Good examples of junk products that fail in less than 180 days:
Belkin (cigarette lighter plug-in) cell phone chargers
SONY microcassette tape-recorders
any compact flourescent light bulb
digital cameras, electronics equipment, etc
SIMPLY:
1. Buy the SAME product at any store.
2. Take advantage of the store's return policy! Wait two weeks; then
put the failed product in the new product's packaging and return it to
the store with the new product's sales receipt. Get your money back!
The more people who do this- the sooner these sloppy manufacturers
will make a quality product and give a reasonable warranty! That even
goes for the cheap Chinese items at the Dollar Store.
While I suppose that would work, it strikes me as slightly dishonest, and
even worse, it seems that you'd end up putting yourself on an endless
treadmill. A better solution would be to buy decent products in the first
place - even if the initial cost is somewhat higher, the life cycle cost
would be less.
I have never had a problem returning a defective product. While I
like local stores the chains are often better because the person
processing the return has no financial stake in the matter.
A few weeks ago I purchased an HP printer at Office Max. It made
great copies but I could not print anything from my computer. Tech
support had me going around in circles repeating the same things over
and over (uninstall CD,reboot computer,unplug/plug in cable). They guy
finally admitted that this printer had what he called "interface issues"
with about 10 percent of the PCs it was used with and then insisted I
retry those steps. I thanked him and hung up. The next day the store
took it back no questions asked,they did not even ask why.
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Thanks for the suggestion, but get real!
The items are almost always NOT cheap and the only item of its kind in
the store!
If you really think buyers have a choice and you want to CONTRIBUTE to
the subject-tell us where we can buy the quality AMERICAN MADE product
with a good warranty.
In theory that's sort of true. However if you didn't care for the
product that fails you still have it; the title should have been
changed to "how to do a return a failed product past the warranty
time". You're still out the money you paid.
Along those lines I always enjoyed the hard drive failure (3 year
warranty) that happened just shortly before that 3 years was up since
the company would no longer have that 20GB HD, you get a considerably
bigger one to replace it.
I didn't say anything about American made vs foreign products, I said buy
better quality products. I don't buy much in the way of the items on the
example list, but my digital camera is several years old and working same as
always, my computer older yet and still going strong, ditto for small
household appliances like microwave, food chopper, etc. I shop for price,
like everyone else, but price isn't just the initial cost, and I don't see
any point in buying something so flimsily made that it won't last 6 months.
Some things, like a cigarette lighter plug-in cell phone charger, seem
pointless to me regardless of cost or quality on a couple of counts - I can
charge my phone at home every day if I need to, and my car doesn't have a
cigarette lighter.
And if it wont fail when required, it isnt hard to kill it undetectably.
a couple of years ago a well placed japanese engineer in japan, told me that
manufacturers in japan were studying how to get products to fail early,
especially after the guarantee expires.
It isnt even possible.
Really.........?
>> It isnt even possible.
> Really.........?
Yep, really.
deliberately indented filaments in incandescent light bulbs?
Cant make it fail just outside the warranty, because the failure time depends on the number of on cycles, not the
calenda time.
That's called "Engineered Obsolescence" and it's not a new thing. It's
just damned hard to gauge.
We experienced that phenomenon a while back when XBox stopped making
new games for the original platform - so off we went to go buy the
newer model! Otherwise, no new games!
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dark.angel