Have you ever wondered whatever happened to the quality of the products that we buy these days? Believe it or not, there was a time when we would buy items from clothes, shoes, appliances to products like bleach to makeup in plastic bottles and containers that would hold up. Now it seems that we are constantly needing to replace new purchases due to poor product quality sooner while prices keep going up.
Shoes advertised as made of leather were exactly as described years ago. You could polish them and get to wear them for more than a season in the past. However, expecting to even get a season out of a new pair of shoes seems hard pressed to do now. For example, my guy bought a pair of Dr. Scholl’s slip on shoes advertised as leather–-not synthetic material.
These shoes were leather all right from the feel when you first examine them. The funny part is that the leather was not what you think of a sturdy shoe leather. Instead, he wore these shoes a few times and the backs and around the sides started to peel away a paper thin leather coating, which was unbelievable. I guess some companies believe that consumers don’t need to worry about the amount of leather just that they’re buying a pair of leather shoes. After all, the cost of a thin coating of leather would be far cheaper to produce and profit over than selling a more durable leather shoe that wouldn’t need replaced before you even could finish out a season.
This was just one pair of shoes that got under my skin. I bought my mother a pair of expensive sneakers to start the summer season and the glue is coming loose, separating the top from sole. I realize companies are in business to make money, but at whose expense? In my opinion, making a poor quality product just to beef up the bottom line so consumers will need to constantly replace those products more frequently is just greed.
Clothes are another that needs replaced more than before. We seem to wash them a few times and those pieces can suddenly resemble rags.
Plastic bottles that you might buy products in like bleach or other cleaners are not trustworthy these days. Trust me, but they leak from the plastic in the bottle deteriorating unlike in earlier days when you could keep a gallon of bleach without fear that you will find it all over in a wet puddle in your laundry room.
Makeup packaging is another that irritates me. I love the idea of companies taking the green effort seriously with paper containers, but those rubber plastic containers rub me in the wrong way. Have you noticed how sticky they become after a while? They become unuseable and force you to throw away sometimes a barely used product. I can see the extra profit companies make to use that type of rubbery material for the container because those products would need replaced much sooner than years ago.
Speaking of makeup containers, it also gripes me that many manufacturers feel a mirror or an applicator for a product like eye shadow is no longer missed. This also may save them money and add to their profits, but it is inconvenient for consumers. Of course, the applicator that typically came inside was hardly quality for smooth application, but they were handy when needed for a quick fix.
Rising prices and inflation are bad enough, but poor product quality has been a problem a lot longer than these current problems with our uncertain economy. Sometimes, I believe manufacturers use any means possible to just charge us more and more for less and less. What are your thoughts on the subject?
