You know the three great lies, don't you? 1) The check's in the mail. 2) Of course I'll respect you in the morning & 3) I'm from the government and I'm here to help. Well they ought to add a fourth to that list: 'some assembly required'. Last night I put together a Thomas the Engine toy box for my grand son. By now I've gotten really good at putting stuff together. I've been doing it for so long that it's gotten easy to remember common patterns and engineering tricks. But there's absolutely no doubt that in recent years, things have gotten more difficult. Why? Made in China, that's why. It's not uncommon for parts to be missing, mismatched or of poor quality. For example, last night's particular item required a large number of different sized screws and an allen wrench. After using the allen wrench just once, the edges got so rounded that it was worthless. Off to the garage to get one of my own. As for the screws. I needed 8 of a large size and 22 smaller ones. What I got were 5 large ones and 35 smaller ones. Off to the garage to get screws of my own. This is not the first time something like this has happened. In fact it's more the rule than the exception. And it doesn't matter who the company is that sells the stuff. It's all made in China and any pretense to quality control is a bunch of bull. Once I wrote the company that makes those Radio Flyer wagons (genuine American made, right? BULL!)and complained about misaligned holes. They wrote back a long letter about their strict quality control standards. What a bunch of baloney! The thing looked like it was shipped directly from China. The box wasn't opened at all. For all the company knew it could have contained rice. Who's to fault for all this? Remember that blog I wrote a couple of weeks ago quoting Pogo? "We have met the enemy and they is US". It's our (yours actually) own fault. We (you) are not willing to pay a little more for quality. Instead, it's off to Walmart where virtually everything in the store is made in China. I'm not going to stop complaining because I gladly pay more for a quality product-when I can find one, that is.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Note from China: Some Assembly Required
You know the three great lies, don't you? 1) The check's in the mail. 2) Of course I'll respect you in the morning & 3) I'm from the government and I'm here to help. Well they ought to add a fourth to that list: 'some assembly required'. Last night I put together a Thomas the Engine toy box for my grand son. By now I've gotten really good at putting stuff together. I've been doing it for so long that it's gotten easy to remember common patterns and engineering tricks. But there's absolutely no doubt that in recent years, things have gotten more difficult. Why? Made in China, that's why. It's not uncommon for parts to be missing, mismatched or of poor quality. For example, last night's particular item required a large number of different sized screws and an allen wrench. After using the allen wrench just once, the edges got so rounded that it was worthless. Off to the garage to get one of my own. As for the screws. I needed 8 of a large size and 22 smaller ones. What I got were 5 large ones and 35 smaller ones. Off to the garage to get screws of my own. This is not the first time something like this has happened. In fact it's more the rule than the exception. And it doesn't matter who the company is that sells the stuff. It's all made in China and any pretense to quality control is a bunch of bull. Once I wrote the company that makes those Radio Flyer wagons (genuine American made, right? BULL!)and complained about misaligned holes. They wrote back a long letter about their strict quality control standards. What a bunch of baloney! The thing looked like it was shipped directly from China. The box wasn't opened at all. For all the company knew it could have contained rice. Who's to fault for all this? Remember that blog I wrote a couple of weeks ago quoting Pogo? "We have met the enemy and they is US". It's our (yours actually) own fault. We (you) are not willing to pay a little more for quality. Instead, it's off to Walmart where virtually everything in the store is made in China. I'm not going to stop complaining because I gladly pay more for a quality product-when I can find one, that is.
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