Has anyone else noticed how increasingly difficult it is to find quality parts, fixtures, tools or anything else at places like Home Depot?

Yes. Supply and demand, and we seem to be in an era where the upfront cheapest price wins.

I’m disgusted with how manufacturers with a reputation for quality products, like John Deere, create a cheap line of products just to sell in the big box stores. I wonder if the practice will bite them in the butt in long run.

Very much so, but in the area of dwindling jobs, consumers want cheap,cheap,cheap.
And I can understand that just don’t sell me crap and tell me it’s great.

Here is their old CEO’s severance package::
“Home Depot Inc. Robert L. Nardelli 2000–2007 $223,290,123.” That could have paid for a lot of employees capable of helping customers.

Buy and large, the young are the biggest consumers, starting families and setting up households. Most of them have little concept of quality, having been raised in dwellings where you can hear the dog fart on the next story down. Add to this the mobility of young professionals today who just want things to work, now. They have no idea where they will be in a year, so buying quality is a frivolous expense.

Now, on the other hand I recently bought a Pfister shower head at Menard’s that is top of the line. No internal plastic, and even the connecting nuts were metal. Of course, it was the 3rd shower head I bought, the other 2 proving to be garbage.

Anyone else remember when Avon owned Tiffany’s? The downward spiral is nothing new. Your complaints are exactly that of your father upon seeing plaster and lathe replaced by gyp board.

@ibstubro I would put your example of plaster/sheet rock in a different category. Whenever there are technology or material improvements, they are often met with resistance and disdain. Many uses for dimensional lumber were replaced by plywood, and then OSB. There were serious grumblings during each transition, but each new product had advantages. I remember when cars had metal dashboards and thick sheet metal bodies. When manufacturers starting using plastics and other materials, everybody snickered about how cheap the new cars were. But cars are safer and more economical to operate than they’ve ever been. Granted, each improvement comes with its own disadvantages, but the original products that one was accustomed to weren’t without disadvantages either.

Those scenarios are different than a manufacturer making a product as cheaply as possible to move more units. I have quality screwdrivers that I’ve owned for decades, but most of the chrome-plated pretty Phillips screwdrivers sold nowadays flake off the coating on the first use and begin to wear down on the second use. After several uses, one would be better off taking it to a grinder and making an awl out of it. Scratch that idea; most millennials don’t know what an awl is, let alone what to do with it! ~

We’ve evolved into an unprecedented disposable culture based on cheap (poorly made) products. I don’t understand how the trend can be sustained, but I imagine there will be creative solutions for the next crisis, just as there always have been.

Yes! And finding an employee to help is equally difficult at the two locations I used to go to. I’ve switched to Lowe’s, though it’s only marginally better.

OSB is the building material equivalent of a chrome-plated pretty Phillips screwdriver @bossob. My point being that up until the advent of assembly line manufacturing, goods available might degrade slightly over generations. That seems to me to be accelerating to the point that every generation accepts ever-more disposable goods.

You argue both sides – you can build a good house out of glue and wood chips, but you need sturdy tools to do it. Face it, the OSB crap isn’t meant to be repaired and is hardly attached to anything that will bear its replacement.

What’s the full circle? 3-D printing using a recyclable material or micro-robots. Sustainable, project specific tools.

But to answer the OP directly and specifically, “Yes, I’ve noticed that it seems to be increasingly difficult to find quality products at the big box home stores, but it’s been my experience that the quality is still there if you stay at it.”

I’ve noticed. It’s like EVERYBODY is selling crap these days. Made in China!