Wednesday, September 9th, 2026, 7:10 am
Cheap But Unfit for Purpose and Unsafe
Filed under: Appliances have gotten worse (less safe, less reliable), even branded goods from NIMA [1, 2] because people like “cheap” and companies are cheapening the production processes, materials, quality control
wo days ago we decided to carefully try to use the underwater lights we had acquired virtually for free (for context, there’s a home project this week [1, 2, 3]). I first tried them outside the water. All OK, no problems. The next step was, try the same inside the water. Oh, no. First, it was very hard to attach the darn thing to the glass. It kept floating upwards. I tried to use the water filter to force it down (in tandem), barely managed to do so. But worse yet, after some time in use we started to see the lights flickering a bit, then bright lights if not sparks came out from the socket. In the process it caused disruption to other appliances, including Rianne’s laptop. OK then, totally not worth the risk! Took it out of the socket, let it dry up for a few days. Today, in the laundry room (away from other valuable appliances and with its own distant fuse; the fusebox splits up the rooms), I plugged the thing back again. Lights not coming back up. None at all. Hmmm… try another socket. Same outcome. Try in the kitchen. Same. Just give up.
“Come on, Roy, you cannot just force it to work…”
My guess is that the fuse blew at some point. Good. Rightly so. Fuses blow up for good reasons, they’re a protection mechanism. I won’t bother replacing the fuse (I have spare ones and know how to handle these).
Whether the lights were not functioning “OK” or the goddamn thing was no longer water-resistant… who knows, right? I’ll never know. Either way, the thing was rendered unsafe to use, either underwater or outside the water (I was prepared to let it be used exclusively as the latter).
Some things are cheap for a reason. Having said that, all the other things we acquired are very good, they just needed a lot of very stubborn cleaning.
Let’s see how long those other things can last. I’m not counting on 5 years, let alone a decade.
My trust in “modern” electronics is waning. I still use appliances older than 30 years old. They still function perfectly.
