The Folly of Errors Seems to be Getting Worse
I'm sure I'm not imagining this. I've been around for a long time...maybe not as long as many of us here...and I am repeatedly surprised at how many people do things wrong these days. Most meal orders are screwed up. Most contracts in the construction work I see aren't followed. I've been trying to put together a golf simulator for my family in our garage. I ordered a bunch of expensive stuff from this national company known for this. One thing I ordered was the hitting mat. Got a nice, wide one for my son (he's a lefty) and I. $1000. They sent me a package. It had two of them in there. Didn't get any of the other stuff so I was concerned and contacted the place asking why they through in an extra $1000 dookicky. "Oh...We'll send you a slip to send it back" (which will cost me at least an hour and the packaging nightmare...good luck with that). Then, when I got several boxes of the pre-cut piping for the backstop structure they were mostly cut to the wrong lengths. Probably manufactured in "CHYNA!!!". My buddy stood there and said the Chinese probably did it on purpose and were laughing when they shipped it off. Most business, production, contractual transactions are screwed up these days. As we sat with a couple beers today I told my buddy who said China's doing it to us on purpose to read "Atlas Shrugged". I think that book explains a lot.
The stuff that doesn't work out of the box isn't the most important issue.
The problem is the product components that work until a few days after the Chinese warranty expires
which is almost always shorter than the warranty included by the US company that bought the
component that they needed to build a product for US consumers.
By then the Chinese supplier is off the hook and the US company that sold it is stuck with the
cost and with the loss of goodwill that may have taken decades to create.
That lets the Chinese competitor, often the parent of the parts supplier, win the customer
from the US company and eventually buy the US company or its trademarks.