Recurring bugs usually means that you're failing to properly manage source code commits. Testing is just another way to discover when you've screwed that up. You should have a process that informs developers where they should pull their code from and how they can go about pushing their changes back into the code base without undoing someone else's work. Of course, even if you pulled from the right source, your changes can break things, so you still should be testing. I agree with what's been said above about slowly building up an automated test suite. Just bake it into your development. If the recurring bugs are genuinely due to poorly engineered products, then, well... You're in a tough spot. You can spend a lot of time polishing a turd, but there's only so much shine you're going to get out of it.
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Recurring bugs usually means that you're failing to properly manage source code commits. Testing is just another way to discover when you've screwed that up. You should have a process that informs developers where they should pull their code from and how they can go about pushing their changes back into the code base without undoing someone else's work. Of course, even if you pulled from the right source, your changes can break things, so you still should be testing. I agree with what's been said above about slowly building up an automated test suite. Just bake it into your development. If the recurring bugs are genuinely due to poorly engineered products, then, well... You're in a tough spot. You can spend a lot of time polishing a turd, but there's only so much shine you're going to get out of it.