangler]

The names have been devalued into nothingness

The only response is for consumers to look at the product and not at the name.

David

[hans]

Planned obsolesence: We have some Apple products: Ipads and Iphones. The olde ones are now more or less useless. The big selling point of these are the apps. Now most apps won't run on the old ones. Except for battery performance they are still good.

Another thing that drives me crazy is the varity of cables. On the new computers at work we got "display port" connectors. This means that the old monitors have to be relaced too as I can't find any converters. Luckily some Equipment still has the analogue DE15 connectors. I heard that a New USB should replace "all" computer cables...

[hans]

Originally Posted by Maarten

Unfortunately, Bosch domestic appliances (manufacturer BSH Hausgeraete) are at best hit and miss in the quality department and have been for at least the last 15 years.

The Bosch (BSH) products aren't bad, but many components are also found in other manufacturers equipment. I have had problems with the electronic going up in smoke in many of their machines. When it does the electronic Board is usually too damaged to repair. The cost of a new board is way to high to even consider buying it. £150-200 will give you a bew budget washing machine/dishwasher. Spending this much on a 5+ year appliance is out of the question.

[Phil G4SPZ]

Originally Posted by McMurdo

We expect cheap goods to fail because... they're cheap.

Exactly. When you compare the cost of most modern equipment to average wages, we actually get real bargains nowadays compared with a few decades ago.

I think the consensus I'm drawing from this very interesting thread is that premium quality may still exist, but it's almost impossible for the average buyer to identify or predict, and has almost nothing to do with brand or price.

I find myself slowly but inexorably succumbing to this way of thinking. If something outlasts the warranty, I think I'm lucky. My daughter still uses my old iPhone and it's still working well at four years old, which I think is good.

On the positive side, we've all got many examples of radios, TVs etc that, with care, have outlasted the manufacturers' wildest estimates of longevity, so we can cock a snook at planned obsolescence and be pleased that we've enjoyed good value!

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by Phil G4SPZ

I think the consensus I'm drawing from this very interesting thread is that premium quality may still exist, but it's almost impossible for the average buyer to identify or predict, and has almost nothing to do with brand or price.

I'll have to differ there, then, as such quality doesn't happen by accident, isn't cheap to produce and hence is rarely sold at all cheaply: I'm sure there are innumerable opportunities to pay premium prices for essentially ordinary items, deceived perhaps by a once noteworthy brand, but only exceptionally might there be a chance to buy something of particularly high quality at a bargain rate.

Miele's laundry appliances, for instance, as far as I know are still designed, tested and manufactured with a 20 year life in mind, in all particulars down to sourcing white cosmetic parts as little as possible prone to yellowing with age so as to reduce the likelihood of an old appliance becoming undesirable on grounds of appearance alone. Nine years ago when we bought ours, which hasn't skipped a beat yet, the cheapest Miele washing machines retailed at around £500, which would have bought the most fully featured machine in most other ranges. In terms of quality and reliability practically every verdict I could find at the time concurred that the £500 Miele was more or less on a par with their £1200 machines, while most other manufacturers' £500 offerings were at least as likely to fail after a couple of years as their basic £200-£250 models.

The Miele situation reminds me of Hacker on the '60s, when in terms of build quality there was nothing to choose between a Mini-Herald and a Sovereign: all the difference was in facilities and performance. I can't dispute, though, that it must be very hard to keep tabs on the likely quality of today's consumer audio-visual products, given the worldwide production facilities of various of the major companies involved and the widespread use of unacknowledged outsourcing. Maybe the Panasonic name is still worth something outside some bought-in entry level products?

Paul

[wireful3]

An interesting comment Paul, about bought-in items. I suspect that even with accountants having a big input, some organisations put more care and skill into selection of suppliers to get value for money, rather than just the lowest price. In this case they may well produce a premium product. The difficulty is that the premium brands may not be obvious from the price.

[Phil G4SPZ]

On a side note, don't be too quick to blame accountants. There's a breed of 'supplies professionals' whose ethos is "where there's a cost, there's a saving" and in my experience, these people wield considerable authority. The term "value engineering" was probably coined by a Supplies Officer.

[Station X]

Originally Posted by Paul_RK

Miele's laundry appliances, for instance, as far as I know are still designed, tested and manufactured with a 20 year life in mind, Paul

These machines may be designed for a 20 year life, in fact I bought one on the basis that it would outlast me, but they still go faulty.

After less than two years my machine began to shut down during the drying cycle and showed an error code on the display. I googled the error code and it said something like "drying cycle not completed" which I knew anyway.

The call out charge for these machines is high, so I took the top off and found that the bearings of the blower motor had seized. Fortunately I managed to free them off by rotating the fan manually and all was well. The error code was actually generated by a sensor detecting that the condensing chamber had over heated.

I suspect the bearings had seized due to lack of use, as the drying function is rarely used.

Given that the machine is software controlled it wouldn't have been too difficult for the manufacturers to program in a routine to run the motor now and again for a couple of minutes. Rather like running a central heating pump during the summer. Or they could have used better bearings or lubricant.

[HamishBoxer]

Am I wrong in thinking the Miele washing machine has a ten year warranty?

[Station X]

It's two years now, but a year when I purchased the machine.

[emeritus]

My first work PC (a Gateway) had a 3 year warranty. The PSU exploded spectacularly at 3 years, 2 weeks! I bought a Gateway myself at the time, as the company had a deal with them, and it is still going strong some 15 years later, apart from the monitor, which died 10 years ago and was replaced by a redundant Dell CRT monitor from work.

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by HamishBoxer

Am I wrong in thinking the Miele washing machine has a ten year warranty?

It's often extended for free to five or sometimes ten years in retailers' offers (John Lewis etc.) I'm sure failures do come along after seven or ten or twelve years - or, with extreme bad luck, in under two! - and, yes, the cost of service in that instance may put some off buying the machines, but nobody seems disposed to doubt the quality of manufacture. In the nature of things there'll be an occasional batch of lemons, as there certainly was with Hacker by way of point earthing failures and suchlike.

[Station X]

It's certainly possible to buy a 10 year extended warranty. I wasn't aware that retailers offered this for free.

I don't buy extended warranties, as when you have several appliances, the cost of all the warranties is likely to exceed the cost of any repairs.

[Paul_RK]

Quite agree, I've never bought one myself. I didn't get a five year or longer warranty on our Miele, but I've heard of them frequently since: and sure enough John Lewis is extending warranties currently to five years on several models and to ten years on one, http://www.johnlewis.com/miele-wda21...white/p1489370 .

[Okto1984]

I do think certain brands (Marantz, B&O, Lenovo, Philips) are better quality and have always lasted a long time for me. However, premium brands tend to have more features, which potentially means more parts that may fail. There must be some trade off here, but it's probably not too bad as my stuff seems to last well enough.

As for Praktica, I believe it turned out Pentacon were being heavily propped up by the government and were not making any profits at the time of reunification, so it's difficult to say what they really cost per item.

[HamishBoxer]

Tell me Pioneer Hi Fi is good as I bought mine in 1982 and still works very well only thing I have ever done is resolder the o/put transistors.

Re Praktica,I have just bought a car camera and it says established 1949.

PS I got a 5 year warranty with our Samsung washer free.

[emeritus]

AFAIR, in the 1960's, the Russians bought a complete Swiss watch factory and shipped it back to Russia, this being used for making the original mechanical Sekonda watches. When I bought a Battery Sekonda watch about 30 years ago, the case was made in Hong Kong and the mechanism was made somewhere in the far east too. Mind you, I later bought a Swiss watch (Rotary I think), marked "Swiss Made" on the face, and while the movement was Swiss, when I took the back off to replace the battery, the case lid was stamped "Made in Hong Kong". No problems with performance of either.