An Easy Mark

That’s me. It never ceases to amaze me, though by now I ought to be used to it, how manufacturers can send shoddy workmanship out the door.

Examples: a nice [name brand redacted *heh*] office chair whose arms would not stay firm, but wobbled, loosened and seemingly ready to fall off, within a short time after purchase. Simply tightening the bolts holding the arms on wasn’t the solution: they needed some thread locking compound. Simple. A couple of pennies-worth of thread lock, if that, and the arm bolts stay tight. (The cheap, thin leather on the arms and body was expected, and some has since been replaced after wearing out. More to come)

Bought a kitchen island, packed for assembly at home. It was pretty much what I expected, except… it had a drop leaf (one of the nice lil features) with one piece of 1″ hardwood (looks like oak) as a pull-out support. That’s fine, except that when I opened the box, the first thing I saw was that the support was split for about 3″ from the tip. *sigh* Carpenter’s glue and C-clamp. Next? When it was assembled, it became obvious that there were three problems with the faux “butcher block” top (it was a soft wood and NOT constructed as butcher block–but I already knew that from the store display so that wasn’t the problem). Pretty much in the middle of the top was a rather prominent marring. When the drop leaf was raised, its level did not match the rest of the top because of a crowning of the drop leaf surface.

Now, some progressively-finer sanding with my old (50 years? More?) Clarke sander did several good things: it got rid of the marring and the crown problems and removed what little finish was on the top and drop leaf, so it could be replaced with a better, Danish oil finish. I do not intend to use the top as a cutting surface, so something to provide a durable, low gloss finish was a good way to go.

Of course, I know why manufacturers send products like these out the door, ill-thought-out or with poor quality control. Many people won’t give poor quality control or bad construction (or even design) a second thought–perhaps because they simply don’t know better or because returns are a PITA. A few will complain and go to excessive lengths to compel a manufacturer or seller to make things right–and I’ve been known to do that very thing, even to the point of being almost thuggish to compel a seller/provider to “make me whole” when something is bad enough or involves anything beyond my dollar threshold for such things. Most of the time, I will just go ahead and make things right myself, often having expected in advance to have to do so (on the kitchen island, having seen a store display, I had already planned to refinish the top, for example).

Still, I’ve enjoyed the few times in recent years when I’ve been able to purchase something and have it be “just right” right out of the box. Appliance purchases this summer and my lil toy Asus are the recent examples of manufacturers and sellers getting it just right, but such examples still remain in the minority in my recent years’ experiences, and I keep on buying things I just know I’ll have to fix, right out of the box.