[zwaps]

I disagree on Miele. They still produce their products in Germany. That's not something you do if you want to sell plastic knockoffs. Sure, quality may vary, but this is literally their brand identity. So I seriously doubt there is a calculated attempt to be less reliable.

It gets more difficult. Tefal produces great pans in France, and really terrible pans in China and they are almost the same product and have the same price.

What I try to do is to buy D2C if possible, from brands where I know what is produced where. That's only a small subset of needed things, and its expensive, but it usually works out for me. I now know household, electronics and clothing brands that genuinely produce here in this country, for example, and the quality is simply better. I also know that no child labour was involved. So, I feel good about supporting such efforts.

Any brand I see on Amazon I assume to be one more variation of the same rebranded product. If I buy it, I buy it under the assumption that it could break the next day.

I also check whether the established brand name has been bought up, which happens a lot. Most of the eminent electronic brands are merely licensed labels nowadays.

[corty]

Miele still produces in Germany, but quality has gone way down nonetheless. Repairability is also getting poorer, you no longer get parts you one used to get for 20 years after the sale.