China produced crap.

[Simon]

Anyone who's ever watched Dragon's Den and groaned when they suggest 'moving production to China to reduce costs' isn't alone. We've bought a few things in the last week from Amazon that were 'Made in China' and 75% of it arrived faulty and is going back.

1 of the 2 vacuum water bottles for each of the kids.
A 'hand painted' wooden bear duo who sit on a shelf and cuddle.
A set of 3 abstract canvas wall prints.

The water had 'paint' marks across the 'enamel' as if it's been mispainted in several places (no it doesn't wipe off)
The wooden bear duo had only been half painted and looked ridiculous
1 of the 3 prints hadn't actually been printed correctly, as if the print head was blocked as it was printing.

How any of this crap ever left the factory is beyond me. Why is the QA for stuff like this non existent? And I'm not talking about cheap stuff - we're paying the kind of prices that I'd expect for stuff produced elsewhere. Yet it's more landfill as the first two are returned for a refund and the prints are going straight in the bin (I had to try and use a 'Yeep' UPS locker at the railway station to send it back but the damn thing didn't work, so in my frustration I told Amazon to just refund me and I'd bin it).

What a waste of time, money and resources. Utterly fed up with it all. Be better!

[Mito Man]

I imagine someone’s worked out the costs and realised it’s cheaper to have very limited/no QA and accept the returns/refunds as it’s cheaper than hiring people to actually check everything. At the end of the day it’s a race to the bottom.

Also, you may have paid a price for your products which you believe should result in a higher quality item but in reality you’ve just vastly overpaid Amazon. If you’re buying something which you know is made in China and you can wait a few weeks, then just order it from China for much cheaper.

[V8Granite]

Things made in China don’t bother me as you kind of know what you’re getting. When OEM stuff moves to China though it seems that they do a yearly quality audit which involves a few nights out on the customer and not visiting a factory.

So many car parts from previously quality manufacturers are now done in China and the quality is shocking. Even a lot of Lemforder parts are being produced in China now and the quality has dropped. Which is silly as they can produce very high quality stuff and have done for quite a few years.

At work, we see a lot of utter crap and the after sales is awful, which is why I will never buy a car produced in China as I have no faith that any product support won’t be removed overnight.

Dave!

[Jobbo]

1/4 of the world’s population is in China so being made in China might be cheap Temu-style tat or might be high quality. iPhones are made in China, as are many Volvos, Teslas (which have less quality issues than the US built ones) etc.

[jamcg]

If you want cheap Chinese tat made in sweat shops for pittance you may as well order it from TikTokshop, showing or Temu and cut out the middle man.

Some of the stuff isn’t bad though- I buy porcelain tile bits from Temu now. They’re a type not sold in this country and I bought 40 for £18 the other day they only last about 5 holes but they’re so cheap it’s not a problem- the type you can get here is about that for one bit and doesn’t last much longer

They also have a ridiculous collection of greyhound memorabilia so the wife loves it for that

[Mito Man]

Yes the amount of random pet memorabilia is nuts

Problem with made in China is when a supplier goes there and says “I want this item made for *insert stupidly low price*” and somewhere in China someone will oblige and make it, it will inevitably be a POS though. Multiply that a billion times over and that’s the current problem.

[ZedLeg]

My new work is a heavy importer, hundreds of tonnes a year. Not thrilled about it tbh but I have to pay the bills. The quality seems to be pretty poor as well.

I guess all you can do is avoid it as much as you can.

I’ve been getting clothes from community clothing recently. Pricy but everything’s made in the UK.

[Mito Man]

How much of an item has to be made in the UK before it’s branded as such?
I recently returned a quad bike mounted sprayer which I had paid 3x the price vs others believing it’s a quality made in the UK product but the only part made here was the vacuum formed tank. The sprayers, pump, hoses, lance (so all the important bits) were all Chinese and not even decent components.

Happens a lot with agricultural stuff. Buy a UK made log splitter. The only thing that’s made here is the chassis
Lots of piss taking going on.

[ZedLeg]

Yeah, you can get stuff that’s “assembled in the UK” from chinese parts.

As far as I can tell with Comm Clothing they contract to UK companies that manufacture from start to finish. The only thing I couldn’t find a material source for was the leather in their shoes.

It’s a lot of effort to be ethical and end up not being that ethical anyway

[Explosive Newt]

I think McKinsey started this idea that outsourcing as much as possible maximises profit for shareholders - so companies shift the needle from delivering a service to people to more of being a profit making enterprise. It's sort of sad.

It’s a lot of effort to be ethical and end up not being that ethical anyway

This all over. I went through a phase of trying to buy from local / UK sellers and discovered that 50% of the time they were just buying from Amazon and adding a surcharge for their services.

[ZedLeg]

Yeah, the shift in focus in capitalism from providing goods and services to providing a return for investors has really done a number on what we can expect from a “quality product” and job security.