Few people love unmet expectations, and that goes for pretty much everything, from people and companies to items and services, among other things. That’s why it’s no surprise that when something does not live up to a certain standard, they can get quite upset.
As a matter of fact, roughly four-in-five customers have had an upsetting or a disappointing experience with a brand, which typically leads to some unfortunate consequences, be it blacklisting the brand—which 44% of unhappy people reportedly do—or sharing their negative feedback with those around them—the means nearly 90% of them take.
The latter was seen to be true with members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community who were invited to share their opinions about the quality of certain brands. User ‘bapboopbeep’ asked them which ones were actively watering down their quality, and netizens didn’t hold back their opinions. Scroll down to find their answers on the list below, and see what brands were no longer living up to the expectations in the eyes of these redditors.
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Netflix, Hulu, Prime video - pretty much all the streaming services. S**ttier content, introduction of ads, constant price increases for zero added value
Streaming is becoming exactly like cable tv was. And podcasts are becoming exactly what network radio was. The exact thing that was appealing about them was that they were different from the corporate bollocks. Now it’s all the same. Monoculture is destroying quality of life in every dimension
Etsy used to have so many good products made by creative and talented people. But more and more I’m seeing s**tty T-shirt prints and stuff from Amazon.
Yes. As a former Etsy vendor I want to comment on this. I make and design unique jewelry. When I first started a shop site on Etsy around 2008, the people selling items on the platform were all individual artists and craftspeople. I know Etsy is even older than this, but that's as far back as my own experience goes. At that time they had a very strict policy that the person selling an item had to be the person who hand crafted the item (except for 2 categories of goods: craft supplies and vintage/antiques). They had methods of investigating cases where people seemed to be not in compliance with this policy, like requiring you to send multiple photos of your studio and of your creation process, etc. This began to change dramatically after about 2015. I think there were just too many vendors to monitor. Plus they started a very bad cycle of raising vendor fees accompanied by loosening of the rules of who could sell items on Etsy.
Prime just announced they are adding advertising to their movies. Bastards.
Ah,but for just an extra £2.99 per month, you can go ad-free...for now!
Google - the search engine is now the same as Alta Vista where you have to scroll past all the sponsored content you are not interested in and you tube is now showing 3 ads to watch a 20 second clip
Google is trash now. It’s mostly just a paid filtering service and it’s very difficult to get good search results from it anymore.
Lately it feels more like which brand ISNT watering down their quality and quantity tbh.
Disney. I hate to say it, but more recent movies just don’t have the same charm as they used to
Recently I was watching some older Disney movies and yes, current Disney can't compete with its older stuff. And since I hadn't seen the movie before (Tarzan) there were no nostalgia goggles at play here.
Appliance companies. My folks have a 35 year old hotpoint refrigerator that is still running strong. Meanwhile a chip on the motherboard in my 3 year old GE refrigerator fried itself and now it won’t dispense water or ice. My Samsung dishwasher shit the bed after two years, and same with my Rheem water heater. Their quality is going down the drain but “OmG mY fRiDgE hAs WiFi :)”
I can’t offer an example of a brand that isn’t guilty of this. Cheap, poor quality, replaceable products and goods is literally the fuel of our global economy. No company makes their products to last a lifetime or even a decade that I can think of… everything from buildings, homes, cars, complete infrastructure to the little things like shoes, phones, T-shirts, lipstick… it is no longer a goal for products to last… quite the opposite- the shorter the lifespan, the more the consumer will replace, repurchase and reinvest.
We are living in an era where the norm is to purposely withhold and prevent longevity. We have consciously become a society where progress is discouraged. We allow/accept lack of innovation and improvement because of the money flow that is generated from dependency on outdated and poor technologies by today’s standards.
Dr Martens boots. Most of them are made in China now and even the Made in England Docs are made with inferior cheap leather and don’t even have a shank.
They are nothing more than fad fashion now.
I should have kept my docs from the 90's. I swear, fashion trends start over every 25 years.
Most toilet paper brands are shorter now, I noticed honey maid and nabisco graham crackers now only have 7 crackers per pack..
BUT most of all GOOGLE search all of a sudden sucks bad for some reason. Just last night I googled “what channel is Sundance on Charter Spectrum” and I almost couldn’t even find it. I had to click on like 6 different pages and reword my search multiple times before I finally found it. That’s just the most recent example I can think of but it’s gotten so bad I don’t know what else to use honestly.
Don’t even get me started on YOUTUBE. Good lord the ads drive me insane. Sometimes there’s up to 3 or 4 ad breaks on a 10min video. They’re skippable for the most part, but the way they’re going, they won’t be skippable this time next year. Or there will be 6 ad breaks instead of 3 or 4. It’s gotten to the point that I cant watch YouTube at night to fall asleep anymore on my tv because unless I actively hit skip every 3 minutes, I get stuck listening to a 2 minute ad about something fucking stupid like click bait $200 bearskin hoodie or Chinese pos flashlight that I promise you I will never buy.
It’s not just YouTube though. It’s Hulu, DIRECTV, Dish, cable, Netflix. It’s everyone and I hate it. Like I’m not going to buy anything you force me to watch I promise you. I pinky promise. Like 0% chance, all the ads do is interrupt the feeling of enjoyment im getting from your service and replace it with annoyance. God I hate ads. There has to be a better way.
Our generation left cable and satellite for streaming services and YouTube to get away from the having to deal with ads.
Hasbro,
They’ve just fired 1500 staff a few weeks before Christmas. While their ceo Chris Cocks earned a 9.5 million bonus. Disgusting.
Their games are terrible quality, they have entered last stage capitalism and are grinding every penny out of their reputation
Subway.
Used to make halfway decent sandwiches that were a pretty good deal. Now? Paper thin meat slices, fillers in the meat, browning gross veggies, three day old stale bread…for $12
Hard pass.
McDonald’s.
Granted, they were never great (at least as long as I’ve been eating them). But over the past few years, I’ve definitely noticed a downward trend. Virtually anything you get from their menu is going to taste almost exactly the same. The only minor exception is the Quarter Pounder, but I don’t feel like spending that much on a fast food burger often. Which brings me to my biggest complaint: most of their sandwiches have shrunk to about 2/3 of the original size, but the prices have somehow doubled or tripled.
Yankee Candle. Well, a lot of candles, but it sucks when such a big candle brand known for having amazing candles has fallen off so tremendously. Went into a Yankee Candle store and picked up my favorite candle, Red Apple Wreath, and could barely smell it with my nose held just aboce the wax. Genuinely got scared I had covid. Went home and opened the one I have that's several years old and the scent filled the whole room without even having to light it. The quality really has gone downhill.
Yankee Candle quality dropped dramatically years ago when the original owner sold the company. They immediately cut back on the scented oil they use and raised the prices. I think they also started to focus more on accessories than the actual candle. I've heard that the son of the original Yankee CEO started Kringle Candle and that they are better quality.
Cable tv stations - TBS, TNT, AMC, Sundance, Comedy Central, etc. All running the same shows for hours on end, repeating day after day, running cheap reality TV, with little variety and far less original content than their earlier days. And the commercial loading ... off the charts. Utter garbage for maximum price.
Panera.
Just what the world needs. A thimble full of soup for $12.
If you’re Canadian, you’ll know: Tim Hortons. What was once a beloved coffee shop brand that offered decent food and coffee has now become a pale imitation of itself. Burger King purchased it, like, (edit) 10 or so years ago, so it’s obvious why. A friend recently said that the owner is notorious for getting food down to the bare minimum of what people will accept and finding the profits there.
As a German I can say all German cars. Same as most German tools etc. American cars are the same bad quality but the old times of engineers building a part so it lasts the longest are long over. Any car which has an oil pump break before 200 000 km should be a warranty case. Same as any other part.
The only breaking parts should be the engine after 250 000+ km for petrol and 500 000km+ for Diesel. Anything breaking before that is an absolute joke and should be covered by warranty.
It is also a joke that Chinese car sellers give you a higher warranty on their cars than German ones... That says it all.
Ps: I drive a Mercedes, but I'm just disappointed about the service. My grandfather only drove Mercedes and the service was beyond great and the cars were better.
I have a Mercedes. It has just turned 3 years old. 7 days before the warranty expired, the engine management light came on. It needed a new cylinder head. Over 25 hours of labour needed, thankfully still under warranty. Mercedes know there is an issue with the part but refuse to honour the repairs for those unfortunate souls who are out of warranty, leaving them with a huge bill.
Dollar Tree :( They used to sell everything for just $1.00. Then they raised everything to $1.25, I think just earlier this year or sometime in 2022. Now they're adding in products for $3 and $5.
It used to be I could go to Dollar Tree and feel like I could afford anything. Now I'm annoyed by the changes and don't want to buy much of anything, only the specific items that I usually get there.
They're just becoming Dollar General and it's gross and sad. :(
Not a certain brand but I think a lot of restaurant have gone down hill. The food just tastes average and rushed, but at the same time the prices are more than ever.
This mostly applies to chain restaurants. There is still plenty of Mom and Pop places offering great food for affordable prices.
Breyer’s ice cream was a premium brand when I was younger. A bunch of years ago they changed and are now the crappy brand.
Didn’t see this one, so I’ll throw it out there: Google products.
Putting aside the more fundamental concerns about data privacy or ethics and all that. Just focused on quality for this.
Search - it’s a mess. If I want an answer, I need to add Reddit to my search. There are no more finding relevant info from unique sites. Every result is branded seo stuff to filter you to some big entity in the space. It just isn’t good at what it’s supposed to do. The chat AIs are only a threat to Google because search is so clearly just a money maker now, and not useful at all.
YouTube - it’s a mess. Its search functions are almost worse than search, shorts are so annoying, ads get longer and longer. The way they compensate content creators kills the content. Easy example: I followed a channel of a guy who did these long video series, where he’d play a game and wax philosophical. It made them very popular and beloved in his niche. Now he only makes 5-10 minute quick videos released rapidly. He was asked why, and he said that the algorithms reward shorter content, posting more often. Longer videos just don’t get promoted (probably because the ad ratios get lower).
The google suite tools still work well (likely because those are sold to businesses so maintaining quality is more important). But their flagships, YouTube and search, are just no good. Too big to be replaced though, so it’s gonna be a long spiral downward for them.
"search is so clearly just a money maker now" - absolutely! It's a huge difference from even a few years ago
Amazon. I’ve returned probably half of things I’ve ordered recently and I’ve been getting a lot of knock offs.Amazon. I’ve returned probably half of things I’ve ordered recently and I’ve been getting a lot of knock offs.
Amazon is NOT a manufacturer. If you order cheap, Chinese Temu c**p, you get cheap, Chinese Temu c**p. My problem with Amazon is they're doing a LOT of bait-and-switch buy selling prioritized searches which put poor matches on top.
Anything candy with chocolate.
Especially in the US, where candy companies have replaced sugar with corn syrup - giving it that sicky-sweet taste. Hershey even tried to get the FDA to redefine chocolate guidelines to make it easier to cut quality and costs. I haven't had a Hershey bar since.
Kahlua is literally watering down their product, ABV went from 25% to 22% to 18%
Pop-Tart
Wtf happened to their frosting placement
Honestly though, I was just reflecting on why pop tart pastry has always been so flavorless and crumbly. Like why have they never improved on their dough?
Dorito's. Their sweet chili flavor is starting to become very bland.
Pringles has already reached the point where whichever flavor you buy, it's original.
Not to mention pringles shrank their chips to about half their size, but they’ve doubled in price!
Note: this post originally had 50 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
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Please add Bored Panda to this list. I am about to leave due to the new intrusive and noisy ads.
This site has been going downhill every since 2021. Once they started with the horrible censorship and negative AITA posts, I knew that something was wrong. They have staff that have degrees in photography, linguistics, literature, and art yet all they do is copy-and-paste c**p from Reddit. It is truly mind-boggling and honestly kind of sad. This used to be a quirky website that celebrated artwork from around the web and posted light-hearted articles. Now, they've become so extremely negative. They have NO moderator on this site and don't even listen to their readers.
Load More Replies...
As we scroll through the article and now get the added enjoyment of an add thanks bored panda
BP is definitely watering down and it makes me a sad panda.
Load More Replies...
Bored Panda with its excessive number of animated ads for stupid s**t I don't need.
Please add Bored Panda to this list. I am about to leave due to the new intrusive and noisy ads.
This site has been going downhill every since 2021. Once they started with the horrible censorship and negative AITA posts, I knew that something was wrong. They have staff that have degrees in photography, linguistics, literature, and art yet all they do is copy-and-paste c**p from Reddit. It is truly mind-boggling and honestly kind of sad. This used to be a quirky website that celebrated artwork from around the web and posted light-hearted articles. Now, they've become so extremely negative. They have NO moderator on this site and don't even listen to their readers.
Load More Replies... As we scroll through the article and now get the added enjoyment of an add thanks bored panda
BP is definitely watering down and it makes me a sad panda.
Load More Replies... Bored Panda with its excessive number of animated ads for stupid s**t I don't need.
