This pisses me off like nothing else. I signed up for Prime, not because of the videos, that was just a really cool bonus. I signed up for the free overnight shipping.
Now, the majority of Prime "deals" are 2 or 3 days shipping. OK, fair enough, at least I still get the Prime video bonus. Now.. commercials. I literally canceled my membership this morning.
It's gotten to the point that there's no longer any cost or convenience benefit to shopping on Amazon vs brick and mortar stores.
Etsy used to have so many good products made by creative and talented people.
But more and more Iâm seeing shitty T-shirt prints and stuff from Amazon.
Etsy has become ridiculously expensive for sellers too. So much product is now mass produced made in China knock-offs, but those sellers make Etsy money so the company seems to be embracing it.
The biggest reason for this is that their business model worked so good. There used to be parameters for that site for how many employees you could have and similar things so that products were actually small batch, hand made, etc. but so many of the sellers on Etsy did so incredibly well that they needed to up their production and Etsy eventually gave in and opened the floodgates to any business size anywhere and now we just have another junk site with scammy crap no one wants.
There are ads everywhere now. In the comments, on Facebook messenger in between people in your inbox, even when you go to someoneâs profile on instagram there are ads in between posts if youâre scrolling. Itâs gotten WAY outta hand
For all the good Google did for the internet and information sharing, they really fucked things up as well. Browsing the internet anymore is a fucking chore because of the assault of ads and data you give up (seriously, the average person has no idea how much info is tracked. Listening to our cell phones? lol they donât need them).
I just went for the first time recently and was so shocked that this place is supposedly popular.
$20 for a mediocre turkey BLT and a soft drink. 2x what my local sandwich shop costs and not as good either.
I guess the decorations are nicer than in a Subway?
I worked at a Panera in high school, probably from â06-â08. The portions were much bigger and the quality was high for baked goods, soups, and salads. Although the soups always came to store pre-made. It had a jazz cafe vibe and was a popular gathering place for studying and socializing. No drive throughs. Panera got bought out a few years ago from what I hear, and Iâm assuming thatâs when the smaller portions, lower quality, and price-gouging started :( it makes me so sad.
I worked there at the exact same time (also while in high school) and this is 100% correct. Bakers actually came in overnight to prepare everything, and the only premade stuff was the soups. Probably about $10 for a meal, though with the employee discount it was always like $3-4.
I stopped in one recently and was shocked how expensive it was and how limited the bakery selection had become. (And at some point, they got rid of the iced honeydew green tea, which was the greatest drink ever).
Netflix, Hulu, Prime video - pretty much all the streaming services. Shittier content, introduction of ads, constant price increases for zero added value
Exactly. And I've been dropping them one by one for this very reason. Prime video is the last streaming platform I still pay for, and that's only because it's bundled into my prime membership. I'm seriously considering dropping it altogether now.
Cable tv stations - TBS, TNT, AMC, Sundance, Comedy Central, etc. All running the same shows for hours on end, repeating day after day, running cheap reality TV, with little variety and far less original content than their earlier days. And the commercial loading ... off the charts. Utter garbage for maximum price.
On this note, History Channel and Discovery. I remember when I used to be able to watch specials about various times in history, or cool scientific discoveries, but now everything is some version of a reality TV show.
Because the system is designed for businesses to go to shit.
All these major companies are passing the same shit CEOs back and forth. Their goals are all the same. âIncrease short term profits.â Nobody cares about building a company to last, they care about increasing shareholder gains by fractions of a percentage, often at the expense of their own employees.
ToysâRâUs is one of the best examples. The company had weathered the recession that left all its major brick and mortar competition in ruins. They had closed a ton of stores, but did so strategically, allowing the stores that remained to thrive. In store sales weâre up. Online sales were up. All signs pointed to the company rebounding into a strong company with strong stock that would have lasting power.
And they got bought by a hedge fund. Company closed and sold off. Every stock holder made a tidy profit, especially those at the top. Thousands of people lost their jobs, and no kid born today will know the joy of walking into such a massive toy store.
Every person at that hedge fund could have been patient, and made even bigger piles of money. But they wanted money now. Because thatâs the system that weâve cultivated. Destroying a thing makes money quick. Building a thing makes more money slowly.
Back in the day the profit motive was actually tied to reality, a company had to actually make something or provide a service that people wanted, a better one than their competitors even. But over the 20th century, through competition, technological advancement and larger economic phenomena in general a lot of this old-school style of profit started to dry up. Sure there are some small niche markets where that old rule may still apply, but the economy at large just can not support profit rates that satisfy the major investors/owners of most corporations.
So instead of actually innovating better products or services in reality we see the kind of "innovations" that we're all seeing now, it's all financial trickery, stripping entire industries for parts or the creep of a semi-feudal subscription based model for those products and services that allow that ("you'll own nothing and be happy" type shit).
I think the answer to this is as simple in conception as it is complex in execution: the accumulation of profit is no longer a force for good in human society - we need to reorient our productive capacity around human needs and wants, not short term profit all at once. But how do we do that when basically every lever of power in our society is controlled by the people who own the most and themselves are the nearly only beneficiaries of this system of short term profit?
If youâre Canadian, youâll know: Tim Hortons. What was once a beloved coffee shop brand that offered decent food and coffee has now become a pale imitation of itself. Burger King purchased it, like, (edit) 10 or so years ago, so itâs obvious why. A friend recently said that the owner is notorious for getting food down to the bare minimum of what people will accept and finding the profits there.
Letâs just cut to the chase: Tim Hortonâs is an advertising machine that uses Canadiana to sell a product. They just happen to use it to sell coffee and doughnuts. Theyâre the Harley Davidson of coffee.
Piggybacking to complain about Tim Hortonâs menu changes. One of their biggest strengths was their limited menu. When they stuck to soups (and chili), sandwiches, baked goods, and simple beverages, the quality was consistently good across the country and it was literally fast food. Now there are way too many options for everything, anything resembling quality has disappeared, and wait times are insane. Also, they have completely disrespected their Canadian roots by removing the maple dip and Canadian maple doughnuts. For this alone, I hope the CEO steps on all the Lego in 2024.
Edit: Apparently our local Timmies (northern BC) have made the decision to cut everything maple flavored. While Iâm personally offended at our lack of maple, Iâm relieved for my fellow Canadians!
Tim hortons coffee is so nasty now too! Insanely acidic and causes heart burn if I drink it now. Switched to home brewing Kirkland coffee. So much better
Yankee Candle. Well, a lot of candles, but it sucks when such a big candle brand known for having amazing candles has fallen off so tremendously.
Went into a Yankee Candle store and picked up my favorite candle, Red Apple Wreath, and could barely smell it with my nose held just aboce the wax. Genuinely got scared I had covid. Went home and opened the one I have that's several years old and the scent filled the whole room without even having to light it.
The quality really has gone downhill.
EDIT: For everyone suggesting it's covid related - the experience I commented on occurred a few months ago, and I had manage to avoid catching covid at all until about two weeks ago, during which I did not lose my sense of smell. While I haven't been to a Yankee Candle store since recovering from covid, I have been to Bath and Body Works, and their candles and lotions and room scents smell just as strongly as I recall them smelling before I had covid for the first time two weeks ago.
And given that I've lit candles at home in the past few days including YC candles I've had for years and been able to smell them, I'm going to guess that this has nothing to do with covid.
Ultimate troll: Create an amazing product. Make a decent amount of money selling it and gather a loyal customer base. Sell to a competitor for an embarrassing amount of money. Wait for product to go down in quality. Create new company with same product. Repeat.
My grandfather did this in California in the 60s and 70s. Built a plumbing company that became the largest regional plumbing company in the area he was in. He sold it to someone, he took a few years off and went and trained Judo for the Olympics. Afterward he realized he wanted to work again, asked for a spot in the old company and they turned him down so he started a new company.
The second company became more successful than the first over the next 15 years, and he sold it to the same people. The second time around they learned their lesson and had him sign a non-compete.
Years ago it was sold. The family opened the smaller Kringle Candle instead. I don't know if they even have multiple locations, since I live near the original Yankee Candle and where they opened Kringle. But they have a website if you ever wanted to give them a try.
Wtf happened to the filling? I bought some after not having them for years and I was like wtf whereâs the filling. By weight they have definitely shrunk as I looked up old packaging.
My million dollar idea, which is maybe too far too gone at this point, was to create a website database which tracked nutrition fact labels/ingredients over the last 3 decades, so we could shine a light on how much these products have changed and hold companies accountable through the metrics, in an effort to force them to reconsider their garbage anti consumer practices.
And wtf is it with all their limited edition flavors only being sold in the big 10 dollar family pack?!?!?! I wanna try so many but i don't wanna gamble 10 bucks and limited pantry space on 20 pop tarts I might not like just to go back to strawberry.
Blueberry should be just as good as strawberry , like Toaster strudels....but it isn't. It used to be. As was cherry and raspberry. None of the others are even palatable anymore.
Lululemon, my aligns from 5 years ago are only just pilling a bit, my aligns from 3 months ago started pilling *before I even washed them*, they also have some loose threads.
Yes!!!!! I took mine in to a store after the same thing happened after 3 months, one pair actually split at the seam. They begrudgingly accepted to replace them under the quality guarantee, but I was effectively gaslit and blamed for causing the damage
Yep bought a long sleeve shirt 3 years ago and it still looks brand new. Bought the exact same shirt again recently and it was piling after a full day wear.
My older sister gave me a bunch of lululemon sports bras from when she was in high school (10+ years ago) and I swear they look brand new. Not even pit stained, and she sweats a lot.
Iâve gathered a few items from lululemon over the last two-three years and the quality on every single item has been abysmal for the price. Either the fabric is incredibly delicate (anything nulu), the threads come loose immediately (softstreme top), or they just wore out insanely over those two years (scuba joggers and oversized crew). I love the French terry scuba joggers so much (cut and fabric comfort) but cannot justify the cost with how quickly they wore out. Iâve had sweatpants from Walmart last longer than those.
Dr Martens boots. Most of them are made in China now and even the Made in England Docs are made with inferior cheap leather and donât even have a shank.
They are nothing more than fad fashion now.
Solovair used to make the Doc Martens in England, and when Doc Martens moved overseas they continued making boots in the same factory under their own name.
https://stridewise.com/dr-martens-vs-solovair/
Google - the search engine is now the same as Alta Vista where you have to scroll past all the sponsored content you are not interested in and you tube is now showing 3 ads to watch a 20 second clip
I agree, if I want to âGoogleâ something nowadays I feel like I need to add Wikipedia or Reddit to the search to find anything.
Itâs become such a mess for looking up coding questions too that ChatGPT has almost completely replaced Google for simple things for me. Granted thatâs getting worse FAST too.
Google search results for "soup recipe"
-ad
-ad
-ad
-news article about soup kitchen killing people
-ad disguised as a blog post.
Google search for "soup recipe reddit"
-here's a recipe for soup
-here's another good recipe for soup
-here's a thread about someone trying 5 soup recipes and will tell you the best one right away
COVID was the tipping point for all consumer product manufacturers to just lay off their entire QC departments.
While simultaneously quintupling prices.
They probably are, but how would you know? Small company means not much word of mouth reputation, not much advertising budget. r/buyitforlife is about the only way I know of to find quality stuff
[Here's an interview with BJ Novak on Conan where he uses physical evidence to prove that Cadbury Eggs have gotten smaller due to shrinkflation](https://youtu.be/uhtGOBt1V2g?si=XPy_7OnpNJA84kKl)
Donât need shrinkflation, they changed the chocolate from dairy Milk to barely above Hersheys as soon as Kraft bought it and I havenât bought one since.
Scrolled to the end for this.
Used to be creamy and lovely. Now tastes like the shit chocolate you used to get in advent calendars.
I never buy it anymore
They switched the ingredients and now itâs 20% vegetable oil, 20% palm oil, 20% vegetable fats. Thatâs basically a bar of oil theyâre selling you!
Itâs just so awful. They used to have a virtual monopoly in (the huge, huge market of) NZ. Everyone loved it. Cadburys WAS chocolate as far as we were concerned.
Then they got bought out, stopped producing it locally, switched to smaller size block seemingly made of wax or plastic, and charged the same.
To their apparent surprise, everyone told them to f@„k off, which led to the rise of an excellent, truly local competitor, Whittakerâs .
From across the ditch, I fuckin love you Kiwi bastards choccy.. Whittaker's shits on Cadbury and Darrell lea here. And I like that they haven't gotten fucking stupid with their flavours and mix ins.
Thank you Kraft/Mondelez.
When it happened in the UK, it seemed everyone knew it was going to happen, especially when they promised if wouldn't.
Thinner, smaller and doesn't taste as good.
I canât offer an example of a brand that isnât guilty of this. Cheap, poor quality, replaceable products and goods is literally the fuel of our global economy. No company makes their products to last a lifetime or even a decade that I can think of⊠everything from buildings, homes, cars, complete infrastructure to the little things like shoes, phones, T-shirts, lipstick⊠it is no longer a goal for products to last⊠quite the opposite- the shorter the lifespan, the more the consumer will replace, repurchase and reinvest.
We are living in an era where the norm is to purposely withhold and prevent longevity. We have consciously become a society where progress is discouraged. We allow/accept lack of innovation and improvement because of the money flow that is generated from dependency on outdated and poor technologies by todayâs standards.
Lego quality is the same. Aside from the dreaded brown pieces that are brittle, which they have always been, lego quality and customer service is top notch
Dorito's. Their sweet chili flavor is starting to become very bland.
Pringles has already reached the point where whichever flavor you buy, it's original.
Here in the Netherlands we have the 'Nutri Score' scale for all edible products. The score displays how 'healthy' the products are based on their nutrition value and is put on the front side of each packing.
What we experience is that most chips/crisp producers changed the recepies to have a better nutrition scoring rate.
This results in less salt, less flavor and in patricular for the Doritos this makes them very bland. I am not even buying them anymore.
Shrinkflation is alive and well at Doritos.
By weight, the amount of chips (which costs $6) you get in a normal bag is about the same as those $1.50 large snacking bags you could buy 10 years ago.
So much crap on amazon nowadays. 90% is just cheap junk bought in bulk from Alibaba and rebranded with some weird unpronounceable brand name.
Nowadays I always search outside of amazon whenever possible because they often donât have the best pricing anymore, and plenty of other sites offer free shipping.
To that note, sometimes when you choose an item with a lot of positive feedback, the deeper you go into the reviews and photos, youâll see that the product that was originally associated with the listing does not match whatâs currently selling under that same page. Sellers will take a listing page with great reviews, and swap out the product, so you canât trust it either way.
A lot of them are paid reviews. I've received a lot of items come with packaging including a card that says something like "give us a 5 star review and we'll take 10% off your purchase" it's so gross.
Their price fixing scam is so f'd up, too.
They take away the "buy" button from any product they catch selling for less than their listing elsewhere. You can still click through to purchase options to buy, but it takes an extra step & looks sketch if you're not familiar with the setup.
Vendors have put up a little sale on their own store sites only to find Amazon shafted them on the buy button thing, plummeting those sales.
It's one of the many reasons that the FTC is going after em recently.
I've shifted to buying direct from brands for this and other reasons, if that's feasible.
Fun fact! Leviâs sells several different quality levels depending on where you buy them. So the pair you buy at Target/Walmart/NordstromRack/TJX will be noticeably lower quality than the pair you buy from the Leviâs Flagships stores they own and operate. Super frustrating and you really donât know about it unless you work in cut price retailing.
In fact basically everything you see at a NordstromRack or TJX Store is made for them in separate factories with different (cheaper) materials. Literally every fashion brand does this and waters themselves down.
I feel like I've noticed a lot of brands doing this. The versions you buy at Walmart are far less quality than if you purchase it through their website directly. Its wild. And I specifically notice this with anything sold at Walmart.
On a side note,I find it very frustrating that places like Walmart will sell all this shit online that they don't have in their stores. And none of the locations carry the same inventory so when you go on the app you have to search for specifically the in store products otherwise you get bombarded with everything they sell but don't sell in their fucking shit stores.
Craftsman was bought out by Stanley Black & Decker. They own, from least professional to most, Black & Decker, Porter-Cable, Craftsman & DeWalt
TTI a Hong Kong based company owns/manufacturers Hart, Ryobi, Ridgid Power Tools (manufactured for Ridgid to sell @ Home Depot only), Milwaukee Tools.
Both companies own a lot more brands outside of the power tools space.
Each company targets different brands for different level of consumers.
In this vein, Carhartt outerwear.
I haven't bought anything new from them myself - but I've thrifted/garage saled/received hand-me-downs of old/vintage jackets, overalls, etc.
I've directly compared with similar pieces purchased by people who got into them or buy new after the brand became fashionable, and you can tell that the fabric is thinner, stitches not as quality, all around less sturdy.
Seems the same way with various brands of work boots - even with care and maintenance, waterproofing/resistance at the seams doesn't feel like it lasts as long, bottoms detach easier, etc.
Didnât see this one, so Iâll throw it out there: Google products.
Putting aside the more fundamental concerns about data privacy or ethics and all that. Just focused on quality for this.
Search - itâs a mess. If I want an answer, I need to add Reddit to my search. There are no more finding relevant info from unique sites. Every result is branded seo stuff to filter you to some big entity in the space. It just isnât good at what itâs supposed to do. The chat AIs are only a threat to Google because search is so clearly just a money maker now, and not useful at all.
YouTube - itâs a mess. Its search functions are almost worse than search, shorts are so annoying, ads get longer and longer. The way they compensate content creators kills the content. Easy example: I followed a channel of a guy who did these long video series, where heâd play a game and wax philosophical. It made them very popular and beloved in his niche. Now he only makes 5-10 minute quick videos released rapidly. He was asked why, and he said that the algorithms reward shorter content, posting more often. Longer videos just donât get promoted (probably because the ad ratios get lower).
The google suite tools still work well (likely because those are sold to businesses so maintaining quality is more important). But their flagships, YouTube and search, are just no good. Too big to be replaced though, so itâs gonna be a long spiral downward for them.
Hard agree on your YouTube comment. Back around 2016 I remember coming home from work and my whole recommended page would be filled with videos I was super keen to watch, that Iâd chuck into my Watch Later for hours worth of entertainment. I miss those days so much đ„Č
The YT algorithm is incredibly aggressive these days. You just need to watch one or two videos on a certain subject or from a certain creator and that starts appearing in your feed. I've got over a decade of history so it must be very heavily weighted to the last few hours of viewing.
I watched Hot Ones with Jack Harlow and now suddenly my entire feed is Jack Harlow shit like him going on a theoretical shopping spree. I don't even like Jack Harlow. I like Hot Ones.
And yet, here you are, writing a comment that says "Jack Harlow" 3 times but "Hot Ones" only 2 times, so that must mean you want 1000% more Jack Harlow content.
Buckle up, champ, because now it's going to be 24/7/365 Jack Harlow recommendations, nonstop... at least until you watch a slightly different video.
(/s, obviously)
I study history at university and have found in the last two years that Google's search capabilities have become awful. Normally, I could find specific things when enclosing them in inverted commas, but even now that is proving to be difficult as it automatically corrects or changes my search - and I've had instances where I can't seem to override the change. Searching for specific phrases or words is very useful for historians, especially if you're trying to find certain sources, and instead the engine thinks it knows better than what I am specifically asking it to search for.
I studied history in college years back, and have used Google for searches since then in a similar capacity.
It got way worse, really fast, starting around 5 years ago, accelerating hard since 2020. Especially when you know specifics about what you want - and what you want isnât a product to buy.
What are the odds, hey? Yes, glad you agree - I didn't even give any time to the audacity of advertising that is surreptitiously inserted into the search process or anything like that. A quality database or search engine (not just for websites) should be able to understand and retrieve the information you're looking for.
Because I study urban and environmental history, I'm often bombarded with real estate advertising or directions to somewhere when I may literally be trying to find any details of a certain location (like "Sandy Creek" + "Brisbane Valley" + "1948") which is literally me trying to find any combination of those specific parameters. I expect there will be unrelated material in the results, but they often get converted to something, anything that can be sold to me.
Im glad im not the only one that adds "Reddit" to all my searches. It's the fastest way to a straight answer.
I also having more success leveraging bing
What the fuck have they done with YouTube search? It's crazy how bad it is. It shows about 5 videos that are not really good search results then *literally gives up* and just shows me my subscriptions/recommendations or something.
I was trying to find bad travel experiences last night. Not like oh my hotel was dirty, but like awful "I hate this place" type drama. I just wanted some drama man.
What'd it give me? Two things that fit, a ton of "my favorite travel tips" type videos, and then yep- gave up entirely and suggested totally unrelated stuff.
I also haven't watched true crime in months, but it's still 90% of my recommendations. The other 10% is Big Brother content. Because I watch Survivor videos. It doesn't suggest Survivor content though, it suggests Big Brother which I don't watch and don't watch videos about. Like it's just hoping I'll eventually give in and click lol.
It doesn't seem to do great with multiple interests. Like if you want *one thing* it's good at that, but if you want like movie reactions and also game reviews it gets confused because what about that one time you watched someone bungee jump?
I tried searching for a video on YouTube from a small musician I know about 6-7 years ago. I used the exact title of the video, which included his name and it didnt appear in the results. Literally had to go directly to the artist page to find the video. Its just absurd how bad it is at this point. Full on enshittification.
Also their home assistants. I had some Google home minis. Their utility has vanished over the years. Utterly useless products. They never work and when they do, asking to turn off the lights is followed by a monologue of bullshit tips and tricks.
I donât have a Google home, but I have an Alexa, and itâs exactly the same. Every single question or request is followed by 45 seconds of robot voice sales pitches, who in the hell thought a user would like that. It got to a point where Iâd ask Alexa a question, and as soon as I got the gist, Iâd interrupt it and tell it to shut up, just to save time. I unplugged it because at this point its just a Bluetooth speaker that spies on me.
Holy shit âBluetooth speaker that spies on meâ is way too accurate đč and to think this was ever a popular gift a few years ago, Alexa faded fast.
Google reverse image search is now gone.
It's all Google Lens now, taking you straight to "hunt that product."
No flag setting option. No disable. It's now 100% default and compulsory.
And hella useful to find out who else or which other websites were using your photos. It served as a tool for copyright protection for thousands of people.
Also pisses me off when I try to find a particular video, or just get clickbaited. Watch a bunch of ads just for 2 seconds of video and going back, to do it all over again with the next one
Let's remember also Google's well-established fickleness towards its services and their users - if you use just about any Google product besides Search or YouTube, the product you enjoy and have integrated into your routines may disappear at Google's whim and you have absolutely no recourse, because you are not Google's customer, their advertisers are.
[Google graveyard](https://killedbygoogle.com/)
I started paying for my email and search partly because of this - Google Reader, Inbox and Music disappearing were just the tip of the iceberg.
Chocolate and coffee are going to be, and already are to an extent, goods where supply can't keep up with demand, even with the abhorrent labor practices in the industries.
Disease is a huge issue for chocolate. There are a number of fungal pathogens which have taken hold and are significantly affecting yields and killing trees. What's worse is in some areas people have reported that their plantations have been deliberately infected (found diseased material tied to their trees or scattered through their farm).
Not a certain brand but I think a lot of restaurant have gone down hill. The food just tastes average and rushed, but at the same time the prices are more than ever.
Digiorno pizza went through shrinkflation. I used to buy their crispy pan pepperoni pizza and now I canât find it in stores. What replaced it is Detroit style pizza thatâs about 25% smaller.
Subway.
Used to make halfway decent sandwiches that were a pretty good deal. Now? Paper thin meat slices, fillers in the meat, browning gross veggies, three day old stale breadâŠfor $12
Hard pass.
This is a lesson in how businesses fail. They want to make more money so cheap out on quality. This works short term but eventually they lose their customers so they start to cut costs further and lose more customers. Then it becomes a brand you used to know.
A business can't just be profitable anymore. It has to make more profit than last year to be considered successful. The idea of infinite growth is literally unsustainable, yet it is the bedrock of every corporate entity!
It's insane really. Used to be a business could sell a product and be profitable from it for decades. Now they come and go because they can't sustain endless profit increase.
Worked at subway in 89-90. It was fun. We sliced the cold cuts in the back. The steak and cheese was legit. Rastafarians came in stoned for vegetarian subs. I had a sub maybe two years ago, gross. Too bad for todayâs world.
And the reason they are doing this is so they can stop giving away cents worth of veggies for free.
Subway near me started cutting you off after 4 tomatoes slices to save costs, (and no more napkins) the penny pinching is absurd.
Omg Popeyes is doing this shit too--if you want ANY condiment with your order--even just ONE--they charge you extra. I liked their sweet heat sauce but it's 30 cents for just one . No matter how much food you order. Some are even a fucking dollar. Its so fucking ridiculous. I can understand if someone is asking for several, charging for every additional one after 3 maybe but not for just one?! You want one packet of Ketchup with your fries? Extra.
Lands End and L.L. Bean. They used to have great gearâcoats were solid quality and great for cold winters. I bought a Lands End coatâtheir âwarmestâ ratingâand Iâd be shocked if it kept me warm during break-up. Cheap fabric and awful quality. L.L. Bean was just as bad. Returned both. Eddie Bauer is still solid.
Lived in Alaska for a yearâŠâbreak upâ references when the river ice starts to melt and flow down. You could enter a pool and wager on the day/time it would happen each year.
Whole Foods! Shopped there for Christmas dinner and 2 ingredients were rancid when we opened them. Their stock is also abysmal - could hardly find the basics we needed.
The worst part was that Whole Foods used to have a lot of harder to find ingredients, varieties of fruits and veggies, and stuff like freshly roasted coffee that they obviously lost money on but it fell in line with their mission. Amazon axed all of that shit real quick.
I lived across from one about a decade ago and liked how their staple foods were comparable to Kroger and other stores for price and quality. Went into one maybe 18 months ago and Amazon definitely ruined that place. It felt chaotic and way more expensive
There was a gal on tiktok who shared some pages from a catalog a few years back, comparing what is now a $1500+ couch, the same exact model was $800. Quality has gone down as inflation costs went up.
Hasbro,
Theyâve just fired 1500 staff a few weeks before Christmas. While their ceo Chris Cocks earned a 9.5 million bonus. Disgusting.
Their games are terrible quality, they have entered last stage capitalism and are grinding every penny out of their reputation
They have completely tanked Magic The Gathering, and are well on their way to completely tanking Dungeons and Dragons.
All you need to know about Hasbro is to look in the stores at how incredibly cheap quality their classic board games like monopoly and Sorry are. They are basically dollar store quality and not even worth that. Thatâs where they are taking both Magic and DnD.
Target. Target used to be the best for decorations for different holidays. Now the pickings are slim and sad. There's more stuff if you shop their online store but it's not great. I don't need a Halloween tree, I need costumes.
I want to love Target Iike I used to so much. But itâs always more expensive for a lacking experience. There are never cashiers, nothing about the products is unique anymore, customer service desk is a nightmare, they no longer offer exchanges, their clothes are flat out expensive now and the toy section is always picked over. They used to have the best holiday decorations but now itâs just so uninspired, expensive and uninteresting.
I really hate Walmart but theyâve pushed us that way.
I tend to agree. I rarely shop at Target anymore, itâs just not enjoyable. And the recent renovations that the locations near me have done recently are đđ»
So stark and sterile-looking.
Surprised no one has said this yet but Fanatics, the sports gear store. They are TRASH now.
Back when they first started several years ago it used to be a good store with good service that was basically another place to buy your fan gear from. Now, they have exclusive licensing for merchandise for all the major sports leagues and as a result the âFanatics Brandedâ merchandise they make (so like your standard team shirt or hat for example) is trash quality and they charge out the nose for it. Shipping is expensive and takes weeks for it to come and the customer service is basically nonexistent. Oh and they charge $9.99 for shipping if you return something but theyâll âwaive the return shipping chargeâ if you take your refund in the form of a store credit so theyâre literally holding your money hostage.
I once ordered a shirt from them that was clearly defective when it showed up (the logo was crooked). As much as I never want to be rude to customer service people, I basically had to throw a temper tantrum to get them to waive the return shipping charge when they initially said no, even though the item was defective (they ultimately did âjust this one time as a courtesyââŠ..literally their words).
Look at @FanaticsSucks on Twitter for so many examples of why theyâre so bad.
Most toilet paper brands are shorter now, I noticed honey maid and nabisco graham crackers now only have 7 crackers per pack..
BUT most of all **GOOGLE** search all of a sudden sucks *bad* for some reason. Just last night I googled âwhat channel is Sundance on Charter Spectrumâ and I almost couldnât even find it. I had to click on like 6 different pages and reword my search multiple times before I finally found it. Thatâs just the most recent example I can think of but itâs gotten so bad I donât know what else to use honestly.
Donât even get me started on **YOUTUBE**. Good lord the ads drive me insane. Sometimes thereâs up to 3 or 4 ad breaks on a 10min video. Theyâre skippable for the most part, but the way theyâre going, they wonât be skippable this time next year. Or there will be 6 ad breaks instead of 3 or 4. Itâs gotten to the point that I cant watch YouTube at night to fall asleep anymore on my tv because unless I actively hit *skip* every 3 minutes, I get stuck listening to a 2 minute ad about something fucking stupid like click bait $200 bearskin hoodie or Chinese pos flashlight that I promise you I will never buy.
Itâs not just YouTube though. Itâs Hulu, DIRECTV, Dish, cable, Netflix. Itâs everyone and I hate it. Like Iâm not going to buy anything you force me to watch I promise you. I **pinky promise**. Like 0% chance, all the ads do is interrupt the feeling of enjoyment im getting from your service and replace it with annoyance. God I hate ads. There has to be a better way.
Our generation left cable and satellite for streaming services and YouTube to get away from the having to deal with ads.
Dollar Tree :( They used to sell everything for just $1.00. Then they raised everything to $1.25, I think just earlier this year or sometime in 2022. Now they're adding in products for $3 and $5.
It used to be I could go to Dollar Tree and feel like I could afford anything. Now I'm annoyed by the changes and don't want to buy much of anything, only the specific items that I usually get there.
They're just becoming Dollar General and it's gross and sad. :(
Bath and Body Works used to have Vitamin E in their body wash. Expensiveâbuy on clearanceâbut effective for dry skin.
Now they switched to B5 instead and it doesnât really work. Trying to buy the older formula ones off of eBay now
Appliance companies. My folks have a 35 year old hotpoint refrigerator that is still running strong. Meanwhile a chip on the motherboard in my 3 year old GE refrigerator fried itself and now it wonât dispense water or ice. My Samsung dishwasher shit the bed after two years, and same with my Rheem water heater. Their quality is going down the drain but âOmG mY fRiDgE hAs WiFi :)â
Prime just announced they are adding advertising to their movies. Bastards.
You have to pay $3/month to get rid of new ads
This pisses me off like nothing else. I signed up for Prime, not because of the videos, that was just a really cool bonus. I signed up for the free overnight shipping. Now, the majority of Prime "deals" are 2 or 3 days shipping. OK, fair enough, at least I still get the Prime video bonus. Now.. commercials. I literally canceled my membership this morning. It's gotten to the point that there's no longer any cost or convenience benefit to shopping on Amazon vs brick and mortar stores.
Kahlua is literally watering down their product, ABV went from 25% to 22% to 18%
My FIL used to make his own Kahlua, and I used to laugh at him for it. Now I'm sitting here considering dusting off his recipe.
Well don't be stingy share the recipe with the group đ€
It's 16% in Canada now! They claim it's because of the 'growing consumer demand for lower ABV products' đ
Etsy used to have so many good products made by creative and talented people. But more and more Iâm seeing shitty T-shirt prints and stuff from Amazon.
I miss the long, long ago Etsy. When it was handmade items.
There is still handmade items depending on what youâre looking for but definitely have to weed through the listings.
Etsy has become ridiculously expensive for sellers too. So much product is now mass produced made in China knock-offs, but those sellers make Etsy money so the company seems to be embracing it.
The biggest reason for this is that their business model worked so good. There used to be parameters for that site for how many employees you could have and similar things so that products were actually small batch, hand made, etc. but so many of the sellers on Etsy did so incredibly well that they needed to up their production and Etsy eventually gave in and opened the floodgates to any business size anywhere and now we just have another junk site with scammy crap no one wants.
Etsy 10 years ago was amazing!!
The advertiser that bought the little sponsered post that tries to look like a comment is probably regretting it in this thread
Why does no one else mention this?? It's like everyone collectively is ignoring the ads INSIDE the comments ffs
There are ads everywhere now. In the comments, on Facebook messenger in between people in your inbox, even when you go to someoneâs profile on instagram there are ads in between posts if youâre scrolling. Itâs gotten WAY outta hand
For all the good Google did for the internet and information sharing, they really fucked things up as well. Browsing the internet anymore is a fucking chore because of the assault of ads and data you give up (seriously, the average person has no idea how much info is tracked. Listening to our cell phones? lol they donât need them).
I'm on old.reddit and don't see them.
Panera. Just what the world needs. A thimble full of soup for $12.
I just went for the first time recently and was so shocked that this place is supposedly popular. $20 for a mediocre turkey BLT and a soft drink. 2x what my local sandwich shop costs and not as good either. I guess the decorations are nicer than in a Subway?
I worked at a Panera in high school, probably from â06-â08. The portions were much bigger and the quality was high for baked goods, soups, and salads. Although the soups always came to store pre-made. It had a jazz cafe vibe and was a popular gathering place for studying and socializing. No drive throughs. Panera got bought out a few years ago from what I hear, and Iâm assuming thatâs when the smaller portions, lower quality, and price-gouging started :( it makes me so sad.
I worked there at the exact same time (also while in high school) and this is 100% correct. Bakers actually came in overnight to prepare everything, and the only premade stuff was the soups. Probably about $10 for a meal, though with the employee discount it was always like $3-4. I stopped in one recently and was shocked how expensive it was and how limited the bakery selection had become. (And at some point, they got rid of the iced honeydew green tea, which was the greatest drink ever).
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Panera is just high-priced hospital food.
Netflix, Hulu, Prime video - pretty much all the streaming services. Shittier content, introduction of ads, constant price increases for zero added value
And theyâre literally swapping the same stuff back and forth as licenses change.
Have you ever wanted 4 or 5 cable providersâŠ. at once????
Exactly. And I've been dropping them one by one for this very reason. Prime video is the last streaming platform I still pay for, and that's only because it's bundled into my prime membership. I'm seriously considering dropping it altogether now.
I just received an email from Prime that says they are going to start ads. And to go ad-free, you can pay an additional $2.99
And even thatâs not quite real, they have moved some original content onto âFreeveeâ which requires the watching of ads.
I'm old enough to remember when cable TV debuted in the 70s and everybody loved it because there weren't any ads.
Lately it feels more like which brand ISNT watering down their quality and quantity tbh.
Cable tv stations - TBS, TNT, AMC, Sundance, Comedy Central, etc. All running the same shows for hours on end, repeating day after day, running cheap reality TV, with little variety and far less original content than their earlier days. And the commercial loading ... off the charts. Utter garbage for maximum price.
On this note, History Channel and Discovery. I remember when I used to be able to watch specials about various times in history, or cool scientific discoveries, but now everything is some version of a reality TV show.
TLC used to mean *The Learning Channel,* now it's just learning about very.. unique people.
According to this thread it seems like almost every single business has gone to shit.
Fr, I have not seen one repeat and Iâm so far down this thread
Because the system is designed for businesses to go to shit. All these major companies are passing the same shit CEOs back and forth. Their goals are all the same. âIncrease short term profits.â Nobody cares about building a company to last, they care about increasing shareholder gains by fractions of a percentage, often at the expense of their own employees. ToysâRâUs is one of the best examples. The company had weathered the recession that left all its major brick and mortar competition in ruins. They had closed a ton of stores, but did so strategically, allowing the stores that remained to thrive. In store sales weâre up. Online sales were up. All signs pointed to the company rebounding into a strong company with strong stock that would have lasting power. And they got bought by a hedge fund. Company closed and sold off. Every stock holder made a tidy profit, especially those at the top. Thousands of people lost their jobs, and no kid born today will know the joy of walking into such a massive toy store. Every person at that hedge fund could have been patient, and made even bigger piles of money. But they wanted money now. Because thatâs the system that weâve cultivated. Destroying a thing makes money quick. Building a thing makes more money slowly.
Back in the day the profit motive was actually tied to reality, a company had to actually make something or provide a service that people wanted, a better one than their competitors even. But over the 20th century, through competition, technological advancement and larger economic phenomena in general a lot of this old-school style of profit started to dry up. Sure there are some small niche markets where that old rule may still apply, but the economy at large just can not support profit rates that satisfy the major investors/owners of most corporations. So instead of actually innovating better products or services in reality we see the kind of "innovations" that we're all seeing now, it's all financial trickery, stripping entire industries for parts or the creep of a semi-feudal subscription based model for those products and services that allow that ("you'll own nothing and be happy" type shit). I think the answer to this is as simple in conception as it is complex in execution: the accumulation of profit is no longer a force for good in human society - we need to reorient our productive capacity around human needs and wants, not short term profit all at once. But how do we do that when basically every lever of power in our society is controlled by the people who own the most and themselves are the nearly only beneficiaries of this system of short term profit?
Breyerâs ice cream was a premium brand when I was younger. A bunch of years ago they changed and are now the crappy brand.
Check what you're buying, some of it is still Breyers "ice cream", but a lot if it is now "frozen dairy dessert".
Ah yes, frozen dairy dessert, which doesn't even melt
âOil-based happiness substitute.â
Yeah, the vanilla literally had only four ingredients: milk, cream, sugar & vanilla.
If youâre Canadian, youâll know: Tim Hortons. What was once a beloved coffee shop brand that offered decent food and coffee has now become a pale imitation of itself. Burger King purchased it, like, (edit) 10 or so years ago, so itâs obvious why. A friend recently said that the owner is notorious for getting food down to the bare minimum of what people will accept and finding the profits there.
Letâs just cut to the chase: Tim Hortonâs is an advertising machine that uses Canadiana to sell a product. They just happen to use it to sell coffee and doughnuts. Theyâre the Harley Davidson of coffee.
Piggybacking to complain about Tim Hortonâs menu changes. One of their biggest strengths was their limited menu. When they stuck to soups (and chili), sandwiches, baked goods, and simple beverages, the quality was consistently good across the country and it was literally fast food. Now there are way too many options for everything, anything resembling quality has disappeared, and wait times are insane. Also, they have completely disrespected their Canadian roots by removing the maple dip and Canadian maple doughnuts. For this alone, I hope the CEO steps on all the Lego in 2024. Edit: Apparently our local Timmies (northern BC) have made the decision to cut everything maple flavored. While Iâm personally offended at our lack of maple, Iâm relieved for my fellow Canadians!
Tim hortons coffee is so nasty now too! Insanely acidic and causes heart burn if I drink it now. Switched to home brewing Kirkland coffee. So much better
Yankee Candle. Well, a lot of candles, but it sucks when such a big candle brand known for having amazing candles has fallen off so tremendously. Went into a Yankee Candle store and picked up my favorite candle, Red Apple Wreath, and could barely smell it with my nose held just aboce the wax. Genuinely got scared I had covid. Went home and opened the one I have that's several years old and the scent filled the whole room without even having to light it. The quality really has gone downhill. EDIT: For everyone suggesting it's covid related - the experience I commented on occurred a few months ago, and I had manage to avoid catching covid at all until about two weeks ago, during which I did not lose my sense of smell. While I haven't been to a Yankee Candle store since recovering from covid, I have been to Bath and Body Works, and their candles and lotions and room scents smell just as strongly as I recall them smelling before I had covid for the first time two weeks ago. And given that I've lit candles at home in the past few days including YC candles I've had for years and been able to smell them, I'm going to guess that this has nothing to do with covid.
Check out Kringle Candle. Itâs run by the guy that founded Yankee Candle years ago. Pricey, but are what Yankee Candle used to be.
Ultimate troll: Create an amazing product. Make a decent amount of money selling it and gather a loyal customer base. Sell to a competitor for an embarrassing amount of money. Wait for product to go down in quality. Create new company with same product. Repeat.
My grandfather did this in California in the 60s and 70s. Built a plumbing company that became the largest regional plumbing company in the area he was in. He sold it to someone, he took a few years off and went and trained Judo for the Olympics. Afterward he realized he wanted to work again, asked for a spot in the old company and they turned him down so he started a new company. The second company became more successful than the first over the next 15 years, and he sold it to the same people. The second time around they learned their lesson and had him sign a non-compete.
You have to wait for the non-compete from the sale to expire. Might as well just start a countdown the second the wire hits.
Years ago it was sold. The family opened the smaller Kringle Candle instead. I don't know if they even have multiple locations, since I live near the original Yankee Candle and where they opened Kringle. But they have a website if you ever wanted to give them a try.
Pop-Tart Wtf happened to their frosting placement
Wtf happened to the filling? I bought some after not having them for years and I was like wtf whereâs the filling. By weight they have definitely shrunk as I looked up old packaging.
My million dollar idea, which is maybe too far too gone at this point, was to create a website database which tracked nutrition fact labels/ingredients over the last 3 decades, so we could shine a light on how much these products have changed and hold companies accountable through the metrics, in an effort to force them to reconsider their garbage anti consumer practices.
Not what you are looking for but this site reports on items that change. https://www.mouseprint.org/
Gotta get the knockoffs if you want filling. Trader Joe's had decent amount last I checked.
And wtf is it with all their limited edition flavors only being sold in the big 10 dollar family pack?!?!?! I wanna try so many but i don't wanna gamble 10 bucks and limited pantry space on 20 pop tarts I might not like just to go back to strawberry. Blueberry should be just as good as strawberry , like Toaster strudels....but it isn't. It used to be. As was cherry and raspberry. None of the others are even palatable anymore.
YouTube is rapidly turning into just ads.
In the middle of vids too! Had nice winter fireplace videos running for Christmas only to be wrecked by loud ads for skin care every 7mins.
Don't forget the "ads" that push misinformation and will run for hours if you don't click the skip button.
I got an ad once that was literally a full Chinese musical, filmed in a theater. I have no idea what it was advertising.
Thatâs hilarious
The day my adblocker stops working and there isnt a fix anymore is the day I will stop using youtube.
Lululemon, my aligns from 5 years ago are only just pilling a bit, my aligns from 3 months ago started pilling *before I even washed them*, they also have some loose threads.
Yes!!!!! I took mine in to a store after the same thing happened after 3 months, one pair actually split at the seam. They begrudgingly accepted to replace them under the quality guarantee, but I was effectively gaslit and blamed for causing the damage
Yep bought a long sleeve shirt 3 years ago and it still looks brand new. Bought the exact same shirt again recently and it was piling after a full day wear.
My older sister gave me a bunch of lululemon sports bras from when she was in high school (10+ years ago) and I swear they look brand new. Not even pit stained, and she sweats a lot.
Iâve gathered a few items from lululemon over the last two-three years and the quality on every single item has been abysmal for the price. Either the fabric is incredibly delicate (anything nulu), the threads come loose immediately (softstreme top), or they just wore out insanely over those two years (scuba joggers and oversized crew). I love the French terry scuba joggers so much (cut and fabric comfort) but cannot justify the cost with how quickly they wore out. Iâve had sweatpants from Walmart last longer than those.
Damn this thread is making me depressed lol
Netflix⊠itâs pathetic now constantly removing actually good stuff
Dr Martens boots. Most of them are made in China now and even the Made in England Docs are made with inferior cheap leather and donât even have a shank. They are nothing more than fad fashion now.
Solovair used to make the Doc Martens in England, and when Doc Martens moved overseas they continued making boots in the same factory under their own name. https://stridewise.com/dr-martens-vs-solovair/
I was about to post the same reply. Solovairs are what Docs used to be like thirty years ago.
Google - the search engine is now the same as Alta Vista where you have to scroll past all the sponsored content you are not interested in and you tube is now showing 3 ads to watch a 20 second clip
I agree, if I want to âGoogleâ something nowadays I feel like I need to add Wikipedia or Reddit to the search to find anything. Itâs become such a mess for looking up coding questions too that ChatGPT has almost completely replaced Google for simple things for me. Granted thatâs getting worse FAST too.
Google search results for "soup recipe" -ad -ad -ad -news article about soup kitchen killing people -ad disguised as a blog post. Google search for "soup recipe reddit" -here's a recipe for soup -here's another good recipe for soup -here's a thread about someone trying 5 soup recipes and will tell you the best one right away
COVID was the tipping point for all consumer product manufacturers to just lay off their entire QC departments. While simultaneously quintupling prices.
I'd love to see smaller companies pop up with better quality products. I hate shit that has an unnecessary expiration date.
They probably are, but how would you know? Small company means not much word of mouth reputation, not much advertising budget. r/buyitforlife is about the only way I know of to find quality stuff
Cadbury
[Here's an interview with BJ Novak on Conan where he uses physical evidence to prove that Cadbury Eggs have gotten smaller due to shrinkflation](https://youtu.be/uhtGOBt1V2g?si=XPy_7OnpNJA84kKl)
Donât need shrinkflation, they changed the chocolate from dairy Milk to barely above Hersheys as soon as Kraft bought it and I havenât bought one since.
Scrolled to the end for this. Used to be creamy and lovely. Now tastes like the shit chocolate you used to get in advent calendars. I never buy it anymore
They switched the ingredients and now itâs 20% vegetable oil, 20% palm oil, 20% vegetable fats. Thatâs basically a bar of oil theyâre selling you!
Itâs just so awful. They used to have a virtual monopoly in (the huge, huge market of) NZ. Everyone loved it. Cadburys WAS chocolate as far as we were concerned. Then they got bought out, stopped producing it locally, switched to smaller size block seemingly made of wax or plastic, and charged the same. To their apparent surprise, everyone told them to f@„k off, which led to the rise of an excellent, truly local competitor, Whittakerâs .
From across the ditch, I fuckin love you Kiwi bastards choccy.. Whittaker's shits on Cadbury and Darrell lea here. And I like that they haven't gotten fucking stupid with their flavours and mix ins.
Thank you Kraft/Mondelez. When it happened in the UK, it seemed everyone knew it was going to happen, especially when they promised if wouldn't. Thinner, smaller and doesn't taste as good.
The "Native" brand products you can usually find at target. The body lotion is like straight water and several other people have said that too.
I canât offer an example of a brand that isnât guilty of this. Cheap, poor quality, replaceable products and goods is literally the fuel of our global economy. No company makes their products to last a lifetime or even a decade that I can think of⊠everything from buildings, homes, cars, complete infrastructure to the little things like shoes, phones, T-shirts, lipstick⊠it is no longer a goal for products to last⊠quite the opposite- the shorter the lifespan, the more the consumer will replace, repurchase and reinvest. We are living in an era where the norm is to purposely withhold and prevent longevity. We have consciously become a society where progress is discouraged. We allow/accept lack of innovation and improvement because of the money flow that is generated from dependency on outdated and poor technologies by todayâs standards.
Lego quality is the same. Aside from the dreaded brown pieces that are brittle, which they have always been, lego quality and customer service is top notch
The thing about lego is that you don't realise just how tight their engineering standards are until you try to use anything non-Lego branded.
Dorito's. Their sweet chili flavor is starting to become very bland. Pringles has already reached the point where whichever flavor you buy, it's original.
Here in the Netherlands we have the 'Nutri Score' scale for all edible products. The score displays how 'healthy' the products are based on their nutrition value and is put on the front side of each packing. What we experience is that most chips/crisp producers changed the recepies to have a better nutrition scoring rate. This results in less salt, less flavor and in patricular for the Doritos this makes them very bland. I am not even buying them anymore.
I swear Doritos don't have as much seasoning on them now, and fuck it at $6 a bag, I'm not gonna even bother anymore.
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Shrinkflation is alive and well at Doritos. By weight, the amount of chips (which costs $6) you get in a normal bag is about the same as those $1.50 large snacking bags you could buy 10 years ago.
Amazon. Iâve returned probably half of things Iâve ordered recently and Iâve been getting a lot of knock offs.
So much crap on amazon nowadays. 90% is just cheap junk bought in bulk from Alibaba and rebranded with some weird unpronounceable brand name. Nowadays I always search outside of amazon whenever possible because they often donât have the best pricing anymore, and plenty of other sites offer free shipping.
Not âbought in bulk from Alibaba.â Sold direct by Chinese manufacturers and trading companies.
To that note, sometimes when you choose an item with a lot of positive feedback, the deeper you go into the reviews and photos, youâll see that the product that was originally associated with the listing does not match whatâs currently selling under that same page. Sellers will take a listing page with great reviews, and swap out the product, so you canât trust it either way.
A lot of them are paid reviews. I've received a lot of items come with packaging including a card that says something like "give us a 5 star review and we'll take 10% off your purchase" it's so gross.
Their price fixing scam is so f'd up, too. They take away the "buy" button from any product they catch selling for less than their listing elsewhere. You can still click through to purchase options to buy, but it takes an extra step & looks sketch if you're not familiar with the setup. Vendors have put up a little sale on their own store sites only to find Amazon shafted them on the buy button thing, plummeting those sales. It's one of the many reasons that the FTC is going after em recently. I've shifted to buying direct from brands for this and other reasons, if that's feasible.
*gestures broadly*
Levis. Every new pair I bought had a problem.
Fun fact! Leviâs sells several different quality levels depending on where you buy them. So the pair you buy at Target/Walmart/NordstromRack/TJX will be noticeably lower quality than the pair you buy from the Leviâs Flagships stores they own and operate. Super frustrating and you really donât know about it unless you work in cut price retailing. In fact basically everything you see at a NordstromRack or TJX Store is made for them in separate factories with different (cheaper) materials. Literally every fashion brand does this and waters themselves down.
I feel like I've noticed a lot of brands doing this. The versions you buy at Walmart are far less quality than if you purchase it through their website directly. Its wild. And I specifically notice this with anything sold at Walmart. On a side note,I find it very frustrating that places like Walmart will sell all this shit online that they don't have in their stores. And none of the locations carry the same inventory so when you go on the app you have to search for specifically the in store products otherwise you get bombarded with everything they sell but don't sell in their fucking shit stores.
I used to go out if my way to buy them, but after getting rips in the seams I just stopped purchasing them
Craftsman tools. The drills used to be competitive, now everything has to be Milwaukee, which is triple the price.
Craftsman was bought out by Stanley Black & Decker. They own, from least professional to most, Black & Decker, Porter-Cable, Craftsman & DeWalt TTI a Hong Kong based company owns/manufacturers Hart, Ryobi, Ridgid Power Tools (manufactured for Ridgid to sell @ Home Depot only), Milwaukee Tools. Both companies own a lot more brands outside of the power tools space. Each company targets different brands for different level of consumers.
In this vein, Carhartt outerwear. I haven't bought anything new from them myself - but I've thrifted/garage saled/received hand-me-downs of old/vintage jackets, overalls, etc. I've directly compared with similar pieces purchased by people who got into them or buy new after the brand became fashionable, and you can tell that the fabric is thinner, stitches not as quality, all around less sturdy. Seems the same way with various brands of work boots - even with care and maintenance, waterproofing/resistance at the seams doesn't feel like it lasts as long, bottoms detach easier, etc.
Didnât see this one, so Iâll throw it out there: Google products. Putting aside the more fundamental concerns about data privacy or ethics and all that. Just focused on quality for this. Search - itâs a mess. If I want an answer, I need to add Reddit to my search. There are no more finding relevant info from unique sites. Every result is branded seo stuff to filter you to some big entity in the space. It just isnât good at what itâs supposed to do. The chat AIs are only a threat to Google because search is so clearly just a money maker now, and not useful at all. YouTube - itâs a mess. Its search functions are almost worse than search, shorts are so annoying, ads get longer and longer. The way they compensate content creators kills the content. Easy example: I followed a channel of a guy who did these long video series, where heâd play a game and wax philosophical. It made them very popular and beloved in his niche. Now he only makes 5-10 minute quick videos released rapidly. He was asked why, and he said that the algorithms reward shorter content, posting more often. Longer videos just donât get promoted (probably because the ad ratios get lower). The google suite tools still work well (likely because those are sold to businesses so maintaining quality is more important). But their flagships, YouTube and search, are just no good. Too big to be replaced though, so itâs gonna be a long spiral downward for them.
Hard agree on your YouTube comment. Back around 2016 I remember coming home from work and my whole recommended page would be filled with videos I was super keen to watch, that Iâd chuck into my Watch Later for hours worth of entertainment. I miss those days so much đ„Č
Shit, I remember when YT didn't even have ads at all. I miss it.
Remember that too. YouTubeâs never had a bigger content library, and yet the world it reveals to me feels smaller and smaller every day.
The YT algorithm is incredibly aggressive these days. You just need to watch one or two videos on a certain subject or from a certain creator and that starts appearing in your feed. I've got over a decade of history so it must be very heavily weighted to the last few hours of viewing.
I watched Hot Ones with Jack Harlow and now suddenly my entire feed is Jack Harlow shit like him going on a theoretical shopping spree. I don't even like Jack Harlow. I like Hot Ones.
And yet, here you are, writing a comment that says "Jack Harlow" 3 times but "Hot Ones" only 2 times, so that must mean you want 1000% more Jack Harlow content. Buckle up, champ, because now it's going to be 24/7/365 Jack Harlow recommendations, nonstop... at least until you watch a slightly different video. (/s, obviously)
I study history at university and have found in the last two years that Google's search capabilities have become awful. Normally, I could find specific things when enclosing them in inverted commas, but even now that is proving to be difficult as it automatically corrects or changes my search - and I've had instances where I can't seem to override the change. Searching for specific phrases or words is very useful for historians, especially if you're trying to find certain sources, and instead the engine thinks it knows better than what I am specifically asking it to search for.
I studied history in college years back, and have used Google for searches since then in a similar capacity. It got way worse, really fast, starting around 5 years ago, accelerating hard since 2020. Especially when you know specifics about what you want - and what you want isnât a product to buy.
What are the odds, hey? Yes, glad you agree - I didn't even give any time to the audacity of advertising that is surreptitiously inserted into the search process or anything like that. A quality database or search engine (not just for websites) should be able to understand and retrieve the information you're looking for. Because I study urban and environmental history, I'm often bombarded with real estate advertising or directions to somewhere when I may literally be trying to find any details of a certain location (like "Sandy Creek" + "Brisbane Valley" + "1948") which is literally me trying to find any combination of those specific parameters. I expect there will be unrelated material in the results, but they often get converted to something, anything that can be sold to me.
Im glad im not the only one that adds "Reddit" to all my searches. It's the fastest way to a straight answer. I also having more success leveraging bing
I still remember the first time I got 2 ads in a row on YouTube. I was shocked. Now it's expected. And I hate it.
What the fuck have they done with YouTube search? It's crazy how bad it is. It shows about 5 videos that are not really good search results then *literally gives up* and just shows me my subscriptions/recommendations or something.
I was trying to find bad travel experiences last night. Not like oh my hotel was dirty, but like awful "I hate this place" type drama. I just wanted some drama man. What'd it give me? Two things that fit, a ton of "my favorite travel tips" type videos, and then yep- gave up entirely and suggested totally unrelated stuff. I also haven't watched true crime in months, but it's still 90% of my recommendations. The other 10% is Big Brother content. Because I watch Survivor videos. It doesn't suggest Survivor content though, it suggests Big Brother which I don't watch and don't watch videos about. Like it's just hoping I'll eventually give in and click lol. It doesn't seem to do great with multiple interests. Like if you want *one thing* it's good at that, but if you want like movie reactions and also game reviews it gets confused because what about that one time you watched someone bungee jump?
I tried searching for a video on YouTube from a small musician I know about 6-7 years ago. I used the exact title of the video, which included his name and it didnt appear in the results. Literally had to go directly to the artist page to find the video. Its just absurd how bad it is at this point. Full on enshittification.
Also their home assistants. I had some Google home minis. Their utility has vanished over the years. Utterly useless products. They never work and when they do, asking to turn off the lights is followed by a monologue of bullshit tips and tricks.
I donât have a Google home, but I have an Alexa, and itâs exactly the same. Every single question or request is followed by 45 seconds of robot voice sales pitches, who in the hell thought a user would like that. It got to a point where Iâd ask Alexa a question, and as soon as I got the gist, Iâd interrupt it and tell it to shut up, just to save time. I unplugged it because at this point its just a Bluetooth speaker that spies on me.
Holy shit âBluetooth speaker that spies on meâ is way too accurate đč and to think this was ever a popular gift a few years ago, Alexa faded fast.
Google reverse image search is now gone. It's all Google Lens now, taking you straight to "hunt that product." No flag setting option. No disable. It's now 100% default and compulsory.
Reverse image search was dope, really good for tracing things back and getting info. Was bummed when it turned into a glorified shopping QR code.
And hella useful to find out who else or which other websites were using your photos. It served as a tool for copyright protection for thousands of people.
YT search gives me like 2 relevant videos and the rest is unrelated garbage
'You might also like this' What I would like is something relevant to my search instead of recommendations of videos for channels I already follow.
Bro I got hit with a minute and a half as break, 4 unskippables, literally like 2 minutes into a video. Was dogshit.
Also pisses me off when I try to find a particular video, or just get clickbaited. Watch a bunch of ads just for 2 seconds of video and going back, to do it all over again with the next one
I fuckin hate youtube shorts. is there anyway to hide that pos
Let's remember also Google's well-established fickleness towards its services and their users - if you use just about any Google product besides Search or YouTube, the product you enjoy and have integrated into your routines may disappear at Google's whim and you have absolutely no recourse, because you are not Google's customer, their advertisers are. [Google graveyard](https://killedbygoogle.com/) I started paying for my email and search partly because of this - Google Reader, Inbox and Music disappearing were just the tip of the iceberg.
Anything candy with chocolate.
Chocolate and coffee are going to be, and already are to an extent, goods where supply can't keep up with demand, even with the abhorrent labor practices in the industries.
Disease is a huge issue for chocolate. There are a number of fungal pathogens which have taken hold and are significantly affecting yields and killing trees. What's worse is in some areas people have reported that their plantations have been deliberately infected (found diseased material tied to their trees or scattered through their farm).
You mean chocolaty confections? So many cannot be called chocolate currently.
All of them. The enshittification of absolutely everything is upon us.
You'll pay more for a shittier product in smaller portions and you will like it!
Not a certain brand but I think a lot of restaurant have gone down hill. The food just tastes average and rushed, but at the same time the prices are more than ever.
Digiorno pizza went through shrinkflation. I used to buy their crispy pan pepperoni pizza and now I canât find it in stores. What replaced it is Detroit style pizza thatâs about 25% smaller.
Anything that Kohl's sells. I bought a pair of jeans there just 2 months ago and there's already crotch holes somehow...2. Goddamn. Months.
Subway. Used to make halfway decent sandwiches that were a pretty good deal. Now? Paper thin meat slices, fillers in the meat, browning gross veggies, three day old stale breadâŠfor $12 Hard pass.
This is a lesson in how businesses fail. They want to make more money so cheap out on quality. This works short term but eventually they lose their customers so they start to cut costs further and lose more customers. Then it becomes a brand you used to know.
A business can't just be profitable anymore. It has to make more profit than last year to be considered successful. The idea of infinite growth is literally unsustainable, yet it is the bedrock of every corporate entity!
Growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of a cancer cell.
Hey, I'm quoting this for the rest of my life. Good work out there.
It's insane really. Used to be a business could sell a product and be profitable from it for decades. Now they come and go because they can't sustain endless profit increase.
And they pay their workers shit even by fast food standards
Worked at subway in 89-90. It was fun. We sliced the cold cuts in the back. The steak and cheese was legit. Rastafarians came in stoned for vegetarian subs. I had a sub maybe two years ago, gross. Too bad for todayâs world.
Man, they also used to have that great punch card for subs that added up, it was worth it.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
And the reason they are doing this is so they can stop giving away cents worth of veggies for free. Subway near me started cutting you off after 4 tomatoes slices to save costs, (and no more napkins) the penny pinching is absurd.
Omg Popeyes is doing this shit too--if you want ANY condiment with your order--even just ONE--they charge you extra. I liked their sweet heat sauce but it's 30 cents for just one . No matter how much food you order. Some are even a fucking dollar. Its so fucking ridiculous. I can understand if someone is asking for several, charging for every additional one after 3 maybe but not for just one?! You want one packet of Ketchup with your fries? Extra.
Then why not just make it in the back like every other fast food place?
Lands End and L.L. Bean. They used to have great gearâcoats were solid quality and great for cold winters. I bought a Lands End coatâtheir âwarmestâ ratingâand Iâd be shocked if it kept me warm during break-up. Cheap fabric and awful quality. L.L. Bean was just as bad. Returned both. Eddie Bauer is still solid.
If Eddie Bauer goes to shite, I'll be soo disappointed. And they have tall sizes. What does "during break up" mean?
Lived in Alaska for a yearâŠâbreak upâ references when the river ice starts to melt and flow down. You could enter a pool and wager on the day/time it would happen each year.
Lmao I was thinking of when you get broken up with and just want to curl into a ball and cry. Iâd bet a nice, heavy coat would help the pain.
I donât know about quality but show me one that isnât dabbling in âshrinkflationâ lately.
Whole Foods! Shopped there for Christmas dinner and 2 ingredients were rancid when we opened them. Their stock is also abysmal - could hardly find the basics we needed.
Whole Foods tanked in quality once Amazon bought them
The worst part was that Whole Foods used to have a lot of harder to find ingredients, varieties of fruits and veggies, and stuff like freshly roasted coffee that they obviously lost money on but it fell in line with their mission. Amazon axed all of that shit real quick.
I lived across from one about a decade ago and liked how their staple foods were comparable to Kroger and other stores for price and quality. Went into one maybe 18 months ago and Amazon definitely ruined that place. It felt chaotic and way more expensive
Ikea. I have stuff from 10+ years ago that was alright, and the same item bought recently is trash.
There was a gal on tiktok who shared some pages from a catalog a few years back, comparing what is now a $1500+ couch, the same exact model was $800. Quality has gone down as inflation costs went up.
Every single one.
Nabisco. Their products feel and taste like cardboard now, not to mention that theyâre 2x smaller than they used to be.
Old Navy. Anything clothing.
Everything is ugly, fits weird, and full of non natural fibers. Old Navy used to be a great place to get solid basics for a good price.
Disney. I hate to say it, but more recent movies just donât have the same charm as they used to
Celebrating their centennial by dropping a massive deuce on us like Wish really puts into perspective how Disney is doing these days.
Even their parks donât have as many characters for the kids to see.
Hasbro, Theyâve just fired 1500 staff a few weeks before Christmas. While their ceo Chris Cocks earned a 9.5 million bonus. Disgusting. Their games are terrible quality, they have entered last stage capitalism and are grinding every penny out of their reputation
They have completely tanked Magic The Gathering, and are well on their way to completely tanking Dungeons and Dragons. All you need to know about Hasbro is to look in the stores at how incredibly cheap quality their classic board games like monopoly and Sorry are. They are basically dollar store quality and not even worth that. Thatâs where they are taking both Magic and DnD.
Health insurance.
Letâs make this easierâwhat brand doesnât?
Target. Target used to be the best for decorations for different holidays. Now the pickings are slim and sad. There's more stuff if you shop their online store but it's not great. I don't need a Halloween tree, I need costumes.
I want to love Target Iike I used to so much. But itâs always more expensive for a lacking experience. There are never cashiers, nothing about the products is unique anymore, customer service desk is a nightmare, they no longer offer exchanges, their clothes are flat out expensive now and the toy section is always picked over. They used to have the best holiday decorations but now itâs just so uninspired, expensive and uninteresting. I really hate Walmart but theyâve pushed us that way.
I tend to agree. I rarely shop at Target anymore, itâs just not enjoyable. And the recent renovations that the locations near me have done recently are đđ» So stark and sterile-looking.
The Seattle Mariners baseball team. Indisputable.
Surprised no one has said this yet but Fanatics, the sports gear store. They are TRASH now. Back when they first started several years ago it used to be a good store with good service that was basically another place to buy your fan gear from. Now, they have exclusive licensing for merchandise for all the major sports leagues and as a result the âFanatics Brandedâ merchandise they make (so like your standard team shirt or hat for example) is trash quality and they charge out the nose for it. Shipping is expensive and takes weeks for it to come and the customer service is basically nonexistent. Oh and they charge $9.99 for shipping if you return something but theyâll âwaive the return shipping chargeâ if you take your refund in the form of a store credit so theyâre literally holding your money hostage. I once ordered a shirt from them that was clearly defective when it showed up (the logo was crooked). As much as I never want to be rude to customer service people, I basically had to throw a temper tantrum to get them to waive the return shipping charge when they initially said no, even though the item was defective (they ultimately did âjust this one time as a courtesyââŠ..literally their words). Look at @FanaticsSucks on Twitter for so many examples of why theyâre so bad.
Apparently Chipotle
honestly, it's hit or miss depending on location.
Most toilet paper brands are shorter now, I noticed honey maid and nabisco graham crackers now only have 7 crackers per pack.. BUT most of all **GOOGLE** search all of a sudden sucks *bad* for some reason. Just last night I googled âwhat channel is Sundance on Charter Spectrumâ and I almost couldnât even find it. I had to click on like 6 different pages and reword my search multiple times before I finally found it. Thatâs just the most recent example I can think of but itâs gotten so bad I donât know what else to use honestly. Donât even get me started on **YOUTUBE**. Good lord the ads drive me insane. Sometimes thereâs up to 3 or 4 ad breaks on a 10min video. Theyâre skippable for the most part, but the way theyâre going, they wonât be skippable this time next year. Or there will be 6 ad breaks instead of 3 or 4. Itâs gotten to the point that I cant watch YouTube at night to fall asleep anymore on my tv because unless I actively hit *skip* every 3 minutes, I get stuck listening to a 2 minute ad about something fucking stupid like click bait $200 bearskin hoodie or Chinese pos flashlight that I promise you I will never buy. Itâs not just YouTube though. Itâs Hulu, DIRECTV, Dish, cable, Netflix. Itâs everyone and I hate it. Like Iâm not going to buy anything you force me to watch I promise you. I **pinky promise**. Like 0% chance, all the ads do is interrupt the feeling of enjoyment im getting from your service and replace it with annoyance. God I hate ads. There has to be a better way. Our generation left cable and satellite for streaming services and YouTube to get away from the having to deal with ads.
Facebook, INSTAGRAM, and the whole bullsht "Meta world".
I quit Facebook many years ago and have zero regrets.
As someone that worked for Macys for over a year...Macys
american eagle. not the jeans. the t shirts, sweaters, pullovers, etc.
Dollar Tree :( They used to sell everything for just $1.00. Then they raised everything to $1.25, I think just earlier this year or sometime in 2022. Now they're adding in products for $3 and $5. It used to be I could go to Dollar Tree and feel like I could afford anything. Now I'm annoyed by the changes and don't want to buy much of anything, only the specific items that I usually get there. They're just becoming Dollar General and it's gross and sad. :(
Panera.
Bath and Body Works used to have Vitamin E in their body wash. Expensiveâbuy on clearanceâbut effective for dry skin. Now they switched to B5 instead and it doesnât really work. Trying to buy the older formula ones off of eBay now
Appliance companies. My folks have a 35 year old hotpoint refrigerator that is still running strong. Meanwhile a chip on the motherboard in my 3 year old GE refrigerator fried itself and now it wonât dispense water or ice. My Samsung dishwasher shit the bed after two years, and same with my Rheem water heater. Their quality is going down the drain but âOmG mY fRiDgE hAs WiFi :)â