"RMD" wrote in message
...
Jeff,

According to "Choice", who collect figures on failure rates of various
appliances, there is usually hardly any difference in the failure
rates for cheaper versus dearer items. Typically 98% of dearer items
may be trouble free in the first year versus 96-7% for cheaper items.
Since the price differential may be huge, you would often be better
buying two of the cheap ones!

I've bought many cheaper items over a lot of years, since I mostly buy
pretty much on price. Nearly all these things have worked fine for
many, many years.

As for the alleged 20% failure rate in the first year of use for cheap
stuff posited by another poster? Fantasy. People have to give one year
warranties these days, and they just won't stock things that are big
trouble for them re returns.

Ross

That was based on my own experience, we've purchased a large number (several
hundred) TV's and VCR's over the last few years where I work, and while
they're quite heavily used, quite a few of them, likely closer to 10% did
fail early on. They had warrantees but the problem is they make you pay
return shipping so in the end people usually just junk it and buy a new one
rather than search for a suitable shipping container, pay to send it back,
and then wait for the replacement.