Percy Moo as Einstein

Percy Moo as Einstein
Dog=Einstein2

Monday 30 December 2013

Carelessly Thrown together in The PRC - Or Giving The Expression Chinese Junk A Whole Nother Meaning.

As 2013 wheezes slowly to its end, presents opened, turkey consumed and Boxing Day Cornish pasties scoffed with bubble and squeak, thoughts turn to presents given and received.

All of mine given and received had one thing in common: none of them were Chinese tat. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not rich - not even comfortable; the Spanish State for which I work has seen to that. No, the point that I want to make is that we have all avoided the made in PRC label for one very good reason. We wanted to make sure that the gifts were still serviceable after New Year's Day. 

Notwithstanding most Euopean and American brands who maintain acceptable levels of quality in their Chinese subcontractors, any generic article emanating from the PRC tends to be, in a word, crap. And crappy crap of the crappiest crap kind.

Take the case of the two timer plugs that I bought this year. The first, an electromechanical affair, made in PRC, was purchased in summer. It lasted for about three weeks before getting thoroughly confused with our western imperialist electricity and rebelling. As such our immersion heater was switched on and off  with all the oriental inscrutability of an I-Ching reading. Peradventure the Feng Shui of the immersion heater was not propitious.

Two days ago I bought a (rather expensive) digital timer switch from an upmarket Spanish department store. It didn't even last an hour. When pressing the reset button, said button fell inside the device and so made it unuseable. I then looked at the maker's details. What a surprise! It was yet another fine article carelessly thrown together in the PRC. I should have known better. 

However, the real problem is the fact that retailers the world over seem to prefer the cheap and cheerless Chinese tat to (not much) more expensive articles made in the UK, EU or USA. We are being robbed of choice, subjected to a tyranny of tat while we see our own manufacturing jobs exported to the long-term benefit of no-one.

Instead of being condemned to endlessly replacing things that should last a lifetime, I would happily pay twice or more for an article that I know is not going to break or fall to pieces . In the case of the timer, I would prefer to pay the rapacious electricity companies more (at least electricity is produced fairly locally and employs people here) than line the pockets of billionaires living half a world away in an oppressive one-party regime with a human rights record that most third-world dictators would envy. 

And it would seem that most people are beginning to think the same. Many small Spanish shops have closed in recent years, driven out of business by the Chinese bazaar next door. Now we are beginning to see Chinese stores close down as consumers begin to realise that low prices and the lowest of abysmally low quality is not a real economic option.

So my wish for next Christmas is that our own business and political leaders realise that there is no real economic or social advantage in trade with the Middle Kingdom; just short-term gains and long-term losses. And please, Santa, bring me a serviceable timer switch, made in the UK, EU or USA! 

Update: Yesterday (18.01.14) I bought a different model of timer at the same store only to discover that the instructions included had absolutely nothing to do with the new model - they referred to the previously purchased piece of junk. Obviously this new timer was also chucked together in the same oriental sweatshop as the last. Wasn't it Einstein who said that madness was when one endlessly repeated the same action in the hope of a completely different result? Who is the lunatic, me for committing the same mistake twice in the same department store, or our society/economy for continuing to buy and peddle such low-quality crap from a corrupt rapacious, undemocratic country that oppresses its own people?

Note: Does PRC mean People's Republic of China - or, as I suspect, Produces Rivers of Crap?

2 comments:

  1. The plethora of "Pound shops" and "99p stores" in the UK suggests that the market for tat still has life left in it. A few months ago there was a scare when non-Apple-made iPhone chargers kept bursting into flames and I have no doubt that there are similar scandals still waiting to happen. Apparently, you cannot even trust the designer labels on garments being sold cheap in discount stores as these are being made by the designer firms themselves, at low cost and therefore low quality, exclusively for sale in those stores. (Not that you would catch me wearing a garment with a designer label on it. EVER!)

    People like cheap. Avarice triumphs over common sense. The message that it is better to spend a little more to buy a product that will last longer is just too subtle for a large chunk of the population to understand.

    Consumer law, at least in the UK, is complex and not as helpful as it is cracked up to be, as I discovered when our tablet PCs failed within months and we could not get any redress without risking a court case (which we might as easily lose as win).

    There used to be a saying "No one ever got sacked for buying from Microsoft". Whether that is still true, the principle still applies: find the companies that produce good quality goods and stick with them.

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    1. With regard to designer labels, I would like to wear some clothes with designer labels - but not for the labels per se. The original idea behind branding was to inspire customer confidence in a well-made, dependable product. I have found that certain labels do indeed last longer and are more serviceable over a longer time frame than others. Levis jeans, for example, seem to last for ever.
      Unfortunately and as you mention, not even labels nowadays are a guarantee of anything beyond a higher price.

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