Everything is so cheaply made these days...

The toggle on our 1 year old air popper - replacing an eleven year old model with no on switch - ceased to provide the desired result. We took a look at the device, jimmied the button and underneath was an old school switch like the back of a computer with an i on one side o on the other. Works just fine now...but yeah lacking design. There was a time when America was known for great cars, Italy for cool design of household objects and Germany was known for craftsmanship. The Japanese came in with form meets function and then greed took it all down to plastic.

FWIW, they’d probably replace it for you.


a reply to: tamusan

a reply to: tamusan

Stainless steel moka pot. Everything else is trash. Plus you can take it wherever you go if you can make fire you can make coffee. And it will last two lives minimum.

I rarely buy anything new or retail. I make coffee every morning, using a French Press I put together from four other presses, all of them bought at garage sales or thrift stores. I heat the water in a Sunbeam kettle, formerly the lower part of a vacuum coffee maker, bought at a garage sale. The kettle will probably outlast me, it is so well made. I buy the coffee at a salvage grocery. I drive a used Volvo - a little rough, but in good mechanical condition. Nearly all of my clothes come from thrifts. I run four stereo systems in the house, and I don't think any of the gear was bought new, or much of the LP's or CD's I play. And on and on. I never made a whole lot of money, so I learned to scrounge - it's a fine art.

Like this, which I posted on "Fakebook" yesterday: Money saving tip: I got one of those e-mails today, touting some breakthrough discoveries...now available in our amazing book (or video). To get it, you must endure an interminable sales pitch, and at the end, the FREE! book or whatever turns out to be free only if you take out a ONE YEAR membership in some organization you've never heard of.

But wait - there's more!

I listened, and decided that they probably sell thousands (or millions) of these books/videos. Some of them must end up on "that auction site" [wink, wink]...so I went there, and sure enough, the book + bonus I would have had to pay $79.95 for, I was able to snag of $18.50 + shipping (about five bucks). I saved about fifty bucks, so keep this in mind, and don't pay through the nose for this stuff.

There's a market for cheaply made stuff. You can buy a coffee grinder for $20 that will last a year or so, or you can buy one for $150 made by Kitchen Aid that is heirloom quality. I made that mistake, and after the third grinder broke I did some research and came up with the Kitchen Aid which has lasted a dozen years so far and, IMO, will not break.

You insist on "getting a deal," buy the cheapest available, and then wonder why it breaks and blame the manufacturer. But whose fault is it, really? If "cheap" is your sole criterion, it should not surprise you that you wind up with cheap stuff. Take responsibility for the fact that you wanted cheap, and that's what you got.

a reply to: Allaroundyou

Maybe next time but something made in America and not China.
Just saying

Fully made in America for a coffee maker is not an option that I've seen. Even the Bunn is just assembled in America.

a reply to: tamusan

Pourover is great.

a reply to: and14263

Unplug it. Dismantle it and fix it.

I just took it apart. The switch is broken. I'm considering replacing it with one from an old computer or something. I love tinkering with stuff, so I may just do that.

a reply to: BlissSeeker

FWIW, they’d probably replace it for you.

Unfortunately I no longer have the receipt to show that it is just 4 months old.

a reply to: Peeple

Stainless steel moka pot.

Someone else had suggested that to me, but they described it as an expresso maker. Is that accurate or can you make weaker coffee with it? My wife does not like strong coffee.

a reply to: Lazarus Short

I'm a big fan of finding used stuff to cut down on what ends up in the landfill. Unfortunately, we do not have any quality second hand stores in my area.

a reply to: schuyler

You insist on "getting a deal," buy the cheapest available, and then wonder why it breaks and blame the manufacturer. But whose fault is it, really? If "cheap" is your sole criterion, it should not surprise you that you wind up with cheap stuff. Take responsibility for the fact that you wanted cheap, and that's what you got.

Simple was the criteria for me, and not cheap. I wanted a basic model with just an on/off switch and none of the additional features.

originally posted by: tamusan
a reply to: and14263

Unplug it. Dismantle it and fix it.

I just took it apart. The switch is broken. I'm considering replacing it with one from an old computer or something. I love tinkering with stuff, so I may just do that.

Great work. Hope you can fix it.

a reply to: tamusan
Isn't this partly because consumers are adddicted to purchasing the cheapest things they can find? Good quality gets priced out of the market.

a reply to: tamusan

Check out cafe and restaurant insolvencies for relyable professional equipment. It's where I have my Izzo espresso machine from but of course there are coffee full automatic dispensers with grinding function too, for like 150€ what would normall cost >1000€ (higher quality)

150€ is a lot for a coffee machine, but not for a full automatic one with grinding and milk steamer if one needs that.

a reply to: tamusan


I just had to replace my me coffee maker; only had it for a couple of months.

Also, my sister got me a really cool looking snow/roof snow remover, used it once and the head of it snapped right off. I used to be able to keep those and only have to replace every 5 years or so. Complete cheap plastic.

My sister bought a new refrigerator a few years back, it sh$t the bed after one year, luckily she got the warranty. She gets another one after much red tape, time and bullsnip. Sure enough, new refrigerator only lasted 2 years. My refrigerator is over 20 years old, still working!

….. and people are worried about the green deal? Let’s just keep on pumping plastic out 🤡

I have a Keurig that I have had for about 10 years now. It works fine for not just coffee but anything hot. I expect it will keep going for a long time. I know others who have had them longer. They are not $$cheap but.....

Sometimes, you get what you pay for. *shrug*

I also paid a lot for my vacuum cleaner. I have had my Dyson for over 20 years and just bought a 2nd one (different model for different flooring).

a reply to: BrokenCircles

That's actually really awesome! I always find things like this interesting, and I learned something new today! Thanks for sharing.

The last two Mr. Coffee pots we had developed leaks somewhere inside and water would come out of the underside of the machine each time we used it. The leaks were small at first, but within a month they got pretty bad. Two different styles of the pot too, I never bothered taking it apart to find out why it was doing that, they were only twenty five bucks on sale. I did get a free pot from Mr. Coffee sent to me for the first one that went bad, that replacement lasted about the same time, it was a different model, same problem in the plastic tubes or something though. The one we have now is a Mr. coffee like our first one and it started to leak, but it temporarily stopped.

No more mister coffees, next time I will get anything else but. I remember when you got a pot and you junked it because it got dirty and couldn't be cleaned up ten years after you bought it. It was not tossed because it did not work.

We have an old cheap pot in the basement we keep for a spare, we have used it multiple times and it works fine...I bought it around twenty three years ago, used it at my shop for five years, the wife brought it to work at the offsite clinic for about five years till that closed, then we made it our spare coffee pot and used it for many weeks when coffee pots bit the dust. No use buying a coffee pot when at full price, that spare pot saved us probably forty bucks because we could wait for a sale at shopko or other big store. It probably only has another ten years or so left of it's life, I think that a coffee pot should be made to last, water and electricity should mandate safety..

a reply to: tamusan

Some would call it blasphemy, but you can adjust the coffee water ratio to however you like it.
Does your wife drink milk? Because warmed up milk, frothed up if your feeling fancy, with a little honey and an espresso in it, is probably the best morning drink you can have.

I still have my old Makita cordless drill I bought in 1988, used it for fifteen years doing construction, then used it till now for a personal drill. I actually own quite a few of those nine point six volt tools, all bought before the year two thousand, all still work. I did have a few of the batteries go bad and two chargers too, but that original drill I bought first, that battery just died about three or four years ago. I still have five good batteries though, I did have to buy a few more ten years ago, but they still hold a charge for quite a while ago except maybe three that I had problems with, mostly dropping the batteries out of my workers pouches when trying to change them took out the batteries, a twelve foot fall off a ladder tends to crack the batteries.

That drill I used to screw planks on to a dock, it is well sealed, but the end by the battery opening is not sealed, that could not go into the water, I had to go only like five inches below the water line that time. No damage, no water inside either, I got a second one from a friend when he upgraded and took that apart, that was ten years ago, and the drill was only a few years old. That makita drill was junk compared to what I had...but the battery worked. It also was not watertight anymore, talk about cheapening things up.