Sometimes we have some really perverse incentives.
I remember Ground Control in Houston. There were dozens of people manning their stations. Some wore overalls that had ROCKWELL or the like written on the back. Before every major maneuver, the flight director would call out each relevant unit before proceeding:
Life Support? Go!
Retro-rockets? Go!
Telemetry? Go!
And on and on. There was great pride in wearing NASA or top aerospace engineering clothes: you were proud of your products and would stand behind them until the end. Pratt and Whitney guaranteed the SR-71’s J58 engines “up until Mach 3.” Anything higher than that canceled the warranty. As Zenith commercials used to say, “We put the quality in before the name goes on.”
That approach to products appears to be something for the museums. In Israel, rightly or otherwise, there is a belief that the quality of an appliance is determined by the country of production: Germany-Poland-Turkey-China in that order. When one buys a new stove or refrigerator, he always asks where the thing was made. Maybe it’s for good luck.
During the past year, we have had to replace our electric glass stove and ovens. We moved to an inductive stove which made most of our pots and pans useless. It is supposed to be cheaper to run, but the electric company does not see it that way. The way things work in Israel is that big multinationals rarely have their own operations here. Most use a local firm to fully represent them in sales and after-sales support. You don’t know how good you have it living in the United States. Apple has a firm here that is supposed to be 100 percent Apple. Well, if you give them the serial number of your phone that needs some TLC and they realize you bought it outside of Israel, they will not give you service. “Send it back to the U.S.”
When you have a company that is not Bosch or Siemens but represents them in Israel there is a little wiggle room between the mother company and its satellite. So in the case of the stove and ovens, the official representatives came to install the units (made in Germany…). In the case of the stove, the guy took 300 shekels and actually had the plug so as to make sure that we had to hire him and could not install the thing ourselves. In both cases, the technicians tried to get us to buy extended warranty coverage. Three years or five years. While we ended up saying how wonderful their appliances are, their guys all but said that they were junk. “If the electronics go, it will cost you a lot to get it fixed.” “They break down.” So we found ourselves in the Kafkaesque situation where we were saying how great the appliances were and the guys hired and paid to represent the makers of said appliances were just one step away from saying that they were garbage. When we didn’t go for five years, they pushed for three years. Then when they were finishing the installation, they begged for us to take an extra year of coverage. When we said no thanks, they all but left in tears. Obviously, their pay includes some commission and, as such, they have a very strong interest in our buying extra insurance. And in order to do so, they need to denigrate the very products that they should be telling us are the greatest ever invented in the history of mankind.
And these perverse incentives are everywhere. My wife likes small phones so I surprised her with Samsung’s first folding phone. But she found out, as did many others, that opening and closing the phone often left a line in the middle of the screen that did not go away. Now, in this case, I bought the phone in Israel. I went to the official rep to get service and he did everything not to provide the same. “It’s your fault for the line. You abused the phone.” The internet was full of pictures of such damaged phones, and fortunately newer Samsung phones do not suffer the same problem. It was not until I called Samsung USA and got them to force the Israeli rep to fix the phone at their expense did anything move. My wife has been in the Apple family ever since. Apple is supposedly coming out with a flip-phone next year.
Some companies do have offices, factories, or facilities in Israel, and one sees the pride that one would see in the home office. Intel-Israel has made many key contributions to the company’s chip offerings. Microsoft, Apple, and others have fully-owned research operations that are as much of the company as are the home facilities. But when you have a big company farm out its operations to a local firm, the latter does not feel the pride and importance of the product offering that the main company feels. If I went to Germany and entered a Siemens store, the salesman would convince me that the oven he wants to sell me is the greatest oven ever created by humans and is the height of German genius. In Israel, the Siemens rep would say that the oven will die a horrible death with an unbaked cake inside unless I buy added coverage.
Roger Daltrey wrote in his book that workers used to sing together while they toiled. In those days, there was great pride in the products produced and sent to the public at large. I believe that there are still companies that work in such a manner. Tesla products are works of art and one can see that Elon Musk makes every effort to produce high-quality products with the greatest engineering available. In a movie about Admiral Hiram Rickover, there is a scene which I don’t know is true or not, but it certainly fits into his way of running America’s nuclear navy. He is on the phone with a manufacturer of the pressure chamber and the contractor asks about what materials to use for a certain part. “Make it as if your son was serving on the sub.” And the U.S. has never had a major nuclear accident with its numerous nuclear-powered subs and surface vessels. Rickover created a mentality that quality engineering was the foundation of his unit’s work. He could drive officers crazy, calling a ship at 2 in the morning to get pressure readings from part of the system. But that’s how he kept his people on their toes. He personally interviewed 14,000 officers who wished to be in the nuclear navy.
Large multinationals should understand that when they entrust their local operations in smaller countries to operators who know the turf, the latter do not have the love of the company and its products flowing in their veins. When the iPhone 13 had a serious problem that made it impossible to hear calls, someone I know had to move heaven and earth to get the Israeli Apple rep to handle the recall which Apple announced for all affected units. Either Apple should open a commercial office here or read the Riot Act to the local agent to treat Apple customers with devices bought in the U.S. like royalty.
Every successful company in history has had dedicated people who saw their products as a part of themselves. If a product failed, they took personal responsibility for making the customer happy. No foreign company can feel the pride and responsibility of the origin company. And as end users, we can feel the difference.
Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
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