For one thing, why would I believe any manufacturer that made this claim?
It’s one thing for very old companies that already are known for longevity and also provide very long warranties, like, say, Le Crueset or Cutco. That’s a believable signal built over generations.
But for anyone else, claiming to have increased durability is cheap talk unless it’s accompanied by a long-duration and thorough warranty, and a reputation for not making the use of existing warranties unpleasantly difficult and frustrating, and some way of assuring me that that state of affairs will continue. (As a personal example: I have a GE gas stove bought in 2014, and whatever the situation was before, GE sold their appliance division to Haier in 2016, and customer warranty service got dramatically worse, as attested by several of the 11 customer service agents and 3 technicians I talked to in 2018 to get a replacement for a busted igniter (which is extremely easy to diagnose and fairly quick to replace, I knew what was wrong before the first call and the first customer service rep assured me the first tech would have the part with him when he arrived, but alas).) In any case, a credible signal of durability isn’t just a design/engineering/QA expense, it’s a deeper corporate infrastructure and organizational expense, and one that is really hard to believe in a world where companies constantly buy and sell divisions of each other, and change executives and strategies, and deal with constant external shocks of various sorts.
Actually, there is one way I can think of top-of-mind that might convince me a company really had engineered for longevity: if the product automatically came with a fully prepaid long-term replacement cost coverage insurance policy from a highly regarded, long-lived third party insurance company. Maybe one that states clearly that if the product breaks (other than usual act-of-god etc. exceptions), and can’t be fixed within, say, three attempts over a one month period, the policy pays out, no other exceptions. And it needs to be transferrable—what’s the use of a long-lived stove if the next owner of my house can’t benefit from the policy? For an actually durable product, this would be cheap to implement, otherwise not so much.
I have the same problem with clothing, but worse. Sam Vimes was wrong, or would be in the modern world. My clothes last about the same number of wash cycles, and have about the same chance of coming clean when I spill things on them, whether I buy a brand of shirt that has a $10 MSRP or a $100 MSRP. And with manufacturing so much cheaper than labor these days, repair of an expensive item, like resoling a shoe, can easily be several times more expensive than an entirely new but cheaper shoe. Especially if I am patient and wait a few weeks or months to buy it on sale when it predictably goes on sale. Actually, I buy most of my t-shirts these days at Michaels (the craft store): comfortable, no logos or tags, wide range of color options, cost less than $4, similar lifespan to every other shirt I have bought in the last decade.
The point in your last paragraph is important and worth emphasizing.
It is often said (as, indeed, in several comments here) that yes, perhaps the new cheap stuff is bad in various ways, but you can always pay more and get good stuff! But in many cases, that is simply false: you cannot pay more (for any even remotely reasonable values of “more”) and get good stuff, because what you get if you pay more is simply the same bad stuff but with more fancy features (or the same bad stuff but from a name brand, or the same bad stuff but with a superficially elegant design, etc., etc.).
Let’s say I look at some inexpensive thing and say: “This does everything I want; alas, it is unreliable, prone to breaking or otherwise failing, is of a poor build quality, does not quite perform to specifications, etc. I would like a thing that is no more ‘advanced’ than this—no fancy features, no exotic accessories, nothing more than what this cheap one’s got—except that it should be good; it shouldn’t break easily, it should be of a superior build quality, it should reliably perform as advertised, etc.”
Nine times out of ten, this desire will never be satisfied. Your choices are “cheap crap” or “expensive crap”.
If you know that the cheap thing will break, and the expensive thing has a 50% chance of being solid and a 50% chance of being the cheap thing in disguise in a way that you can’t immediately tell the difference before the sale, the expensive thing looks far less attractive… which in turn means it’s less likely to be sold, and places making an expensive solid product end up doing worse. (But places making an expensive cheap thing in disguise still do well.).
(To which the common response is “just look at reviews/brand history/etc”, and the common counter-counter response being to note that just because the version sent to reviewers was good/the brand used to be good doesn’t mean that the version in front of you is good.)
(To which the common response is “just look at reviews/brand history/etc”, and the common counter-counter response being to note that just because the version sent to reviewers was good/the brand used to be good doesn’t mean that the version in front of you is good.)
That would be a good counter-counter response in a (slightly) more reasonable and sane world than ours, yes. In our actual world it’s actually much worse than that; the response in reality is more like “the brand history means very close to nothing because of rampant extreme short-term thinking, the reviews are likely to be fraudulent/shills/etc., and sometimes the reviews you’re shown are for an entirely different product but you won’t be able to tell because this fact is intentionally obfuscated, and just in general the sellers have every incentive to make it maximally difficult for you to acquire accurate information about the market and the products in it, and no one is able and willing to make them behave honestly”.
For one thing, why would I believe any manufacturer that made this claim?
It’s one thing for very old companies that already are known for longevity and also provide very long warranties, like, say, Le Crueset or Cutco. That’s a believable signal built over generations.
But for anyone else, claiming to have increased durability is cheap talk unless it’s accompanied by a long-duration and thorough warranty, and a reputation for not making the use of existing warranties unpleasantly difficult and frustrating, and some way of assuring me that that state of affairs will continue. (As a personal example: I have a GE gas stove bought in 2014, and whatever the situation was before, GE sold their appliance division to Haier in 2016, and customer warranty service got dramatically worse, as attested by several of the 11 customer service agents and 3 technicians I talked to in 2018 to get a replacement for a busted igniter (which is extremely easy to diagnose and fairly quick to replace, I knew what was wrong before the first call and the first customer service rep assured me the first tech would have the part with him when he arrived, but alas).) In any case, a credible signal of durability isn’t just a design/engineering/QA expense, it’s a deeper corporate infrastructure and organizational expense, and one that is really hard to believe in a world where companies constantly buy and sell divisions of each other, and change executives and strategies, and deal with constant external shocks of various sorts.
Actually, there is one way I can think of top-of-mind that might convince me a company really had engineered for longevity: if the product automatically came with a fully prepaid long-term replacement cost coverage insurance policy from a highly regarded, long-lived third party insurance company. Maybe one that states clearly that if the product breaks (other than usual act-of-god etc. exceptions), and can’t be fixed within, say, three attempts over a one month period, the policy pays out, no other exceptions. And it needs to be transferrable—what’s the use of a long-lived stove if the next owner of my house can’t benefit from the policy? For an actually durable product, this would be cheap to implement, otherwise not so much.
I have the same problem with clothing, but worse. Sam Vimes was wrong, or would be in the modern world. My clothes last about the same number of wash cycles, and have about the same chance of coming clean when I spill things on them, whether I buy a brand of shirt that has a $10 MSRP or a $100 MSRP. And with manufacturing so much cheaper than labor these days, repair of an expensive item, like resoling a shoe, can easily be several times more expensive than an entirely new but cheaper shoe. Especially if I am patient and wait a few weeks or months to buy it on sale when it predictably goes on sale. Actually, I buy most of my t-shirts these days at Michaels (the craft store): comfortable, no logos or tags, wide range of color options, cost less than $4, similar lifespan to every other shirt I have bought in the last decade.
The point in your last paragraph is important and worth emphasizing.
It is often said (as, indeed, in several comments here) that yes, perhaps the new cheap stuff is bad in various ways, but you can always pay more and get good stuff! But in many cases, that is simply false: you cannot pay more (for any even remotely reasonable values of “more”) and get good stuff, because what you get if you pay more is simply the same bad stuff but with more fancy features (or the same bad stuff but from a name brand, or the same bad stuff but with a superficially elegant design, etc., etc.).
Let’s say I look at some inexpensive thing and say: “This does everything I want; alas, it is unreliable, prone to breaking or otherwise failing, is of a poor build quality, does not quite perform to specifications, etc. I would like a thing that is no more ‘advanced’ than this—no fancy features, no exotic accessories, nothing more than what this cheap one’s got—except that it should be good; it shouldn’t break easily, it should be of a superior build quality, it should reliably perform as advertised, etc.”
Nine times out of ten, this desire will never be satisfied. Your choices are “cheap crap” or “expensive crap”.
Imperfect information is rather important here.
If you know that the cheap thing will break, and the expensive thing has a 50% chance of being solid and a 50% chance of being the cheap thing in disguise in a way that you can’t immediately tell the difference before the sale, the expensive thing looks far less attractive… which in turn means it’s less likely to be sold, and places making an expensive solid product end up doing worse. (But places making an expensive cheap thing in disguise still do well.).
(To which the common response is “just look at reviews/brand history/etc”, and the common counter-counter response being to note that just because the version sent to reviewers was good/the brand used to be good doesn’t mean that the version in front of you is good.)
Yes, this is an important point.
That would be a good counter-counter response in a (slightly) more reasonable and sane world than ours, yes. In our actual world it’s actually much worse than that; the response in reality is more like “the brand history means very close to nothing because of rampant extreme short-term thinking, the reviews are likely to be fraudulent/shills/etc., and sometimes the reviews you’re shown are for an entirely different product but you won’t be able to tell because this fact is intentionally obfuscated, and just in general the sellers have every incentive to make it maximally difficult for you to acquire accurate information about the market and the products in it, and no one is able and willing to make them behave honestly”.
Anyway, yes, I agree with your overall point.