How to Make an $800 Product Cost $1000 and Fail Sooner

Today I’m here to roast Bosch.

The Bosch company makes a lot of nice stuff, and I should know, because I own a lot of it. Big router. Hammer drill. Demo hammer. Bits. Two angle grinders. Sometimes, though, they really blow it.

My first angle grinder was a small Bosch, around 4 amps. It ran fine, and they gave it a nice long cord the way tool manufacturers should. The problem is that the cord disintegrated.

I don’t know what kind of faux rubber they put on the cord, but it started cracking at the boot next to the tool, and latitudinal cracks eventually appeared from one end to the other.

I bought a new Bosch cord, which was surely a mistake. It’s probably as bad as the old one. I didn’t install it for a long time because the old one was hanging in there. And because Bosch, in its wisdom, used a combination of Phillips screws and Torxes.

Torxes fall into the category of tamper-proof fasteners. Tamper-proof fasteners are used on things like Coke machines to keep people from getting into them. Here’s the thing, Bosch: REPAIRING MY OWN TOOLS ISN’T TAMPERING.

At least it wasn’t a second-tier tamper-resistant Torx.

A Torx is bad enough, because you have to buy bits or drivers to turn it. A second-tier tamper-resistant Torx is worse because the fastener has a little nipple in the bottom of the hole, and it pushes your driver out every time you push it in. The other day, I took apart a DeWalt product that had these things in it.

People like to make excuses for companies that use Torxes. They say they’re for ease of assembly. No, they’re really not. At least not the tamper-resistant kind. They don’t stick to a driver any better than a regular Torx. Companies use them to discourage people like you and me from fixing our products. They want us to throw them out or pay for repairs.

I now have just about every known type of tamper-resistant fastener bit. I have so many, the cops should have me on a list. I can open an iPhone, a tablet, a Dewalt battery charger…don’t try me. Companies that use these things didn’t stop me. They just made me waste money. And they made me more dangerous.

I can’t even guess what it would have cost me to send the angle grinder to a repair center. Probably more than I paid for it.

I finally stuck the new cord in there, and if it falls apart, too, I’ll go to Home Depot, buy a quality extension cord that will last 100 years, and stuff it into the angle grinder.

Second Bosch fail: my dishwasher. Overall, it’s okay, except that Bosch has decided I’m not supposed to have dishes or pots over a certain size. Ziss is not necessary, ja? My old Whirlpool or whatever it was would let you wash an ottoman if you felt like it. To use the Bosch, I had to buy a set of new plates. You can probably guess what brand my next dishwasher won’t be.

Anyway, plates: $40 at Bed Bath & Beyond. Dishwasher: $800. No contest.

Good dishwashers have latches. They have hinged handles. To open a good dishwasher, you pull the handle up, the latch opens, and you’re in. My Bosch has a motionless handle built into the top panel that runs across the door. You pull the handle, putting lots of strain on the panel, until something in the dishwasher gives.

A couple of years back, the handle started to rip from the tremendous force I had to apply to it. The plastic was about two millimeters thick, so no wonder it gave.

I could not buy a handle by itself. It was molded into the control panel. I looked the part up, and the best I could do was well over a hundred dollars. This part probably costs 5 dollars to make.

No, probably less. You can buy much heavier plastic products for $7, retail. This panel probably cost less than two bucks to make.

I got myself a type of JB Weld made for structural repairs to plastic. This stuff sticks to plastic very well, and it’s hard and tough. I took the panel off the dishwasher, pried off everything that was in my way, pressed the torn part back together, and pumped in a bunch of JB Weld to make it impossible for the rip to get bigger. I’ll post a photo.

This worked great until this summer. Then the panel ripped in three other places. Parts came completely loose and fell off.

This is the problem with strengthening bad products. When you reinforce an area that has failed, often, you’re just sending the problem to another area that hasn’t been reinforced. The reinforced area will hold up just great, so the flimsy bits will yield. Put a stiff boot on to protect your ankle, and when you stumble, you’ll rip your knee apart because your ankle can’t move. That’s the principle.

I managed to find a new panel for $80. Today I took the old one out, found the places where it ripped, and applied globs of JB Weld to the new one in the same areas. I have the toughest Bosch dishwasher control panel on Earth. It’s probably the only one which is really adequate.

I knew the new panel would be garbage, and it would fail just like the old one. I fixed it so it would fail much, much later.

I have a Hercules angle grinder from Harbor Freight. This is not a snooty Germany company like Bosch. Harbor Freight is a budget tool seller, and Hercules is its top line of budget tools. The grinder is magnificent. If you open it up, you will find very thick glass-reinforced plastic. I think I paid $59. Why can’t Bosch put 3/16″-thick plastic in an expensive dishwasher? Why is there no glass in the dishwasher panel?

I think I paid $78 for the Bosch grinder with the bad cord. It had a motor, heavy steel gears, a tough case, a complicated switch, a guard…how can a crummy, embarrassingly bad dishwasher panel cost the same amount?

The Hercules grinder’s case will last forever. It is nearly indestructible. Same thing goes for a lot of my power tools. Probably even Bosch tools. The Bosch angle grinder looked very tough inside.

The Hercules grinder has a really nice cord, Bosch. I will probably never be able to buy a replacement cord, because it’s Harbor Freight, but then I won’t need one.

Bosch can make a drill with a tough case, but somehow they can’t make a dishwasher with a glass-reinforced handle thicker than two millimeters. No, they made a choice, and the choice looks like an obvious effort to limit the lifespan of an otherwise-durable product.

Meanwhile, they’re probably playing the green game in their ads and on their website. Yes, I’m looking at it now. “Carbon neutral” since 2020. As if it were really possible to be carbon neutral. The whole idea is a farce. Fly your private jet to St. Bart’s for the weekend, but plant two banana trees in Madagascar. No, sorry. The correct thing, if you actually care about carbon, is to plant the trees and skip St. Bart’s.

Making dishwashers that last 5 years instead of 15 years is not green, Bosch. Throwing out a perfectly good dishwasher with a bad handle is not green.

I guess all the big manufacturers are hypocrites. I just bought a new washer for a tenant because the company that made the old one decided to quit making timers. The company is Hotpoint, which is General Electric, which is Haier, which is Chinese. The Chinese own General Electric now. Nice. I’ll know the end is here when they buy Coca-Cola and Harley-Davidson.

Haier has a bunch of stuff on its site about how it loves the environment. I’m totally convinced. The environment loves it when you stop making a $20 timer so you can sell a new $600 washer.

I guess I’m blowing the lid off major stories here. “Blogger Learns Company Makes Bad Products Intentionally.” “Florida Man Shocked to Find Hypocrisy Among Green Corporations.” I’ll probably be contacted by major news organizations. No one saw these scoops coming.

Don’t be afraid to improve products you own. You may be a better engineer than you think. There are lots of really bad engineers out there, and there are lots of products that are bad because of accounting decisions. Sometimes a tube of glue or a couple of new wires can make a product way better than it was when it left the factory.

I’m not afraid to wash dishes now. Fear is gone. Now I’m back to plain old laziness. Hooray.