I'm not immune. I recently bought some New Balance shoes from Sheels, figuring I'd be getting reasonable quality footwear. Both sets had hole damn near worn through the soles and delamination in multiple locations after ~6 months of wearing them as an office worker who does no abnormal amount of walking or exercise in them. Come to find out their "non flagship" models are cheaply made garbage as opposed to the quintessential white leather model that costs, iirc, the upper $300 range and is made in America.
There's so many companies reputation-tarnishing themselves by doing this "we sell a lesser line thats actually terrible" thing. Why do you think I will now trust you with more money for an upgraded model? You've just made me skeptical of your brand entirely.
I've sworn off Bosch appliances after a 2 year fiasco of service calls with one of their dishwashers. The thing was still about $900 plus install. At what price point am I to believe it's not the worse-on-purpose line, as they cheapen the product every year. They seem to have models from $700 to $2000.
A bad $900 model sours me on gambling that the $1200, $1500 or $2000 model is the good one this year.
The Bosch 800 series dishwashers are god-tier, or at least they were as of 5 years ago, when I last bought one. I've had one in the last 3 houses, and went so far recently as to swap my new house's dishwasher (I think a Whirlpool something-or-other) with my old house's Bosch 800, because it was a cross-town move, and I could.
Seems like almost everything moderately priced has soles made of a extremely
lightweight, squishy soft plastic that neither has much traction nor any toughness — worse than cheap flip-flop material.
Shoe companies should be embarrassed to put their name on such crap, yet they try to pass it off as premium.
