I usually bitch mostly about software and services that suck. However there's a large amount of suckage to be found in the physical world as well, and every so often I find it worth mentioning in case someone who cares stumbles across it.

About a year ago I purchased a new sink for the kitchen, and while I was at it, decided to replace the faucet as well. I found a nice Peerless brand faucet for around $70 at True Value. It was absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, time has proven that this beauty was chrome-deep.

First of all, once it was installed, I noticed that the spout itself was a bit... wiggly. This hasn't caused any problems to date, but was my first indication that the quality was perhaps a bit sub-par. The second indication came about 6 months ago when my girlfriend accidentally hit the side of the spout with a pan. It left a visible dent in the side of the spout. Now, I imagine it's possible to dent almost anything metal given enough force, but it turns out that this faucet is paper-thin. The next indicator of poor quality came about two weeks ago when the hand-sprayer started leaking water from the handle. Better yet, if you actually tried to use the handle, water would literally spray out the back of it, usually all over your shirt and pants. Now, this is only a $10 replacement part, but really, the damn thing is less than a year old and the spray handle only gets used on occasion. There's no way it should have failed already.

In any case, I won't buy Peerless again and if you are doing some home project, I'd look at other brands.