on being a "YGWYPF" free zone...

Badtux making a good case, a telling note, and in the "Mean and vindictive asshats" department...

I'm currently in the process of getting rid of a lot of crap aboard "So It Goes" which is simply taking up valuable space but, more on that later.

On a related subject, I've received a couple of emails regarding my opine on the SeaWater Pro watermaker of the "You get what you pay for" sort and, to be perfectly frank, I'd like to point out a couple of things...

For starters, a goodly amount of the "crap I need to get rid of" aboard "So It Goes" is of the stuff I paid a serious chunk of money on that is, for want of a better word, crap. For instance, I have two pairs of very lightly-used Keen sandals and one pair of new ones where the glue holding them together has simply quit working. Not exactly what you might expect for $100+ sandals.

I also recently wanted to use a light, albeit pricey, Marmot rain jacket that I'd only used a couple of weeks and when I got it out of the closet found that the Goretex membrane had morphed into something other than a waterproof barrier and become so much dust. Again, not exactly what you'd expect from the money spent...

I could go on of course, the Raymarine gear that's never really worked, the brand new $120 basketball shoes whose soles came off the third day I wore them, the new DeWalt batteries that never held a charge, the expensive tools that fell apart. All things that I paid top dollar for that performed worse than much less expensive alternatives.

What's actually more important is that the companies making the expensive crap seem to be less than eager to fix or replace items that don't quite live up to expectations.

Which brings us back to the whole "you get what you pay for" thing because, in my experience, you really can't just depend on price being any kind of indicator of quality or service these days.

Being a smart consumer means you really have to look closely at the the product in question rather than just the price tag. I know that seems obvious but just the fact that every time I suggest here that a lesser priced product may actually be of impressive quality I tend to get letters of the "YGWYPF" sort. It shows just how many people are addicted to the consumerist kool-aid.

Just saying.


Listening to Buyepongo

So it goes...