Buy American Blog

Saturday, January 26, 2008: Served in the USA

I have a new pet peeve. Actually, it's more of a long-standing one that I haven't had to deal with in a while. Off-shoring customer service. I hate it.

Generally when I'm calling for customer service, I'm pissed off about something to start with. Then when I get patched through to someone in India or Hong Kong or wherever the heck they are, my annoyance level jumps two notches. Their English may be a lot better than my Mandarin, so hats off to them for learning it, but I'd rather talk to someone in my own time zone, thank you very much.

I've been campaigning, unsuccessfully of course, to get the escrow removed from our mortgage so we don't face a huge hike every year when our payment gets readjusted to make up for the soaring property taxes. I'd like to pay the taxes myself so we don't have to keep a ridiculous minimum in the escrow account. But you can't talk to anyone who has the authority to do anything for you at HSBC (Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, and if I had realized what that stood for when I first became a customer, well, I'd have gone elsewhere). You have to FAX them. That's right. The only ones you can talk work in off-shore call centers and have no ability to do anything and can barely understand what you're asking in the first place.

Not happy with HSBC now, and my criteria for doing business with any bank, credit card, etc., in the future will include stateside call centers. Really doesn't seem like too much to ask.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008: Winter wardrobe finally assembled

I finally got my coat last week, and it was worth the wait. I placed my order back around Thanksgiving for a Navy style peacoat from Sterlingwear of Boston. It was on back order and they warned me that it wouldn't arrive until after the first of the year. Still, every afternoon as I pulled into the driveway I scanned the front porch looking for the package. Finally showed up last Thursday.

I've been wearing my old coat for over 10 years, and it's been ugly pretty much the whole time. It must have been on sale when I bought it, because it didn't have much other redeeming value, and over time I grew to hate it. The zipper broke in three different places, buttons fell off, it never matched anything else I wore, yet I kept wearing and hating it.

My problem was, I couldn't find a nice American-made coat to replace it. Then one night while surfing for Made in USA products, I stumbled across the Sterlingwear site. They make stylish, wool coats for men, women and children, in the Boston area. They're union made, and I can now say having seen mine, they are very nice coats. If you're looking for a winter coat (and aren't in a particular hurry to get it), check them out.

I'm also breaking in a new pair of boots, made by the Weinbrenner Shoe Company in the USA. Very comfortable, and very reasonably priced, as well. Certainly no more than I'd expect to pay for a similar pair of imported boots, were I so inclined to buy any. So finally, a month into winter, I'm ready. Bring it on.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008: Coffee makers and USA retailers

A couple weeks back I mentioned that many of the searches that land people on this site are looking for appliances, like plasma TVs and coffee pots—things we don't seem to make. I sent out the call for help, and Joe Martin of Dearborn Heights, Michigan, answered. Joe mentioned that BUNN makes coffee makers in the US. The longtime maker of commercial coffee makers also offers several different models for home use. You can see them on their web site, www.bunnomatic.com.

And how does Joe know so much about American-made products? He runs an online store, selling only Made in USA goods. Check out www.madeinusaproductsstore.com to see what he's got to offer. Help him get business off the ground.

He's not alone in running an online retail outlet for American-made goods. You may have noticed on the Links page that we now have a section for retailers. Made in USA Forever (www.madeinusaforever.com) and Zebulon USA (www.zebulonusa.com) also offer a selection of USA goods. If the stores in your hometown aren't stocking much in the way of American-made products, take a look and see what these guys have. Just as it takes some courage and class to keep your manufacturing here, it's also gutsy to go all Made in USA on your retail business. Give them a little support.

A couple more random notes to add tonight. First up, a plug for our new weekly newsletter. If you want to know what's going on here each week, just sign up and you'll learn about the Weekly Spotlight as soon as it's announced each week. You'll also get Recommended Reading links to interesting stories out there on the web, and anything else noteworthy going on each week. The cost—zip, zero, nada. So sign up and we'll see you in your inbox. Just to make it real easy, you don't even need to go to the front page. Sign up right here:

And lastly, if no one's going to bother leaving any useful comments here, I might as well decommission that feature. Most of the "comments" that have been left have been gibberish and baby talk by imbeciles that somehow stumbled onto the site. I'm not talking about comments I disagree with. I'm literally talking about jumbled letters and idiotic words. Thanks for stopping by, but keep on moving if you've got nothing better to do. I do 100 percent of the coding on this site, and it's not worth my trouble to make a registration system so people can leave comments. So we have an open and trusting system and some people apparently can't handle that kind of freedom.

Sunday, January 13, 2008: It's the economy, stupid

New polling out indicates that the No. 1 issue on the minds of voters today is now the economy, sliding past the war in Iraq.

When the media talks about the economy we never seem to get much in the way of specifics, aside perhaps from concern over the mortgage problems that have blown up on people in recent months. Just this nebulous term, "the economy." No one really dives into the fact that literally millions of Americans have lost good-paying manufacturing jobs over the last seven years, and millions more if you go back into the '90s.

And when you do hear people talking about it, it's sad to hear what some of them think. I was poking around a forum on the internet a couple days ago and ran across a statement someone left saying they didn't see anything wrong with China taking all our manufacturing jobs, because it freed us up to work on more interesting things like research and development (ostensibly, I guess, so we could invent more stuff to outsource.) This might be a good point if we had so much work here that we just couldn't get to it all. But that's not the case at all. And people who lose their factory jobs don't generally slide into high-paying R&D gigs.

Many of them are forced to take lower-paying jobs just to keep some money coming in. For them it's easy to see why the economy is at the top of the list when asked what our next president should focus on.

I want to see NBC News talk about them. I want to see USA Today write about keeping the manufacturing jobs we have left. But wherever I turn the leading economic story seems to be mortgages and foreclosures. Plenty bad, I suppose, if you signed on for one of those, but I think most of our major media, as well as most of the candidates, are ignoring the more important issue.

Sunday, January 6, 2008: Birthday gift saga

Happy birthday tomorrow to my nephew. And my niece. And my other nephew. Yes, we have a set of twins and another nephew with the same birthday. So we had some serious birthday shopping to do this weekend. It started Friday night with a stop at a local independent toy store. Turns out they closed early to do inventory, so we wound up at <gasp> Toys'R'Us.

I'd say I walked in there under protest, but it felt more like sneaking in behind enemy lines. My challenge was on the moment I entered: Find and log the Made in USA toys. There were a few, but let's just say you could have fit them all on one shelf and still had room left for the European and Mexican toys. The entire rest of the store was Made in China. We bought an American-made Slinky there, and I prolonged my searching.

Saturday morning I went back to the independent store, and the first thing that caught my eye was a Buffalo Games product. Nice. Made in USA. Doing all right. Or so I thought. Then it was China, China, China, China. About the next dozen items I picked up all made by the new great red menace. I finally found a couple of suitable gifts (or so I thought). A board game by University Games and a terrarium by Dunecraft. Both Made in USA.

When I got home, my wife made a strong case that the terrarium was not going to entertain a 5-year-old, and my sister informed me last night that the twins already had enough toys. So the gifts went into the closet (we have 13 nephews and nieces, so it's not the worst thing in the world to keep a couple of gifts on standby), and I was back on the prowl.

This time I was hunting for books. Mother Goose stories to be precise. Should be a piece of cake at Barnes & Noble, right? Yes, and no. Barnes & Noble did have 10 different collections of Mother Goose tales. Eight were printed in China. One in Singapore. One in Indonesia. Zero in the good ol' USA. It wasn't all that long ago that books were "safe." Not any more. You assume a book is American-made at your own risk. I advise you to check the title page.

I kept on looking until I found a Disney version of the nursery tales, printed in USA. They had a nice series of Disney story books there, in fact, and I got a couple for the twins. But I was disappointed it was such a struggle.

On my way out I browsed the board games they had on hand. Almost every one made in China. I thought I was onto something when I turned over a Scrabble game. "Made in USA," it said. Then "Racks, tiles, and letter bags made in China." Wait a minute. Open a box of Scrabble and tell me what's in there. Racks, tiles, letter bags, and a board. That's it. So the board, I guess, was made here, and that's enough for them to get "Made in USA" on the box? Seems like they're trying to pull a fast one. They want to say Made in USA. They just don't actually want to make any of the parts here. Shameful.

Thursday, January 3, 2008: Coffee pots and TVs

Judging by the search terms that show up when people land on this site via Google or other web browsers, there are a lot of folks looking for American-made electronics. Coffee pots, plasma TVs, stereos, digital cameras. I hate to say it, but to the best of my knowledge these products are no longer made in the USA.

I welcome input from visitors. If you know of any companies still making electronics of any type in America, let me know. Use the Comment form or drop an e-mail. Let's help each other out. This goes for all types of products, really.

Other than electronics, one hot search term has been towels, believe it or not. I've found towels in a few stores that are marked Made in USA, but for the most part these are contracted out so the actual manufacturer is not whose name shows up on the label. Not that there's anything wrong with big labels contracting out some of their towel/sheet/blanket business to American factories. It's just hard to refer anyone to a manufacturer whose work hits the shelves under a variety of different names, none their own. But don't give up hope on the linens. If you look around at the major department stores you should be able to find some American made options.