Secondly we had a son 6 months ago.
Huh I was waiting to see you say the son broke down too already.
The stock market is causing it all.
You see, companies no longer base on pride on quality of work and serving clients. With the stock system the only goal of a company is now to create as much profit as possible.
This has lead to following: Product prices have been dropped in order to sell more products. In order to achieve that, build quality and materials have been dropped even more, outsourcing to China is part of it. Since profit is all that matters, engineers have calculated the bare minimum level of functionality that can be achieved so that manufacturing is as cheap as possible and product lasts at least a few days. So now manufacturing cost is 10% of what it used to be and sales price is still about 80% of what it used to be. Stock owners get rich. Product breaks down, consumer is forced to buy an another one -> more profit for the company.
If they did things the right way and products would last 10-20 years like they used to, sales would plummit, expense would be multiple times higher and returns sunk.
So your only route is to find a small independent craftsman that will build custom made door knobs etc. at 10x the price. They most likely won't break. Back to old school.
