I have an old cohort of co-workers who I went through the PE experience with and we pretty much use PE ownership of a company as a heuristic to avoid buying their products. Duracell batteries would be an example. A list would probably be helpful but depressingly long.

Which company is this? I’ve heard this referred to as “reputation mining”.

You buy a company with a good reputation, cut quality drastically, and profit for the decade or so it takes until everyone realizes the brand sucks now.

It is all over the place. The worst part is when you realize reputation is always a trailing indicator the only rational action seems to be to buy the cheapest one and use the saved money for the replacement. Basically, optimize your life around rapid disposal and replacement which makes extra trash and takes extra time versus just having a good quality item you can rely on.

My mower recently started to rust out and I dread buying a replacement. Aside from cheaply replacing poorly designed wheels fairly often I was 100% with this mower. But I can't buy it again because the march forward with redesigns means it is no longer made. Is the new one better? General life experience says, probably not.

I had this conversation with someone online. "X makes great cars! I bought one 15 years ago and it's been rock solid!" Yeah, well 15 years is a long time. The car you buy that was made this year could be a piece of crap. Who even knows? No one will know for at least the next 5 years. You just have to roll the dice and hope they care about the reputation - and check if the badge has been sold.

I also consider a few products disposable like that, but it's generally cheaper things. Non-stick pans are one of those, they work until they don't and I'm not going to baby them.

it's interesting how your reluctance in naming names in this instance actually ensures PE folks win.

I have been considering for years to make something similar. A site that offers a company search and it will tell you how many PE tendrils are wrapped up in it. The data is out there. Anyone else want to join in? Is there an API we should be considering?