Quality Is Junk Today

[Rastus]

Tab I thought you were retired.   

[TAB]

Tab I thought you were retired.   

on paper.

I still have a contractual obligations  for my company.  At least until the 1st of the year.  I am not swinging a hammer.  This week i have to be in 3 different states.  Portland, dfw than oakland.    Covid has made the world make no sense. 

I have only spent 24k at home depot so far this year.  It was mainly stuff for the barn.  Life has been a real snafu.  Had to buy a house for my mom to recover in.  There was no way she was living in a second story condo.  It was actually cheaper to buy a house than it was to rent.  I figure i can rent it out after my mom can go back to her place. Then sell it after 3 years.   Its one of those things, even if she sells her condo and buys something else it will make her payment jump by 700-1000.  That is not an option for her.   

[billt]

Well, as it turns out you guys were right, and I was wrong. I'm now convinced the quality of the big box store products are not the same. My second A.O. Smith water softener started leaking this past week. (It may have been doing it from the start, and I just didn't notice it). This one was leaking from where the electronic flow reader attached to the bypass valve. It was non reparable.

I called Lowe's and told them that was it. I'm done. 2 out of 2 leaking water softeners was enough for me. They were very good about it, apologized, and came and picked up the second softener for no charge, and gave me a full refund. I called a local plumbing outfit I've dealt with here in town, that have been in business for years, and had them them come out and install one of their units.

This new softener was twice the money, but it's an excellent softener. The resin tank is over twice the size for the same grain unit, (35,000 grains). Also the brine tank and resin tank are separate. I'm noticing this is the case with most of the higher quality, more costly softeners. Anyway, the thing works like a champ, and uses much less salt, and regenerates far less often. Over a period of years using less salt and water to regenerate adds up.

This has convinced me from now on when it come to things like valves, faucets, garbage disposals, and water softeners, I'm sticking with plumbing supply houses. I did a little research and found A.O. Smith does not build their own softeners. They contract them from a company called Hague, that produces them in China. (Big shocker there).

For appliances, (stoves, fridges, washing machines, and clothes dryers), Lowe's and Home Depot might be OK. If you stick with higher end, brand name products. And stay away from the Pacific Rim brands. (LG and Samsung). But for items that require a more complicated install, other than plugging them in, I'm going elsewhere.

It's really a shame it has come to this. The concept of having big home improvement stores like Lowe's and Home Depot is a good one.... Then they go and louse it up by selling crappy, inferior products.

[alfsauve]

BTW, speaking of crappy brands, stay away fro Dacor.  Got roped into an oven and range top.  The former is so poorly designed as to be useless for baking, the later they don't have any replacement parts for.

[Timothy]

Years ago, kid was still in HS.  My boss gave me a workstation to use at home.  It was an HP she had purchased from Walmart.

It needed some repairs and at the time I was fixing computers at work so I took it apart and started looking to replace some internals.  First thing I noticed was the unit serial had a funny suffix or prefix.  Turns out it was assembled specifically for Walmart.

I replaced most of the parts from Tiger Direct but it never worked too well.

I haven’t bought any electronics from them since.  Target ain’t much better.

[Sponsor]