I don't quite know what to say to what I found near the end in this article:
> Recently, my wife needed a carrot peeler. She needed one rather quickly. Off to Target. The one she bought (the only one on sale)...
I stopped at the phrase "the only one on sale". Inevitably the next part reads:
> looked handsome enough, and the brand was one she recognized, but it failed in the useful department, miserably. It wasn’t sharp enough to peel a carrot.
Is this deliberate, or did the author not notice a core problem right there, in their own shopping behavior?
As for coffee grinders, I've got a Eureka Mignon and machines like that are expected to last a few decades easily, with a little bit of maintenance. If you buy the $99 stuff, well...
Especially in the kitchen some good stuff still exists. It's expensive, heavy - and lasts. Unfortunately you won't find those in many of the regular shops. In my city - Nuremberg, Germany - I only see that kind of (expensive) quality in a single specialized store (Kitchen Loesch, https://www.kuechen-loesch.de/). I myself was not aware of the kinds of good appliances that are still made until I went through the lower levels of that store for the first time. I too only knew the stuff most people know, which does not last long, visible at first glance already, with all the cheap plastics it's made of. Much of the better stuff is heavy and mostly made of metal. Even the hand blenders there almost all cost above 100 Euros, far more than I was used to seeing. On the other hand, those devices looked like they would last for a very long time, not like that shitty plastics Philipps model I own. Unfortunately it's not nearly the same to see pictures online, having the actual appliance right in front of you is very different as far as I can tell after that experience of actually seeing them there. The impression of solidity just does not transmit via some online shopping website picture.
I noticed the "only one on sale" thing too. I suspect the author meant it was the only one for sale at the store, period, not that it was the only one with a sale/discounted price.
You are right but this very much reinforces the saying "it's very expensive to be poor". $99 for a coffee grinder is a lot of money for most people. At the US minimum wage it's almost 17 hours of work, after taxes are taken out. So all they can afford is the cheaper version but then they have to consistently purchase a new one so end up paying more over time. Pretty interesting phenomenon.
> As for coffee grinders, I've got a Eureka Mignon and machines like that are expected to last a few decades easily, with a little bit of maintenance. If you buy the $99 stuff, well...
All the fawning over the Niche Zero grinder does my head it - its using a crappy brushed DC motor and a plastic gearbox more akin to the quality of a $100 sunbeam conical burr grinder I had.
And like my Sunbeam grinder the gearbox will likely start to get very very noisy after 10 years of heavy use, not to mention needing new brushes at some stage which aren't user replaceable.
But hey, one youtube guy said some good things about the Niche so it must be the best!
They also complained about pyrex not being durable because they dropped it. My pyrex has lasted 2 decades of use and I think it's an example of a durable product.
Corning invented a particular kind of borosilicate glass about a hundred years ago and called it PYREX™. They left the consumer goods market about twenty years ago, divesting the brand. Nowadays that name might refer to either borosilicate glass or to soda lime glass.
> Whether Pyrex switched from using borosilicate glass to tempered soda lime glass only after Corning sold the brand to World Kitchen in 1998.
…
> In a January 2011 article on glass bakeware, Consumer Reports stated that they were unable to determine exactly when major U.S. manufacturers (including Pyrex) switched
She was sold a carrot peeler. She didn't receive a carrot peeler.
It's not relevant what the price was: that's a decision for the shop. If they can't sell carrot peelers at a price that makes sense for them, the answer is to not sell carrot peelers, not to sell things that are described as carrot peelers but which cannot peel a carrot.
I seem to have replied at top level - I intended to reply to someone attempting to say that selling crap was ok because you should expect crap if it's cheap.
You should look at the specific appliance and not just the brand. Even known "good" brands mess up.
For example and speaking about grinders, I had a Mahlkönig Vario at first, 370 Euro (https://www.mahlkoenig.com/de/products/vario-home). Mahlkönig is a brand for professional-grade coffee grinders, with some few expensive top-consumer-grade ones in the mix. It's their cheapest coffee grinder.
That particular model wasn't their own, I think they got it from Baratza (https://baratza.com/grinder/vario/), probably to extend their presence in the top-segment of the household market.
Too bad, that model is not a good fit for them at all. Lots of issues. I had mine repaired and it went so badly they sent me a brand new one after I complained with pictures. It's not bad per se or terrible, it just does not quite deliver what one expects from that brand. For example, the seal that prevents the espresso-grade finely ground coffee to get into the machine is just some barely attached rubber ring. Leakage into the machine is an issue. Also, lots of plastic. Very hard to disassemble, soooo many steps and parts, bad for repairs and maintenance.
> Recently, my wife needed a carrot peeler. She needed one rather quickly. Off to Target. The one she bought (the only one on sale)...
I stopped at the phrase "the only one on sale". Inevitably the next part reads:
> looked handsome enough, and the brand was one she recognized, but it failed in the useful department, miserably. It wasn’t sharp enough to peel a carrot.
Is this deliberate, or did the author not notice a core problem right there, in their own shopping behavior?
As for coffee grinders, I've got a Eureka Mignon and machines like that are expected to last a few decades easily, with a little bit of maintenance. If you buy the $99 stuff, well...
Especially in the kitchen some good stuff still exists. It's expensive, heavy - and lasts. Unfortunately you won't find those in many of the regular shops. In my city - Nuremberg, Germany - I only see that kind of (expensive) quality in a single specialized store (Kitchen Loesch, https://www.kuechen-loesch.de/). I myself was not aware of the kinds of good appliances that are still made until I went through the lower levels of that store for the first time. I too only knew the stuff most people know, which does not last long, visible at first glance already, with all the cheap plastics it's made of. Much of the better stuff is heavy and mostly made of metal. Even the hand blenders there almost all cost above 100 Euros, far more than I was used to seeing. On the other hand, those devices looked like they would last for a very long time, not like that shitty plastics Philipps model I own. Unfortunately it's not nearly the same to see pictures online, having the actual appliance right in front of you is very different as far as I can tell after that experience of actually seeing them there. The impression of solidity just does not transmit via some online shopping website picture.