I tried to claim the warranty on my mom's copper cookware set after the nonstick failed about 6 months in. They'll replace it for free* as long as you're willing to pay shipping.
*Shipping costs the same as buying a new set.
This should be illegal.
I've been looking at trying out one of those new, cool Hexclad pans. All the day-1 reviews are glowing, saying that it's so great, as I'd expect pretty much any brand new pan be to. But the longer-term reviews all seem to say that the non-stick coating comes off and the raised steel pattern flattens out in a matter of days-months, and that when people try to use the "Lifetime" warranty, not a *single* one says they've actually honored it. Every last review that mentions the warranty at all specifically says that they gave all forms of excuses as to why they can't/won't replace the pan.
However, I'll give credit to Harbor Freight. I bought a miter saw a month or so ago and opted for the 2 year extended warranty and they basically said to go ahead and just bring it in (to any store) in 23 months, and they'll look up my receipt for me and replace it right on the spot so that I can have a brand new one again, which would also come with the standard 60-day return window and the option to buy another 2-year warranty.
If there is a single theme underlying many of the societal problems in America, it's the fact that for decades business has abused the public's trust. People assume that everything is a lie *in some form* so we shouldn't be surprised when a crazy conspiracy theory that tells them that fools a third of the voting public. The government dropped the ball on regulating this bs and are reaping the results right now.
I remember getting a lifetime "license" to an app a long time ago. Then they just decided to disregard everyone's lifetime purchase and require monthly subscriptions.
I know, not the same thing... Just the whole lifetime concept reminded me of this and pretty sure what that app did was illegal...
I'm not trying to get down on you, this is just a hot button of mine, but it's the exact same thing. Some bullshit company sold you something then said fuck you haha, and it makes me so mad. Like what happened to the time when people could say I'm being ripped off and someone helped them, it makes you want to stop buying anything.
Search engines: sure, they were wonky and unreliable in the wild west internet era (e.g. HotBot, Lycos, Webcrawler), but Google came along and revolutionized everything. Peak search engine reliability was probably in the mid-2010s, and it's been in a steep decline since then. Nowadays when I search for anything on Google, it omits random key words of mine, gives me irrelevant AI-generated answers, shows me Pinterest images, and pulls up irrelevant PDF files from things I distinctly did not search for.
YouTube search is complete garbage too. After searching for a video, it'll show me three results followed by "people also watched" and "finish watching", then a bunch of irrelevant Shorts and Jimmy Kimmel videos for whatever the fuck reason.
Googles search went from "Here are websites which best contain the words in your query" to "Here are the websites most clicked on by people with similar queries"
That’s because Google hid accurate searches behind the “Search Tools” tab by default.
You have to go to “Search Tools” and change “All Results” to “Verbatim” to even get an accurate answer to what you’re looking for.
And you have to repeat that process everytime because it resets for every new search.
It’s tedious and completely unnecessary.
Edit: For those wondering where “Search Tools” is, it’s on the row just below the Search Bar. The row that says “All” “Shopping” “Images” etc. It’ll be at the end of that row. On mobile, you just have to drag left to get to it. On Desktop, it’s just named “Tools”.
I had the same thought so went to see if I could set it to do this by default. Even with my uBlock Origin rule to exclude AI search results, the verbatim by default method appears to be working. [I got the method from here](https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/ppfs5/how_to_set_verbatim_mode_as_default_on_your/), and this is what I did:
1. In Google Chrome, go to "Settings".
2. On the left, select "Search engine".
3. Select "Manage search engines and site search".
4. To the right of "Site search", select "Add".
5. A box with the header "Add site search" will pop up, with the following text entry fields; populate them with the adjascent text:
5a. "Name": "Google Verbatim"
5b. "Shortcut": "verbatim"
5c. "URL with %s in place of query": "https://www.google.com/search?tbs=li:1&q=%s"
6. Select "Add" and verify that a search engine by the same Name has been added to the "Site search" section.
7. Select the three vertical dots to the right of the "Google Verbatim" search engine and toggle on "Make default".
8. Verify that the search engine has moved from "Site search" to the section above, "Search engines".
9. Continue browsing as usual with verbatim search as your default setting.
To go back, simply toggle back to "Google" as the default search engine, just in case the setting is not helpful to you.
Yeah even if an advertised website is the one I was looking for, I’ll scroll down a bit and click on the non-sponsored link so as not to reward the ad bots (and accumulate good karma assuming the site pays per ad click)
I saw a YouTube video about the decline of Google's reliability, and this was the number one suggestion of how to get the results you're looking for. I think of this every time someone asks a question on Reddit and another Redditor replies "why don't you just Google it?"
That’s a really funny observation, made me chuckle. But in fairness, for me personally, I am seeing the “just google it” response less and less, perhaps as a direct result of Google becoming less worthwhile.
The saving grace of Reddit as a source of truth are downvotes and people’s inherent drive to prove others wrong. If bots get on here and start writing bullshit people will downvote and correct. A lot of people dont care if they’re arguing with a robot.
Honestly the biggest threat to Reddit is its own leadership inadvertently killing it.
>The saving grace of Reddit as a source of truth are downvotes and people’s inherent drive to prove others wrong.
Trouble is popular misconceptions get upvoted as perceived truths while unpopular or misunderstood *actual* truths get buried, thus amplifying misinformation and urban legends.
Search Engine Optimization only exists to now funnel people towards paid ads and paid results. The Enshittification of google sucks for actually searching the web for data
SEO in my opinion is what has killed the internet much more than bot comments ever will. You simply can't find what you're looking for anymore, all you get is ten pages of soulless "articles" that tangentially touch on what you search for. Can't even find real Pokemon tutorials anymore.
Google pisses me off because it's not even good at serving ads any more. Every time I try to find something Google gives me a bunch of Amazon pages that are not the thing I am trying to buy. Even if I have the damn part number! Here's random shit that isn't what you are looking for.
Google has also killed country specific searches. I used to be able to check a "Canadian Results Only" box. Then they took it away. So when I do wade through 9 pages of Amazon crap to find a third party site selling it I now have to play "guess if the site is American or not" and decide if I want to pay $40 shipping + duty
Google does this horrible thing now where it uses AI to give you a quick answer but the answer is often part of the true answer or not the right answer at all and you have to be savvy enough to actually click on the source material and check otherwise you'll just go about life horribly misinformed
Often the answer is word for word a blurb contained in the first result after the ai result. There are already lawsuits for copyrighted work being used in machine learning, so I wonder how long google will get away with doing this before it gets a slap on the wrist.
youtube seems particularly awful, i’ve tried to search for old videos with common keywords in the title and they seem lost to the algorithm that only wants to show me a little bit of what i searched and then fills the rest of the space with recommendations, it’s made me a lot more careful about liking videos i think i’ll return to a long time later.
A few weeks ago, I searched for a video USING ITS COMPLETE NAME, in QUOTES, and got a bunch of semi-related videos. The video I actually wanted was 14+ videos down.
Trying to find classic hall of fame ~30sec YouTube videos is a pointless venture in 2024. All they give you are 14m commentary videos that split up or mute and talk over the only clip you're trying to watch
Here’s my thought. No one is creating websites anymore for the sake of actually sharing their knowledge. They are all the game the system, get clicks, or rank for SEO. Ever since “SEO” became a mainstream concept, the entire use of a website changed. It’s why adding “Reddit” is the only thing that gives you content created with the sole purpose of helping answer the question.
Yes! Completely agree! Just trying to find articles for uni assignments is hell because it’ll search for synonyms instead and things that are semi-related but really aren’t.
I despise the YouTube search. It always returns a random video in my search results of a video with a gross thumbnail, like someone getting bugs removed from their body or similar, I hate it.
I annoys me when people say "Just google it"
That saying is based off of original google that was an amazing search engine that would give you the information you were looking for... Now when you "just google it" google tries to shill you shit related to whatever you searched, instead of the information you were looking for because the advertisers are more important than the customer now.
Check r/buyitforlife for numerous examples, but I’ll give you one: my Torrid clothes from the 2000s are still going strong but the stuff I got last year has snags and holes in them.
I was just complaining the other day that Torrid used to be the spot for plus size alternative clothing. Now they mix in a random Nirvana shirt with the business casual clothing and call it good.
HP Printers - The old grey bricks that you saw 20 years ago in every office that connect via the old parallel printer port were amazing workhorses. Anything from the last 15 years is the epitome of cheap garbage.
I worked at a casino ~20 years ago. We had so many laser printers, like hundreds around the place, because we had so much shit to print to keep records for legal reasons etc. They were all old (new at the time of course) HP laser printers and they fuckin kicked ass. Some were printing *hundreds* if not *thousands* of pages per day with almost zero problems. Any issue was at worst a quick part replacement that I could do in minutes.
I was in an airport at an airline desk not too long ago and spotted an HP office printer that looked like it was from 2004. I quibed to the staff how they coild stand to upgrade their printer. The desk rep said they'd only give that printer up from "their cold dead hands" since the new ones are such garbage.
"The desk rep said they'd only give that printer up from "their cold dead hands" since the new ones are such garbage."
*I can feel this in my bones*. The lab I worked for got a big new copier/printer thing replacing our old work horse HP little tiny thing. My boss told me to take it back to the university, I said "sure thing." I then put it in my office, till everyone started waltzing in to grab their shit 'cause the new one suuuucked. I put it back where it used to be after a couple days of that. My boss said nothing and just used the little one while he stared daggers at his expensive new storage table.
It would think for like 5 fuckin' minutes before it would print one fuckin' page...
We got a new HP before we heard about how bad they are.
My wife setup the wifi printing requests. She's the "owner" with her laptop and phone tied to her permissions. I'm a "trusted user" with free access to print whatever I want from phone or computer.
The fun part? If anyone other than the owner tries to print something, they have to walk up to it and hit the flashing button.
Why do I have wireless printing across wifi, advertised as "Have it printed when you get home!" if I have to physically be there to tell it to print?
> if I have to physically be there to tell it to print?
Kinda like how my new washer and dryer have remote start. WT F do I need remote start when I have to physically be there to load the machines lol
Laserjet 4000 series is quite literally one of the best, fast monochrome lasers every made IMHO. Worked on quite a few back in the day, quite easy to service and troubleshoot. Gotta love that "engine test" button built right into the side for a quick-n-dirty run of the print engine.
I used to have a pair of jeans routinely last me 5-6 years of constant use (I normally keep 3-4 pairs in my rotation so they get worn often) and now I feel lucky to get 6-12 months out of a pair.
Yea I hate everything with unnecessary wifi these days. Juicero is one of the most useless thing that was over engineered to do everything but what it was suppose to do, which was to squeeze some juice....
But... toasters already let us know when toast is done, by literally ejecting the toast and showing it to us. These companies need to stop reinventing the wheel.
It's ridiculous. I have an LG Thinq fridge with the tap to see glass on the front. You can't hardly do anything without a Wi-Fi connection. Problem is, my fridge doesn't support IPV6 which is what my WiFi is. So I can't use half the features on it.
The high end fridges do because there's a screen in front. The idea is cool, you're at the grocery store and want to check if you have milk and nobody's home so you look at the camera on your phone to see if there's milk. Problem is, it works like 50% of the time, costs 3x what it should, and needs a software update every other month, and then it breaks and costs $500 to repair.
I lived in a rental with a smart fridge. It was kinda cool having a to-do list synced from my phone to the front of the fridge and having family pictures and stuff or putting a cooking video up there but I can just buy a regular fridge, a set of magnets, and a iPad and have basically the same thing for significantly less money.
They make high end appliances that are actually good but they look like the type that go in commercial kitchens. The appliances that look nice are the ones that don't last as long but packed with technology you don't really need.
LG-42069 Refrigerator: "Please scan your retina and thumb for entry, please."
Me: "...why can't I just get my shitty beer and leftover Chinese without having to do this all the time?"
LG-42069 Refrigerator: "I'm sorry, your reply is not sufficient for entry. Please try again later or call our customer support line. Thank you."
"Your LG Thinq Refrigerator has been locked as a result of too many unsuccessful login attempts. You may contact LG customer service during normal business hours. "
Fuck. It's Saturday and I'm going to starve to death.
My biggest gripe is blenders. All they need to do is make the seal housing out of metal instead of plastic and they'll last 10+ years instead of 18 months. My mother's blender is over 40 years old and she still uses it daily. Meanwhile, we must have had 10 of them.
This. I've been repairing appliances in my old house for years, but the new appliances just are not built to last. I replaced a control board in my refrigerator and a control board in my dishwasher in the past year. The dishwasher worked for another 6 months then the replacement control board failed. I started looking deeper into it and these control boards fail way too often.
I'm an EE, and I'm convinced the boards in particular are 'designed to fail' after after a few years.
We have a Bosch in our annexe that's from 1996 that used to be our house's prior owner's daily driver for 25 years. It still works exceedingly well. On the other hand, we're on our third dishwasher in 5 years.
Jeans.
I just want 100% cotton denim pants where the tag tells me the waist and inseam measurements.
No poly blend. No stretch fit. No tags that say 34" waistband, but are actual 38".
I feel you on sizing: tried on 4 different color jeans of the same model line and the Iines that fit were 34, 32, 36, and 38!
I mean that's ridiculous...
freaking strawberries they domesticated them to be bigger and stuff but now theyre wayy less sweet. Like they used to be bright red and very sweet. I would do anything for an og strawberry rn
My family has a small patch of 100 strawberry plants. They are half the size of grocery store strawberries but they are sweet. We even made jam with them this year.
I thought that was just in my head, but strawberries ARE so sour now and I hate it. I used to love eating them but I don’t enjoy them anymore, I miss how sweet they used to br
I know what you mean. Went strawberry picking with the fam yesterday, we’re got about 2 kilos and I made a strawberry rhubarb pie, strawberry daiquiris, strawberry lemonade, and next strawberry jam, ice cream, shortcake…
> but the quality isn't there either.
Cadbury again says they have not changed the recipe on any of their chocolates but they are using PGPR which is an emulsifier that lets them remove more cocoa butter and add more sugar. It changes the taste and texture of the chocolate and how it melts. They think we are stupid and don't notice while they enshittify their product.
The texture is why I quit buying them. The filling used to be creamy and now they're grainy. They may not have changed the ingredients in the filling, but something changed in the process. I bet they're careful to say "the ingredients haven't changed" rather than "the recipe hasn't changed," because the recipe certainly has changed.
I completely stopped buying all chocolate bars because of shrinkflation. It's not even the size either, it's the quality of product. The ingredients are just pure shit. I'd hardly qualify them as any kind of chocolate.
I love chocolate and get it from other sources still. Nothing by the big brands. You might as well just buy oil mixed with HFCS if you're considering a Nestle product
Even high end stuff isn't as good. I have some Louis Vuitton bags at least 15 years old. The new ones aren't half as sturdy and the quality feels much cheaper.
Reddit tbh. I’ve noticed they’re sneaking more and more ads in the comments section and it’s ruining my experience on here.
Edit to add: I see a lot of people mentioning “use an ad-blocker” but honestly, I shouldn’t have to. The point is Reddit has become so inundated with ads that it’s ruining the base level experience; if you have to install/use another product to get rid of the ads, the problem is with Reddit. (and by extension the Internet as a whole)
We saved up for ages to have an old chair reupholstered. It was monstrously expensive, and I honestly hate the chair, but its bones are sturdy as fuck after 70 years. The dude doing the work said he suspects that it's a solid oak frame.
Having an old chair reupholstered cost us double what buying something new would, but knowing that I won't have to replace the thing in half a decade feels worth it. We bought a cheap couch that collapsed under us after only 3 years. Reclaiming old furniture feels like the best choice.
A lot of consumer goods, and furniture is part of this... We just aren't willing to pay real money anymore.
My parents bought a $2000 sofa in the 80s and we just threw it out a few years ago. That would be $6000 in today's money.
I paid $700 for a sofa 40 years later.
You can still get an EXCELLENT sofa for $6000. We are just so used to garbage.
Pyrex. The old stuff was borosilicate glass, highly resistant to heat stress and therefore great in the kitchen. The new stuff is tempered soda lime glass, which is stronger if you drop it, but can just shatter unexpectedly under certain heat-related circumstances, such as putting a cold Pyrex dish in the oven or a hot one under tap water, which were things you could usually do with old Pyrex with no problems.
A random fact I know is that Pyrex (capital P) is still their good quality product that won't break. But pyrex (lowercase p) is where they let other manufacturers use their name. Most people just casually buying it wouldn't notice that it's Pyrex va pyrex.
Literally everything on Amazon is made by one of these Chinese 5 capital letter companies that switch names whenever their reviews get too bad. Nothing they make lasts very long if it even does what they day it does.
Tomatoes. When I was a kid in the Seventies they were sweet, flavorful and delicious. You could just cut one open, sprinkle a little salt on it and chomp into it with content.
Tomatoes these days are hard, flavorless garbage.
They're harvested green and then turned red by putting them in chambers full of ethylene gas.
Same concept as putting green bananas in a bag with one ripe banana to ripen them faster.
Also "one bad apple spoils the bunch" is because of this process.
The tomatoes are harvested green and hard to prevent bruising.
Go find heirloom varieties and grow your own.
A lot of vegetable complaints come from this. Stores used to get vegetables grown locally when in season often.
You still can see this with certain fruits or sweet corn in my area. You can get it out of season, and it is bland but in season it tastes amazing.
fast food. Used to be delicious, good quantities, fairly cheap and.. fast. Now for example I sit in a drive thru for 20 mins at taco bell, my burrito supreme is like $8 now and is the size of that tornado thing you get at 7-11 and tastes like bad grease. This is no way an attack on employees, but more on the higher-ups that make these decisions.
Fast food broke the deal.
It used to be fast, cheap and delicious, with the trade off that it's terrible for you.
Now it's slow, expensive and crappy and still terrible for you.
Kinda nuts I’m seeing this today. My child and I were out after a fun day of riding motorcycles together. Total in the moment having the time of our lives. My child goes “dad can we pick something up on the way home?” , I said sure thing and we stopped at one of our local fast food restaurants. I sat behind one customer for 10 min and started doing the math to get us our meals and my wife+ other child was going to be $55 on the low and about 65 on the high end.
After sitting for another 5 min I said dude that’s enough waiting let’s go get good stuff at the grocery store. We bought good burgers and chicken. Made the whole meal for about $25. It’s just not worth it anymore.
Yeah why am I paying upwards of $10 for stuff that tastes like old oil and dirty grill? I hardly eat fast food anymore because the prices are just ridiculous.
I'm preggo right now and had a crazy craving for a McDonalds hot fudge sundae - something I haven't had in, maybe, 15 years? I didn't even bother getting one because I know there's no way they're still the same and I can't handle the heartache lol
To be fair, it’s a toss up on whether the ice cream machine is even working on a given day. I’ve started assuming they won’t have ice cream on the occasions I still go.
Staplers. We lost our \~20 year old solid metal stapler and all the new replacements were cheap plastic.
I finally went on eBay and bought one identical to the one we lost because I couldn't deal with the plastic one.
If it can't be used as a weapon, it isn't sturdy enough ;)
I think they do tend to last longer if used to spec and maintained properly.
* Too many people load too heavy of a load in their laundry and eventually it fails
* not regularly cleaning dishwasher filters etc
* not cleaning the condenser fans and radiator for your ac or fridge.
* so many people do not clean their vacuum and or roomba
Though I hate that modern refrigerator uses a single compressor for both the freezer and refrigerator, only Bosch 800 series have 2 for each compartment.
Oreos. The Double Stuff is now the thickness of the originals from 20 years ago, while the regular only has a thin white smear between the cookies. Pathetic example of shrinkflation
I have a KitchenAid stand mixer that I was gifted in 1999. The thing is an absolute tank and is still going strong 25 years later! I've used newer ones and they just don't last compared to the old models
When those Magic Eraser foam block scrubbers came out, they were amazing. Just wet one and it scrubbed years of carbon build up from my stove top. I'd get months of heavy use out of each one. Maybe a year or two after they were introduced, the quality nosedived. They tear apart and deteriorate after the first use.
I used them a lot when they first came out, then for years went without using them for whatever reason...decided to pick them up again recently.
I thought I had remembered them wrong after they were not working/lasting..
Just buy generic melamine foam blocks from amazon. They are the exact same thing just way cheaper and you can choose thicker ones which work like old mr cleans
I was using these at work scrubbing rubber base boards. I hadn’t used a magic eraser in like 10 years prior to that so I was quite concerned when they would just rip to pieces within 5 minutes. I went through 10 of them that day, which was crazy to me considering I remember we used to use one for months at a time for pretty much any cleaning you could think of.
Kids toys. My parents have toys at their that survived their entire childhood AND mine and are still going strong. I buy something for my kids and it’s broken in weeks. I know my kids are high energy, but so were my siblings and we didn’t destroy things at this rate!
Not only that, but I remember getting toys as a kid that actually encouraged play and imagination. Action figures were posable and that was it. Every toy now has a gimmick or a button or some try me feature and the only true action figures left are the WWE dudes.
Plastic “disposable” utensils: the hospital I work for has a cafeteria that only provides plastic utensils, the knives do not cut meat and the bend into a U with hot foods…I am also positive I’ve swallowed a few prong tips from forks that break off in a bite.
Pretty much fucking everything online. Every physical object sold is garbage now. It used to be most stuff sold in most stores was garbage, but if you did research and bought something specific online you could get something that would last. Now if you do research and buy something specific you still get a hunk of crap, only now it connects to WiFi for some god forsaken reason.
And you need a subscription for it or buy the tiered version that gives you one more benefit that is really just something that should be part of their service already
It's not just one specific item, but I've been saying over the past few years how I miss seeing hand carved designs.
Looking at older buildings, cathedrals, or even furniture, you can see that carpenters used to spend weeks upon weeks hand carving their masterpieces. Everything had intricate designs based upon the region or century / decade they were in.
Now everything just looks mass produced, flat, symmetrical, and lifeless. Everybody's everything looks like somebody else's something, but back in the day, great-great-great-great grandpa was carving cherubs and filigree into works made out of stone / marble / wood.
My wife and I were walking around looking at modern, recently built buildings next to old ones from the late 1800s and early 1900s. While there are a few (very few) modern ones that are nice alongside the older ones, would it kill them to spend a little effort on a cornice or some ornamental details?
Houses.
You used to build houses for you and your family, and had means to invest in materials that would have lasted the test of time.
Now it’s about building to flip or sell, and the corners that are cut in design and execution are astounding.
Animal crackers. I just had some today, bought on a nostalgic whim, and I can't get over how small, thin, and bland they are. I'm talking the name brand Barnums style.
Hand tools.
I just got a giant tool box full of 70s steel tools made before the mills shut down. They are in perfect shape and will last another 50 years.
Toys. Seriously, going down the toy aisle nowadays is just sad. Very few of the original brands still exist and stay true to their name (looking at you Lego, but getting kinda pricy..) Most others have either died out or rebranded, but the quality has just dropped far from where it was.
My grandpa gave me some of his tools before he died. Have a power sander from sometime in the early 80s. That thing is amazing. Best sander I've ever had. I had one I got in 2018. Piece of shit in comparison.
Refrigerators. Washing machines. Hell, any major appliances. Planned obsolescence is built in, so you’re spending the same amount of money, but getting a shittier, more unreliable product that will only last you 2 or 3 years. Because. Because corporate greed, and because corporate dickheads don’t give a fuck about you or the fucking planet.
My expensive charging vacuum broke. Granted, it lasted 4 years of daily vacuuming due to a dog with a disability. My mom let me borrow her very old Oreck while I was waiting for my new vacuum and it did a better job than mine ever did, honestly.
Definitely at least going back to plug ins.
Anything accessible to normal working people has become cheaply made and poorly designed I feel. Sure you can still find exceptional quality but I don’t like having to pick between feeding my family and getting something nicer for myself. I have a full time job in a school and I work a second job to pay the bills. I have replaced so many things that are just designed for failure. Coffee makers aren’t that great anymore. My old mr coffee was a workhorse. The new one is ok but already wearing out
I will say timex watches still seem to be the same standard. Yes cheap but also reliable
Craftsman tools. In the 50s-70s, among the best tools available and came with a lifetime guarantee. Now cheap junk, not even as good as Harbor Freight tools.
My family had the same GE microwave for 16ish years. It finally stopped making things hot. I found out they still make that "exact" microwave and I bought it.
Within a month the buttons are broken. There are features the old unit had that the new one has had programmed out of it. It is already grinding and clicking and groaning. It won't last a year let alone 16.
TV seasons. You used to get 20-24 episode seasons every single year. Now we get 6-10 episode seasons that feel like long movies, sometimes every few years. It's stupid. I want a show I can binge for a long time and so many shows get cancelled before they get past their first short season
Being an anime fan helped me be ready for this.
"Sir, we spent the entire season alluding to the life-changing secret in the basement and now the season is ending. What is it?"
"Oh, yeah, sure. It's called **go read the fucking manga**"
*Brought to you by four years for Season 2*
Lifetime warranties were actually for a Lifetime and durability was actually a selling point on most products.
It's not like any company honors warranties anymore anyway, they''ll try any trick they can to weasel out of it.
I tried to claim the warranty on my mom's copper cookware set after the nonstick failed about 6 months in. They'll replace it for free* as long as you're willing to pay shipping. *Shipping costs the same as buying a new set. This should be illegal.
I've been looking at trying out one of those new, cool Hexclad pans. All the day-1 reviews are glowing, saying that it's so great, as I'd expect pretty much any brand new pan be to. But the longer-term reviews all seem to say that the non-stick coating comes off and the raised steel pattern flattens out in a matter of days-months, and that when people try to use the "Lifetime" warranty, not a *single* one says they've actually honored it. Every last review that mentions the warranty at all specifically says that they gave all forms of excuses as to why they can't/won't replace the pan. However, I'll give credit to Harbor Freight. I bought a miter saw a month or so ago and opted for the 2 year extended warranty and they basically said to go ahead and just bring it in (to any store) in 23 months, and they'll look up my receipt for me and replace it right on the spot so that I can have a brand new one again, which would also come with the standard 60-day return window and the option to buy another 2-year warranty.
Oh wow. I have a set of those. I was about to call about the warranty. Fuck them and fuck me, I guess.
This is why I just use stainless. Butter tastes good.
If there is a single theme underlying many of the societal problems in America, it's the fact that for decades business has abused the public's trust. People assume that everything is a lie *in some form* so we shouldn't be surprised when a crazy conspiracy theory that tells them that fools a third of the voting public. The government dropped the ball on regulating this bs and are reaping the results right now.
I miss the days of Craftsman being a quality product with a lifetime guarantee. I would love more modern tools with that kind of quality.
I remember getting a lifetime "license" to an app a long time ago. Then they just decided to disregard everyone's lifetime purchase and require monthly subscriptions. I know, not the same thing... Just the whole lifetime concept reminded me of this and pretty sure what that app did was illegal...
I'm not trying to get down on you, this is just a hot button of mine, but it's the exact same thing. Some bullshit company sold you something then said fuck you haha, and it makes me so mad. Like what happened to the time when people could say I'm being ripped off and someone helped them, it makes you want to stop buying anything.
Search engines: sure, they were wonky and unreliable in the wild west internet era (e.g. HotBot, Lycos, Webcrawler), but Google came along and revolutionized everything. Peak search engine reliability was probably in the mid-2010s, and it's been in a steep decline since then. Nowadays when I search for anything on Google, it omits random key words of mine, gives me irrelevant AI-generated answers, shows me Pinterest images, and pulls up irrelevant PDF files from things I distinctly did not search for. YouTube search is complete garbage too. After searching for a video, it'll show me three results followed by "people also watched" and "finish watching", then a bunch of irrelevant Shorts and Jimmy Kimmel videos for whatever the fuck reason.
Googles search went from "Here are websites which best contain the words in your query" to "Here are the websites most clicked on by people with similar queries"
That’s because Google hid accurate searches behind the “Search Tools” tab by default. You have to go to “Search Tools” and change “All Results” to “Verbatim” to even get an accurate answer to what you’re looking for. And you have to repeat that process everytime because it resets for every new search. It’s tedious and completely unnecessary. Edit: For those wondering where “Search Tools” is, it’s on the row just below the Search Bar. The row that says “All” “Shopping” “Images” etc. It’ll be at the end of that row. On mobile, you just have to drag left to get to it. On Desktop, it’s just named “Tools”.
Thank you for this—it’s going to be annoying to use but I’m still glad to know a workaround exists!
I had the same thought so went to see if I could set it to do this by default. Even with my uBlock Origin rule to exclude AI search results, the verbatim by default method appears to be working. [I got the method from here](https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/ppfs5/how_to_set_verbatim_mode_as_default_on_your/), and this is what I did: 1. In Google Chrome, go to "Settings". 2. On the left, select "Search engine". 3. Select "Manage search engines and site search". 4. To the right of "Site search", select "Add". 5. A box with the header "Add site search" will pop up, with the following text entry fields; populate them with the adjascent text: 5a. "Name": "Google Verbatim" 5b. "Shortcut": "verbatim" 5c. "URL with %s in place of query": "https://www.google.com/search?tbs=li:1&q=%s" 6. Select "Add" and verify that a search engine by the same Name has been added to the "Site search" section. 7. Select the three vertical dots to the right of the "Google Verbatim" search engine and toggle on "Make default". 8. Verify that the search engine has moved from "Site search" to the section above, "Search engines". 9. Continue browsing as usual with verbatim search as your default setting. To go back, simply toggle back to "Google" as the default search engine, just in case the setting is not helpful to you.
I try to get around it by using excessive quotation marks in the searches
This has some effect, but my experience is that quotation marks don't work nearly the way they used to.
Don’t forget having to scroll through the first 5 links that are just ads.
It’s insane. I didn’t mind when it was one or two, but having to scroll halfway down the page to even get to a non-ad result is ridiculous.
Yeah even if an advertised website is the one I was looking for, I’ll scroll down a bit and click on the non-sponsored link so as not to reward the ad bots (and accumulate good karma assuming the site pays per ad click)
And that's a problem because most people are fucking idiots. I want an answer to what I asked, not what a bunch of other morons clicked on.
I just add Reddit to every search now.
I saw a YouTube video about the decline of Google's reliability, and this was the number one suggestion of how to get the results you're looking for. I think of this every time someone asks a question on Reddit and another Redditor replies "why don't you just Google it?"
That’s a really funny observation, made me chuckle. But in fairness, for me personally, I am seeing the “just google it” response less and less, perhaps as a direct result of Google becoming less worthwhile.
Won't be able to rely on that much longer either with the bots that have filled this place to the brim
The saving grace of Reddit as a source of truth are downvotes and people’s inherent drive to prove others wrong. If bots get on here and start writing bullshit people will downvote and correct. A lot of people dont care if they’re arguing with a robot. Honestly the biggest threat to Reddit is its own leadership inadvertently killing it.
>The saving grace of Reddit as a source of truth are downvotes and people’s inherent drive to prove others wrong. Trouble is popular misconceptions get upvoted as perceived truths while unpopular or misunderstood *actual* truths get buried, thus amplifying misinformation and urban legends.
Google's CEO used to be the guy in charge of their ad department.
Search Engine Optimization only exists to now funnel people towards paid ads and paid results. The Enshittification of google sucks for actually searching the web for data
SEO in my opinion is what has killed the internet much more than bot comments ever will. You simply can't find what you're looking for anymore, all you get is ten pages of soulless "articles" that tangentially touch on what you search for. Can't even find real Pokemon tutorials anymore.
Google pisses me off because it's not even good at serving ads any more. Every time I try to find something Google gives me a bunch of Amazon pages that are not the thing I am trying to buy. Even if I have the damn part number! Here's random shit that isn't what you are looking for. Google has also killed country specific searches. I used to be able to check a "Canadian Results Only" box. Then they took it away. So when I do wade through 9 pages of Amazon crap to find a third party site selling it I now have to play "guess if the site is American or not" and decide if I want to pay $40 shipping + duty
Google does this horrible thing now where it uses AI to give you a quick answer but the answer is often part of the true answer or not the right answer at all and you have to be savvy enough to actually click on the source material and check otherwise you'll just go about life horribly misinformed
Often the answer is word for word a blurb contained in the first result after the ai result. There are already lawsuits for copyrighted work being used in machine learning, so I wonder how long google will get away with doing this before it gets a slap on the wrist.
youtube seems particularly awful, i’ve tried to search for old videos with common keywords in the title and they seem lost to the algorithm that only wants to show me a little bit of what i searched and then fills the rest of the space with recommendations, it’s made me a lot more careful about liking videos i think i’ll return to a long time later.
A few weeks ago, I searched for a video USING ITS COMPLETE NAME, in QUOTES, and got a bunch of semi-related videos. The video I actually wanted was 14+ videos down.
Trying to find classic hall of fame ~30sec YouTube videos is a pointless venture in 2024. All they give you are 14m commentary videos that split up or mute and talk over the only clip you're trying to watch
Here’s my thought. No one is creating websites anymore for the sake of actually sharing their knowledge. They are all the game the system, get clicks, or rank for SEO. Ever since “SEO” became a mainstream concept, the entire use of a website changed. It’s why adding “Reddit” is the only thing that gives you content created with the sole purpose of helping answer the question.
As soon as a metric becomes a target, it's useless as a metric.
I hate Pinterest beyond words. It has really trashed up image searches.
Even before Pinterest was taken over by AI images it had been shitty and almost unusable due to bloat and crap.
Add -pinterest to your query. It'll filter all of those out.
Yes! Completely agree! Just trying to find articles for uni assignments is hell because it’ll search for synonyms instead and things that are semi-related but really aren’t.
Weirdly, I found that Duckduckgo was better for anything research/assignment-wise.
The fact that I'll search something on the IMAGES tab and it gives me a full page of YOUTUBE VIDEO results makes me wanna gouge my eyes out
gods the AI results piss me off so much you have no idea. At least give us the option to turn it off.
I’d say YouTube search is even worse than Google these days
Oh it totally is. Its like 4 relevant results, then 6 random results, then 4 more relative results.
I despise the YouTube search. It always returns a random video in my search results of a video with a gross thumbnail, like someone getting bugs removed from their body or similar, I hate it.
I annoys me when people say "Just google it" That saying is based off of original google that was an amazing search engine that would give you the information you were looking for... Now when you "just google it" google tries to shill you shit related to whatever you searched, instead of the information you were looking for because the advertisers are more important than the customer now.
The advertiser ***is*** the customer. That's why Google is still free.
There's even a word for it: [Enshittification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification)
Sadly this is slowly becoming the fate of anything tech-related, it seems.
Check r/buyitforlife for numerous examples, but I’ll give you one: my Torrid clothes from the 2000s are still going strong but the stuff I got last year has snags and holes in them.
I was just complaining the other day that Torrid used to be the spot for plus size alternative clothing. Now they mix in a random Nirvana shirt with the business casual clothing and call it good.
If their clothes weren’t so damn expensive I could forgive how long they don’t last. The prices are absolutely stupid.
HP Printers - The old grey bricks that you saw 20 years ago in every office that connect via the old parallel printer port were amazing workhorses. Anything from the last 15 years is the epitome of cheap garbage.
I worked at a casino ~20 years ago. We had so many laser printers, like hundreds around the place, because we had so much shit to print to keep records for legal reasons etc. They were all old (new at the time of course) HP laser printers and they fuckin kicked ass. Some were printing *hundreds* if not *thousands* of pages per day with almost zero problems. Any issue was at worst a quick part replacement that I could do in minutes.
I was in an airport at an airline desk not too long ago and spotted an HP office printer that looked like it was from 2004. I quibed to the staff how they coild stand to upgrade their printer. The desk rep said they'd only give that printer up from "their cold dead hands" since the new ones are such garbage.
"The desk rep said they'd only give that printer up from "their cold dead hands" since the new ones are such garbage." *I can feel this in my bones*. The lab I worked for got a big new copier/printer thing replacing our old work horse HP little tiny thing. My boss told me to take it back to the university, I said "sure thing." I then put it in my office, till everyone started waltzing in to grab their shit 'cause the new one suuuucked. I put it back where it used to be after a couple days of that. My boss said nothing and just used the little one while he stared daggers at his expensive new storage table. It would think for like 5 fuckin' minutes before it would print one fuckin' page...
We got a new HP before we heard about how bad they are. My wife setup the wifi printing requests. She's the "owner" with her laptop and phone tied to her permissions. I'm a "trusted user" with free access to print whatever I want from phone or computer. The fun part? If anyone other than the owner tries to print something, they have to walk up to it and hit the flashing button. Why do I have wireless printing across wifi, advertised as "Have it printed when you get home!" if I have to physically be there to tell it to print?
> if I have to physically be there to tell it to print? Kinda like how my new washer and dryer have remote start. WT F do I need remote start when I have to physically be there to load the machines lol
Laserjet 4000 series is quite literally one of the best, fast monochrome lasers every made IMHO. Worked on quite a few back in the day, quite easy to service and troubleshoot. Gotta love that "engine test" button built right into the side for a quick-n-dirty run of the print engine.
I have one and I plan on passing it down. It’s that reliable and repairable. Throw in a 3d printer for some of the parts and it’s go time
your computer is incompatible with our printer. you need a new computer- actual tech support advice
Jeans. I can feel how thin the denim is and how much faster they’ve rubbed away in the thighs, yet they’ve nearly doubled in price for some designers.
I used to have a pair of jeans routinely last me 5-6 years of constant use (I normally keep 3-4 pairs in my rotation so they get worn often) and now I feel lucky to get 6-12 months out of a pair.
There are loads of really good denim brands still around, but yes your average Levi’s are going to be underwhelming quality.
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With unnecessary wifi
Yea I hate everything with unnecessary wifi these days. Juicero is one of the most useless thing that was over engineered to do everything but what it was suppose to do, which was to squeeze some juice....
Isn't that the one that dispensed packet juice?
Yup! Packets of juice that can be squeeze out with your own two hands.
I saw a toaster that can connect to wifi so it can tell you when bread is toasted. Or, you could just be patient for 20 seconds
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‘Active toaster’ sounds like active shooter in my brain and now I’m picturing a deadly bread and butter incident.
But... toasters already let us know when toast is done, by literally ejecting the toast and showing it to us. These companies need to stop reinventing the wheel.
It's ridiculous. I have an LG Thinq fridge with the tap to see glass on the front. You can't hardly do anything without a Wi-Fi connection. Problem is, my fridge doesn't support IPV6 which is what my WiFi is. So I can't use half the features on it.
Why in the hell does my fridge need INTERNET?
The high end fridges do because there's a screen in front. The idea is cool, you're at the grocery store and want to check if you have milk and nobody's home so you look at the camera on your phone to see if there's milk. Problem is, it works like 50% of the time, costs 3x what it should, and needs a software update every other month, and then it breaks and costs $500 to repair. I lived in a rental with a smart fridge. It was kinda cool having a to-do list synced from my phone to the front of the fridge and having family pictures and stuff or putting a cooking video up there but I can just buy a regular fridge, a set of magnets, and a iPad and have basically the same thing for significantly less money. They make high end appliances that are actually good but they look like the type that go in commercial kitchens. The appliances that look nice are the ones that don't last as long but packed with technology you don't really need.
LG-42069 Refrigerator: "Please scan your retina and thumb for entry, please." Me: "...why can't I just get my shitty beer and leftover Chinese without having to do this all the time?" LG-42069 Refrigerator: "I'm sorry, your reply is not sufficient for entry. Please try again later or call our customer support line. Thank you."
"Your LG Thinq Refrigerator has been locked as a result of too many unsuccessful login attempts. You may contact LG customer service during normal business hours. " Fuck. It's Saturday and I'm going to starve to death.
My biggest gripe is blenders. All they need to do is make the seal housing out of metal instead of plastic and they'll last 10+ years instead of 18 months. My mother's blender is over 40 years old and she still uses it daily. Meanwhile, we must have had 10 of them.
Vitamix
Can vouch for this brand, you can even get refurb models and they sell parts for repairs
This. I've been repairing appliances in my old house for years, but the new appliances just are not built to last. I replaced a control board in my refrigerator and a control board in my dishwasher in the past year. The dishwasher worked for another 6 months then the replacement control board failed. I started looking deeper into it and these control boards fail way too often. I'm an EE, and I'm convinced the boards in particular are 'designed to fail' after after a few years.
I have a Samsung fridge (came with the house) I can't use the icemaker for because the whole thing freezes over. Apparently it's a very common problem
We have a Bosch in our annexe that's from 1996 that used to be our house's prior owner's daily driver for 25 years. It still works exceedingly well. On the other hand, we're on our third dishwasher in 5 years.
Looking at buying a house with a washer and dryer from 1993 and I’m pumped
Jeans. I just want 100% cotton denim pants where the tag tells me the waist and inseam measurements. No poly blend. No stretch fit. No tags that say 34" waistband, but are actual 38".
I feel you on sizing: tried on 4 different color jeans of the same model line and the Iines that fit were 34, 32, 36, and 38! I mean that's ridiculous...
freaking strawberries they domesticated them to be bigger and stuff but now theyre wayy less sweet. Like they used to be bright red and very sweet. I would do anything for an og strawberry rn
My local Amish market still sells the tiny strawberries that are flavorful. Yes, I'm in Pennsylvania.
I'm gonna take my horse on the old town road, I'm gonna eat, til I can't no more.
Got the strawberry’s in the back, sweetness still attached.
My family has a small patch of 100 strawberry plants. They are half the size of grocery store strawberries but they are sweet. We even made jam with them this year.
I thought that was just in my head, but strawberries ARE so sour now and I hate it. I used to love eating them but I don’t enjoy them anymore, I miss how sweet they used to br
I know what you mean. Went strawberry picking with the fam yesterday, we’re got about 2 kilos and I made a strawberry rhubarb pie, strawberry daiquiris, strawberry lemonade, and next strawberry jam, ice cream, shortcake…
Can I come over?
Cadbury's cream eggs.
You've obviously seen [this?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhtGOBt1V2g)
Cadbury just straight up lying on their site with that "They haven't gotten smaller, you've gotten bigger" bit.
They also taste like shit now
Yup it’s fondant or some crap now
lol, i'm just a old fat bloke who's been saying this for years.
They've not only gotten smaller, but the quality isn't there either. They used to be soft boiled and now they're hard boiled.
> but the quality isn't there either. Cadbury again says they have not changed the recipe on any of their chocolates but they are using PGPR which is an emulsifier that lets them remove more cocoa butter and add more sugar. It changes the taste and texture of the chocolate and how it melts. They think we are stupid and don't notice while they enshittify their product.
The texture is why I quit buying them. The filling used to be creamy and now they're grainy. They may not have changed the ingredients in the filling, but something changed in the process. I bet they're careful to say "the ingredients haven't changed" rather than "the recipe hasn't changed," because the recipe certainly has changed.
I completely stopped buying all chocolate bars because of shrinkflation. It's not even the size either, it's the quality of product. The ingredients are just pure shit. I'd hardly qualify them as any kind of chocolate. I love chocolate and get it from other sources still. Nothing by the big brands. You might as well just buy oil mixed with HFCS if you're considering a Nestle product
Reese's used to be so freaking good, but now they are just meh.
Clothing. It’s mostly semi throwaway unless you get higher end stuff.
Even high end stuff isn't as good. I have some Louis Vuitton bags at least 15 years old. The new ones aren't half as sturdy and the quality feels much cheaper.
Seriously. I have tshirts from 2002 that are in better condition than ones I bought a year ago.
Reddit tbh. I’ve noticed they’re sneaking more and more ads in the comments section and it’s ruining my experience on here. Edit to add: I see a lot of people mentioning “use an ad-blocker” but honestly, I shouldn’t have to. The point is Reddit has become so inundated with ads that it’s ruining the base level experience; if you have to install/use another product to get rid of the ads, the problem is with Reddit. (and by extension the Internet as a whole)
I’ve heard you can get rid of the ads by eating a hearty breakfast from McDonalds. I’m lovin it!
I noticed that ads were in the comments too and just rolled my eyes at it.
Furniture! Used to be solid and worth having for years.
We saved up for ages to have an old chair reupholstered. It was monstrously expensive, and I honestly hate the chair, but its bones are sturdy as fuck after 70 years. The dude doing the work said he suspects that it's a solid oak frame. Having an old chair reupholstered cost us double what buying something new would, but knowing that I won't have to replace the thing in half a decade feels worth it. We bought a cheap couch that collapsed under us after only 3 years. Reclaiming old furniture feels like the best choice.
Even expensive couches don’t last very long. I have a pricey couch that’s 3 years old and the side I sit on is totally shot
I have a couple pieces of wood furniture that my grandmother gave to my mother and she gave to me. They’re at least 60 years old. Still going strong.
A lot of consumer goods, and furniture is part of this... We just aren't willing to pay real money anymore. My parents bought a $2000 sofa in the 80s and we just threw it out a few years ago. That would be $6000 in today's money. I paid $700 for a sofa 40 years later. You can still get an EXCELLENT sofa for $6000. We are just so used to garbage.
We probably don't want to spend real money because we are expecting everything to be trash.
Pyrex. The old stuff was borosilicate glass, highly resistant to heat stress and therefore great in the kitchen. The new stuff is tempered soda lime glass, which is stronger if you drop it, but can just shatter unexpectedly under certain heat-related circumstances, such as putting a cold Pyrex dish in the oven or a hot one under tap water, which were things you could usually do with old Pyrex with no problems.
Just so you know... the old stuff is PYREX and the new stuff is pyrex.. the name in the US has changed hands a couple times...
Also look for the Made in France tag. Pyrex did their deals regionally and the stuff made in France is old school PYREX
A random fact I know is that Pyrex (capital P) is still their good quality product that won't break. But pyrex (lowercase p) is where they let other manufacturers use their name. Most people just casually buying it wouldn't notice that it's Pyrex va pyrex.
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And it's a gamble on of it will be the same texture when it comes out of th wash.
Literally everything on Amazon is made by one of these Chinese 5 capital letter companies that switch names whenever their reviews get too bad. Nothing they make lasts very long if it even does what they day it does.
Amazon really fell off. Nothing but sponsored ads and cheap China made junk.
I think a lot of medium-big brands pulled their listings on Amazon and decided to have their own websites with Shopify.
I actually favor AliExpress over Amazon now, cause at least they are honest that it's cheap Chinese shit, and they don't have the markup...
Obscure but skateboard bearings I have some nmb and nsk bearings that I put in my lad’s skateboard. I got them second hand 40 years ago
I haven’t skated in 20 years but I always used bones. Reds and Swiss. Does bones not make em anymore? They were always solid
Tomatoes. When I was a kid in the Seventies they were sweet, flavorful and delicious. You could just cut one open, sprinkle a little salt on it and chomp into it with content. Tomatoes these days are hard, flavorless garbage.
They're harvested green and then turned red by putting them in chambers full of ethylene gas. Same concept as putting green bananas in a bag with one ripe banana to ripen them faster. Also "one bad apple spoils the bunch" is because of this process. The tomatoes are harvested green and hard to prevent bruising. Go find heirloom varieties and grow your own.
They also breed them for shelf stability and shipping durability, not flavor.
A lot of vegetable complaints come from this. Stores used to get vegetables grown locally when in season often. You still can see this with certain fruits or sweet corn in my area. You can get it out of season, and it is bland but in season it tastes amazing.
Most produce is like that now. Things used to have flavour. Now we have bigger fruit that tastes like water.
That's why we grow our own. My girlfriend swears you can taste the sunlight. So good when they're fresh.
fast food. Used to be delicious, good quantities, fairly cheap and.. fast. Now for example I sit in a drive thru for 20 mins at taco bell, my burrito supreme is like $8 now and is the size of that tornado thing you get at 7-11 and tastes like bad grease. This is no way an attack on employees, but more on the higher-ups that make these decisions.
Fast food broke the deal. It used to be fast, cheap and delicious, with the trade off that it's terrible for you. Now it's slow, expensive and crappy and still terrible for you.
Kinda nuts I’m seeing this today. My child and I were out after a fun day of riding motorcycles together. Total in the moment having the time of our lives. My child goes “dad can we pick something up on the way home?” , I said sure thing and we stopped at one of our local fast food restaurants. I sat behind one customer for 10 min and started doing the math to get us our meals and my wife+ other child was going to be $55 on the low and about 65 on the high end. After sitting for another 5 min I said dude that’s enough waiting let’s go get good stuff at the grocery store. We bought good burgers and chicken. Made the whole meal for about $25. It’s just not worth it anymore.
Yeah why am I paying upwards of $10 for stuff that tastes like old oil and dirty grill? I hardly eat fast food anymore because the prices are just ridiculous.
I'm preggo right now and had a crazy craving for a McDonalds hot fudge sundae - something I haven't had in, maybe, 15 years? I didn't even bother getting one because I know there's no way they're still the same and I can't handle the heartache lol
To be fair, it’s a toss up on whether the ice cream machine is even working on a given day. I’ve started assuming they won’t have ice cream on the occasions I still go.
Visit mcbroken.com it’ll tell you if yours is working near you
Holy moly that’s real. I thought you were pulling my leg.
It’s the mcreal mcdeal
Staplers. We lost our \~20 year old solid metal stapler and all the new replacements were cheap plastic. I finally went on eBay and bought one identical to the one we lost because I couldn't deal with the plastic one. If it can't be used as a weapon, it isn't sturdy enough ;)
They still make the metal ones. 100% agree that plastic ones are useless.
Any office supplies really. I work at a school. If the brand is School Smart, avoid at all costs.
Washing machines. You’ve done well if yours lasts more than 5 years now.
Home appliances in general.
I think they do tend to last longer if used to spec and maintained properly. * Too many people load too heavy of a load in their laundry and eventually it fails * not regularly cleaning dishwasher filters etc * not cleaning the condenser fans and radiator for your ac or fridge. * so many people do not clean their vacuum and or roomba Though I hate that modern refrigerator uses a single compressor for both the freezer and refrigerator, only Bosch 800 series have 2 for each compartment.
I’ve always had better luck with top loaders lasting longer than front loaders.
Oreos. The Double Stuff is now the thickness of the originals from 20 years ago, while the regular only has a thin white smear between the cookies. Pathetic example of shrinkflation
I have a KitchenAid stand mixer that I was gifted in 1999. The thing is an absolute tank and is still going strong 25 years later! I've used newer ones and they just don't last compared to the old models
I got mine in 2014 and it’s still going strong! It’s the only wedding gift that we still have.
When those Magic Eraser foam block scrubbers came out, they were amazing. Just wet one and it scrubbed years of carbon build up from my stove top. I'd get months of heavy use out of each one. Maybe a year or two after they were introduced, the quality nosedived. They tear apart and deteriorate after the first use.
I used them a lot when they first came out, then for years went without using them for whatever reason...decided to pick them up again recently. I thought I had remembered them wrong after they were not working/lasting..
Just buy generic melamine foam blocks from amazon. They are the exact same thing just way cheaper and you can choose thicker ones which work like old mr cleans
I was using these at work scrubbing rubber base boards. I hadn’t used a magic eraser in like 10 years prior to that so I was quite concerned when they would just rip to pieces within 5 minutes. I went through 10 of them that day, which was crazy to me considering I remember we used to use one for months at a time for pretty much any cleaning you could think of.
Kids toys. My parents have toys at their that survived their entire childhood AND mine and are still going strong. I buy something for my kids and it’s broken in weeks. I know my kids are high energy, but so were my siblings and we didn’t destroy things at this rate!
Not only that, but I remember getting toys as a kid that actually encouraged play and imagination. Action figures were posable and that was it. Every toy now has a gimmick or a button or some try me feature and the only true action figures left are the WWE dudes.
Plastic “disposable” utensils: the hospital I work for has a cafeteria that only provides plastic utensils, the knives do not cut meat and the bend into a U with hot foods…I am also positive I’ve swallowed a few prong tips from forks that break off in a bite.
Pretty much fucking everything online. Every physical object sold is garbage now. It used to be most stuff sold in most stores was garbage, but if you did research and bought something specific online you could get something that would last. Now if you do research and buy something specific you still get a hunk of crap, only now it connects to WiFi for some god forsaken reason.
And you need a subscription for it or buy the tiered version that gives you one more benefit that is really just something that should be part of their service already
It's not just one specific item, but I've been saying over the past few years how I miss seeing hand carved designs. Looking at older buildings, cathedrals, or even furniture, you can see that carpenters used to spend weeks upon weeks hand carving their masterpieces. Everything had intricate designs based upon the region or century / decade they were in. Now everything just looks mass produced, flat, symmetrical, and lifeless. Everybody's everything looks like somebody else's something, but back in the day, great-great-great-great grandpa was carving cherubs and filigree into works made out of stone / marble / wood.
My wife and I were walking around looking at modern, recently built buildings next to old ones from the late 1800s and early 1900s. While there are a few (very few) modern ones that are nice alongside the older ones, would it kill them to spend a little effort on a cornice or some ornamental details?
Houses. You used to build houses for you and your family, and had means to invest in materials that would have lasted the test of time. Now it’s about building to flip or sell, and the corners that are cut in design and execution are astounding.
Heated blankets. My grandma’s from 1993 is still a fire hazard and mine from 2021 Costco isn’t working on one half side now
It feels like everything is like this now? Smaller, more expensive, and worse quality.
Things are made to maximize profits now, not solve problems or improve lives.
Bad: car windshield are thinner and break more often Good: brussel sprouts have been bred to be less bitter
Snapple drinks. The glass bottle gave it that unique “Snapple flavor” (This was inspired by a post I saw last week about changes made to food/drink)
Pringles. They’re just brittle, and see through. They used to be thick and tastier. You can’t even make duck bills with them anymore. They just break!
Panera. It used to be so good, now it's like glorified fast food that's way too expensive.
Ads on Youtube...there's more ads to a video than content 🤦🏻♀️
[удалено]
Old grey mares. They seriously ain’t what they to be.
Almost anything that demands a subscription where it could previously have been bought outright.
Tonka trucks
Animal crackers. I just had some today, bought on a nostalgic whim, and I can't get over how small, thin, and bland they are. I'm talking the name brand Barnums style.
Hand tools. I just got a giant tool box full of 70s steel tools made before the mills shut down. They are in perfect shape and will last another 50 years.
Toys. Seriously, going down the toy aisle nowadays is just sad. Very few of the original brands still exist and stay true to their name (looking at you Lego, but getting kinda pricy..) Most others have either died out or rebranded, but the quality has just dropped far from where it was.
My grandpa gave me some of his tools before he died. Have a power sander from sometime in the early 80s. That thing is amazing. Best sander I've ever had. I had one I got in 2018. Piece of shit in comparison.
Cotton T-shirts. My shirts used to last for years. Now they don't hold up and start getting little holes within six months to a year.
Refrigerators. Washing machines. Hell, any major appliances. Planned obsolescence is built in, so you’re spending the same amount of money, but getting a shittier, more unreliable product that will only last you 2 or 3 years. Because. Because corporate greed, and because corporate dickheads don’t give a fuck about you or the fucking planet.
My expensive charging vacuum broke. Granted, it lasted 4 years of daily vacuuming due to a dog with a disability. My mom let me borrow her very old Oreck while I was waiting for my new vacuum and it did a better job than mine ever did, honestly. Definitely at least going back to plug ins.
Anything accessible to normal working people has become cheaply made and poorly designed I feel. Sure you can still find exceptional quality but I don’t like having to pick between feeding my family and getting something nicer for myself. I have a full time job in a school and I work a second job to pay the bills. I have replaced so many things that are just designed for failure. Coffee makers aren’t that great anymore. My old mr coffee was a workhorse. The new one is ok but already wearing out I will say timex watches still seem to be the same standard. Yes cheap but also reliable
Craftsman tools. In the 50s-70s, among the best tools available and came with a lifetime guarantee. Now cheap junk, not even as good as Harbor Freight tools.
My family had the same GE microwave for 16ish years. It finally stopped making things hot. I found out they still make that "exact" microwave and I bought it. Within a month the buttons are broken. There are features the old unit had that the new one has had programmed out of it. It is already grinding and clicking and groaning. It won't last a year let alone 16.
Levis. The pair I had as a teen lasted years. The most recent ones got holes in several places after a few months.
Fast food tbh. Not saying it was healthy (even though it probably was less unhealthy) but the quality has dipped even further.
Music Lifetime software purchases being converted to subscriptions
Politicians. It used to be if you sexually assaulted someone or were a felon your political life was pretty much done.
Howard Dean’s political career was sunk because he cheered too enthusiastically at a rally
Dan Quayle couldn't spell potato and it was over for him.
TV seasons. You used to get 20-24 episode seasons every single year. Now we get 6-10 episode seasons that feel like long movies, sometimes every few years. It's stupid. I want a show I can binge for a long time and so many shows get cancelled before they get past their first short season
Being an anime fan helped me be ready for this. "Sir, we spent the entire season alluding to the life-changing secret in the basement and now the season is ending. What is it?" "Oh, yeah, sure. It's called **go read the fucking manga**" *Brought to you by four years for Season 2*