(OT) General rants

[garhkal]

True, but with a car you CAN do it yourself without voiding the warranty.  Kind of hard for appliances these days..

[Feenix74]

Did I suddenly get dropped back into the 50s or something?

Sure starting to look like it lol

Nope, cannot be the 50s. I am of Chinese-descent, back in the 50s I would not have been allowed in the country, let alone hold an Officers Commission in Her Majesty's Royal Australian Air Force. Me marrying an Anglo-Australian would have been frowned on and my Anglo-Australian step-daughter would not be allowed to date a Kiwi, let alone one of Maori-descent. My two mixed-race daughters would probably be constantly in trouble at school for beating up the kids that were teasing them about their ancestry  :D

[solmanian]

Bought a new chair for the PC, the last one holding out for six years before giving out. This piece of crap gave out in less than a week; warranty was easy to find, so i got it replaced. The replacement broke after two months, got it replaced again. As an engineer looking at the problem, it seems pretty obvious - instead of metal or wood, the entire weight is focused on a couple of pieces plastic. I wonder how many times they can afford to replace this crappy chair while still being cost-effective. I asked if they can replace the problematic piece with metal, the answer was that it would cost north of 400$, essentially tripling the price of the chair... Even my crappy IKEA chair held for three years, what happened to times you could buy a furniture and you could trust it wouldn't break the moment you bring it home?

[pheonixstorm]

Whenever they decided to make everything disposable. First PC my parents bought... 4k. First computer I bought off the store shelf, clearance for 250. Why make things that last a long time, there is no money in it.

[solmanian]

But it's a more expansive chair than before... for the price hike they asked to to put a piece of metal, I'd expect to have three blacksmiths working in intervals, while listening to epic LOTR soundtrack in the background, forging the "one chair" for me. For that price I expect it to at least charge my phone and have a wifi hotspot.

[garhkal]

Bought a new chair for the PC, the last one holding out for six years before giving out. This piece of crap gave out in less than a week; warranty was easy to find, so i got it replaced. The replacement broke after two months, got it replaced again. As an engineer looking at the problem, it seems pretty obvious - instead of metal or wood, the entire weight is focused on a couple of pieces plastic. I wonder how many times they can afford to replace this crappy chair while still being cost-effective. I asked if they can replace the problematic piece with metal, the answer was that it would cost north of 400$, essentially tripling the price of the chair... Even my crappy IKEA chair held for three years, what happened to times you could buy a furniture and you could trust it wouldn't break the moment you bring it home?

And that's part of my gripe.  How companies are MORE concerned with Quantity over quality.  Even if those quantity items keep getting replaced every 2-3 weeks.. 

[sadlerbw]

Not making assumption here, but how much do you weigh and what was the chair rated for? Actually, don't answer, just check it out. We have found that the chairs we use at my office that have plastic stress points used to be rated at 250lbs, but are now only rated for 225lbs, even after a redesign of the stress point. What we have found is that, for anyone over about 220, the charis really will fall apart much faster. I'm around 215 and I switched models because I was tearing up the 225 rated models. We actually looked for heavier duty chairs for our big guys, and it has made a difference. More metal parts and even sturdier hydraulics. They cost a little more, but it's less than $100 per chair. I think we looked for Big and Tall models to find the ones with higher weight ratings. Even if you aren't over 225lbs, you may like the sturdier construction.

As for why they are all made more poorly...well, labor and materials are more expensive thanks to inflation mostly. That, and many people don't WANT their stuff to last forever. They want a new model every few years. C'est la vie.

[guardiandashi]

I know I got tired of having the chairs I was picking up at office depot that were failing after a few months, and yes I am a bigger person, at over 270lbs, and the $100 ish chairs were only rated for ~225 lbs.  my last chair I picked up on sale was a "big and tall" model, rated for ~400lbs, and since it was on sale it was $200 instead of its regular $300-400 when I looked at the differences they were fairly obvious.

the 225 rated chair has a thinner base plate and the point that the top of the cylinder goes into is just pressed in, and the cylinder is not as heavy etc.

the 400 lb rated chair is physically a bit bigger the base plate is made out of a heavier gauge metal, and the insert is pressed in, and then wielded all the way around. Its things like that that make the chair so much more durable.

[solmanian]

Well, the salesman claimed the chair is rated for 150 kilos, and I'm less than a 100. The problem isn't with the base plate; as I said it's poorly designed, the stress point is on the plastic arm handles, who essentially suppose to hold the chair together. I originally thought they were made with metal covered with plastic. Nope, once it broke turns out the visible metal were simply  unconnected rings at the connection points, with the plastic around them simply not up to the job. I reckon that without the metal rings the chair would break in minutes, not lasting long enough to leave the showroom if not simply cracking during assembly.