When does disguise constitute Fraud?
As lots of people here will point out, these Frigidaires are a product of WCI, neither a GM product nor even totally Westinghouse. To most of us, WCI is a badge that represents "ersatz-ness". Rather than produce its own products, the White Consolidates assimilated designs and parts of companies that were in one way or another going out of business and presenting them to the consumer market as weak copies, not even clones disguised as the originals. I've had this argument many times with a family member who is a lawyer. To me, this is clearly fraud. The lawyer always responds with
"caveat emptor" the law-school response, "let the buyer beware" : the consumer is required by law to be well versed enough and informed of all the deviousness of the market ultimately making the poor sap responsible when taking the bait.
Unfortunately it seems that the originators of the great Frigidaire brand, GM themselves, were the bellwethers of this corporate dishonesty. As the owners and creators of great brands like Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Buick and Cadillac, they diminished their own lines of automobiles by creating clones of cars that appeared in each brand. They taught the rest of them how to do this manufacturing sleight of hand.
I feel a little bit of outrage when in some appliance department I see the good Maytag name stamped on a product built by a company that was once a competitor. Yes, I understand that the owners of the Maytag brand sold the name to others for money and had the legal right to do so. I'm not a lawyer but, I think this is a bad practice. Furthermore, most appliance customers, even reasonably intelligent and educated ones such as my own parents have fallen at least once or twice for this greedy and unethical ruse and have ended up wasting hard-earned money on
drek. It's my opinion that brands should not be bought and sold; if the company goes out of business, the brand should be retired. I think this should have applied even to a brand like Hotpoint which was already owned by GE. By producing carbon copies of its own products and labeling them as Hotpoints, GE was trying to dupe loyal Hotpoint customers into buying goods that, in the end, were not Hotpoints. I think this is a dishonest and unethical business practice.
Even more unfortunately, I can supply those who would disagree with my argument with a good example for rebuttal: the coffee company that bought the "Eight O'Clock" brand from A&P who are forthright enough to put good delicious beans into those beautiful old red bags. There's always an exception.
