Well, they did it...

[Hammermechanicman]

Whenever people complain about shop rates i always remember the Pawn Stars episode where a guy says "that is half what you can sell it for" and the reply is " tell you what. You buy some land, build a store, hire employees, and you sell it.

 

[StarTech]

Whenever people complain about shop rates i always remember the Pawn Stars episode where a guy says "that is half what you can sell it for" and the reply is " tell you what. You buy some land, build a store, hire employees, and you sell it.

Yelp. Most customer have not clue or want to know what is involved in running a business. Overhead can be a killer if not controlled to a reasonable level. I stride for about 25% net profit so I can buffer to buy unexpected things like new tools or repairs for broken down shop equipment. Heck I just spent $200 having a metal fragment removed from my right eye that some how make it past my safety glasses. That definitely qualifies as an unexpected expense.

Now out that 25% comes my wages and income taxes too.

 

[Hammermechanicman]

When folk gripes about service rates i get on the web and show them the T&M rates of the company i used to work for. $360 to walk in the door and say "hi" and that covered the first 15 minutes. Some of the leases with service contracts with 24/7 coverage could be up to $1000 A DAY. My $40 an hour is dirt cheap.

 

[bertsmobile1]

And about the copper there is enough copper wires buried around here they could recycle the cables if the costs of digging them back up wasn't expensive. The telcons just leaves them in place and bury more cables but at least they optic fibers now..

Well we will get to the point where telephone wires are economic to strip to recover the wire.
However I rather fear they will be burned in an ammonia atmosphere to remove the plastic insulation as it is nearly impossible to strip manually.
Thus creating even more pollution from burning the PVC coating.

In 2000 a new LX279 listed for $4750.00. A new X300 listed for $2999.00 in 2018. Adjusted for inflation the X300 would sell for $2000.00 in the year 2000. So adjusted for inflation the LX279 is almost 240% more expensive.

Exactly the point I was making although just doing adjustments on inflation alone is not strictly accurate, but good enough to show we should not expect an X 300 of today to be the same quality as the LX 275 of 20 years ago .

I try to get people to use the "real" price of what they are buying rather than the dollar numbers.
We purchase things with hours of labour . Dollars are nothing more than an exchange medium that is acceptable to both parties .

 

[bkeller500]

The only conspiracy happening is from YOU the BUYERS refusing to pay a reasonable price for quality mowers.
So every season the manufacturers HAVE to find a way to make the mower CHEAPER because customers will not buy it if in their tiny cheapskate minds they believe that the mower company is making 1 red cent more profit than they think is reasonable .
The end result is a shaft with a forged gear ( which will be very strong ) because it takes 4 minutes off the assembly time & saves $10,000 / pa in warehousing & inventory .
I have never understood the mentality where everyone expects to get paid more each year for doing exactly the same work as last year but demands that prices for what they want reduce each year or at least remain the same .
Iron ore prices have doubled in the past year and copper prices have quadrupled

well stated my friend........I too like a bargain........but all too often a bargain becomes a disappointment. The way we built this country was to continue to make things better. Quality has been sacrificed to meet a lower cost from a public that has bought into a false economy. Build it here with quality engineering, reliability and technology. You will say more in the long run.

 

[StarTech]

Another with equipment is that manufactures are designing equipment to only to last a few years Some equipment was design with higher lifetimes are now built to have lower times; hence, quicker failures and needed replacements. It is a way to keep factories humming producing new that is being constantly being replaced.

I once worked for a Fortune 500 company that switch to a maximum lifetime standard of 5 yrs for all their durable goods. I was instructed as a tech to kill off anything over 5 yrs old even if the equipment was well maintained. Now some countries have mandated the minimum lifetime standard of durable goods much higher.

 

[upupandaway]

It's a shame that a company as successful as JD employs engineers whose job it is to find ways to ensure customers have to take their mowers to a dealership for service and pay a fortune for parts

So...................are you suprised? JD sales are stronger than ever and dealers charge $100/hr for service and they are not hurting for service business.

Maybe they want to be like Mercedes - make it expensive to repair.(That explains why there are so many at junkyards for parts)
So long as people whose item breaks say "May I please have another", the makers don't care if not laugh.

 

[bkeller500]

Suicide by design is not the intent of any manufacturer. Who would ever intend to build a product that is inferior or designed to fail, just so the consumer has to repurchase more quickly? How likely are you to purchase again, a expensive piece of equipment that had a shorter life than you thought reasonable? Manufacturers build their reputations on producing quality equipment at a affordable price. The design is not intended to fail but to meet price demands. Far too often the price points are not that of the consumer but by the big box stores that want to make the most profit they can. It's just like a cheap pizza.....you won't go back.

 

[StarTech]

Well sorry but equipment is just designed to make it the end of the warranty period. After that they don't care if it last a long time afterward or not. They employ engineers and researchers that can figure out just how long a particular part will last and then design it just make it through warranty period most times.After they will sell you the repair parts until they decide to kill the equipment off.

I have several items over the years that just the warranty expired so did the items. Most were not replaced by the same product either here.

As for the OEMs and large distributors reputations they simply don't care anymore as it is all about the profit that they can make. However sooner or later it will catch up to them.

It is like the JD dealer that took back the discounts they gave me for buying parts and now charges $20 shipping on anything that I order through them. Well I have basically left them in favor of an online dealer that still gives me the discount for JD parts and I have gone to another Stihl that don't charge me an arm and leg for the Stihl parts.

Also A&I here just got suspended in house for failing to provide timely updates and shipping of parts among other things until Spring 2022. Then I think about buying from them again but by then I probably done found alternate sources for the part at reasonable prices. It just don't cut it taking a week just to post online that my most needed parts were back ordered a week before. Anyway they have already lost over $2000 in orders lately because of their attitude. The last PO was initially $660 but was cut down to $221 as I rerouted the rest of the order to another vendor. At least three 793880 camshafts and two 799863 fuel tanks were among the re-routed items along with a roll of chainsaw chain.

 

[bertsmobile1]

At this point I refer you to the to automotive pioneers with the name of Henry
One decided to make the best vehicles in the world , so he tested them till something failed then made that part stronger & tested again.
The cars bearing his name are the halmark for quality engineering , come with a guarantee that passes down through generations of the original purchaser.
I the long term those who bought his cars paid far less on a per year basis ( or per mile if you like ) than those who bought the other Henry's cars.
Over 95% of the cars his company made are still in existance and of them better than 80% are still in running condition.
However his company has been bankrupt 3 times and he died in poverty.

The other Henry made cars as cheap as he could .
He also tested his cars till some thing failed only with him, he then downgraded all the other bits so they failed at around the same time.
Originally he sold cars with no warranty till the government forced him to do it and the company still only provides the minimum legally required warranty.
Less than 5% of the total production output of his company are still in existance and the bulk of them are less than 10 years old .
His company became one of the biggest makers of cars in the world, his family became one of the wealthiest families in the world for the next 50 years.

The first Henry was of course Henry Rolls of Rolls Royce fame.
The second one was Henry Ford of Ford Motors.

If the buying public will not pay for quality that will last a lifetime then they can not complain when everything else is trash of varying levels .