🚀 go-pugleaf

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 5:15:44 PM UTC-5, Dan Espen wrote:

> > AT&T also wrongly predicted that Western Electric would continue to
> > be profitable.  It knew at the time [Alvin Von Auw] that customer
> > ownership of sets and wiring was no long cost-effective.  However,
> > it probably could not have predicted that W/E's business model of
> > building equipment strong enough to withstand a nuke attack was no
> > longer working, and consumers wanted cheap equipment, even if it
> > meant frequent replacement.  That is, consumers would rather have
> > a cheap crappy $10 phone replaced every year than a solid durable
> > $40 phone lasting for 40 years.

> To be fair, today's "cheap" phones last a LOT longer than a year.
> I think I got 20 years out of my last set of wireless in-house phones.
> (The internal batteries stopped holding a charge.)
> I know I'm on 3 years with the newest set.

At the time of Divestiture, Conair, the hair dryer company,
made a $10 cheap landline phone (cordless phones weren't out
yet).  It sounded terrible.  Yank it or drop it and it stopped
working.  But it was cheap.  There were even cheaper sets out
there that were given away as a bonus for buying some product;
they were even worse.

BUT, consumers no longer had to pay that $1/month rental charge,
which a great many people disliked.  Further, the cheapo phones
did look better, using pretty stylish.  The Western Electric
sets were a 20-30 year old internal design.

I remember at yard sales the cheapo phones quickly became
available.  If I asked the seller if they had any Western
Electric phones, the reply was always, "No, we're keeping those."