Products and services where the new version is not as good or has significant disadvantages as the old

styles · 1 Sep 2026

Yeah I don't like a lot of "full sugar" soft drinks now. Even Pepsi have caved. Lucozade removes about two thirds of the sugar from their original drink, which soft of defeats its purpose.

Thankfully Irn Bru make both a new recipe version to get around the sugar tax, but also an Irn Bru 1901 which is the original recipe with all that sugary goodness.

I don't drink fizzy pop very often but when I do I find a lot of them too chemically due to the sweeteners.

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D6130 · 1 Sep 2026

All and any Rohan outdoor and walking gear. When they were still a small family firm with craft workshops in the North of England, they were top quality. Now that they have sold out to the corporate 'big boys' their products are made in China, or sometimes other far-eastern countries and wear-out or disintegrate much more quickly....for the pleasure of paying twice the price. :'(

Bletchleyite · 1 Sep 2026

D6130 said:
All and any Rohan outdoor and walking gear. When they were still a small family firm with craft workshops in the North of England, they were top quality. Now that they have sold out to the corporate 'big boys' their products are made in China, or sometimes other far-eastern countries and wear-out or disintegrate much more quickly....for the pleasure of paying twice the price.

Has it got cheaper though? Berghaus kit is vastly inferior to the 1990s but it's also way cheaper in real terms. Arcteryx and Mammut are probably your premium brands now (The North Face is an overpriced fashion brand), I bought a £250 Berghaus jacket in 1995 and got nearly 20 years out of it, and that's similar in real terms to a £5-600 Mammut/Arcteryx now.

For walking trousers these days I'd go with Craghoppers.

As an aside on outdoor gear, the real example is Karrimor, bought and ruined by Sports Direct. Once a high end brand, now a budget one.

D6130 · 1 Sep 2026

Bletchleyite said:
Has it got cheaper though? Berghaus kit is vastly inferior to the 1990s but it's also way cheaper in real terms. Arcteryx and Mammut are probably your premium brands now (The North Face is an overpriced fashion brand), I bought a £250 Berghaus jacket in 1995 and got nearly 20 years out of it, and that's similar in real terms to a £5-600 Mammut/Arcteryx now.

For walking trousers these days I'd go with Craghoppers.

As an aside on outdoor gear, the real example is Karrimor, bought and ruined by Sports Direct. Once a high end brand, now a budget one.

No, it hasn't. As mentioned in the last line of my post, many items are almost double the price - pro rata with inflation - compared with what they used to be. For years I have worn their cargo/freight vests while travelling. Hard-wearing (were!), lots of pockets - including inside zipped ones for wallet and passport security - shower proof, easily-washable and quick drying. Back in the day they were really good quality and one would last me five or six years. Now I'm lucky if I can get a year out of them....for the best part of £200.

gg1 · 1 Sep 2026

styles said:
Yeah I don't like a lot of "full sugar" soft drinks now. Even Pepsi have caved. Lucozade removes about two thirds of the sugar from their original drink, which soft of defeats its purpose.

Thankfully Irn Bru make both a new recipe version to get around the sugar tax, but also an Irn Bru 1901 which is the original recipe with all that sugary goodness.

I don't drink fizzy pop very often but when I do I find a lot of them too chemically due to the sweeteners.

As odd as it might sound, one of the reasons I prefer full sugar drinks to diet drinks is, to my tastebuds, diet drinks often taste sweeter than full sugar, I find many artificial sweetners have a distinctive sickly sweet taste distinct from drinks sweetened with sugar.

Broucek · 1 Sep 2026

Well, artificial sweeteners make me need to pee every 20 minutes so I have to be very careful to avoid them. I've never been one for fizzy pop but Schweppes non-diet tonic now has sweetener and so does most cranberry juice. It's really limited me when in restaurants and bars and checking the ingredients list isn't really practical

BuhSnarf · 1 Sep 2026

I think I might actually be the only person who likes the car parking apps. Especially as more and more move to the NPP standard. Means I no longer have to walk to the shops to split a note because the price has gone up and the fact at Pay & Display car parks if I decide to stay a bit longer I can easily extend it without going back to the car park to buy a new ticket.

My personal peeves are the fact that subscription services (Netflix/Amazon Prime/Disney+) that hook you in with low prices. Then reduce the library options, reduce quality unless you pay more and then.... add adverts to a service I'm already paying for.

styles · 1 Sep 2026

gg1 said:
As odd as it might sound, one of the reasons I prefer full sugar drinks to diet drinks is, to my tastebuds, diet drinks often taste sweeter than full sugar, I find many artificial sweetners have a distinctive sickly sweet taste distinct from drinks sweetened with sugar.

Yeah there is that as well.

I also find, oddly, that if I'm drinking full sugar drinks, I drink less fizzy drink overall. There's a handful of diet drinks I do like, such as Pepsi Max, but if I get a Pepsi Max I'm likely to finish it quite quickly then get another. Whereas a full sugar drink like a Coca Cola will last me a meal and more. Can't really explain that one except maybe they make me feel fuller!

Generally if the choice is between artificial sweetened drinks and that's it, I'll opt for water.

Bletchleyite · 1 Sep 2026

styles said:
I also find, oddly, that if I'm drinking full sugar drinks, I drink less fizzy drink overall. There's a handful of diet drinks I do like, such as Pepsi Max, but if I get a Pepsi Max I'm likely to finish it quite quickly then get another. Whereas a full sugar drink like a Coca Cola will last me a meal and more. Can't really explain that one except maybe they make me feel fuller!

As your blood sugar rises from ingesting sugar, you will naturally get less hungry for things containing sugar. Same as if you eat food.

Depending on your body you may of course get an insulin crash a short while later but that varies from person to person.

Mcr Warrior · 1 Sep 2026

Have we had PRT rail tickets vs CCST rail tickets? Variously discussed on the forum, from time to time including, quite recently at the below link. Does anyone actually like the things?

Faded print on All Line Rover ticket and poor LNER customer service

Hi all. Not sure if this is the right forum so apologies if not. I'm at a bit of a loss on what to do with this one. I bought a 14 day first class All Line Rover from the LNER travel centre at Edinburgh Waverley at the end of June. The ticket was on the newer stock with a QR code and I was...

www.railforums.co.uk

DelW · 1 Sep 2026

BuhSnarf said:
I think I might actually be the only person who likes the car parking apps. Especially as more and more move to the NPP standard. Means I no longer have to walk to the shops to split a note because the price has gone up and the fact at Pay & Display car parks if I decide to stay a bit longer I can easily extend it without going back to the car park to buy a new ticket.

I've no problem with car parks accepting apps for those who prefer to use them ... my objection is to those which want to force everyone to use them, by withdrawing all the alternatives.

I'd accept that it may be impractical to require them always to accept cash, but IMO there should always be a non-app option, like a contactless bank card. Personally I prefer using cash, as I don't always have a bank card with me but I always keep a stash of change in my car.

jon81uk · 1 Sep 2026

CaptainHaddock said:
When Mars Inc withdrew Marathon bars and replaced them with the tasteless sugary American rubbish they call Snickers. It's not even a proper name, what exactly is a Snicker and why they did they give a plural name to a singular product?

Snickers was the name of the Mars family's favourite horse and was the original name of the peanut and caramel bar ever since the 1930s. But when expanding to the UK they decided to go with Marathon, then changed back to the original Snickers name in the 90s. It has been named Snickers in the UK now for longer than it was Marathon.

They also didn't "withdraw" anything except the name, the bar itself didn't change.

Bletchleyite · 1 Sep 2026

CaptainHaddock said:
When Mars Inc withdrew Marathon bars and replaced them with the tasteless sugary American rubbish they call Snickers. It's not even a proper name, what exactly is a Snicker and why they did they give a plural name to a singular product?

The bar is no different (barring "shrinkflation").

All that happened was that Mars standardised their product names across Europe, i.e. Marathon to Snickers and Opal Fruits to Starburst. But the UK didn't lose all of those, Twix was called Raider in several European countries and was changed to Twix in line with the UK.

That has happened in a fair few industries to be honest, as it makes export etc easier. General Motors (now under Stellantis of course) renamed Vauxhall and Opel cars to standardise them, the Kadett became the Astra (UK name), but the Nova became the Corsa (Euro name) and the Cavalier the Vectra (Euro name too).

Actually there's an answer, Vauxhall cars. They are now just overpriced Stellantis tin foil

Egg Centric · 1 Sep 2026

Broucek said:
Well, artificial sweeteners make me need to pee every 20 minutes so I have to be very careful to avoid them. I've never been one for fizzy pop but Schweppes non-diet tonic now has sweetener and so does most cranberry juice. It's really limited me when in restaurants and bars and checking the ingredients list isn't really practical

This reminds me as well, how much cheap fruit juice now isn't juice, but instead a "juice drink". 50% Orange Juice, 49% water, then flavourings and sweetener or sometimes sugar. I don't think this was sugar tax so much as some crop failings and then manufacturers noticing they could get away with it, at least in certain sectors.

(Menawhile during these failures in Southern Africa the big manufacturers took a different approach of selling pineapple juice with no pineapple at all, just flavoured pear juice. But at least it was all juice!)

Bletchleyite · 1 Sep 2026

Egg Centric said:
This reminds me as well, how much cheap fruit juice now isn't juice, but instead a "juice drink". 50% Orange Juice, 49% water, then flavourings and sweetener or sometimes sugar. I don't think this was sugar tax so much as some crop failings and then manufacturers noticing they could get away with it, at least in certain sectors.

Premier Inn serving up squash as "orange juice" is an example of that. It's nothing of the sort. Though it's mostly kids that end up drinking that rather than coffee so maybe it wasn't that bad a call.

AlterEgo · 1 Sep 2026

Mcr Warrior said:
Have we had PRT rail tickets vs CCST rail tickets? Variously discussed on the forum, from time to time including, quite recently at the below link. Does anyone actually like the things?

Faded print on All Line Rover ticket and poor LNER customer service

Hi all. Not sure if this is the right forum so apologies if not. I'm at a bit of a loss on what to do with this one. I bought a 14 day first class All Line Rover from the LNER travel centre at Edinburgh Waverley at the end of June. The ticket was on the newer stock with a QR code and I was...

www.railforums.co.uk

PRT is horrendous. Not a single benefit to the user in my view.

BuhSnarf · 1 Sep 2026

Bletchleyite said:
Premier Inn serving up squash as "orange juice" is an example of that. It's nothing of the sort. Though it's mostly kids that end up drinking that rather than coffee so maybe it wasn't that bad a call.

I'm fairly sure many adults also drink the juice. But... urgh, I agree! So many now are watered down garbage.

A hotel orange juice alongside my breakfast was one of my favourite things in a hotel - especially how you had to drink one glass at the orange machine and then bring another back to the table as they were served in thumbnails.

My hotel routine is always getting the black coffee at the same time as the orange juice and then the OJ goes alongside the breakfast and once all the food is gone the coffee is just cool enough to drink. Perfect.

Bletchleyite · 1 Sep 2026

AlterEgo said:
PRT is horrendous. Not a single benefit to the user in my view.

Lower cost, which on a nationalised railway benefits taxpayers, farepayers or both, as there's nobody to be creaming profits off.

Though to be honest at booking offices I do wonder if it would be cheaper to simply print the e-ticket format on A4 using a laser printer. DB do that now albeit on CIV70 style (pink and blue triangle) preprinted "letterheads". Standard off the shelf kit is generally cheaper than railway specific kit.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Sep 2026 ==

BuhSnarf said:
A hotel orange juice alongside my breakfast was one of my favourite things in a hotel - especially how you had to drink one glass at the orange machine and then bring another back to the table as they were served in thumbnails.

I generally take a cup from the coffee machine to put it in.

jon81uk · 1 Sep 2026

DelW said:
I'd accept that it may be impractical to require them always to accept cash, but IMO there should always be a non-app option, like a contactless bank card. Personally I prefer using cash, as I don't always have a bank card with me but I always keep a stash of change in my car.

I expect you are becoming a minority by keeping cash in the car. Most car park machines are card only now as then don't need to empty the cash out, reducing risk of theft/loss.

Egg Centric · 1 Sep 2026

jon81uk said:
I expect you are becoming a minority by keeping cash in the car. Most car park machines are card only now as then don't need to empty the cash out, reducing risk of theft/loss.

We often have this discussion on here for some reason but there lots of other reasons to keep a few coins lying around eg supermarket trolleys* or locker rooms.

*I've not figured out an obvious pattern to where you need to make a deposit or not, certainly doesn't seem to be socioeconomic

Bletchleyite · 1 Sep 2026

jon81uk said:
I expect you are becoming a minority by keeping cash in the car. Most car park machines are card only now as then don't need to empty the cash out, reducing risk of theft/loss.

I would say that the number of people who own a car and who would go out by car with cash but no contactless payment method is going to be very small indeed. More likely people go out with no cash but with their phone these days.

I do think phone-only is annoying, particularly if it's not one of the two mainstream apps (RingGo and PayByPhone), but contactless payment will cover almost everyone.

Up to about COVID I did have a small cotton bag of change in the glovebox to avoid being caught out, but these days parking that even takes cash is increasingly rare so I no longer bother.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Sep 2026 ==

Egg Centric said:
We often have this discussion on here for some reason but there lots of other reasons to keep a few coins lying around eg supermarket trolleys* or locker rooms.

*I've not figured out an obvious pattern to where you need to make a deposit or not, certainly doesn't seem to be socioeconomic

I use a token for those. When I used a £1 coin I couldn't rely on myself to remember not to spend it!

81A · 1 Sep 2026

3g (especially HSPA+) being switched off has actually made things slower in a lot of cases and networks haven't fully recovered (leaving only EDGE/GPRS/no service where there would have been a solid 3g connection).

BuhSnarf · 1 Sep 2026

Bletchleyite said:
I generally take a cup from the coffee machine to put it in.

Yes, that's a good shout, but for some reason I find the taste of a cold drink out of a ceramic cup a bit weird. I'm an odd one, though

jon81uk said:
I expect you are becoming a minority by keeping cash in the car. Most car park machines are card only now as then don't need to empty the cash out, reducing risk of theft/loss.

Absolutely, thankfully gone are the days where you're walking from machine to machine only to find that someone has attempted to rip open the cash box and now the machine is OOS. I would imagine most people who are driving will have a card on them for paying for petrol / in case their cash gets stolen whilst they're on their day out.

styles · 1 Sep 2026

BuhSnarf said:
My hotel routine is always getting the black coffee at the same time as the orange juice and then the OJ goes alongside the breakfast and once all the food is gone the coffee is just cool enough to drink. Perfect.

I'm with you on this exactly.

Bletchleyite said:
I generally take a cup from the coffee machine to put it in.

For a split second I thought you meant you put coffee in your orange juice and I nearly boked.

Speaking of hotel drinks, I was recently at a hotel, which was attached to a wedding venue we were at so you'd think would want to make everything perfect, and at breakfast neither of their two coffee machines were working. I was offered sachets of Nescafe instead (ugh). Surely for both to break, one must've broken first and not been repaired before the second one broke; otherwise they're two completely standalone machines. They still had beans in them. Used to be a really good hotel as well I'm told, but after a very hot night's sleep, the lifts being out of action, the men's toilets near the entrance being closed, and then not even a half-decent cup of coffee with breakfast, it's definitely gone downhill.

81A · 1 Sep 2026

AlterEgo said:
PRT is horrendous. Not a single benefit to the user in my view.

No ability for a gate to incorrectly retain the ticket and no "09 magstripe unreadable" errors after putting the ticket through a faulty gate/near a magnet are at least two benefits.

jon81uk · 1 Sep 2026

Egg Centric said:
We often have this discussion on here for some reason but there lots of other reasons to keep a few coins lying around eg supermarket trolleys* or locker rooms.

*I've not figured out an obvious pattern to where you need to make a deposit or not, certainly doesn't seem to be socioeconomic

I keep some of those trolley coin tokens in the car

BuhSnarf · 1 Sep 2026

styles said:
Speaking of hotel drinks, I was recently at a hotel, which was attached to a wedding venue we were at so you'd think would want to make everything perfect, and at breakfast neither of their two coffee machines were working. I was offered sachets of Nescafe instead (ugh). Surely for both to break, one must've broken first and not been repaired before the second one broke; otherwise they're two completely standalone machines. They still had beans in them. Used to be a really good hotel as well I'm told, but after a very hot night's sleep, the lifts being out of action, the men's toilets near the entrance being closed, and then not even a half-decent cup of coffee with breakfast, it's definitely gone downhill.

Not part of the Britannia group by any chance?

speedy1 · 1 Sep 2026

BuhSnarf said:
Not part of the Britannia group by any chance?

Can't be: they wrote "Used to be a really good hotel" lol

jfollows · 1 Sep 2026

OhNoAPacer said:
Indeed, I think a lot of degreasing products used to contain carbon tetrachloride, which was not only hazardous to the user but also wasn't doing the ozone layer any good.

Carbon Tetrachloride + hot Carbon (eg in a cigarette) produces Phosgene which is very much not good for you and was used in WW1 as a poison gas.

I did used to like the smell of it, though. It’s also been used as a fire extinguisher.

Egg Centric · 1 Sep 2026

speedy1 said:
Can't be: they wrote "Used to be a really good hotel" lol

*Most* of the Britannia Group, with exceptions like their airport ones, used to be incredible hotels - it's what they do, buy up beautiful old hotels that are about to need a maintenance refresh or other refurb and then... not bother. Quite often as the second negligent owner. Stuff like the Adelphi in Liverpool or Grand in Scarborough prime examples of this.

Products and services where the new version is not as good or has significant disadvantages as the old

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