If you hang around on social media long enough, you will catch the “gratitude fever.” Being grateful is all well and good. But don’t let the positivity memes blind you. Quality craftsmanship is down the tubes.
The fact is that products made in China and other Asian countries are utter crap. I am not going to sugar-coat things, sing kumbaya or try to yoga away my disgruntled feelings about it.
FACT: We buy overpriced products made in China and other countries, and they are of poor quality.
They don’t work, break, aren’t durable, don’t last long and don’t perform as expected. And what do we do about this? Nothing. We just throw them away and buy more crap products. This has gone from bad to worse, and something needs to be said.
Got stories about junk products from China? I sure do. Let me tell you a few of them.
Singer Sewing Thread That Doesn’t Work the Way Thread Should Work.
I bought some sewing thread with the Singer brand on it. Remember Singer? My mom, the long-time seamstress, had a Singer sewing machine. This is a long trusted brand name that speaks of quality.
My mother was always sewing when we were kids, and there were lots of spools of thread around.
Thread is NOT supposed to snap in half when you pull it from both ends. Why? Because that’s not thread’s job. Thread is used to stitch things together.
Let me show you a video of what happens when I tug on the ends of this Singer thread that I bought.
Did you see that? The thread is new, out of the package. It’s not going to hold together anything. I would be better sewing something using dental floss, than with this Singer thread. The hair on my head is thicker than this thread.
(Side note: I added that music to the video later. I heard the intro, thought it would suffice. The song is hilarious! That lady has some problems. LOL.)
Where’s it made? Starts with a C and ends in hina.
More Junk Products: Printers and Printer Ink
This week, I am printing things. I prepped for this. I had a printer that is also a piece of garbage, which I dismantled and ended up throwing away (of course). I bought a new printer from guess where? Walmart. I bought printer ink along with it. “It comes with ink already, ” said the guy at the counter who rang me up.
“I just want to get some extra, in case.” I said.
Sure enough. I printed maybe five documents, and the ink that was already in the printer when I bought it ran out. GREAT. So I put the new printer cartridge in. I printed about five more two-page documents. I was just getting to the part where I start printing tax forms. Would you like to see the result?
Wow!! I’m so glad I invested in these fine office products. This is working out really well. Thank you, Walmart!
Here is the box that the printer ink came in. It says “Complete Set of Ink.” That wording doesn’t really make sense. What is a “set of ink?” This is a set of ink cartridges.” A set means there are two of them. So it’s not a set of ink, because “ink” refers to one liquid. You can’t have a set of liquid.
Here’s the back of the box.
I love the disclaimer. “Product design and specifications are subject to change without notice.”
Ah. So what they’re saying is, “We’ll send you any old crap we want, and you can’t do anything about it.” This isn’t from China, as the label tells us. But it’s pretty much another garbage product sold by Walmart and Amazon.
What’s another product that I have wasted my money on and I’m sure you have, too?
Pens. Pens that work correctly are now becoming a problem. Just a basic thing… a pen to write with. They’ve been making these for a while now.
Back in September I bought a whole bunch of school supplies for my son. The school sent me a big list to shop for, and I dropped around $80 fulfilling their requests. Think about that. Eighty dollars in school supplies for every child in school.
I bought pens, for him and myself. Just the standard Bic brand. School started. A month went by. I noticed some red staining on my son’s shorts. Where was that coming from? The red pens. They were leaking as he was writing with them. The ink was getting on his hands and clothing. It was like the red pens were filled with watercolor paint instead of real ink.
I started finding disassembled black Bic pens in my purse, and more broken pens with his school supplies. I don’t take pens apart. These are regular Bic pens. They’re just falling apart on their own, leaving the ink tube out in the open to explode on our belongings.
Not sure where the ink and plastic components of these pens are made. Bic is a French company. Did product manufacturers do away with quality control? What is going on??
“Be grateful for what you have!,” they say.
What I have mostly came from China, and it is broken, of poor quality and doesn’t work.
Disgusted with the poor quality products being forced on us? Buy American. Shop local. Support crafters and small business owners. Complain. Return it.