...and thats exactly why I stopped trusting any bottle that comes with a "lifestyle" price tag. But real talk, did the brand even ask you to send the bottle back for testing, or did they just ghost after the coupon? Cause if they didn't want the failed product back, that tells you everything about how much they believe in their own hype. These companies bank on people being too tired to fight a $200 charge, so they offer a tiny discount and hope you go away. Were you able to do a chargeback with your card company, or did they weasel out of that too?

Honestly I've done the exact same thing, grabbed a handful of cable disc on a steep hill and felt my soul leave my body for a second. The trick is to set them up with zero pad gap and crank the cable tension until the lever feels like it's got a solid bite right off the top, but even then you're never gonna get that hydraulic snap. I think you just gotta accept the squish and brake earlier on every test ride, or secretly wish you could swap the parts out without the customer noticing.

Man, that timeline matches what I saw too, but for me it was the 2015 floods that did it. I had a full pantry and a generator, but when the water kept rising I realized I could only grab what fit in my truck. Those shows just made it trendy, but the real wakeup call was watching people who stayed put lose everything in a single night.

Took me nine years on finishing trowels before I learned the same thing. Felt like an idiot.

Call that rush job a blessing in disguise because sometimes thin mud and no tape is exactly what those seams need to breathe. I've run plenty of patches with watery compound and zero mesh, and they held fine for years, so your problem was probably the drywall shifting or bad studs, not your shortcuts. Honestly, the extra tape might be overkill on a straight butt joint if the framing is solid, and blaming your mix just lets the real culprit off the hook.