LV QUALITY CONTROL --- WHAT IS GOING ON??

[PinkInTheBlue]

I'm curious about where does LV claim that part of the expected quality of their bags is that all of the patterns will be symmetrical down to 1/16th of an inch and logos will be perfectly matched along all seems no matter what the shape of the bag? The whole "look very, very carefully and take out your slide ruler to see if the pattern is off center" complaint mystifies me. I've never seen or heard of it or perfectly aligned seems to be a claim or promise of quality from LV. Am I missing it?

 

[umamanikam]

I am not particular of symmetry or any such thing .Unless there is a real damage or fault I will exchange ,so far have no problems whatsoever in the 10 bags I own from this brand .I don't baby them except for few days ,then the novelty wears off ,but I don't thrash them around .I enjoy every bag I have and all are in pristine condition .

 

[chasy.price]

I forgot the name of the cognitive bias, but this thread reminded me of something.

As others have mentioned, for every "LV quality is terrible" post there are hundreds if not thousands of happy people with no quality issues whatsoever. But you never see them post. It gives the impression that the quality has gone down whilst it might have always been the same (if not better).

It's the same with war and peace. We live in the safest period in history but with all the news of terrorist, wars, (insert fight on youtube at walmart) it gives the impression that the world is unsafe. It's not.

To hit it home even more - when you're an exotic dancer and all you do is sleep and work at the club, you start to think all men are *******s. You don't know better but what's really happening is that you live in a bubble. The same thing is happening here.

I've got $40k of LV stuff all bought in the last 3 years and only had a quality issue with one item (a backpack that started cracking). It happens, not a big deal. Got it replaced and moved on with life

It's called "confirmation bias' is something alongs the lines that this occurs when theres a tendency to interpret or favour info in way so that it confirms one beliefs. So basically if we have strong beliefs that LV is going down hill one will look for only info that confirms this just to fit into ones own preconceptions. Which then leads to statistical/data errors. Which is no good as this bias will filter out new potentially useful or objective info which is then lost and what we are left with is a misconception rather than the truth.

This is actually the availability heuristic. It is the tendency to rely on the ease of recalling certain phenomenon to predict pervasiveness of such phenomenon. Related to this thread, it is the tendency to look at a couple of flaws in some bags and then conclude that the whole brand is going down. As the original OP of this post, I for sure suffer from this bias, because I am just human, and availability heuristic is our inherent nature. After all, as humans, most of our inferences are made based on our own experiences and the information we are exposed to (which suffers from confirmation bias).

 

[RayKay]

I'm curious about where does LV claim that part of the expected quality of their bags is that all of the patterns will be symmetrical down to 1/16th of an inch and logos will be perfectly matched along all seems no matter what the shape of the bag? The whole "look very, very carefully and take out your slide ruler to see if the pattern is off center" complaint mystifies me. I've never seen or heard of it or perfectly aligned seems to be a claim or promise of quality from LV. Am I missing it?

If you are missing it, so am I!

What really rankles me is when someone does a (happy and excited!) reveal and someone posts something like "that misalignment would drive me crazy, but I am glad you enjoy your bag!" or "it looks like the stitching is off in the corner, I would exchange for sure". Uh, okay? OP was not concerned about it, and was not asking about these issues, so why even mention it? Sometimes I feel it is just a bit of showmanship to prove their eagle eye or unwavering demand of perfection. Seems exhausting, and rather insensitive to OP. It is not often, but I have seen it enough to take note!

 

[umamanikam]

The initial post I started it ,because I just ventured into this forum even after having few LV bags since 10+ yrs .As I kept reading I found lots of complains about the bags and their quality ,so thought of compiling which bags had blatant faults like glazing peeling off from a particular type of bag ,not loose threads or misalignment of logos .Since then I have purchased quite a few bags ,new and preloved and touchwood no problems so far .

 

[Missydora]

This is actually the availability heuristic. It is the tendency to rely on the ease of recalling certain phenomenon to predict pervasiveness of such phenomenon. Related to this thread, it is the tendency to look at a couple of flaws in some bags and then conclude that the whole brand is going down. As the original OP of this post, I for sure suffer from this bias, because I am just human, and availability heuristic is our inherent nature. After all, as humans, most of our inferences are made based on our own experiences and the information we are exposed to (which suffers from confirmation bias).

Asked dear daughter who is a 3rd year experimental psychology student. I'm confuddled she atleast explain in layman's terms the difference between the two, so here's her interpretation.
Availability heuristic-mental shortcut, is where we rely on information that can easily be recalled ie: if you can recall something easily then the info must be important.
Confirmation bias, is where one actively find information to support their own ideas and beliefs via exaggerating supporting evidence and ignoring contradictory ones.
Availability Heuristic-mental short cut is more about mental rules that we rely on to make quick judgements can be seen as a lazy way of thinking. Whereas confirmation bias is a type of selective thinking.
I think both are relevant to reasons to why people think LV is going down hill if looking at it psychologically. But she does mention there's a lot of different cognitive biases that is also relevant.

 

[miss_chiff]

...the hive mind.

Asked dear daughter who is a 3rd year experimental psychology student. I'm confuddled she atleast explain in layman's terms the difference between the two, so here's her interpretation.
Availability heuristic-mental shortcut, is where we rely on information that can easily be recalled ie: if you can recall something easily then the info must be important.
Confirmation bias, is where one actively find information to support their own ideas and beliefs via exaggerating supporting evidence and ignoring contradictory ones.
Availability Heuristic-mental short cut is more about mental rules that we rely on to make quick judgements can be seen as a lazy way of thinking. Whereas confirmation bias is a type of selective thinking.
I think both are relevant to reasons to why people think LV is going down hill if looking at it psychologically. But she does mention there's a lot of different cognitive biases that is also relevant.

Nicely written. Then there is the 'hive mind' mentality, where everyone thinks as one and heaven forbid you should question or disagree with said 'hive mind'.

 

[Missydora]

...the hive mind.

Nicely written. Then there is the 'hive mind' mentality, where everyone thinks as one and heaven forbid you should question or disagree with said 'hive mind'.

Yes is a type of herd mentality with the hive mind. A bit like when someone in a crowd runs everyone follows.

 

[lwn]

I also think people forget that, while this is a very active thread, Louis Vuitton sells millions of bags to people who have never even heard of this forum. There are millions of people who have purchased luxury goods and don't frequent threads like this to share or even complain. This forum is in no way an accurate representation of LV's business or their overall quality.

 

[lwn]

The decline of lv's quality is actually a fact. My local lv store opened in 1985 and most of the employees have been working there for at least 10 years and almost everyone who knows me has admitted that now the quality is much lower than it used to be. They have told me that the canvas and the leather they use now are much thinner, the stitching is not as precise as it used to be and generally they have noticed a fall in quality wich happened gradually from 2000 to today. Apparently lv is trying to minimize the cost of production and now they use materials of lower quality and they new items are much simplier in terms of design and production. Also they have told me that the number of defective items that are being exchanged or send for repair has significantly increased over the last years. This doesn't mean that lv has bad quality or that everyone has quality issues, I do believe that lv has a good quality, but lv has definitely lost its great quality and their recent products won't last as many years as these from years ago.

Correlation is not causation. That's a statistics rule, and it absolutely applies here. No doubt your SAs are knowledgeable, but they are using anecdotal observations to imply causation without any actual facts, despite whay you said at the beginning of your comment. Their opinions and observations are not verifiable fact. Thinner canvas has not caused an increase in repair requests.

Seriously, guys, LV operates nearly 500 stores in 50 countries, and people are using the relatively small number of complaints (and large number of nitpicking) on this forum as proof of an overarching, widespread decline in quality. More than likely, the reason people feel as though things were better 20 years ago is because we weren't all carrying the internet in our pockets, and the only way you'd think to check the alignment of your monogram print is if someone told you in person that theirs was off.

 

[ashlie]

LV ruined my noe. I sent it in to get the leather redone and they cracked it!! My canvas was cracked when I got it back!! I checked my bag thoroughly, it was not crack when they sent it out. They wouldn't have done the repair if it was. Took it home, noticed it, brought it back and then blamed me! They said I purposely cracked it. It's absolutely insane. So disappointed in them and no longer buying. Their vintage pieces are so lovely though so it stinks.

My store manager did say that they changed the canvas, it is now thinner, and they agree that it is related to/with the cracking of new or relatively bags.

 

[chasy.price]

Asked dear daughter who is a 3rd year experimental psychology student. I'm confuddled she atleast explain in layman's terms the difference between the two, so here's her interpretation.
Availability heuristic-mental shortcut, is where we rely on information that can easily be recalled ie: if you can recall something easily then the info must be important.
Confirmation bias, is where one actively find information to support their own ideas and beliefs via exaggerating supporting evidence and ignoring contradictory ones.
Availability Heuristic-mental short cut is more about mental rules that we rely on to make quick judgements can be seen as a lazy way of thinking. Whereas confirmation bias is a type of selective thinking.
I think both are relevant to reasons to why people think LV is going down hill if looking at it psychologically. But she does mention there's a lot of different cognitive biases that is also relevant.

The difference between availability bias and confirmation bias is the direction between two variables: judgment and information.
For availability bias, we see information (or we retrieve this information from our memory), and then we form a judgment that such information is important / relevant / pervasive.
For confirmation bias, we already have a judgment, and our information selection process is affected by our pre-existing judgment. But the key is that a judgment must first have been formed before conformation bias can kick in.

Confirmation bias is very, very powerful. So far experiments have shown that once people form judgments, it is exceedingly difficult to change those. When presented with counter evidence, people actually are more likely to dig their heels and stand firm on their previous judgments. These pre-existing judgments also lead to different interpretations of the same "facts", so that seeing the same evidence people will have completely different reactions. People also feel a lot more comfortable when they are surrounded by opinions that are similar to theirs, creating an echo chamber that further reinforce people's views about things.

For myself though, the availability bias was the major contributor to my conclusion that LV quality is going down. I do not want to believe that LV is going down. I am actually motivated against it. But recent experiences made me wary, and I relied on my vivid, recent, personal experience to draw the prediction and judgment that LV is not as good as before.

Is my conclusion right? I don't know. I hope I am not right. Maybe after I step away from boutique for a while (still can buy pre-love!), I will cool down and embrace the brand again.

 

[Missydora]

The difference between availability bias and confirmation bias is the direction between two variables: judgment and information.
For availability bias, we see information (or we retrieve this information from our memory), and then we form a judgment that such information is important / relevant / pervasive.
For confirmation bias, we already have a judgment, and our information selection process is affected by our pre-existing judgment. But the key is that a judgment must first have been formed before conformation bias can kick in.

Confirmation bias is very, very powerful. So far experiments have shown that once people form judgments, it is exceedingly difficult to change those. When presented with counter evidence, people actually are more likely to dig their heels and stand firm on their previous judgments. These pre-existing judgments also lead to different interpretations of the same "facts", so that seeing the same evidence people will have completely different reactions. People also feel a lot more comfortable when they are surrounded by opinions that are similar to theirs, creating an echo chamber that further reinforce people's views about things.

For myself though, the availability bias was the major contributor to my conclusion that LV quality is going down. I do not want to believe that LV is going down. I am actually motivated against it. But recent experiences made me wary, and I relied on my vivid, recent, personal experience to draw the prediction and judgment that LV is not as good as before.

Is my conclusion right? I don't know. I hope I am not right. Maybe after I step away from boutique for a while (still can buy pre-love!), I will cool down and embrace the brand again.

Had a very interesting conversation about this with dd. I think she maybe getting exhausted with with my millions of questions
What she has been taught is that heuristic are short cut thinking the brain will make to come to a quick decision. It is inate, natural mechanism the brain does unconsciously and sometimes from learnt behaviour. It is more like mental rules or rule of thumb. Her example is like if we see 2 people up a hill one at the top of the hill one at the bottom. The one at the top appears small the one at the bottom appears big. We would not automatically think the person at the top must be a very small person. Our brains will have quickly come to a decision that the person up the hill may be of similar size to the person at the bottom with all the available information from perpective etc we will have built up some algorithm subconsciously from it. Hence we are able to make quick decisions without much thinking. Things like using our gut feeling or making a educated guess are example of decision making from heuristic. It is quite a automatic brain process.

Confirmation bias and many other cognitive bias however isn't inate. It is selective thinking. We do it consciously rejecting info because of the beliefs we hold. Its human nature that we like to be right most of the time or want to be superior. So for some depending on personality or even profession etc. They maybe actively be self aware of this. So seek methods to stop this from happening as it can skew results or performance cloud our judgemnet etc. By using say statistical models, analysing data etc. To come up with a better rational decision. We can change this type of thinking if we want to.

Back to LV . So all these flaws and problem and people thinking LV quality has gone downhill. She does think that its the heuristic side of our brains in wanting to spot patterns, we can't switch this off as it is a kind of a survival mechanism as we have to sometimes make decisions quickly. So basically if we keep seeing and experiencing glazing peeling off and stitching going wonky donkey with our bags. Our brains will have spotted a pattern and then make a assumption and convince you something must be wrong with LV quality overall. It really depends on your personality and beliefs. Some brains will try and spot patterns more than others and try and come to some dichotomy. And its this brain Dichotomy that sometimes skew what is really going on. Because the problems you have been getting is consistent and reacurring your brain has spotted this pattern and made a assumption. But in reality she thinks it's coincidence at play that your receiving a lot more faulty goods than average or norm. As if you look at the bigger picture there is probably a lot more satisfied customers who aren't getting faulty goods who are happy. You have been very unfortunate or a anmomaly as they say. Sorry for long post. hope I haven't offended or made things worse.

 

[reason24]

How can i fix this?

 

[CornishMon]

View attachment 3817537 How can i fix this?

Buy a replacement strap - about 300 bucks. What ever was spilled on it was a doosy. . .