I don't in any way mean to be rude about the ability of Chinese factories to produce high quality products and indeed the computers and phones that I use and love are all manufactured in China despite the brand being associated with the USA. There is however no doubt that Chinese factories are also churning out vast quantities of cheap but poor quality products that are either defective on arrival or fail after being in use for a short period of time. The obvious question is, why do we keep buying them and why do we seldom send them back? I will provide you with a few recent examples in the Jones household and present my thoughts as to why we are so tolerant when items are really not fit for purpose or as we used to say 'not of merchantable quality'.
Mrs Jones was doing the weekly shop at Lidl and the centre aisle is always full of interesting and incredibly cheap tools that I am tempted to buy whether I need them or not. She called me because after eight years of use and abuse, my Black and Decker Workmate had broken, my even older Bosch cordless screwdriver was making horrible noises and Lidl had a special offer on replacements under the Parkside brand. The prices were about one third of what I would expect to pay for similar items, so she bought them for me. Despite the English name I expected them to be manufactured in China because nearly everything is and I expected the quality to be inferior to the items I was replacing due to the price but I did not expect them to fail within a week. The cordless screwdriver could only manage a few screws before needing about six hours to recharge its battery via a USB lead and then something snapped inside, the Workmate equivalent took me six hours and a lot of swearing to assemble and a few weeks later the winding mechanism has broken so I basically have a rather rickety non adjustable table with one foot missing.
If I had bought a Black and Decker and Bosch and they had failed within their guarantee period, I would have been straight back to the shop demanding a replacement but instead the screwdriver is in the bin and I now use a wobbly non adjustable workbench because the value of the item is too low and the hassle factor of returning them so high that like most people, I cannot be bothered. This means the factory will keep churning out the same rubbish and millions of others like me will buy them, break them and put them in the bin without a whimper. I was aware of single use clothes, i.e. e.g. a blouse so cheap that it gets worn once and then binned but not single use tools.
The next example was not bought by me as it was a Christmas present for Master Jones from a relative. To be honest I had seen this Lego lookalike kit and thought about buying it so was very happy when one was unwrapped on Christmas morning. Please see exhibit A below.
You may think that the boat does not look too bad but you may also ask where are the other five models including the helicopter. The tub is supposed to contain 1160 pieces that are fun to build but in reality the tub was full of generic poor quality, vaguely Lego compatible blocks in cellophane bags, many with the same identification number on them. That does not really matter because the instructions do not provide any clue as to which bag the required bits are located in. This was disappointing and there is no way a six year old could follow the instructions so I started building it myself on Christmas day. It is immensely complicated, many of the pieces are missing and I spent hours sorting through over 1000 pieces to try and find them. It is obvious that a computer (AI?) designed this when provided with a list of parts contained in these generic bags of bits. 'Dear AI this is a list of the bits we have, design me a warship and 5 other models'. It was absolute rubbish and after fourteen evenings spent on this, there were not even enough parts to complete the ship. I started to build the helicopter but soon realised that the parts detailed in the instructions were not within the tub. The boat also falls to pieces when Master Jones tries to play with it. fourteen evenings of swearing and not much to show for it. Like most cheap rubbish it is from a company in GuangDong. The same kit is on sale from Amazon and straight from China via Temu. Is it anywhere near as good as Lego in any respect, well the answer has to be no but of course it is cheap.
I admit to being grumpy but what triggered me to produce this rant and provide a small sample of the not fit for purpose items that I have bought? Well I treated myself to an Iphone Pro Max but balked at the cost of an Apple original protective cover so I carefully selected one from Amazon. Exhibit B below.
I was quite impressed by the quality of the product and it came from a company in the UK but after trying and failing to assemble it, I have decided that it probably originated in that font of all rubbish i.e. Guangdong. The two halves are lovely but sadly they will remain as two halves because they are of slightly different sizes and it is impossible to fit them together. I can't say that I am really disappointed because I half expected there to be a problem and it just means that I will now buy an Apple original and it will have cost me even more. Mrs Jones will send it back to Amazon but the hassle involved in getting a refund will be considerable. I am sure that I am not alone in repeating the same folly time and time again thus supporting the junk manufacturers of Guangdong.
The answer of course is to pay considerably more for a respectable brand but in these difficult times the temptation for a bargain remains, and the next time I am in Lidl I will no doubt be visiting that central aisle again.
You may find the comparison between the purchase of cheap tools and toys with the culinary purchase of a particular vegetable strange but here goes. We frequently purchase courgettes because they look tasty and there must be loads of healthy recipes on the internet. We have never found out, because they lie in the bottom of the fridge until they go a bit squelchy and end up on the compost heap. In the Jones house they truly are a straight to compost vegetable, whereas my purchases are straight to bin. Mrs Jones has suggested that we should grow courgettes in one of our raised beds so I suggested the one nearest the compost heap for ease of disposal. Why bring them into the house when you can cut out the middle man and dispose of them straight from the plant. Mr Jones may have received a slap for that suggestion.
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