Hacker News Reader

Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

15 years ago I bought a ride-on lawn mower that gave me 12 years of service, but was getting a bit long in the tooth.

I decided to buy the next model up from the same company, not knowing in the mean time it had been bought by a PE company and the quality had gone to shit. The mower is bigger, but the engine is smaller and they are notorious for blowing a head gasket any time the mowing blades stall out.

I was thinking of starting a web register of all PE PortCos (private equity portfolio companies) so people would know to treat the products with caution as the main way of reducing costs seems to be a) sacking people and b) cutting corners on product quality.

View on HN

I have an old cohort of co-workers who I went through the PE experience with and we pretty much use PE ownership of a company as a heuristic to avoid buying their products. Duracell batteries would be an example. A list would probably be helpful but depressingly long.

Which company is this? I’ve heard this referred to as “reputation mining”.

You buy a company with a good reputation, cut quality drastically, and profit for the decade or so it takes until everyone realizes the brand sucks now.

It is all over the place. The worst part is when you realize reputation is always a trailing indicator the only rational action seems to be to buy the cheapest one and use the saved money for the replacement. Basically, optimize your life around rapid disposal and replacement which makes extra trash and takes extra time versus just having a good quality item you can rely on.

My mower recently started to rust out and I dread buying a replacement. Aside from cheaply replacing poorly designed wheels fairly often I was 100% with this mower. But I can't buy it again because the march forward with redesigns means it is no longer made. Is the new one better? General life experience says, probably not.

I had this conversation with someone online. "X makes great cars! I bought one 15 years ago and it's been rock solid!" Yeah, well 15 years is a long time. The car you buy that was made this year could be a piece of crap. Who even knows? No one will know for at least the next 5 years. You just have to roll the dice and hope they care about the reputation - and check if the badge has been sold.

I also consider a few products disposable like that, but it's generally cheaper things. Non-stick pans are one of those, they work until they don't and I'm not going to baby them.

I have been considering for years to make something similar. A site that offers a company search and it will tell you how many PE tendrils are wrapped up in it. The data is out there. Anyone else want to join in? Is there an API we should be considering?

it's interesting how your reluctance in naming names in this instance actually ensures PE folks win.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com