Oak has lost its heart

Is this accurately described?

Argos is a catalog retailer with over 800 outlets throughout Britain. It’s the largest general-goods dealer in the UK. there are hundreds such companies in the US with one of the largest being IKEA.

I visited the Argos store in Derby UK
this weekend and saw this sign. The sign is both explicit and subliminal in that it states the table to be “Oak” when it has never seen or smelled or touched oak in its life except for the pallet it was shipped to the UK on, and that the chairs associated with it are made of pine and colour-matched to oak. Oak, what is described as a Chiltern Oak Table, is in fact what we call particle board (in the US) and chipboard (in the UK). This material is not continuous-grain real wood but pulverized chips held together with synthetic resins and bulking agents. It is a false-economy board that seems inexpensive to buy but lasts for a fraction of the time real wood does. If I were to use this material and sell my furniture as Oak I would be prosecuted by process of law for false representation otherwise know as lying. Argos does this blatantly and no one knows because no one knows. The staff don’t know, and people don’t know, but, underneath, lying on their backs with their iPhone as I am to get these pics, they know. Melamine surfaces that look like oak like this are deceiving everyone. It proudly states a half price reduction on something that probably cost Argos less then £50. If you buy this table it will most likely last less than 5 years max. The legs are 3/4” thick corner jointed so they look visually at first glance to be 4” x 4”. If you drag this table across a carpet the legs will fall off I assure you.

Look at the underside of this table corner. No joints just screws and glue. This wicked deception by manufacturers and sales outlets to deprive people of true and fit-for-purpose products. How did we end up here? Anyone!!! I mean how can the majority of the UK or US populations accept this greed and pollution. This invasion of truth and trust with such blatant misrepresentation.

Let’s look at this chair for a moment. By association this chair is sold with artificial oak table as part of the suite. The chair has the same colour as the oak table but is actually made from low-grade pine. It to the point of dangerous in that it has no strength. The joinery again is screw fixings uniting corners in three dimensional quadrangle but has no integrity of structural and mechanical joinery. Imagine the hoops these engineers jumped through to come up with such a distortion of truth. This chair’s lifespan is about two years with very careful use. Why am I so despondent when companies do such despicable things. IKEA does exactly the same. What a sad day we live in.

And guess what? You get to assemble it all by yourself!