Brands that succeed despite being shite...

frank1985

Electro Harmonix. The McDonalds of fx pedals

scrumhalf

boogieman said:

robgilmo said:

Land Rover and Jaguar.

What's wrong with them? I love our Jaguar, best car I've ever had. 

Ever had a good packet of Land Rover strings?

I rest my case.

Bork

Pizza Express - the recipe seems to be make the thinnest base and call it crispy crust. Throw the uncooked pizza skin against a wall,  aerosol some tomato puree on and throw the minimum of toppings against it. Then peel off and cook whatever hasn't fallen off already under a furnace for 2 min and charge as much as they think they can get away with.  They're successful because because people can't tell the difference between the decorated bread Pizza Express sell and a generous pizza pie.  I've made my own at home ever since and they're killers (literally, because of the fat content).

Lego - well made compared to the Chinese ripoff stuff but fuck me, it's expensive for what it is.  Mass produced plastic components that cost less than pennies to make selling in sets for hundreds of quid.  More design work goes into guitar pedals.

Behringer, Joyo, Wangs -  "R&D department?  BWAH HAHAHAHA!"

Fender, Gibson, Rickenbacker, Marshall...in fact any brand that has been cashing in on it's 'vintage' status since the end of the 80's but with very little material evolution in their products.  See Behringer comment above.

Sports Direct - you get what you pay for.  

Rocker

Hard to disagree with Starbucks, total #####.

And Bose. Reliable kit that sound impressive on first listen but is really quite poor sound quality wise.

One Direction. Nothing further need to be added.

SKY. Expensive for what they provide and absolutely zero loyalty to their customers.

HAL9000

Burger King - horrible.

McSwaggerty

BBC , ITV, C4
Wall to Wall 'Reality shows'..pathetic quiz shows...and soap operas to insult your intellegence...
Programmes about baking cakes...??
Fuck off.

mellowsun

All big brands really.

Why are people so into brands and labels anyway? I don't get why people pay more to give a brand free advertising by wearing clothes or shoes with a logo 

holnrew

octatonic said:

Garden centre cafeterias.

I mean what sort of fucking moron dines at a garden centre?
Same with supermarket cafes.

There's a nice garden centre with outdoor eating area near my mum, it has chickens and ducks wandering around and is a really nice place for lunch. Otherwise you're right. As for supermarket cafes I always know I can get a cheap vegetarian breakfast even if the surroundings are less than stellar.

chillidoggy

Very.co.uk

Except I'm predicting it to go tits-up after I placed a review on Trustpilot.

sweepy

Panasonic Viera TV's not much cop if you have Netflix 

Bork

octatonic said:

Garden centre cafeterias.

I mean what sort of fucking moron dines at a garden centre?
Same with supermarket cafes.

Garden centre cafes: Retired baby boomers who find mixing with the hoi polloi at a Sunday pub lunch potentially threatening.

prowla

Microsoft - their latest release of the OS looks like the one they did in 1990 and they shift things around & remove features and call it "Modern". I'm glad their phone OS bombed, 'cos it was utter rubbish; a company I worked for decided to change over to M$ phones, which were just horrible.

Ford - crap cars which always seem to have some strange problem which nobody can fix, be it the gear lever coming out in your hand, a loud clunk when you do a 3-point turn, non functioning air-con, the engine conking out at speed.

Greene King - yep, a place to go and drink bottled beer!

Microsoft Azure - copy the things AWS do, but make them more difficult.

Microsoft Windows - take a fairly nice OS (Windows 7) and convert it into an ugly blocky-shaped flat-windowed system where the user isn't allowed to set their preferences.

Celery - OK, I know it's not a brand, but that thing has no right to exist.

Jamie Oliver's Italian - the gits at the Reading one ripped me off and I haven't been to another since.

Nando's - they gave my kids chicken with raw blood in it.

Toblerone - their removal of 1/3rd of the bar for the same price - I'll never buy another.

HP sauce - named after the Houses of Parliament and by appointment to the Queen, but offshored to The Netherlands.

Marmite - putting up the price of their entirely UK manufactured product and blaming import costs.

Microsoft Office - making the windows white-on-white, so you can't tell where the scroll bars are.

Fender guitars - for confusing the market so much, branding their cheap "Squier" range as "by Fender", so people can advertise Squiers as Fenders, for using the name "Squier" which many mis-write as "Squire", for not pursuing 3rd parties who produce fake "Fender" logos, for producing the "Fender Squier Series" instruments, thereby confusing things even more.

Road-worn - not a brand, but an affected style: the guitar equivalent of ripped jeans.

stickyfiddle

@prowla So, to sum up, pretty much everything about modern life?

not_the_dj

Wrong thread....ignore!

RobDavies

Emp_Fab said:

Fuck me, I thought I was a moaning bastard!  This is like a "Shit that boils your piss - for snobs" thread!

Given how so many of you seem to hate pretty much every brand under the sun, wouldn't it just be easier to create a "Brands that are really good" thread ?  At least I'd know where to go, what to buy and what to eat then.  This way round, it's like 'Which?' magazine just printed the negative reviews only... "This is shite, don't buy that, this is utter wank, that's appalling junk...."

For once, Emp, I partially agree with you.  

There's certainly an element here of "look how much I can spend....and I'm still not satisfied". 

crunchman

Foster said:

Bucket said:

Apple.

Overpriced, style over substance, with a fucking useless, horrible "walled garden" approach to connectivity that makes everything needlessly difficult unless you do everything Apple's way and buy all their other products as well.

See I disagree, I bought a MBP in 2009 for uni - cost me about £1500.

In that time it has been used and abused. It copes well with protools, ableton, logic, max, aperture, photoshop and various other programs that I use fairly often. Sometimes it gets a bit hot but it still works and i'm happy using it live for pantos, shows, gigs, etc.

I like the fact I can buy pretty much anything I need and it'll work without a load of hassle and pissing about with drivers.

So how long did the MPB last? Still using it, rarely ever update it because it works. I think i'm still running on Lion, couldn't see the point in upgrading the OS (though I miss snow leopard, that was good). Admittedly the CD/DVD drive died but I just took the thing out, rarely ever use CDs or DVDs anyway (when I do I have a £5 USB one that does the job fine).

Got a show next week where my laptop will be running both the sound and lighting at the same time, just got to muck about in max4live so that ableton will control everything and make life so much easier.

Why is the length of time you have had it relevant?  I had a Dell PC that lasted 7 or 8 years.  I've upgraded it but parts of it are still being used 10 years on.  Apple use the same processors, hard drives and memory as PCs anyway.  Some of their hardware is better quality than budget PC laptops but I don't want to pay extra for gimmicks like a light up keyboard.

I also had a MBP from around 2011 or 2012.  Unfortunately I was forced into "upgrading" the OS to make it run with a bit of hardware that wasn't compatible with Snow Leopard.  It ran like a slug after that.  You mention "pissing about with drivers" which is something I never did in 7 years with that PC.  With the Apple I was forced to "upgrade" the whole OS because it wouldn't run with something.

With hindsight, I could have bought a PC latptop with the same processor, memory and hard drive as that Apple for about 40% of the price.  With that kind of maths, even if you end up replacing the PC after 4 years you are still better off financially, and you will have a much faster machine 4 years down the line.

To be fair to Apple, I don't think the price differential is as bad as it was then but @Bucket was correct with his comment.

As for their overpriced phones.....

slacker

Having read 8 pages in one go (good grief) imho there's a lot of subjective opinion and anecdotal evidence.

I don't like sport it should be banned.

Wetherspoons is great for what it is, cheap food, drink and somewhere to sit. I haven't been to all of them, obviously, but there must be a bad one or at least people who have had a bad experience.

The service industry depends on people and professional only means getting paid. 

I've been going to a local kebab shop since 1985. The same guy has run it. A while ago he complained that he wanted to retire. he couldnt find a buyer. That was the time the quality started to dip. I put up with it for a while. There was a different disinterested teenager serving me every time. I stopped going.

 A year ago Mrs s insisted in going there and the quality is better, not soggy not thrown in from a great height. So I started going again, there's the same guy out front making the kebabs and the owner watching telly  at the back.

So the point of this very long winded story is that one went to that kebab shop in a given period it would be excellent or ok or crap. If people who went there talked about it, they would disagree on the quality.

RocknRollDave

LinkedIn

chillidoggy

RocknRollDave said:

LinkedIn

Couldn't agree more. It appears to be populated by sharp-suited well-groomed, and coiffured salesmen and middle managers called Darren, who drive Audi's and BMW's.

All of which want to make friends with me. Vomit-inducing.

Legionreturns

The Beetles ... Pile of toss