The
Paradox
Real
life paradoxes could be interesting and debilitating at the same time.
Rugged Longevity or Fragile Technology
There were times, when one brought a
product and it went on and on and on. When it went kaput, it would promptly be
repaired and reused, re-re-repaired and re-reused. There were also people who
could precisely detect causes for failures and knew exactly how to put it right
back into service. Many such products saw and served few generations. Brand
loyalty transcended generations. Those were yesteryear stories of stuff repaired and reused.
Nowadays, most products pack up either
before expiry of warranty or definitely shortly thereafter. To add insult to
injury, the technical support wizard who attends to the complaint for a
consideration called ‘service charge’ is often clueless. After inspection of
the equipment, often a charade, promptly declares it ‘Beyond Economical Repairs’.
Some of them even attempt to convince the customer how lucky it is to have the
machine go kaput since it is the right time to grab a technologically superior
replacement at an unbelievably benevolent price with an enticing buy-back scheme.
Comparisons between a rugged archaic
refrigerator that refuses to give up despite an abusive existence and an elitist
state-of-the-art double door intelligent convertible fridge that refuses to
serve a day after warranty expires, sums up the prevailing situation. Deference
to technological advances and miniaturization notwithstanding, longevity of
many a new age product stands suspect. Whether the fragility is by design or not
is a question that must trouble society, intensely now.
Bitter Yet Better?
Some products, especially white goods, marketed and sold as
state-of-the-art are particularly notorious for failures immediately after
expiry of warranty. Discussions, confidentiality assured, with managers up the
chain give an impression that companies could be eyeing higher volumes through
replacement sales. ‘More Bitter - The Better’ seems to be the underlying marketing
philosophy. A consumer can be motivated, on some pretext or the other, to part
with his money on a technologically better piece of the same brand as
replacement for the defective piece. Zero interest financing and attractive
buy-back clauses function well as enticing baits. Fortunately for the market, for
every discerning customer opting out of the brand there are hundreds with more disposable
incomes being added every day to the market, readily led up the garden path by
glib talking sales executives.
Credibility a Non-issue?
While cost of servicing
pre-warranty expiry failures might have been catered for by the company, there
is little chance for incessant pecuniary bleeds inflicted upon consumers by
post warranty failures to receive any consideration. On the contrary, unmindful
of the compounding cost of credibility-loss, for some post-warranty service is
bait, hook and revenue. Unfaithful and ill prepared staff at the contact edge aggravate
loss of credibility through greed and lack of professionalism. After one or more incidents of living with an
untrustworthy brand, clients tend to shun the entire
range of products of the brand. Ignorant of
the fact that longevity sustained by quality and affordability ensure brand
immortality, smooth talking salesmen garner and fuel sales peddling ailing products
amongst the gullible new. There is no dearth of poor products, gullible
customers and glib talkers. It may serve brands well if they remind themselves
of the potential informal adverse referrals, right or wrong, have in
obliterating the brand itself from the market.
Unseen Costs
Unseen, unspoken about, yet not considered alarming but the most
afflicting by-product of poor quality and cheap production is the burden
environment has to bear for the huge inventory produced, warehoused, discarded,
dumped and non-recycled. To make production profitable, volumes are required.
To improve profits yet more volumes at even cheaper input costs are required.
To move huge volumes of new inventory, more demand should be generated. High rate
of failures repairs and replacement is required to fuel higher demand. Then greed kicks in. This destructive combination
necessitates brutal invasions into nature’s belly across the globe. Environmental degradation thrive on such mindless, greed fuelled activities.
Junkyards have mushroomed over cities and towns all over the
world. Often created at the periphery of settlements, they invade inwards,
thrive within and overwhelm. Maximum discards are necessitated not due to products
outliving life promised but because they are abandoned as
‘beyond-economical-repairs’. Concept of repairs have made way for
replacement. With poor uptake for recycling, a large
pool of material resources is wasted and left to pollute nature. The burden and
impact of pollutants leaching out of these colossal dump yards have neither
been fully documented nor recognised. While
the world is busy buying and discarding, we tend to forget that the pace of
discard is also pace of environmental pollution.
Not only individuals but even the society has to collectively bear
the cost of poor-quality. It is in the interest of the society and its longevity
that products manufactured, marketed and sold have life long enough to reduce
burden of waste. Else we may be racing to
choke ourselves in plentiful refuse?
