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Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality – Worse on Purpose

113 points by bilsbie

by comrade1234

6 subcomments

I read years ago about a drill which was sold at Walmart with the same sku as in higher-end stores but the Walmart version had plastic gears. This was due to pricing pressure by Walmart on the manufacturer.
Me, personally, I seek out first Swiss brands then German brands when buying most things. I'm willing to pay extra.
In fact I'm a little pissed off this week because I ordered some oxygen absorbers off a Swiss website that listed a Swiss address but they were shipped directly from china. Investigating the site more closely, yeah, it's just a fake website made to look Swiss.

by 1970-01-01

2 subcomments

One massive unmentioned counterexample: High quality Chinese tools continue to proliferate and sucker-punch these brands for being so egregious with quality. They are now the high quality standard if you know what brands to look for, and not because their competition got worse as mentioned here, they are simply iterating and improving and making better tools and designs than they did 10 years ago. Sometimes you are getting the exact same tool as the name-brand but with less warranty for a fraction of the price. "Corporate Greed" is self-correcting in a free and fair market! Vote with your wallet.
Example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/harborfreight/comments/1v1ujxe/hmmm...
Which directly contradicts the blog's post about Knipex never selling-out on quality:
https://www.worseonpurpose.com/p/your-power-tools-got-worse-...
>Knipex is family-owned out of Germany. They make what many consider the best pliers on the planet. Part of a larger group (Knipex Group) but not publicly traded, not for sale.

by xnx

6 subcomments

This entire site can be boiled down to: products get decrease in quality when customers don't know or don't care what quality is.
Price is a clear and obvious thing to measure, quality is much more difficult. Consumers get little or no formal education in quality, and advertisements (and even review sites!) almost never address it properly. Any review site that is paid for by ads or affiliate links has the default position of trying to get you to buy something.

by theturtletalks

2 subcomments

I call this the cycle of disruption.
A company makes a really good product as first challenging incumbents. They get so big, they eventually become the incumbent. All this time, they’re probably losing money on the product or breaking even. Eventually, investors will want returns on their investment. This will first happen with prices increases to save the quality of the product. Once they can’t raise prices anymore, the quality will be decreased. By this point, the brand is strong enough to get sales even on this worse product.
Then another company will come in and make the same product but better than the incumbent. The cycle continues.
My point is find these new companies that are trying to get market share by making a higher quality product. And if you really like that product, buy 2.

by groundzeros2015

1 subcomments

“corporate greed” is a signal to me of low quality commentary. The opening premise of Econ is that consumers want all the goods for free and producers want to give nothing in exchange for as much money as they can.

by inigyou

5 subcomments

I've come to the conclusion this proliferates because it's very hard to start a business. If there was tons of competition the market would decide.

by NoboruWataya

1 subcomments

Interesting (and very helpful!) that they keep a list of good brands. I wonder how they judge that - do they just look at ownership?

by gorgoiler

0 subcomment

Incredibly depressing, but a good and important thing to read!
Not to sound overly cheerful, but shout out to my Makita DHP484 combo drill/driver and 100 piece bit set that, for a low three figure price, is far more powerful and capable than the noisy old corded monster it replaces.

by Rygian

1 subcomments

Related: "A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Upf_B9RLQ

by asimpletune

0 subcomment

What if there was a way to tax things that encouraged people to buy things that would last longer and then let the market correct?
Basically, we've done our experiment of hyper-disposable consumerism. It was great and the world has gotten richer. But not it seems like we should parlay that benefit into transitioning into a new era of quality.

by Ker102

1 subcomments

Thats why competition is so important in the market

by voxleone

0 subcomment

I remember the emphasis on quality - and on safety and security - in the 1990s. A substantial part of company life revolved around Quality Circles, quality meetings, quality inspectors, and the 5S methodology. A ton of money invested in the pursuit of compliance with ISO 9000 standards. It's disconcerting to see how little of that mentality has survived, and it leaves me with a certain personal feeling of defeat.
But one has to recognize that the weakening of regulatory enforcement, reduced labor bargaining power, increased pressure for quarterly earnings, and less aggressive antitrust enforcement - all developments I associate with the broader neoliberal shift and the retreat of social democracy - have greatly contributed to what we now call the enshittification of products and services. My use of the term extends beyond Doctorow's original definition.

by skeater15

12 subcomments

I find it odd how corporate greed is always the focal point. But its never consumer greed. The consumer is the one who dictate's a market. So cheap, low quality products are the direct result of consumers paying for a less expensive product. The consumer has proven it doesn't care about quality. So as much as corporations are greedy so are consumers.

by fallinghawks

0 subcomment

About 4-5 years ago I bought a Bosch 500 dishwasher. Loved it. Excellent performance. The top silverware rack could be adjusted to fit slightly larger items. There was a very basic clock display to tell you how long the cycle would take. And of course you could delay start by whatever number of hours.
Well, last year I moved, and as it happens, the dishwasher failed and I leapt on the chance to replace it with another Bosch 500. The salesman showed me a new addition to the model (an alleged potscrubber) but didn't tell me what they had taken away.
I should have looked more closely. I assumed I was getting largely the same dishwasher. After purchase I discovered that all those things I listed in the first paragraph were gone. Rack is no longer adjustable. The clock has been replaced with a trio of LEDs indicating >2 hours, 1-2 hrs, and <1 hour. And you cannot delay start at all from the control panel. You have to download their app of course, get a sign in of course, and then you can delay start from the app.
It's absolutely trashy of Bosch to take features away while raising the price several hundred dollars.

by trollbridge

0 subcomment

It is really disappointing how this site’s text appears to be mostly AI generated (60% or so on Pangram).
I guess you could say this site is… worse on purpose.

by ChrisArchitect

1 subcomments

Related discussions on articles from this site:
Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48147665
Brands got worse on purpose
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47849221
Backpacks got worse on purpose
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777209

by pwillia7

0 subcomment

You should do clothing brands like PVH brands (CK, Hilfiger, VS, and more) where they have a high end line and use it to build a brand and then sell a totally different cheap line of terrible goods with the same name on it in different stores. Luxury consolidation with LVMH and the enshittification there would be a good one too

by Schlagbohrer

5 subcomments

"Worse on purpose" is just "Minimum viable product"

by wannabe44

0 subcomment

Slop on purpose

0 subcomment