Saturday, January 7, 2012

Black and Decker Can Opener Reviews

!±8± Black and Decker Can Opener Reviews

Black and Decker is a very old name when it comes to home appliances, and have been making home appliances for decades. They make very good quality, robust machines that last and have a very good name in the market because of that. Although they may be a little more expensive you know that none of their products are going to fail you.

Their most popular model is the CO1200B. It is a table top model and comes in an extra tall size so that you can open even larger cans. It is not too expensive and costs around . Many people get this online because the price is much cheaper, but then it is better to go to your local store and get it because if you add the shipping charges, it will come up to the same and sometimes even more. The only time this makes sense is if you are getting free shipping. Remember to shop around as the price varies online.

Their second most popular model, the CO100B is an under the cabinet can opener. This model costs a little more than the previous model but is good if you open a number of cans a day, or use many different sizes. You can pretty much open cans of any size with this starting from the really small to the massive ones. At near the mark you should get this only if you really need something that you cannot get with the earlier model. Again do your research and shop around.

Black and Decker have a number of other models but they are only nomenclature variations of the same two models. You may get a bigger or a smaller CO1200B and each will have a different model name. The 100B obviously does not have any variations and is just Black and Deckers version of the standard can opener.

The only fly in the ointment when it comes to Black and Decker is their Gizmo. It was a total flop and the manufacturer has stopped production. You will however find a number of online stores selling this model at a huge discount, but it is better to stay away from it, even if you are getting it for close to free. It does not work and will only spoil your impression of Black and Decker for ever after that.

Overall Black and Decker have a small range of can openers and other than the Gizmo all work well and will suit everybody's budget.


Black and Decker Can Opener Reviews

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Monday, January 2, 2012

Brand Name Quality - Can You Trust It?

!±8± Brand Name Quality - Can You Trust It?

Cuisinart. Black and Decker. Maytag. These sound like brand names you can trust. But what's in a brand name these days? Is the lonely Maytag repairman twiddling his thumbs waiting for a call because his company's products are of the highest quality? Or is it because none of the products is actually made, or serviced by Maytag, or even covered under a Maytag warranty?

I've noticed an increasing trend over the past ten or so years, for companies that have built up a solid reputation for their brand, sometimes over the course of decades or even a century, to try to cash in on that reputation by sticking their brand on other people's products. Sears has been a master at using the Kenmore brand to sell a great number of products made by many different manufacturers; as far as I know, Sears doesn't really make much of anything themselves. But this new breed of brand-name selling is different. A company like Sears still provides service for the products that they sell, and presumably they're very careful what products they decide to brand and sell. The new breed isn't putting their stamp of approval on someone else's products and then selling them. It is selling the brand itself, so someone else can take advantage of the brand's reputation.

I found this out a few years back when my Black and Decker bread maker ran into trouble after a few too many loaves of whole wheat bread. The paddle started slipping on the paddle axle, so the bread would not mix properly. I needed a new paddle, and called the Black and Decker company. To my surprise, I discovered that Black and Decker, the reputable manufacturer or reseller of so many common household tools, not only did not manufacture Black and Decker kitchen appliances, but in fact didn't sell them either. They had licensed their brand to someone else.

The Applica Consumer Products company sells bread makers, can openers, food processors and other products that carry the Black and Decker brand name. At some point in the past these appliances may have actually been sold through Black and Decker itself. But at least through the end of 2010, Applica is paying a minimum of .5 million per year to Black and Decker for the right to stick that trusted brand name on products that are now sold and serviced exclusively by Applica.

This practice has obvious attractiveness to popular brands looking for extra cash to improve their income statement. A .5 million per year cash infusion with absolutely no expenses (except perhaps a bit of legal effort) can make a company seem much more profitable than an equivalent infusion of cash from actual product sales, where cost of goods sold and other expenses need to be deducted. This is a great deal for the owner of the brand and the licensee - cash for the one, reputation for the other. Unfortunately it's not always so good for the consumer.

In the Black and Decker case the problem for consumers is that you are buying a brand based in part on your trust of that brand, but the home appliance you are buying actually has nothing to do with the company that built a reputation on that brand. In other words, you think you are buying quality because of the name, but there is absolutely no guarantee that that is the case. As I discovered when I finally had to throw out my original Black and Decker, the replacement "Black and Decker" bread maker did not live up to the same reasonably high standards. In other words, a company buys the license to a brand for its quality reputation, and then sometimes squanders that reputation.

Another highly reputable brand that sold its name to an inferior product line is the Maytag Corporation. Maytag licensed its trademark to Fedders Corporation to sell room air conditioners, after Fedders had run into financial trouble while branching from such units, which were its specialty, into the less lucrative commercial HVAC space. Fedders needed to boost sales fast, and adding an entire new product line with the Maytag name behind it was an obvious fix. This helped for a while, but unfortunately Fedders had sown the seeds of its own destruction by taking quality shortcuts and offshoring more and more of the component manufacturer, and eventually the machine assembly, of its small air conditioners. The end result was that air conditioners with the Maytag brand became increasingly fraught with quality problems, and people who actually read up on products before buying discovered that these were not a good product to buy.

Fedders suffered from this, as well as from a string of unseasonably cool summers, and filed for bankruptcy in 2007. Imagine the surprise of disgruntled "Maytag" customers who called Maytag for warranty support on their units, only to discover that Maytag had nothing to do with the products and did not stand behind their own brand name in the case of the products made by Fedders.

This is why it is so important to do your research on any product before you buy it. Cuisinart made excellent food processors until they filed for bankruptcy in 1989; the company that bought them, Connair, continues to make the same food processor, and in my experience the quality of the new units is at least good, if not as outstanding as the original. But Cuisinart also sells a whole range of other home appliances such as coffee makers and bread makers. Do these live up to our expectations of the Cuisinart brand? My experience with a Cuisinart bread maker was certainly not in line with my hopes for the name. It made heavy burnt bricks of bread and I returned it to the store in a week! (That's when I bought my second Black and Decker, which wasn't that much better.)

So do a search for reviews of the products you're planning to buy, before you put down your money. It's not a bad idea to include the words 'trademark' and 'license' along with the brand name in an Internet search, when trying to learn more about the product you're after. You might discover that the brand you are buying is a name, and nothing more.

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet - but a dandelion that's been rebranded a rose, under a licensing agreement worth several million dollars a year, isn't a great addition to your flower garden.


Brand Name Quality - Can You Trust It?

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Thursday, November 17, 2011

The Prosperity Gospel Is a Lie

!±8± The Prosperity Gospel Is a Lie

It is very common for so-called Christian churches and preachers these days to deliver a false message that is not found anywhere in the pages of the Bible. It is known as the "prosperity gospel," and it gives people the false impression that if they accept Jesus into their lives then everything that is going wrong in their life will be fixed. The saying, as you may have heard, goes something like: "Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life."

The problem with this is that it goes against everything scripture has to say about how what people will experience once they are saved and become born again. In Matthew 10:22 we read: "All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved." Here Jesus Christ Himself warns those who are following Him that the rest of the world is going to hate them simply because they adhere to His name. Contrary to the prosperity gospel's proclamation, this is sure to bring more hardship in life than it would to remove it.

Similarly in John 15:19 we read: "If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you." Those who have been saved "out of this world" by God and been born again will be hated by the world, not loved. The reason that people preach the prosperity gospel in the first place is so that "the world" will love them, rather than hate them.

This results from man taking the gospel of Christ and making in man-centered rather than God-centered. It takes all of the focus off of bringing glory to God and simply tries to let people extract everything they can from it for themselves. The reason people love the prosperity gospel is because it is from the world, not from God. As we have already read that what is from God will be hated by the world. This is why it takes a powerful work of God Himself to save a person.

People are fooled into believing that the reason someone is wealthy and has a big house and car is because they "serve Jesus." As a result of this people who want more for themselves will begin to "serve God," the only problem being it is a false faith and a false profession. The Bible says not to love the world or the things of the world, and the prosperity gospel is in direct contradiction to that teaching. Do not fall into the trap of the prosperity gospel, instead read your Bible and discover what the true gospel has to offer: Spiritual Life and a justified relationship with God who is the creator of heaven and earth.


The Prosperity Gospel Is a Lie

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