Free Market Competition - Failing in a personal way
While I was Christmas shopping, I went to the watch counter at a department store and asked if they could change the batteries in two watches - one of mine and one of my daughter's. This is where I usually get my batteries changed. I was told they no longer serviced watches and that I should try a watch store out in the mall.
I didn't have time to go out into the mall that day, but after Christmas when I was making an exchange, I decided to look for the watch shop and get the batteries changed. I found the store, but the salesman there said they only had batteries for the brands of watches they sold there - expensive, high profile watches. Now Bulova and Timex make good watches, but no one could say they were the "latest" in fashion or demand.
Free market competition is touted as being the best for the consumer, more choices, better prices. But when you can't get your product serviced, the benefits of choice and price are academic or beside the point.
What am I supposed to do, throw the watches away? Think of our landfills, piled with products of "good value" but dispensible rather than repairable. The thinking person's choice is to buy the more "au courant" product, but how long will that product be "au courant?" How long before it, too, winds up in the landfill?