The most frustrating flaws in everyday products

I agree that we should be pushing for spares to be available for a reasonable length of time but wonder if this is more likely to be achieved via EU legislation. Not everyone sees the benefits of EU legislation to benefit the environment but making spares available long term could help convince more people of its value.

I expect that manufacturers would claim that the cost of spares has to be high but I believe the number of spares involved could be greatly reduced if they did not make so many trivial changes to their products.

Your aims are ambitious DorsetMike, but thats the way we need to be thinking.

A way that we can stop the abuse is for Which? in its test results to note that bad design, which members have noted, that is still present in newer models, is commented on and marked down in the test results. Ideally, the suspect components should be subjected to accelerated testing to see if they fail.
It is apparent that many manufacturers no longer test their components to destruction or to survive 7 million cycles of load / unload. This was normal in the 1960s in the aftermath of the Comet air disasters, which were due to fatigue failure. Plastics however do not fail in the same way, they creep, lose plasticiser, go brittle and break.
Come on Which?. Show some initiative, link tests on new products with “old” components to failures in previous designs. We might then get some action from manufacturers.

I agree that it would be good to know more about poor design and anything that will affect the durability of products. Failure of plastics for the reasons you have indicated is a major issue, but it’s difficult to accelerate this to estimate how long plastic components will last.

A good product designer would be able to spot a poor choice of materials. This is exactly where Which could add value compared to user reviews; most users would not have the expertise to identify different polymers and assess their suitability.

jak, exactly right. Most products are designed using existing materials and manufacturing methods with known characteristics. There is no excuse for early failure of plastics in fridge-freezers, inadequate strength of components, for example. However, the effect of poor design in practice often takes time to reveal itself and may not be apparent when the product is brand new. This is perhaps where the wide membership of Which? could help by reporting problems that have arisen in normal use. If they were encouraged to report defects that arise in fridge fittings, as an example, warnings might be given of the likelihood of similar defects in new versions; just asking the manufacturer whether they have made any changes might help?
To make this manageable, in view of the large number of products Which? review, it would need to concentrate, I suspect, on the key offenders. Perhaps we could suggest them?

Agreed. So how about a longitudinal tracking survey of (say) 1000 Which member households over a few years. Every time a premature product failure occurred, people would register all details. A Which expert would attempt to diagnose the reason for failure and over time a comprehensive picture would emerge. Funding might even be available from WRAP as there’s a political will to reduce scrappage and landfill.

I think there is a lot we can agree on here. Looking at the choice of plastic, quality of moulding and suitability of design of components is useful and can reveal potential weaknesses. One complication is the considerable variation between batches and that can significantly affect useful life. The effect of poor quality control is more difficult to predict.

Quality control tends to go with brand to some extent. Plastic components are very sensitive to moulding cycles ie. temperature of injection, mould temperature, mould cooling, dwell time etc. This is where good process control comes in.

Regarding volume of data, there’s space for creativity here. For example, Which could try a form of member assisted project – a bit like crowdsourcing or citizen science – where members get involved in collating or analyzing results. (Think of the RSPB’s garden watch project). Granted, this sort of thing isn’t for everyone but it would only take a few people to get it off the ground. One thing I’ve noticed in Conversations is that there are some real experts around – an untapped resource in my view.

I once wrote to Karcher after a plastic component had failed when my pressure washer was out of warranty but had seen little use. I pointed out that the choice of plastic was poor and noted that their later designs used a more suitable type of plastic for the job. A replacement part arrived by First Class post.

All the Karcher pressure washers I’ve used have suffered premature failures for one reason or other. My present one has bits of springy copper strip instead of a proper pressure switch. My neighbour’s Karcher has the same leakage problem that the previous one did.

Other brands I have tried are not nearly so good at cleaning. As you say, use it as little as possible.

I sometimes have that problem too – I thought it was because I learned to type on an upright grand office typewriter where the Shift and Shift Lock [CAPS] keys were always [and only] on the left-hand side. It was years before I realised that on a computer keyboard there was another Shift key on the right-hand side underneath the Return key. I very quickly got out of the habit of hitting the [Carriage] Return key at the end of each line but I still instinctively use the left-hand Shift key. Of course, on the old typewriters there was quite a steep rake on the keyboard so the vertical separation of the rows of keys obviated any miss-hitting. A little tip: In a Word document, block [select] the text in the wrong case and type Shift+F3 to change from upper case to lower case or to initial caps [unfortunately it doesn’t work in documents like this and in e-mails but I bet Wavechange knows a way of doing it!].

John – We are using different software – I am a Mac user – but in my browser (Safari) and email software (Outlook), selected text can be set to upper case, lower case or words capitalised using Edit > Transformations and choosing one of the three options.

I’m a touch typist and look at the screen all the time, so if I’m typing in the wrong case I would know immediately.

Sorry for taking six months to reply.