RE: Commission acts to guarantee UK Consumer rights under the Guarantees Directive

["Kenneth Watt" <kwatt@xxxxxxx>]

> Yeah, I know. It's the sad tale of engineering abused. It seems
today's
> concept of research and development is more about Ford style
systematic
> weakenning of a design. Rather than building a better mousetrap, the plan
> seems to be to build the very worst mousetrap you can possibly get
away
> with..

Yup, that's more or less it in a nutshell!

The problem is that a lot of it is the consumer's own fault, IMHO they
are their own worst enemies at times as they demand lower and lower cost goods yet complain when the product is, basically, crap and the service
backup limited simply as there is no money to invest in either. It also
seriously hampers any innovation.

To make the point, for most volume manufacturers we would expect to do
one or two bearing changes a year under warranty that would be
considered normal. For one we do work for that is producing sub-=A3200
machines this figure rises to 5-6 failures *a WEEK*! The worst of it is
that many of the big, so-called, quality brands are following suit as
it's the only way that they can compete in the marketplace and get
machines stocked by retailers, very sad indeed.

ATEOTD though, ultimately, the customer looses every time by buying
cheaper, I expect from the appliance mentioned a 2-3 year lifespan, so
potentially, a 10 year ownership cost of about =A3800-1000 yet an
appliance that cost that in the first place would probably have trundled on to 15 years old without the high failure rate and heartache.

> I would say I have to agree, and the great problem is that whilst
there
> are
> many internet review sites which wil give honest answers about things<= BR> like
> mobos and graphics cards in terms of quality and performance, the
various
> shopping engines for appliances care only about price.

Yes, the whole shopping experience these days seems very much focussed
on price as opposed to service and quality other than a few exceptions.

> Then again Ken, you must be in a pretty cool position to crunch some stats
> on which models break most often, and which faults come up time and > again...

I and some others in the trade have been working on something on and off but it=92s a lot of work and a hard slog.

K.

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