What are the chances of faults with new items ? My stats are high

hubb

Well, I have a long history of buying something mechanical or technical that seems to show a fault that the manufacturer has never come across before.

This year alone I purchased these from reputable high end companies.

A pair of high end pro audio speakers for £1500. The dsp went in one of them. It was replaced. Now another issue has surfaced that they have never had before. It will have to be replaced under guarantee.

An E bike for £2199 and it started to lose power intermittently after a week. The manufacturer had not had this issue with any other bikes. They replaced the battery. Same issue surfaced again. Ended up replacing with a new bike.

A dehumidifier that doesn't display the correct humidity (compared to two separate stand alone humidity hydrometers) and also does not shut off when the desired level is reached. Again, they have never had this issue before.

I could go on and on over the past 20 years with many other technical, mainly pro audio/music related items that went chips like a Sony Blu ray player and a set top box. 

So is it me or are things just not made as well ?

Farway

I'd take the phrase, we have never had this before with a large pinch of salt. 

A lot of goods these days are never thoroughly tested before sale or post design, leaving the final customer to do the work of what was the testing departments job

DullGreyGuy

I think some people are simply jinxed when it comes to tech. Mrs is like that but worse still she has problems with her phone but when I use it it all works fine. Even switched phones at one point and my now former phone started having problems for her but her former phone worked perfectly for me. 

EssexExile

As DullGreyGuy says, some people are just jinxed. I used to repair domestic appliances and found that some people would call me back time and again to work on various appliances. If they got fed up with old ones always breaking down they'd buy new ones that would also always break down.

cerebus

I do like that little white lie "I've never seen that before" used it meself once or twice! 🤣

Some of it is that some people simply take care of things better,  get them serviced/maintained regularly and/or don't use them as much 

My sisters washing machine is still going strong and its 30 years old, she only uses it once a week , regularly cleans it and asks me to give it a once over from time to time,  I've only changed the brushes and bearings once to keep it going 

For someone else they might do that amount of washing in 3 years and the machine requires work 

hubb

cerebus said:

I do like that little white lie "I've never seen that before" used it meself once or twice! 🤣

Some of it is that some people simply take care of things better,  get them serviced/maintained regularly and/or don't use them as much 

My sisters washing machine is still going strong and its 30 years old, she only uses it once a week , regularly cleans it and asks me to give it a once over from time to time,  I've only changed the brushes and bearings once to keep it going 

For someone else they might do that amount of washing in 3 years and the machine requires work 

Well if you read my op you can see everything that has gone wrong has done so from new. That said, I always take good care with what I buy. 

debitcardmayhem

I feel for you really, the old adage buy cheap buy twice doesn’t seem to apply to you. Do the forum a favour and don’t recommend anything that you have just bought or you are thinking of buying.

I hope you have a lovely xmas and you can still test your gifts befor it’s too late. 🎄🎅

PHK

debitcardmayhem said:

I feel for you really, the old adage buy cheap buy twice doesn’t seem to apply to you. Do the forum a favour and don’t recommend anything that you have just bought or you are thinking of buying.

I hope you have a lovely xmas and you can still test your gifts befor it’s too late. 🎄🎅

For two reasons, I don't think that adage is correct. 

Luxury brands sometimes have lower reliability. What Car recently looked at reliability. Jaguar came 29th out of 32 car brands. Based on number of reported faults. For the Jaguar XE for every 100 sold, there were 137 faults. 

Secondly, higher spending consumers are likely to have higher expectations. For example perceive something as a fault when it's actually a characteristic. 

That's not to say this is the case with the OP. 

It's also the case that premium brands can sometimes be a higher cost because of name and service aspects rather than Quality of Goods. 

A friend of mine had a Loewe analogue  flat screen TV, one of the first to come out. She paid around £4000. She had no end of trouble with it whereas my £600 similar Samsung had better picture, ease of use and never needed repair. 

DullGreyGuy

PHK said:
It's also the case that premium brands can sometimes be a higher cost because of name and service aspects rather than Quality of Goods. 

Plus marketing spend... cost per sale tends to be vastly higher and gets worse the more premium the brand wants so appear. 


There is however something between cheap and luxury, its probably in this space where you may get the best return on investment but again you may find its more performance than durability

hubb

For the record., replacement bike is now showing the same rare fault as the first returned bike. I think I will now give up on e bikes after returning this. 

wongataa

hubb said:

For the record., replacement bike is now showing the same rare fault as the first returned bike. I think I will now give up on e bikes after returning this. 

Or maybe you should just give up on that particular ebike as it apparently has issues.