Skip to main content

Buying Electric Appliances - Cheap is No Longer Expensive




A fancy Bosch iron box with floor showing electrical damage from the appliance. Though more expensive than standard iron boxes, the appliance has proved not to be as reliable nor easy to open up.

It once used to be that the more you paid for an electric appliance, the better the quality you got.

Then, the world moved to China and it simultaneously became cheaper to make quality appliances, but incredibly cheap to make cheap appliances(here cheap means poor quality than low cost) Turkey also became a global manufacturing hub for appliances, which meant that we now had thousands of brands to choose from since anyone with some money could manufacture easily.

More choice, I am shocked to announce, has not been necessarily better.

So if paying more for an iron box or cooker does not mean you are paying for better quality, what does it mean? Well, it means you are paying for more features, including a long list of confusing features you may not need. Even more confusing is that sometimes the extra features are available in the cheaper product, but they are hidden or disabled!


Sometimes, paying more nets you an appliance that actually lasts - but with a catch. If the appliance has parts that need replacing often such as a coffee maker glass jug or nylon filter, you will find that the part is no longer available as the entire appliance has been replaced with a newer model with incompatible parts.

All these are things I found out when my Bosch iron box literally went out in a blaze of glory, and when I tried to replace the nylon filter in a Black&Decker Coffee Maker.

I had gotten the Bosch iron box about mid-2015 at a supermarket stock clearance, and it was a fancy model going for about KSh. 4,000 down from KSh. 8,000 ($40 from $80). It was a steam iron with a safety feature where it could switch itself off if accidentally left on or if left lying flat on a garment.

It was so much for safety features when sparks erupted from the bottom in the middle of ironing. Moreover, I realised that you couldn’t just open up the iron box. It uses a very proprietary screw with a 6-star slot and a protruding spike in the middle. The only place I can find that screw driver is possibly a Bosch service centre, and not for lack of trying. Few other appliances use such an impossible-to-unscrew screw.

Granted 4 years may be a long time with an iron box, but then purchasing an iron box that costs more than four times the average should deliver way more ironing days and they should not almost end in a catastrophe.

People tend to buy Bosch as a premium brand with longer lasting appliances, but I would suggest that this quality does not at least apply to their iron boxes. A cheap model from another brand will work just fine and save you money.

As for my Black&Decker coffee maker, it still works perfectly years later, save for the fact that its parts are no longer available. What you will find interesting is that it has been replaced by a model that looks exactly like the one I bought. The parts though have slight adjustments such that they do not fit into each other. You would wonder why such a model update would be necessary if it meant that parts for both models become hard to stock simultaneously.

An appliance buying strategy I once found dependable was buying a cheap appliance brand where the variety was limited and where the controls were largely manual. Such brands had few electronic circuits in them and were therefore less prone to failure as these are what tend to fail in fancy gadgets with touch and button interfaces. Such brands also took so long to replace a model that you knew what they had in stock had to be dependable.

China (and Turkey) have made it cheap for any brand to outsource their manufacturing. People also want to buy something that looks modern with fancy shapes and fancy colours. Therefore everything is manufactured at the same factories but with different names, and models change very fast based on what’s the latest feature.

The only way out of this quagmire is to buy based on reviews. This means buying last year’s or last-year’s-but-one model which was highly rated by those who bought it. Of course there may be a trade off such as increased power consumption from older devices - but you will all agree that slightly increased consumption from a fridge that lasts years is better than one that breaks down after less than six months.

For items like cheap coffee makers, old models with all-metal parts don’t need replacing and will probably last years.

It may be wise to begin your appliance purchase by looking up the brand on Google, Facebook or Twitter, or for specific models, looking up customer reviews on online sites. The challenge here is save for Amazon, most online shopping sites do not have proper customer review sections. This leaves you with searching for what people said on Google and social media.

Also brands do vary over time, and across their range of products. In Kenya, Ramtons, a local brand takes a lot of flack for fridges that keep breaking down. Yet, I have owned a Ramtons fridge for 8 years now with no issue and a Ramtons cooker oven for about the same amount of time too.

My fridge seems to be no longer available and replaced with the RF 267. Of course I should point out that the models people have been complaining about are the lower-priced smaller models which are refreshed more regularly and likely more modern compared to the larger, less moving stock. Either way, the complaints are quite numerous.

My takeaway here - Google before you buy and go with what gets overwhelmingly recommended. Price is no longer a determiner.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

WhatsApp Solution: Sorry we were unable to restore any of your message history backup

*This method only works if you are trying to transfer WhatsApp from one phone to another, and have not deleted WhatsApp data or formatted the old phone. If you already uninstalled WhatsApp and deleted data or logged into a different number, it won't work. If you get the “Sorry we were unable to restore any of your message history backup” when trying to restore your WhatsApp messages, trying to restore again from the same backup will probably fail. The issue seems to be caused by an issue with your backup file such as if you repeatedly tried to backup with internet connecting and disconnecting. 

Beers in Kenya: A sober opinion

Note: This is a dated post and has since been mostly passed by events. SAB Miller beers including Castle and Peroni are no longer widely available in Kenya after their exist. Sirville Brewery was bought out by Brew Bistro before being permanently shut in a tax dispute. Kenya is a land of milk, honey, beaches and taxes. I have penned, or is typed, a newer post here .  Peroni - One of the best beers in Kenya. Did a taste of canned and bottled Italian, and bottled Tanzanian I like the tangy flavour and body in Tanzanian Peroni. The can is close. Heineken drinkers will like the Italian one.  I have had a short beer swigging stint in my life. It has however been long enough for me to share my opinion of Kenyan beer. Interestingly, over the course of sharing such opinions with other drunkards connoisseurs,  I have found that we all have different views as to what beer is the best, which one makes you too drunk, or which one gives one free, extra hangover for every ha...

Nairobi's Top 4 Texas Brisket Places Reviewed and Ranked

Brisket on a bed of roast vegetables with barbecue sauce at Texas Brisket, Kikuyu  This review has been updated after a number of you suggested I try the brisket at County2County.  What's the best place to have Brisket in Nairobi? What's even brisket?  Brisket is one of the toughest cuts in a cow, from around the belly. It is so tough that it has to be smoked for about 16 hours to tenderise. But that there, is the catch.  12 to 16 hours later, it is the most flavourful and softest cut you will ever have. So full of flavour and so soft you can pick it apart with your fingers.  However, due to the long cooking time involved, only a few places offer brisket in Nairobi.  The best so far is Texas Brisket which is located within Kikuyu Railway station.  They do the meat for a proper 16 hours, and will usually have a fatty or non-fatty portion. The fatty portions are more tasty. A 500 gram serving goes for KSh. 900 and a 1 KG order comes with a serving of fre...

Lusaka and Livingstone Zambia to Namibia By Road

Zambia is a pretty large country,  an exciting one and with no shortage of potholes.  For instance, take the direct route from Lusaka - Livingstone to Namibia through the Sesheke - Katima Mulilo border crossing. Typically, roads are either good or tend to have potholes here and there. However, the last 120 kilometres of the Livingstone to Sesheke/Katima Mulilo route are best described as potholes dotted by some road here and there for the just thirty kilometres past Kazungula town, which is also the Zambia - Botswana border crossing.  Trying to drive to Sesheke is so bad it will take you anywhere between 4 hours to 6 hours to navigate those 100 kilometres. You may or may not have your dignity at the end and your vehicle may be in more than one piece.  If you really must use the Sesheke - Katima Mulilo crossing as of December 2022, then take the 900 kilometre longer detour from Lusaka to Mongu then back to Katima Mulilo. It doesn't guarantee you absence of potholes, b...

Why Humanity Hasn't Learned From the Covid Pandemic

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic began ravaging the world, succeeding the 1918 flu pandemic.  Many found it unbelievable that despite all the scientific progress that the world has made since 1918, from composite jets to modern healthcare to going to the moon, the world was still susceptible to a pandemic.  Ironically, some of these advancements largely played a role in the spread of the pandemic. Thousands of global flights every hour and air conditioning fanned its spread like a dry wind would in a forest fire.  There was even further disbelief in mid-2020 when it became apparent that many countries were even struggling to keep a pandemic in check. Developed countries, supposed to have the best healthcare, suffered the worst outbreaks amidst disagreements on measures such as quarantines and wearing of masks.  In yet another twist, technology advancement finally came to our rescue with the speedy development of vaccines, including the safe pioneering of never-tried-b...