What model Buick, and how many miles on it?
Best buy I ever had in a used car was an '84 LeSabre, bought in 1991 at about
55K miles... sold it in 2001 at 209K, still running fine. The only major repair was a transmission rebuild at 150K.clipped
I'll entertain the idea of beating to a bloody pulp anyone who entertains the idea of me washing their shirts by pounding them on a rock.
clipped
Don't know how many times I heard that one when I was a student nurse. It's a real PIA trying to take pulses on night shift - rarely find both hands free :o)
She blushed, and
Regal. The odometer quit at 106k. Heck, I could get it painted and sell it as a low-mileage granny car. It's actually on it's fourth older driver. The first two only put on 12k.
There is a flaw in your argument. We started making cheap crap here too. Black & Decker was one of the leaders in the rush to consumer grade junk. Lasko Metal Products fought the cheap stuff by making their own version of cheap fans back in the mid 1970's. I have a couple of made in the USA drill from B&D that are not as good as many imports. GE sold the small appliance division to B&D also and they kept making stuff cheaper. Why? Because we wanted cheaper from the discount stores at the time.
Wal Mart takes a lot of heat, but thee were discounters going back a number of years that fought for every low price imaginable. They just did not do it as well as WM. You can probably think of a bunch of discount stores that have gone under in the past 20 years, before China made everything. Two Guys, Lechmere, Bradley's, Crazy Eddie, Zayre, Clover, Kiddie City, and every department store that sold decent merchandise at reasonable prices. Macys is about the only one left.
Consumers demand cheap stuff too. We are as much to blame as the stores selling it.
" Crazy Eddie " ?
I heard about this guy.
Was his Warrant served ...?
I'm an ass for pointing out the truth??? You can shop anywhere you want....I could care less....I just pointed out the need to re-run THIS SAME EXACT THREAD EVERY FEW WEEKS WITH THE SAME OLD RESPONCES..If my reasoning is wrong give me the REAL: reason for the need to re-run this topic , instead of calling names and re-running your reasons for not going to HD or Lowes...It only belittles you and proves my point....
sounds more like an old mans wet dream than reality...Did you have to clean up afterwards???? LOL....
On 2/22/2009 8:40 PM benick spake thus:
I'm the one who started this thread, and I do shop regularly at Home Despot (no experience w/Lowe's yet); I get things there that I know are cheaper, that are easy to grab and go, and that I don't have to ask for help for.
But I prefer places other than the big-box stores, for the many reasons already stated in this thread. So I guess we'll just have to say that
*you* can shop anywhere *you* like, OK?
Sure I have (bought power tools or kitchen appliances lately).
The fact is, there are almost always more expensive choices available, no one is forced to buy the "cheap" alternative (except maybe for kitchen microwaves and a few hundred other items).
For example, last year I bought a cheap table saw for $99 (Ryobi). I COULD have bought a SawStop CB31230 for a mere $3,470 (MSRP). That thirty-three hundred dollar savings bought a lot of beer!
You ask "how is that an improvement?" Simple. For me it was a choice between a saw for $99 that does an acceptable job and something that cost prohibitively more that may do a perfect job. For your position, my choice would have been between the more expensive item and nothing. Had your dream been reality, I'd be cutting boards with an X-Acto knife!
Your criterion of "lasting a generation" is slightly flawed. I didn't WANT the item to last a generation - durability wasn't even on the list! In my case, the saw I bought did the job (cutting laminate for three rooms). Had the saw failed immediately after the flooring job was complete, I'd have been satisfied. As it is, lasting 18 months is a 17-1/2 month bonus!
Now if I had wanted a saw to pass on to my son, maybe I'd have sprung for the three-thousand dollar model. But with my luck, my son would have turned out to be a hair dresser, the saw would end up as scrap metal, and I would have missed out on a lot of beer.
It's a division of labor. She washes my shirt and I fix her rock when it breaks.
I LOVE that line!
"Lin Burton for certain". Polk Brothers?
Oops. You're exactly right: She would.
Then, she would surely volunteer to mow the lawn half the time (she's done it once in >35 years) and shovel the snow (I don't think she's EVER done it) - to name a few outdoor things.
I've changed my mind: She would insist on an automatic rock.
Agreed.
My biggest lament is that, occasionally, I wish to buy the high quality version of something - a power tool comes to mind - and it's hard or impossible to find. Ace does carry the "high end" stuff as well as the cheap stuff. At the big box stores, it's ALL the low end merchandise.
What colors are available?
I hope this doesn't lead to thread-drift but, gots my own story about good hardware stores:
The precursor to our local Ace was a place called Do It Yourself Center. Their signage was strange; the two words "DO IT!" in four-foot letters and the words "Yourself Center" in two-inch letters below it.
I had to stop going there because every time I took one of my wife's teenage boys with me to pick something up he'd say, "So, Frank, We gonna Do It?"
-Frank
I've never been in a HF store and have no intention of ever going. I agree that it is cheap crap. OTOH, I've bought a few items that are very good quality and meet the specifications of the US brand that formerly made them either here of Japan, Hong Kong or wherever they chased the cheap labor. My Kitchen Aid toaster is a good example. Works perfect for a few years now, but it did cost more than the Wal-Mart $7 toasters.
My company produces custom molded parts. We buy and re-sell the tooling for the job and make parts as the customer needs them. Typical tooling from the US, Germany, or Italy runs about $10,000 and takes 8 weeks on average. If we buy it at that price, we only mark it up about $500 to cover costs because we really want the long term product sales. In some cases, the prospective customer says, "I can't justify that tooling cost so I'm sticking with my old method of packing even though the piece price is a little higher". Sale lost
Along comes China mold maker. He quotes the same tool for $3500 and two week delivery. We go to the same prospect and quote $5000 for the tooling and he gives us an order. Tooling is shipped exactly when promised. Quality is as good as any other source. We have new business and keep people employed. Customer saves money. We have happy customer for many years.
The other side is that we have lost good customers as they moved their manufacturing overseas.
Still another story. The wife of a co-worker was laid off about 6 months ago. The product her division made was split between China and Alabama. Last week she was called back to work. Neither China, nor Alabama, is able to produce the quality of goods needed so it is back to Rhode Island. Other products are still gone though.
No one scenario, no one story fits all. You can get good, you can get crap from most any place.
In article , "Ed Pawlowski" wrote: [major snip]
You're ignoring the relative probabilities: any randomly selected product made in China, Vietnam, or Malaysia is FAR more likely to be crap than a randomly selected product made in Canada, Germany, the U.S., or Australia (to name a few).
Hehehe! Will that be a top- or front-loading rock?
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