Quality in manufacturing has declined as companies realized a durable product means fewer purchases.
For example, household appliances used to advertise they'd last 20 years. And most of them did last that long and even longer.
Today's appliances only boast of a 5-10 year lifespan. And most don't last to 10 years without at least one major repair.
Have prices for these poorer quality products gone down as companies spend far less to make them? No.
Have company profits and executive salaries gone way up with inferior products? Yes.
Reddit user Flaky_Show6239 asked:
"What is an example of 'they don't make 'em like they used to'?"
Lifetime Warranties
"Lifetime warranties were actually for a Lifetime and durability was actually a selling point on most products."
~ Drakenfel
"It's not like any company honors warranties anymore anyway, they''ll try any trick they can to weasel out of it."
~ 80burritospersecond
"I tried to claim the warranty on my mom's copper cookware set after the nonstick failed about 6 months in. They'll replace it for free* as long as you're willing to pay shipping."
"*Shipping costs the same as buying a new set."
"This should be illegal."
~ msnmck
Search Engines
"Search engines: sure, they were wonky and unreliable in the wild west internet era (e.g. HotBot, Lycos, Webcrawler), but Google came along and revolutionized everything."
"Peak search engine reliability was probably in the mid-2010s, and it's been in a steep decline since then."
"Nowadays when I search for anything on Google, it omits random key words of mine, gives me irrelevant AI-generated answers, shows me Pinterest images, and pulls up irrelevant PDF files from things I distinctly did not search for."
"YouTube search is complete garbage too. After searching for a video, it'll show me three results followed by 'people also watched' and 'finish watching', then a bunch of irrelevant Shorts and Jimmy Kimmel videos for whatever the f*ck reason."
~ baron_von_brunk
Clothing
"My Torrid clothes from the 2000s are still going strong but the stuff I got last year has snags and holes in them."
~ PinkMonorail
"I bought some graphic tees from Target recently. No sh*t, they literally all got multiple holes within 1-2 washes."
"I’m not hard on my clothing by any means. Clothing is all trash now, even the expensive stuff."
~ ahleeshaa23
"Back in 2000, when the Lakers won the NBA championship, I ordered the championship Tshirt the players wore post game. Wore the thing for YEARS. Thick cotton, durable, soft and kept it's shape."
"In 2020, I again ordered the Tshirt they wore post game. The damn thing tore as I was putting it on. It was so thin I could see through it."
"Every year they try to cost cut everything to death to save money until what you end up with is useless. I've seen these projects work."
"They use a slightly thinner material, and test if consumers can they tell the difference? No? Great. Next year, again a thinner material, can they tell the difference against the current shirt? No? Great... And so on."
"But when you compare it to the original, it's night and day."
~ Maliluma
HP Printers
"HP Printers. The old grey bricks that you saw 20 years ago in every office that connect via the old parallel printer port were amazing workhorses. Anything from the last 15 years is the epitome of cheap garbage."
~ connerpunk
"I worked at a casino ~20 years ago. We had so many laser printers, like hundreds around the place, because we had so much sh*t to print to keep records for legal reasons etc..."
"They were all old (new at the time of course) HP laser printers and they kicked a**. Some were printing hundreds if not thousands of pages per day with almost zero problems."
"Any issue was, at worst, a quick part replacement that I could do in minutes."
~ vonkeswick
"I was in an airport at an airline service desk not too long ago and spotted an HP office printer that looked like it was from 2004. I quipped to the staff how they could stand to upgrade their printer.
"The desk rep said they'd only give that printer up from "their cold dead hands" since the new ones are such garbage."
~ fulthrottlejazzhands
Jeans
"Jeans. I can feel how thin the denim is and how much faster they’ve rubbed away in the thighs, yet they’ve nearly doubled in price for some designers."
~ SortedN2Slytherin
"I used to have a pair of jeans routinely last me 5-6 years of constant use (I normally keep 3-4 pairs in my rotation so they get worn often) and now I feel lucky to get 6-12 months out of a pair."
~ Substantial-Award-20
"I've worn one pair of black Levi's 501s (that is still very black as well) for well over 10 years. The knees and rear pockets are quite worn, but not too bad."
"Then I bought 2 pairs last year."
"One is basically completely worn through (not just ripped, the fabric just got so thin it fell apart) within a year. The other one I managed to keep together with patches by catching it early."
"Absolute garbage compared to the older ones."
~ JefkeJoske
Small Appliances
"My biggest gripe is blenders. All they need to do is make the seal housing out of metal instead of plastic and they'll last 10+ years instead of 18 months."
"My mother's blender is over 40 years old and she still uses it daily. Meanwhile, we must have had 10 of them."
~ Separate-Ad-9916
"I saw a toaster that can connect to wifi so it can tell you when bread is toasted."
"Or, you could just be patient for 20 seconds."
~ EmperinoPenguino
"But... toasters already let us know when toast is done, by literally ejecting the toast and showing it to us. These companies need to stop reinventing the wheel."
~ JojoTheWolfBoy
Strawberries
"Freaking strawberries. They domesticated them to be bigger and stuff, but now they're way less sweet. Like they used to be bright red and very sweet. I would do anything for an og strawberry."
~ isthisreal19191
"I thought that was just in my head, but strawberries ARE so sour now and I hate it. I used to love eating them but I don’t enjoy them anymore. I miss how sweet they used to be."
~ 7ottennoah
Chocolate
"Cadbury's cream eggs. Cadbury just straight up lying on their site with that 'They haven't gotten smaller, you've gotten bigger' bit."
~ KaityKat117
"I completely stopped buying all chocolate bars because of shrinkflation. It's not even the size either, it's the quality of product."
"The ingredients are just pure sh*t. I'd hardly qualify them as any kind of chocolate."
"I love chocolate and get it from other sources still. Nothing by the big brands."
"You might as well just buy oil mixed with high fructose corn syrup if you're considering a Nestlé product."
~ ScionoicS
Furniture
"Furniture! Used to be solid and worth having for years."
~ ChrisShapedObject
"We saved up for ages to have an old chair reupholstered. It was monstrously expensive, and I honestly hate the chair, but its bones are sturdy as f*ck after 70 years."
"The dude doing the work said he suspects that it's a solid oak frame."
"Having an old chair reupholstered cost us double what buying something new would, but knowing that I won't have to replace the thing in half a decade feels worth it."
"We bought a cheap couch that collapsed under us after only 3 years. Reclaiming old furniture feels like the best choice."
~ the-nature-mage
Pyrex
"Pyrex. The old stuff was borosilicate glass, highly resistant to heat stress and therefore great in the kitchen."
"The new stuff is tempered soda lime glass, which is stronger if you drop it, but can just shatter unexpectedly under certain heat-related circumstances, such as putting a cold Pyrex dish in the oven or a hot one under tap water, which were things you could usually do with old Pyrex with no problems."
~ Dachannien
"That's why I didn't hesitate to grab two vintage pie plates for 50 cents each at a rummage sale."
~ Picax8398
Major Appliances
"I've been repairing appliances in my old house for years, but the new appliances just are not built to last. I replaced a control board in my refrigerator and a control board in my dishwasher in the past year."
"The dishwasher worked for another 6 months then the replacement control board failed. I started looking deeper into it and these control boards fail way too often."
"I'm an electrical engineer and I'm convinced the boards in particular are 'designed to fail' after after a few years."
~ Orome2
"My family has had the exact same fridge since we moved into this house over 18 years ago. I don't know if it has ever actually broken, and if it has, my dad has been able to easily fix it."
"That little saying about 'every middle class family has an outside fridge' is true for us, but we got our 'outside fridge' like 8 years ago because our main fridge never needed replacing."
~ OptimusPower92
Amazon
"Literally everything on Amazon is made by one of these Chinese 5 capital letter companies that switch names whenever their reviews get too bad."
"Nothing they make lasts very long if it even does what they say it does."
~ drdildamesh
Staplers
"Staplers. We lost our ~20 year old solid metal stapler and all the new replacements were cheap plastic."
"I finally went on eBay and bought one identical to the one we lost because I couldn't deal with the plastic ones."
"If it can't be used as a weapon, it isn't sturdy enough."
~ Cyt0kinSt0rm
"Yes. I’ve gone through like 3 staplers in a year."
"I know people who collect old office equipment and I’m seriously considering buying a stapler from like the 1940s."
~ viktor72
Tomatoes
"Tomatoes. When I was a kid in the 70s they were sweet, flavorful and delicious. You could just cut one open, sprinkle a little salt on it and chomp into it with content."
"Tomatoes these days are hard, flavorless garbage."
~ BeanieMcChimp
"They breed them for shelf stability and shipping durability, not flavor."
~ thingpaint
Fast Food
"Fast food. Used to be delicious, good quantities, fairly cheap and fast."
"Now for example I sit in a drive thru for 20 mins at Taco Bell, my burrito supreme is like $8 now and is the size of that tornado thing you get at 7-11 and tastes like bad grease."
"This is no way an attack on employees, but more on the higher-ups that make these decisions."
~ hallandstoat
"My child and I were out after a fun day of riding a motorcycle together. Totally in the moment having the time of our lives."
"My child goes 'dad can we pick something up on the way home?' and I said sure thing. We stopped at one of our local fast food restaurants."
"I sat behind one customer for 10 minutes and started doing the math to get us our meals and my wife+ other child was going to be $55 on the low and about $65 on the high end."
"After sitting for another 5 minutes, I said 'dude, that’s enough waiting, let’s go get good stuff at the grocery store'. We bought good burgers and chicken."
"Made the whole meal for about $25. Fast food is just not worth it anymore."
~ brapo68
What do you think isn't made like it used to be?
