What start to really annoy me is how it as become almost impossible to buy quality product anymore. And the issue is not even limited to Amazon.
Recently, at work, we had to make a bunch of RJ45 cables. So we bought some cable, terminals and a crimper and a tester. The crimper was so horrible, we add to cut and re-crimp new terminals 2-4 times before having a working cable. So we said fuck it, lets go buy another one. Turn out, all the shop around us had only cheap ones in store (<30€), we tried a few and had the same issue. To find a crimper that wasn't complete shit, we had to find a specialist store on the internet and it was retailing for more than a hundred euros.
And I keep stumbling upon the same issue when I want to buy tools, electronics and sports equipments: You only have a choice between very cheap stuff that will clearly not do the job or won't do it for long, or very expensive (sometimes overpriced) high-end equipment. There is almost no middle ground, no places for product who are not top notch quality with the latest technology, but will do a solid job if you don't need the latest and greatest. There is the second hand market, but it is a hit a miss, and not a reliable supplier either.
And if there is those "middle-ground" product, you often only find them in limited quantity in specialized store, often only on the internet.
Our economy seems really good at producing cheap garbage that's hardly worth even their low prices, expensive shit that actually works (expensive in part because the cheap garbage eats into its economy of scale by taking market share), and, for some product categories, super expensive shit that exists for the sake of being expensive (as in, conspicuous consumption).
Absent is any ground between cheap garbage and expensive shit that actually works. Some products are in that middle-ground price range, but they're actually cheap garbage that's been marked up to rip you off.
This seems to have increased over time, especially as factories became better able to produce goods that use barely enough material to work at all, without a too-high defect rate. I wonder sometimes how much inflation this is masking—goods stay the same price or even get somewhat cheaper, but are significantly worse than before.
> I wonder sometimes how much inflation this is masking
I've wondered this too. So many electronics or appliances from the 1970s are still working (I own some). Good luck finding that quality today. In effect, companies were smart enough to realize they don't have to bring costs down, they can just screw you on longevity and you'll have to come crawling back in a year or two. In effect, things are "cheaper" on the surface but more expensive over time. Not to mention the effect this has on landfills and pollution. It takes just as much gas to ship a 1970s stove as a 2020 one, but the 1970s one is still working and the 2020 one is replaced in three years.
IMO, this is driven by the middle class learning to optimize their spending. No more spending middle prices on mid-tier products when you can buy cheap garbage for things you don't care about in order to save up for the top shelf on the things you do. Suddenly, mid-price mid-quality items are unavailable at any price.
That's interesting, I've been renovating my home for the past two years and have had the exact opposite experience: I've been quite happy with my cheap pipe bender, cheap angle grinder, cheap hex crimper, cheap multipipe pliers as well as store brand consumables like hybrid glue, tape, drill bits and whatnot. For electrical work I do buy Knipex most of the time and for tools that get used heavily it's usually Bosch, plus I'm never going near cheap paint again, so I do see the advantage of trustworthy brands, but it's nice to know that for things that'll only see occasional use, you can get something okay-ish for a great price. Or for something completely different, I used to dabble in brewing, and all of the small commercial brewers I know are really happy with their bottom price Chinese fermentation tanks.
For some time now, for buying home improvement tools, I have followed the heuristic “buy the cheap one, then once it breaks, buy the expensive high-quality one.” I find that this helps make sure I don’t waste money on something I will only use once or twice.
There is likely a difference depending on the tool. My track saw is going to be Makita or similar, but my abrasive cutoff saw can be a Harbor Freight special.
I do the exact same thing (buy the cheaper versions most of the time).
My dad was in the trades and he bought "good stuff" for his actual trade, but also bought 'affordable' stuff he needed around the house.
The idea is that if you are using a tool every day, and they break on the job it is time, money, embarrassment. How do you tell a customer the cheap saw just broke and you need to get a new one?
The "pro" stuff costs a LOT more, it will outlast if used on a regular basis, but most home owners will not reach those limits.
Tools/electronics can easily be bought from reputable providers: eu.mouser.com,
tme.eu, uk.farnell.com, digikey.com, etc.. You can get a decent ratchet rj-45 crimp tool at around 40€ - like "Knipex 975110".
I suspect "middle ground" had a race to the bottom on price. I'm thinking for example of Sears "Craftsman" brand. Now that there are all these other big-box stores like Blowe's, Home Despot, they each have to have their own "house brand" that should have been the "middle ground" as well but, as I see it, have moved to lower and lower priced Chinese products.
I think what we're seeing is a nice metaphor for manufacturing in the 1st world in general.
Given the infamous bathtub curve and my personal desire to fix and maintain my tools, getting a cheaper one might be proper annoying. Saying that off-shore T15 soldering irons were a top notch quality often times.
However, for certain types of tools/devices - e.g. multimeter, SMPS (even wall charges) I'd not touch totally no brand. An example of middle ground multimeters: brymen - they are more expensive than UNI-T, better than Fluke price/feature wise and very solidly built. SMPS - meanwell: proper capacitors, creep distance, real copper transformers. Hand tools - (screwdrivers, spanners) - Wera.
It gets harder with heavier duty tools that have to do the metal (like really) - that leaves prosumer+ stuff only - Makita, DeWalt - or straight to the pro: Hilti, Fein.
No one seems to care about quality. It's all about price. In the "Cheap, fast, quality triangle - pick 2" society has moved hard towards cheap, fast. Companies don't even want to cater to anything else.
Perhaps that’s because quality is hard to measure in terms of numbers.
What gets measured gets optimized. And price is the easiest to measure.
Everything else is murky to measure, and often delayed as well (like how long a tool lasts, or what that food will do to your health, or what the company will do with your data once you’ve used their app for a year or two).
And on Amazon, what gets measured is impressions and ratings. Hence, as a seller, you get wiped out of you do not invest time and money into gaming the ratings. Honesty and quality not only does not pay, it also gets proactively penalized.
The “evil” here truly is Amazon, for they, in their walled garden, really do control what gets measured. They could prevent or penalize fake reviews. But they chose not to do so.
Actually, I wonder if Amazon could be sued by the FTC precisely because of this behavior. They are profiting from false advertising, namely false testimonials. If you did this on your own web shop, you’d certainly get sued.
You should try one of these P-38 can openers they use in the army [1]. A bit challenging to get the hang of, but they'll last the rest of your life and inexpensive to boot.
I noticed this too. I searched for a couple of xiaomi products on amazon but all it threw up were dubious knock offs.
Bizarrely if you search by price from highest to lowest looking for quality all you get is cheap looking products with no reviews that cost 150x the price of products with actual reviews for no discernible reason.
You need to use professional tools to get a professional result when precision counts. My last coax prep tool cost over a hundred bucks. It works only with one type of coax. Yet every time with professional tools the cable comes out perfect with as much waterproofing as one can get.
The Amazon bullshit tools I bought just made a mess.
Now, all the cheap Amazon wrenches and stuff? I leave em all over!
Check out Raptor Supplies. In general, look at B2B MRO distribution-scope suppliers. Be prepared to pay commensurately, or go low-tier and apply the heuristic already mentioned in this discussion: first time around, buy low-tier; when it breaks in an unfixable way, go B2B tier.
I personally go straight to B2B for anything safety-related like my PPE.
And I keep stumbling upon the same issue when I want to buy tools, electronics and sports equipments: You only have a choice between very cheap stuff that will clearly not do the job or won't do it for long, or very expensive (sometimes overpriced) high-end equipment. There is almost no middle ground, no places for product who are not top notch quality with the latest technology, but will do a solid job if you don't need the latest and greatest. There is the second hand market, but it is a hit a miss, and not a reliable supplier either.
And if there is those "middle-ground" product, you often only find them in limited quantity in specialized store, often only on the internet.