Is it me?
I paid over £60 for a 'Top of the range'  Russell Hobbs kettle just over a year ago and it was great - until just a short while out of guarantee.  It was well designed, looked good, easy to fill. solidly built, fast boiling, quiet:  Almost perfect!  I say 'almost' because in spite of being just about the most robust, well designed kettle I could find at the time, a stupid little bit of plastic engineering in the form of the tiniest, thinnest, weakest lid hinge pivots you can imagine have suddenly sheared off rendering the whole thing useless and unusable.  The bad design of the offending parts are almost impossible to see until the kettle is broken or dismantled.  I have now spent 2 days looking for a replacement kettle paying particular attention to the hinge lids on all the models of all the makes regardless of price, and - guess what?  The hinge pivots are a weak point on almost every one and the ones that do have a hinge that looks a bit stronger are so badly designed in other ways that you wouldn't want them in your kitchen!  Some of the worst are the ones without a hinge but have a lift off lid which, the designers seem oblivious to the obvious, when it gets warm the metal expands, the lid gets tighter and you then take the skin off your knuckles when you pull it harder and it comes off causing you to hit your hand on the underside of the handle!
I am still looking but if anyone thinks they know of one I can't fault please let me know.  I'll probably write to Russell Hobbs when I get time aand if I get a reply will post it here.