I'm getting pretty annoyed at the low quality of products. And I'm not talking about products from overseas that we have come to expect to be of the low-quality, such as products from China. I'm talking about products that are supposed to have a certain level of quality because of where they are made.
Specifically, about a certain company that makes their glass products in the United States of America, touting that they've been making glass products for 110 years. It might be true that they been making glass products for 110 years, but the quality of the products has diminished. They might've had a name for themselves for over a century where they made good quality and long-lasting products, but things have changed in recent years.
I went to Canadian Tire yesterday to buy a shower filter to remove the chlorine in water. Yes, in Canada there is a store called Canadian Tire :)
I was looking around a few of the aisles and noticed some products made by Anchor. There was a good deal for a 3 piece set of glass measuring cups. I grabbed it.
In the next aisle I wanted to get some glass containers to use for food storage instead of some of the plastic I still have. Another good deal for an 8 piece set of round glass containers. I grabbed it too.
Then I went to another aisle and saw some cutting boards on sale. I was going to grab one that was a good deal, it seemed. But then I started thinking of reviews, and to check what other people had to say about the products.
Am I ever glad I did.
It turns out the cutting board there was on special was really crappy. People have purchased it, washed it a few times and it ended up cracking on them. I looked at the board and saw that it was made of rectangular pieces that seemed glued together. This definitely wasn't a quality board that I want to risk spending money on and having it break soon after.
I went back to the aisle for the glass containers, and saw another good deal for a 15 piece set of glass containers. I calculated which one was the better deal to buy. But then also wondered about the quality of the product, and checked out some reviews.
Most of the reviews were positive. One person said the "TrueSeal" covers were not that great as they started to break apart after a few months. So overall the review seemed okay. But I kept looking in Google and found reviews on Consumer Reports for the company. This is where I read how low-quality their glass is.
I wasn't buying an oven dish, but all of the glass products said they were oven safe. I wasn't planning on using them in the oven. The people who had bought a specific oven cooking container, have gotten a rotten deal. They would cook something in the oven and have the glass dish shatter into many small pieces, ending up with cuts and burns.
Some people even put only warm soup that had cooled after cooking, into a glass container for storage made by this company, and had it break into pieces as well.
I also read one review about the glass measuring cups that I was going to buy. This person said that they didn't even have anything in it, and all of a sudden they heard a loud noise and it turned out that their glass measuring cup had broken into pieces.
Even though I wasn't going to use these products in the oven, having products that shatter when warm liquid are poured into it, or that shatter on their own, is not something I want to spend money on or risk having happen to me.
Being satisfied with all the negative reviews on Consumer Reports, I went to check regular reviews about the glass measuring cups. So many people were saying that the red labeling on these glass measuring cups was junk, because after a few passes in the dishwasher the labeling was not readable, making the measuring cups useless as measuring cups.
After spending about an hour looking at products to buy, and looking at reviews of the products, I ended up buying nothing except for the original item I went into the store for, which was the shower filter.
I find it somewhat sad and deplorable that a company that's been around for 110 years, is now producing such horrible quality products that they break apart in conditions that they are not supposed to break in, and where the labeling they have on measuring cups gets erased so easily.
What has happened to the quality of manufacturing in the United States? I used to think something made in the United States carried a certain level of quality with it, but that isn't the case anymore. You might as well just buy something in China and get the same level of quality, and maybe you'll get an even better quality, who knows. Of course this doesn't apply to all products, but it sure does applied to this one company: Anchor.
I don't understand why the company would make such poor quality products. People in North America aren't going to just keep buying from your product after your product fails to provide adequate quality. They will go to another company for better quality.
Planned obsolescence doesn't work in the favor of a company doing it unless people don't have alternatives. If there are no alternatives, people keep going for the cheap product because that's all they can get. In the case of Canadian Tire, that appears to be the case. Anchor can keep making poor quality products that might or might not last because Canadian Tire is only carrying this company's glass measuring cups. I found another company for rectangular glass containers instead of the ground glass containers by Anchor, but I didn't research them yet to know if I actually want to buy them. There were a lot of Anchor products for glass kitchen ware though. It seemed pretty dominant at the store, which is unfortunate.
Define that the quality of products has gone down overall? Did you used to trust products made in North America, like the United States? Have you seen the quality of products from a company you used to trust go down in recent years? Do you find planned obsolescence is getting larger in scope?
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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