Asklemmy

A replacement PCV valve for my car.

Car was around 100,000 miles, figured it was a good time to do a big refresh & replace a bunch of stuff. Spark plugs, belts & hoses, fuel & air filters, fluids, etc etc... While I was at the parts store, guy suggested I also replace the PCV valve. But, it turned out the only one he had in stock was the store brand. $4, sure whatever. Got it home, took the factory one off the car, and sure enough it was gummed up kinda bad. But went to put the new one on, and it just about collapsed in my hands. It was so flimsy, kinda like a drinking straw. Ended up cleaning the factory one & putting it back on, threw the new one away.

A friend of mine made an online store and he started selling ~~e-waste~~ ahem… various affordable electronics. He wanted me to test a Chinese tablet, and I said yes. This was back in the day when Android Honeycomb was a thing and iPad 2 was a reasonable option, so even the best tablets weren’t that great.

I got the tablet, charged the battery, booted it up, and it was just barely ok. It worked, but it was really slow. I mean, like slower than my first Android phone. This was not even last gen hardware. It was clear that ~~some~~ all corners were cut. The storage, CPU, RAM, bandwidth etc. Every component was the slowest one available.

Anyway, the testing went slowly, as you would expect. It ran out of battery very quickly, because of course it did. Why put large cells or even mediocre quality cells in a cash grab like this. So, I charged it up and continued testing later until it ran out of battery again. Rinse and repeat.

After a few days of testing, It just didn’t boot up any more. Apparently some of those cheap components just couldn’t take the heat that comes with using a battery powered device. Rust in pieces! I hope this abomination gets ground to shreads and drowned in sulfuric acid.

I returned the tablet to my friend and I never heard from it again.

A Logitech gaming headset, I think it was G332. My main headphones broke, and I needed some ASAP, so I went to the local store and bought them as backup ones. The black paint on the padding started peeling off almost immediately and it got everywhere, like sand.

My wife once bought me a Siar Wars action figure from e bay. Yes that's right Siar Wars. He fall apart immediately upon taking out of the box.

Good thread to promote !buyitforlife@slrpnk.net

I once bought cheap headphones from amazon without reading reviews. They literally fell apart in my hands as I took them out the packet.

A wireless logitech mouse for gaming from back when wireless technology for periferals still meant a decent amount of latency. I learned quickly why latency is important when gaming. Also the precission of the mouse was terrible as it would regularly skip backwards under slightly accelerated movements. It was pretty humbling for me as a ~15 year old kid to realize I wasted around 4 weeks of newspaper work money on a mouse which I gave up on almost the same day as I bought it.

Purchases from Wish. A pair of block heels where the heel length didn't match the shoe arch. Wearing them meant constantly falling backwards. It was so comically bad, the seller gave me a refund and said don't bother sending them back.

A Gorillaz t-shirt, also from Wish. The picture on the website looked ok. However, what I received was so awful I thought it was a prank. The white shirt had what I assumed was yellow rust stains. It looked like a rag kicked underneath a disgusting kitchen frier and left there for years.

Some of the seams were on the outside and some were on the inside. The print itself was heavily pixilated, as if someone took an internet forum avatar image, blew it up, and stuck it onto a shirt.

Burger king chicken sandwich with foot lettuce

I bought a size of pizza from a food truck in DC and it was so bad I threw it away. Which is saying a lot for pizza

My Muller hand mixer was designed to break.

Feit light bulbs aren't worth it for any price less than free.

Might not take #1 spot, but is definitely up there. A pair of Levi's jeans that were worn through in 2-3 days.

We bought a shower mat that reeked of plastic offgassing, so we left it outside to air out for a month, and it still smelled like shit, so we threw it away.

I bought an ouya. I remember just about everything sucked. It's the thing that came into mind.

The thing that immediately comes to mind is a cheap telescoping fly swatter. . Old radio antenna style shaft / handle. The part that’s supposed to swat the flies was a massive square that was way too heavy and had so much drag that it would flop and never hit flat and was too slow because of it. Never once was able to kill a fly and after about the fifth try the handle broke in half and the top flew off launching into the great Beyond. Pretty sure it’s still lodged behind a couch somewhere.

There's probably worse, but off the top of my head, a Sandisk Curzer Fit USB 3.0 drive. It would overheat about 15 seconds into a file transfer and throttle to well below USB 2.0 speeds, perhaps even USB 1.1. I tried to alleviate the issue by using it through a USB 2.0 extender (thereby ruining its entire appeal to compactness), but it developed bad sectors soon enough. It was satisfying smashing it to bits with a hammer though.

Years ago I bought an angle grinder from Aldi, for about 20,-. After 30 min it started to smell and the enclosure started to melt. I brought ist back still warm and smelling burnt in order to recieve my refund. Although I knew it couldn't be of good quality I expected it to last a little bit longer. If you buy cheap you buy twice.

Those Dollar Store umbrellas! They are so shit they will break if the slightest bit of wind hits them, or maybe the flimsy metal frame breaks from closing it.

Sure it's from the Dollar Store, but I've bought lots of things from there that have last a decent around of time.

I purchased sunglasses in the Philippines and they broke the same day. I purchased a different pair from a different stand and they broke the same day. Im convinced the defective bottom of the barrel get dumped onto the Philippines

A set of darts from Temu. They were 23g and the barrel was like, slippery feeling to where you had almost no grip to barely grip. It was hard at times throwing them, you had to fling them to get them on the board.

Cream Soda from Best Choice, a brand that's from those not-so-well known grocery stores that charge 10% on top of the total amount you pay groceries for. This is somehow a step below Great Value brand which arguably is better in comparison.

We got gifted a plastic rack for garden utensils. My mother in law bought it for us from the local supermarket (which has various cheap crap every week). Anyway, we placed a few items in it and it broke in a day. Utterly useless.

Coors

probably not the lowest quality, but an allarm clock from walmart that sheared/tore off the prongs from its plug leaving them in the outlet. (to have some charity I was putting significant strain on it)

Barely working solar charger

A donair from Pizza 73