The crux of this dilemma is that doing the “right thing” leads to the wrong result. In a comment I questioned the possibility of management in a public company solving the dilemma.
It reminds me that Jobs did not do much buying, nearly empty house, but he did do a lot of shopping I think. He just couldn't find stuff worth buying. I'm sure he was just frustrated.
Conversely the owners of these other large companies, have people who do their shopping I think. They just seem to have no clue of the massive work consumers have to do in order to give them their money.
Isn't that true? Haven't we all desperately wanted to give a retailer our money at one point and its been damn hard!!! Here I want this TAKE MY MONEY PLEASE!!! PLEASE!!! I'm BEGGING YOU!!! TAKE MY MONEY!!! Nope we have a lot of absurd barriers, long lines, complex rigamarole. If you want to give us your money we are going to make you go through hell and back. And half the time the friggin thing is defective or so crappy you have to take it back and that is REALLY fun stuff.
I'm doing that right now. I'm shopping for several things. It should be stone simple. I need a mini fridge for my granny pad and some seat covers for my tercel and a replacement for my coleman lantern and a few tools for my business.
Its really not brain surgery for these products. Take the lantern. I need LED lights and a cigarette jack with a rechargable battery that won't break after 10 uses.
Finding what I want is... and what almost all car campers want is almost impossible. Every single product is half assed. Every single retailer has no clue. They are all almost what I need. I could actually buy products to do what I want for about $150 assuming they all didn't break. Then I would have a whole box of parts to do one thing - be a lantern.
Coleman led products break and the light is so low its useless. I bought some $4 LED flashlights that are awesome, extremely bright and only ONE led so I know it can be done. They were so good I bought 12 of them because I knew I'd never see them again. That's how it is now, if you find some thing that works right buy a dozen because sure as hell they will improve it until it doesn't work worth poo poo.
The rechargeable batteries coleman sells are absurdly expensive. I already have a monster rechargeable battery in my car. I'd have to drive home to recharge their batteries or carry a recharger and buy a cigarette to 110 volt converter... sigh... my alternative is to use dozens of size D batteries. Either throw them away or buy a charger and a converter.
Everready has a nearly bright enough lantern with no cigarette jack but it does have an LED light YOU CAN'T TURN OFF so it drains the batteries unless you remove them which from reports is a huge hassle. So get this, if you buy it for an emergency like an earthquake, you can't just turn it on, you have to fumble with it in the dark. They have like 240 reviews on amazon with 239 commenting on how you can't turn the LED light off so it drains the batteries. How could they not know? Just pull the dam led light out at the factories and tape the wires!!!
I've looked far and wide for a lantern to replace my coleman propane but no luck.
I found the seat covers I need I think, except all 5 websites that have the seat covers don't have a picture and they have a disclaimer that the "item might not match the picture!!!" Yeah I'm really going to trust them to do business online. Amazon gets my money. They have the right seat cover but don't have the right color... sigh. I need either grey or green, gonna settle for brown. Nice cloth covers. ALL the rest I've seen are hideous artificial carpet like material with terrible gaudy prints or pattern or else fake leather that sticks to a body like glue. A search of Sears site yields 20 pages at 25 covers per page, all of them identical more or less. Three pages in - I threw in the towel. Just put them all on one page you idiots. I'll read the news while it loads.
I'm also buying some tools. There is a blizzard of cordless tools out there. Once you buy into a model it sort of locks you in although many parts are interchangeable.
I think Makita is getting it. Their tools and batteries seem to be well designed. I'm buying a "Hackzawl" which is a mini Sawsall perfect for what I need, just to modify other people's bad work so I can do mine right, small which is what I need. I already have a big sawsall, way too big for this job. I'm also buying a multi tool which is pretty small too. they have 2 sized batteries both use the same recharger. Now if they would only make a lantern. So they are doing it right and they are going to get about $500 bucks worth of my business. Maybe more later if they can figure out how to put 5 good LEDs in a lantern. Probably too complex of an idea.
I swear its just exhausting. Apple is the ONLY one that gets it. |
