It is true the damn things seem to be designed to fail after about one year. There is no other logical explanation that I can think of. Plastic lasts for a long time, but not on these seats. Magically they fail.
I once bought a soft toilet seat. It was very comfortable for about a week. Then the foam started to compress. After about two weeks it was very uncomfortable. It had sharp plastic edges covered with a little foam. I never bought another one.
I've yet to find one that lasts longer than a couple years. One thing to look for is four support pads on the underside of the seat where the seat contacts the top of the bowl rim. I'm a pretty big guy and the cheapo soft seats with only 2 support pads near the front allow the seat to crack and break at about 3 and 9 o'clock, usually sooner than later.
The last seat we bought about a 8 mos ago was a cheapo from Walmart (~$20), a soft seat, but the only one with 4 support pads. It also had all plastic hinge hardware which is most frustrating. These are "made in the USA" and I don't understand the logic behind their construction. The mounting screws are some kinda plastic, nylon, I think. The damn things sit in sliding blocks which allow the seat to be adjusted from side to side. They also allow the damn thing to shift constantly, requiring I continually recenter the seat and tighten the nylon screw nuts. Maddening, but no worse than the last soft seat which had all metal hinges and the metal mounting screws also continually worked loose. These plastic adjusting pads seem to have finally set and I haven't had to re-adjust in the last couple months.
It seems all the soft seats in all the hardware and building supply stores, around here anyway, are all junk and I'll jes hafta live with constantly tweaking and/or replacing the damn things more often. I did run across one seat on the web, a heavy-duty soft seat, but it was about $80! Better to buy a new one every couple years or buy a wooden or plastic contoured seat. .
Plastic is fine but has different properties than metal in the bolts or wood in the seats and requires engineers to design with these differences in mind. Manufacturers need customer feedback to maybe push them in the right direction. I had to send back a non-home plastic based item for repair the second time because of poor design. I know exactly what they are doing wrong in the design but they won't correct it.
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