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+ - Mass Manufacturing of Defective Products

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LostIt1278 writes "Companies have been selling less than quality software for years and they have been getting paid for it. It seems that worked out so well that now manufacturing and selling defective hardware is common place. Every time I drive the 20 miles to get to the "city" to buy anything I have to drive back 2 days (give or take a week) to return at least half the items I bought because it has a manufacturer's defect. Example (TRUE!!) I received an XBOX 360 as a gift for the holiday season in December. It has already been returned because it decided that it wasn't an XBOX 360. When inserting a game (any of them!) it told me to please place the disc in an XBOX 360 to play it. I know, no big surprise there, everyone has been having problems with the poorly made 360. I have also had to return a $60 wireless Guitar Hero guitar controller (the yellow button didn't work), an original XBOX controller (made by Pelican that just made you spin in game), a PSP with a scratch on the backside of the LCD screen, 2 Mad Catz racing wheels for the original XBOX (I was told they shipped a whole batch of defective ones and not to buy anymore from that store), 2 Toshiba laptops (1 hard drive failure in the first month, the other a defective touch pad I noticed out of the box), an iPaq Pocket PC that refused to acknowledge any SD card, and that's just what I've returned recently. I have my own IT business and I spend a lot of money on technology. I, personally, am sick of having to drive 40 miles round trip every time I buy something just because some manufacturer wants to shave a few more pennies off of their costs by making their products cheap. Am I the the only one seeing this trend grow? It's getting a bit ridiculous and it's only getting worse. I literally have to return half of the items I buy. When will it end or won't it? How do we stop such a wide spread trend? I haven't even mentioned the some what often "less than helpful" customer service I've received while returning defective products. That's a topic all to itself but maybe another article eh Best Buy?"
