This has a very simple reason: the cost of manufacturing has shrunk and the cost of repair has not. Because repairs require expensive people and manufacturing can take place with automation or cheap labor.
The worst offenders aren't large appliances, it's the cheap crap. If a store sells me an electric toothbrush for $79 and it breaks after a month shouln't just be required to replace it, it has to be worse than that to make products where even 1/1000 fail. And the result of such action would be that electric tooth brushes soon cost $200 instead of $79. But that's a good thing.
When I browse appliances or electronics, I want to know the lifespan. Not just the warranty. I want to know how long people actually use this particular product. And it can't just be based on some Amazon review system, it needs to be reliable and cover every seller. Like car mileage I need to have a decent idea about what to expect. And even if just 10% of product have this rating - that's also a good thing. It would mean less churn because manufacturers would be reluctant to replace an officially labeled product with a new one.
So we'd have longer lasting, rarely replaced models, more expensive products. Which is what we need.
Northridgefix? Tronicsfix? TheCod3r? (Louis Rossmann, of old?)
There's several of them, but it really depends on the value of the device more than the cost. A lot of what Northridgefix repairs is valuable for the data being recovered more than anything, where the value proposition isn't clear. That said, if someone's paid $2000 for a GPU, I can understand their willingness to pay $300 to get someone to painstakingly microsolder some components back on.
> When I browse appliances or electronics, I want to know the lifespan.
An approach for this is to switch from owning to renting.
Say you rent your washing machine for 1000 runs.
Consequence then is that you have predictable cost per run and since the vendor is responsible for maintenance and deposition, thus they have an interest in making the machine repairable and recyclable.
I don't dislike this idea as much as many do in principle.
But it would indeed allow companies to abuse me. Would only be good when there is enough competition to keep prices down.
Problem is then you'll have to pay a premium for people who are careless with their appliances, or just use them 10x as much as you etc.
And of course this allows the lender to make profit margin as well. So as a consumer, I end up paying more.
But still, for many appliances and devices which I am not an expert in repairing, I'd be OK with this deal.
Many tenants here do this already with the lender being their landlord.
I knowingly pay a premium to use a simple bike with this model:
(they're pretty successful here in Europe / NL and germany at least)
I know that the price for this exceeds a good used bike after a year or two at most.
But it often took me months to getting around to fixing my bike, I'm not very good at it, and professional bike repair is also expensive and takes me time.
Renting the bike is still more expensive, but it allows me to have a working bike without hassle; and if something breaks it takes a maximum of a workday or two to have it fixed or get a replacement.
Not everyone wants to build their appliances from scratch, but many people might want to have my appliances. IP laws might prevent me from selling them…
Household appliances aren't a thing many people are attached to, which simply should work. Giving up the worries there might make people happy.
If one doesn't get the feeling that one overpays. And that fear will likely win, before another model reaches scales where it is beneficial.
We can see that a bit with cars in cities, where car sharing tries to do that, while profits are hard to make (also die to hard competition between companies)
In a world where customer service is being reduced YoY, and slowly given over to chatbots. You are telling me that you trust companies to give you timely service for something you rent?
When was the last time you had trouble with your Internet router or modem? A large number of people rent these items from their ISP.
(1) the cost of renting, in this case, is way higher than the actual value of the device. (Last I looked, you rent for a year, you are better off buying your own)
(2) repair requires a 12 hour window of your time. May not be able to come due to high volume of work per tech.
(3) no penalty for the company really if your stuff doesn't work for 3-5 days, as long as they 'are working on fixing it'
Here in Norway, for large appliances there's a 5-year statutory warranty[1], 2 years for smaller appliances etc.
It covers anything that's not a wear-item breaking due to normal use. The shop who sold it has the burden of proof in case they want to claim it's been exposed to non-normal usage.
The shop has the right to try to repair the damage, but after two times (for the same issue), you have the right to get your money back.
Now surviving 5 years doesn't mean the thing will last 20. But it should at least keep the crap away.
Quebec, Canada one-ups on this! Our warranty law essentially says a "product must work for as long as is reasonable". There is also a very easy way for citizens to apply to a commission, including past judgements, with a simple form and no cost.
One can also look at past judgements.
So far, the logic is that an expensive fridge should last 10 to 20 years. Same for other appliances. And if companies give the run-around, those costs are added to judgement costs too.
These laws, such as Norway's and this one in Quebec, are vital. And to anyone saying they care about the environment, creating a massive appliance like this, and then making it purposefully bork early to kick a replacement, is absurd. The environmental cost of production, shipping, and then trashing such an appliance is silly, just to pad the pocket book.
Note: I'm the first to say profit = awesome. Let the market decide. But LG (for example) is famous for having a compressor issue with fridges, to the extent that there have been class action lawsuits against them. And on top of that, having an inability to get any parts... so people cannot even get fridges fixed! Replacing fridges every 2 years (an example) instead of once a decade is probably incredibly bad for the environment... for no valid reason!
The reasonable lifetime warranty provides that an appliance must serve for normal use for a reasonable period of time. However, the law does not specify, for example, that a stove must have a lifetime of 10 years. Why? Because several factors, such as the price paid, the contract, and the conditions of use, must be taken into account to determine the reasonable lifetime of the item. Thus, a $700 stove cannot be expected to last as long as another one with the same features, but that costs $1,500.
Also, add to the above another bit of logic I've heard. If you buy a clothes washer, and use it 3x every single day, obviously that might fall into "non-consumer use" or "excessive use", thus shortening the above "reasonable lifetime". Meanwhile, if you're a bachelor that uses the washer once a week, the inverse is true! It should last longer.
I suspect those markets are small enough that they just eat the costs when one fails early. We need some bigger markets to get in on these sorts of laws and then they'd have to make better goods.
Just to be clear, within the entire 5 year period a defect is assumed to be a manufacturing fault? If not, isn’t it easy for the seller to claim damage/wear and tear etc?
We have 6 years in the UK but only in the first 6 months is a defect assumed to be a manufacturing defect, which is naturally the period with your strongest rights and when it’s easy to get a repair or replacement. After that, you need to argue quite a lot
Yeah, if it's not due to wear items (break pads on a bike say) and you've only used it normally, it's assumed to be a manufacturing fault and it's on the shop to prove it's not.
For example if a mobile phone stops working they can't just take a look and say "oh water damage", they have to open it up and show the water stains or similar.
depends perhaps on the part of the product? For example induction stovetops are notorious for just stopping to work seemingly at random, and thus if you call up and say hey it stopped working you might not get as much pushback.
>Here in Norway, for large appliances there's a 5-year statutory warranty[1], 2 years for smaller appliances etc.
If a few larger markets would start having similar laws, it'd essentially fix the problem for the rest of us. I imagine currently Norway is small enough that manufacturers can just keep making crap and eat the cost of Norwegian returns.
This sounds great! Then if course the shops exert pressure on suppliers for quality hypothetically, but I wonder this just manifests as optimizing to fail after 5 years mostly reliably.
I wonder if it translates into shops not selling the most unreliable crap, or selling it at a markup, compared to other countries. Or do they just amortize the cost across entire product gauntlet.
It's hard to maintain a revenue stream if your product is good enough to last, so the products are engineered to either be part of a subscription, to be replaced far sooner than necessary, or both. They're worried more about their revenue sustainability than they are actual product "sustainability."
The "buy-it-for-life" brands ran into this problem because once you sell someone the classic product, they aren't going to sell another one unless it's to another (new) customer or purchased as a gift for someone by their existing loyal customer. So then they start entering into new product areas and eventually end up compromising quality.
As other have mentioned, this is becoming particularly annoying with home appliances and cars. "They don't make them like they used to" are true words.
Appliance manufacturers survived most of the 20th century making reliable products for a smaller global population. On the other hand, it's hard to have never ending quarterly profit growth without planned obsolescence to create extra demand that normally wouldn't exist.
Where are the 8% annual returns for old people’s pensions going to come from? Because the fertility rates of the last few decades surely is not going to result in growth like it did for previous generations.
“How to provide promised services and goods to a larger and larger non working population from a smaller and smaller working population” and/or the politics of managing this once the working population realizes they are not going to get the same, so why should they bother with providing it?
I don't know what you mean. Money is just a means of allocating goods and services, but by itself, it does not increase the supply of goods and services. So the pensions, the 401ks, the savings, and the cash really all are just trying to grab a portion of the nation and world's goods and services.
Which is why the returns ("financialization") are so important, higher returns means you get a higher portion of the goods and services. But since returns are just money, it does not mean the sum total of goods and services increases, just the proportion that you get is proportional to the return you get relative to others. And you can replace "you" in this statement with "x tribe" whether it be generational, political, racial, etc.
I had a certified GE service technician come to my home and install a electric glass top range that came with the home because it had broken from my cast iron sitting on it while the glass cooled.
I turned off the range with my Cast Iron on it, the cast iron cooled slower than the glass and the glass cracked. Poor design not built for cast iron.
This happened twice.
That meant I got to spend good time chatting with the service tech. He said he’s the last of a dying profession for a few reasons:
1. Nothing is fixed anymore except really old stuff. The things are simply replaced because the cost of fixing is higher than just replacing it with new. This means we’re literally throwing what are effectively new products into the landfill months after being installed. Even the old stuff, they are pushed into suggesting new build because the supply chain for old parts is small and there’s no money in it anymore.
2. There’s no career path for technicians because of 1 so where he used to be training apprentices they are going for other trades.
Nope, talk to appliance people and they will tell you all of the traditional high end brands are junk now too
I specifically did not call them "repair" people BTW since most have lapsed into doing mostly installs...it's not even worth it to repair today's s junk and most people just replace. Cost of parts and labor now can easily exceed replacement cost (by design obviously)
Maybe Speed Queen is the one exception. I've had folks explicitly single out Bosch as a brand people still mistakingly believe is high quality. Follow the supply chain...it all comes out of just a few factories with most parts shared.
There are no longer high quality brands, only high price. High price is usually just for the name or appearance.
The thing with repair people is that they'll always complain that whatever model they see most often is crap, without comprehending that the reason they see that model most often is because it's sold 10-100x any other model.
I don't agree, its like saying Victorinox/Wenger ran out of business because everybody eventually got that small pocket knife of theirs and due to its quality nobody is replacing those.
Yet reality is more like - completely new markets are opening, new rich people look for quality good brands, or father happy with his knife for 20 years will buy another one for his son. Or Miele, brand completely built on just its perceived reliability. They cost 2-3x more compared to even Bosch/Siemens, without any unique features apart from this.
The problem is, as almost everywhere in corporations - C-suite bonus incentives. Quick milking without care about long term strategies or brand name is the name of the game.
Victorinox/Wenger are good examples of a brand associated with a quality product (the original swiss army knife) that now extends that brand over to backpacks, luggage, etc.
Personally, I really like the Filson brand from the United States, but they also suffered from their core products being too-good, ownership changes eventually to a private equity fund, and ended up being driven into a lifestyle brand with a variety of otherwise unrelated product lines and collaborations (e.g. t-shirts) which often get manufactured overseas with lesser quality of materials and construction.
Another example might include other American "heritage" brands of footwear, such as Red Wings and Wolverine; they still make and sell their heritage products at a premium price but have been driven to use their brand to sell other, lesser quality goods with better profit margins.
I suspect it is more an issue with the "do one thing and do it well" trope than anything else. A great team that can design and produce high quality that is valued as high price surely can diversify along the way, if the management sees it and invests.
It varies by market a lot. In my part of Canada -- for example -- appliances are almost always included with a house or apartment purchase. Similarly, I only recently learned that in large parts of Canada, it's the norm to rent or lease your water-heater either from a third party or from a utility. Out here in BC, that's not really a thing AFAIK.
When you make an offer to buy a home, there will be a section that lists the furnishings/appliances/things-not-nailed-down that are included in your offer. Your real estate agent is going to check the boxes for appliances without even asking you. You could tell the agent not to do that, and the seller could say no. But that would be unusual.
I can tell you as a real estate agent I almost always recommend to my clients that they leave the appliances... appliances are a pain to move! No guarantee that your old appliances will fit in the respective places in the house you are buying, likelihood of beating up the walls and floors as you move them in and out of houses, and often it will cost you as much to move it as it would to just buy a new one. Further - the buyer of your home generally doesn't want to have to go spend thousands on new appliances right after they dropped a big chunk of coin buying your house. It definitely makes an impression on buyers, especially how petty it looks if you are marketing a luxury home where the sellers have stripped all the appliances - does not give the impression of luxury to a prospective buyer.
A new refrigerator is roughly $1k for a cheap one, don't tell me someone is going to charge more than that to move a single item. Hell, I've paid for an entire move for less than that.
Why would they be paying to move it at all though when the house they are buying already has perfectly good, and often better, appliances than they would be moving anyway.
Dude - consider mainstream buying options like say, Costco, Home Depot, Lowes, etc. There are apartment sized refrigerators going for nearly $1000. Can you find a super low end model for under $1K? Sure - but that's not what the majority of people are putting into their homes for a family unit of 2+ people. Can I throw a washer and dryer into the back of my truck? Sure - but that's not what people are going to do if they are moving outside their immediate vicinity. At minimum they are backing up the U-Haul, at the high end they are bringing in movers.
The annoying thing is that you see arcticles in paper and clips on tv that you have to upgrade all your old equipment from the 60s so you can "save energy".
Who wants some iFridge/iOven when the equipment made in the 60s was built to survive two zombies apocalypse and one nuclear war and won't connect to the internet for a firmware update.
Also the CIA can't hack your fridge so you get salmonella from your chicken because they have access to your shopping patterns from the super market.
I am very curious as to whether the money you save in energy bills from today’s more ‘energy-efficient’ appliances outdoes the money spent in replacing the things so much more frequently.
Older appliances may cost more to run but it’s possible they pay themselves off by virtue of not having to re-buy them every few years.
Speculation, of course. I wonder if anyone’s done the math on this.
I did the math for my parents once for their 50+-year-old freezer using a Kill-A-Watt. Buying a similar, cheap, efficient modern freezer for paid for itself after 12 years, with an expected life of 11 years.
Of course, this was almost a decade ago, so the numbers might have changed; and a newer device would have an automatic defroster.
Is anyone really having to re-buy appliances every few years? I bought all my appliances back in 2016 (dishwasher, washing machine, induction plate, owen with microwave, fridge, hot water boiler) and none of it broke yet. They're all from different brands, most were cheapest stuff available.
I've had to buy one fridge in my life and it's because the 20+ year old one that came with the house broke, and honestly it was repairable. Likewise, I had to buy one microwave after one that was like 15 years old broke due too much steam getting into the internal workings all the time.
Most new appliances seem to be replacing perfectly functional but outdated appliances in my experience helping people move them. The exception being washers and dryers, but they tend to get mistreated by the owners so it's reasonable that they have a shorter life.
If you read the article that was probably the smarter thing to do is get the cheapest stuff available because yours likely had a lot less bells and whistles that would be more likely to break.
We own a second fridge, a GE (family of 6 so we need the extra storage). It is now ~65 years old and has never needed service and has not failed to maintain the correct temperature.
I have a friend who works in production. I cannot remember exactly what his education is, but it's a type of engineer. If you want something produced that you have invented, he can get it done.
He has mentioned that they have software that can calculate the average lifespan of the finished product by entering the different components that goes into the product (like this piece has this amount of iron, this amount of tin, etc).
Based upon this the software can calculate the lifespan very precisely and determine if they have made it "too good". If it's too good the quality is decreased on purpose in order to reduce the lifespan such that people will buy more. Other testing goes into the equation as well, but enough data has been collected over the years that it can be calculated/simulated.
Trade: If the company at ANY POINT calculates a lifetime analysis for the whole or any sub-component, the SHORTEST LIFETIME DURATION, MUST be advertised at the same print scale size and next to the price of the product at all times.
That's one way to put it. Another would be to say that an appliance is (or should be) designed to last for approximately the amount of time it is likely to be in use, as people often upgrade old machines that haven't failed because the new ones are more energy efficient, faster, quieter, more convenient or clean better. There is no point in designing a washing machine to last 50 years, it only adds to the cost and nobody will use it for that long.
There’s an old story of Henry Ford sending agents to visit junkyards to catalog which parts of the car were still good when a critical part failed. Those were then redesigned to be cheaper in later revisions, so the entire thing fell apart at once.
It’s not just appliances, it’s even common household items too. Someone disassembled a portable toothbrush that died within some months vs the many years of the one that died before.
The original one had what looked like a custom/in house engineered motor with a solid structure and beefy battery. The new one had those cheap toy motors that cost a few pennies each along with a flimsy frame and tiny battery to match.
I have a Sonicare that rattled the head off within a half year of buying it. I took it apart and it was due to a screw with no thread lock being the only thing holding everything together. On a vibrating part.
Put some thread lock on it and it’s been totally fine since, but that seems like it’s intentionally planned to fail. Good job, Philips.
I had the same problem. Sent it back to them and they fixed it, but perhaps I should have a look inside. They did imply I'd dropped it when I'd done nothing of the sort.
They are actually fairly repairable once you manage to open the watertight enclosure, which requires patience and a fair bit of violence. Switching out the cell is really easy once the battery starts dying.
The different Sonicares also share many of their parts, makes replacing broken pieces possible if you ever do drop one.
A good example of this is the Kitchenaid standing mixer that used to have metal gears and now has plastic gears and easily fails. They used to last generations, now they last a few years. They turned one of the most iconic small appliances into a generic plastic piece of junk.
Sure but I bet the original one cost $100 in 20 years ago money and the new one was $15 on sale. These sorts of comparisons never compare like to like.
> A spokeswoman for the Association for Home Appliance Manufacturers says [...] data last updated in 2019 shows that the average life of an appliance has “not substantially shifted over the past two decades.”
So, unless she is lying, there is actually no story?
"Substantially" is doing a lot of work there, and "last updated in 2019" means half a decade out of date. It's a fun modeling exercise: how much do you need to reduce durability in order to make people spend 40%+ more on replacements (in constant dollars, I suppose)? I'm pretty sure that the members of the Association for Home Appliance Manufacturers have created that model, but they're not going to share it with the public. If the answer is a few percent, disregarding the last five years, they're not strictly lying. Just not telling you the whole truth.
I'm inclined to believe it. Most of the appliances, other than washers and dryers, that I see people replace are generally replaced due to simply wanting something nicer or newer and not because the last one stopped working. People have this belief bias that old appliances are better because of some old fridge in their garage that has been trucking along for 60 years, but the reality is that that is just survivorship bias. The only real exception would be 'smart' features that fail before the core utility of the appliance fails. I imagine a lot of perfectly good fridges get replaced when the tv screens on them break and whatnot.
It might be an unpopular opinion, but globalization did this — the consolidation and exportation of manufacturing out of the west has decimated manufacturing capabilities in the countries.
My father was a tool maker (top of his profession, top shop at Molex for a time). He and everyone he knew had such pride in their work. They also knew who would use their products. They cared about the quality and worked hard to deliver. It was a personal pride thing, as much as anything else.
When you export manufacturing, people don’t know who they’re building for. Nor does near slave labor in some places create quality.
Not to mention, companies are trying to maximize profit. To contrast, the owner of molex at one point heard my dad needed a surgery. He came down on the shop floor, called him over and sent my dad (and our family) to the Mayo Clinic for 2 weeks to have the surgery done (all expenses paid). It wasn’t for profit, it was for a good business.
Globalization and planned obsolescence (PO) are just two prongs of the same thing: profit maximizing corporations. Another one is the pervasive subscription model. These companies want a consistent, predictable revenue stream.
In a way you can think of PO as a sort of subscription. If my AirPods last 3 years on average they cost me around $25 per year to own.
100%, that said I don’t think you get the same degrading in quality when you know the people using the product. You simply can’t have your neighbor hating you for the bookshelf they made poorly.
> To contrast, the owner of molex at one point heard my dad needed a surgery. He came down on the shop floor, called him over and sent my dad (and our family) to the Mayo Clinic for 2 weeks to have the surgery done (all expenses paid).
I don't know how often this happens in Western mega corporations (which is probably why you're surprised).
And you obviously haven't been to Japan. Yes, long hours, but your employer takes care of most aspects of your life. Healthcare, apartment, marriage, your kids education, everything. See this article by patio11: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan...
In the non-crappy businesses in India other people — coworkers, bosses, etc — taking care of you is routine. And — okay this is a terrible example — in the unfortunate situation that somebody dies, for instance, trust me, random people just help the family with funeral and stuff like that.
What I'm trying to say is this: the rest of the world isn't filled with morons and cattle.
Oh and by the way, across the world people want quality products. Even people from — gasp — the global South. We too want our fridges and washing machines and TVs and cars and everything else to last forever.
I don't think the rest of the world is filled with morons haha. The rest of the world is trying to improve their lives.
However, I think you missed part of what I was saying, which patio11 actually touches on.
The west, particularly America, is individualistic & meritocratic. This leads to a lot of self-interest & overall refines the system as a whole. It'll also spur competition in a free-market, as people leave to start competitors. Etc. This is in contrast to "salary men" in Japan.
When you have globalization, you have:
(1) The cheapest possible workforce will be used and will drive out competitors who have higher expenses (the west does)
(2) Those goods are then exported and corners can be cut because there's little direct risk.
(3) The companies themselves have no employees where they're selling their goods, so there's little feedback (besides profit) to employers.
(4) Innovation & competition is dramatically reduced. To compete you effective need a very cheap workforce & sell below the larger players (who already have scale).
The ultimate result ends up being, poorer & cheaper quality products, made by people who don't use the products. This actually increases the profit margin to corporations. Yet, it's ultimately a race to the bottom at that point. Anyone who attempts to produce a higher quality product has to be significantly more expensive, and often fails in the market. It's why most "high quality" brands have slowly been bought out by the more profitable (low cost) players, then their brand names are used like a skin suit (as their quality decreases).
The article focuses a lot on GE, however from my experience now most of the appliances are Bosh or LG from Korea.
On the LG side, I feel like the quality has really gone downhill over the years. I had a GE washer which gave me 13 years of life -- not bad for $400. I replaced it with an LG now and already regretting it -- complicated controls which seem somewhat redundant, more electronics instead of just knobs to turn.
Also bought an LG microwave. Kept blowing my circuit (and yes, it was rated for 15A and I have 20A circuits). Replaced with smaller model, still Chinese garbage, but less complicated. It's worked perfectly.
Genuine question why would you describe it as "Chinese garbage" if it worked perfectly? Are you referring to its aesthetics or the price? In both cases I don't think this adjective is merited...
I can buy a lot of $20 sale price black and decker coffee pots for the $500 that repairable one costs though. There should be a sweet spot between junk and bougie high end stuff.
It's an espresso machine that makes barista level coffee if you're into coffee culture like we are here in Australia. Yeah, you could just churn pod machines as well, the Aldi ones are pretty good for that as Aldi is super lax on returns.
The $50 piece of junk is a switch, a hot plate best not used because it ruins your coffee but there's probably no way to disable it short of physical disconnection, and a tube boiler you won't be able to source a replacement part for when it overheats and dies because the two (two!) thermal fuses are in free air, nowhere near thermal contact with what they're meant to be protecting. Ask me how I know.
I’ve thought about this a lot while restoring an old sewing machine. I conclude it comes down to the Labor-Capital share in a market [1].
Labor used to be relatively more abundant compared to capital. In these conditions, servicing an older machine makes economic sense.
With capital becoming relatively cheap compared to labor, servicing becomes more expensive. It then becomes cheaper to simply replace an appliance, utilizing efficiencies of scale unlocked on the factory floor though greater automation. Repairmen don’t enjoy the same efficiency gains because diagnosing and repairing an issue is still fundamentally a manual process.
It’s classic greenwashing - a more efficient fridge is obviously better, right? Except they use extremely thin oil so it dies in a few years.
Another interesting narrative is how Segway shut down the production of their scooter because they were so well made that they weren’t selling enough! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23621279
It’s a weird world and I wish I could just have my cake and eat it too.
We've gone through three refrigerators in about four years...the first one had survived more than ten years and had just run its course -- all the cheap plastic had broken on it, but it still kept things cold. Replaced with a second-hand LG, and you know how that went - compressor went out after two years and would have cost as much as a new one to repair. Bought an outlet store domestic brand (I forget which one now) - freezer didn't work, back to the store it went. Bought a Kenmore (I think?)... turns out it is one of the models that has known issues, and the parts backlog is at least 6 months. Living in small town America, the problem is made worse because we only have two, maybe three repair options - first they tell you they won't work on LG, but whatever you buy they won't work on that either. Good luck getting a warranty honored on anything. Have decided when I remodel the kitchen, I'm going big - some kind of commercial fridge, as it is clear that consumer grade stuff simply doesn't work. If you are going to spend $3K a pop on a fridge (the prices have gotten crazy too!) and they aren't going to last more than a couple years, just spend the $10K on a commercial model and get your decade+ out of it.
And then there's Bosch, etc... now, I'd like to buy a Bosch, but my current partner doesn't want to spend the money, she likes buying outlet / second-hand / feeling like she got a deal, which is a problem. But - even the top end consumer Bosch is relatively small and I'm not sure the plastic bits are any more durable. I do like the dual compressor system though.
And then there's dishwashers... oh Maytag, how you've fallen thanks to VC/ PE...
This is why I manufacture a lot of my own appliances these days. The parts are all available online, and I trust my engineering moreso than manufacturers these days.
I would be very interested in open-source plans like this, and joining (or helping form) a community around the idea of appliances built to last, or more importantly, using modular standard parts and designed for repair.
> The first test produced the following conclusion: perfect fountain. The valve distributed the coffee perfectly outside the cup, the inside remained completely dry. So a “coffee deflector” had to be installed around the outlet.
> Somehow the thing is starting to look like a construction site compressor... Well... In the meantime I've brewed my first coffee on the moped. Tasted like crap. After some optimizations to the software, the second cup tasted better, but not as much as I thought it would.
> An increase in the pump pressure resulted in the hose bursting from my boiler and I was suddenly standing in a white cloud. GRMPF!
That probably voids any kind of accident insurance. One house fire and you're homeless. One injury to another person and you're facing millions in bills.
Personal anecdote:
I bought an expensive Samsung cloth dryer. The more recent ones with a heat pump together with the same segment, Samsung cloth washing machine.
The drier died after 3 years. Everything else worked by it didn't heat, so, it didn't dry.
I called someone to try to fix it, and they said the heat pump was gone and that they see a lot of that. He advised me to buy one that used the old technology of heating the air through an electric resistance. According to the repairman, those are way more reliable (problem is that, while I can live with the increased energy consumption, they need an external exhaust for the moisture).
What is the difference to the electric one? The process is the same up until the point where the hot air with the moisture passes to some sort of cold condenser to transform it back to liquid state? Doesn't the condenser use a heat pump to cold itself?
I've seen toasters from the ~1930s that seem to be virtually indestructible, and which will still burn your toast just as well as any toaster from the 2020s. I can't imagine current appliances lasting 90+ years.
Smart toaster ovens may change that equation a bit, both in terms of not burning your toast (due to cameras and various sensors and control systems) and also with even more rapidly accelerated obsolescence as apps and cloud services stop working.
If there exists a company that makes appliances that are very expensive and that last a long time, a company with a real reputation for quality, then it is extremely profitable for that company to be purchased by a hedge fund that cuts quality by 90%, raises prices by 10%, and just rides that train into the ground over the next 20 years.
Miele has that reputation. According to Wikipedia, it "has always been a family-owned and family-run company", which would explain why it hasn't suffered that fate.
I love my Miele vacuum but they're not like the old-school vacuum companies. They too succumbed to modern business practices. They discontinued all their upright models a couple years ago - just 1 year after I bought it. I needed a replacement belt for the carpet brush, but they:
- No longer mannufactured that incredibly commonly replaced part -- probably the most frequently replaced part on an upright vacuum.
- No longer sold any leftover stock of that part
- Did not have a recommendation for a 3rd-party replacement
- Did not have any access to any service manuals for the device I bought 1 year earlier to tell me what dimensions the original belt was.
Additionally, quite a few years ago Miele changed their canister vacuum bags to force customers to replace them more frequently, most recently in 2017[0] but also tried some shenanigans in 2009[1]. Furthermore, the air prefilter quality went from "amazing" to "horrible" during COVID.
I still recommend Miele vacuums because everything else is much much worse. But I can no longer give them an unconditional endorsement, and I worry for their future too. SEBO may be another brand to consider[2] if you find yourself looking at Miele's.
> a few years ago Miele changed their canister vacuum bags to force customers to replace them more frequently
Thankfully they also sell bagless vacuums, our Miele bagless is working pretty well so far (though after a couple years it's definitely started to get louder, despite me doing all the recommended maintenance).
I am erring on the side of durability because I'm not really into new gimmicks but it's a daunting proposition to buy the "good stuff". A low stakes example is my Miele dishwasher that I bought when I was outraged at my previous Siemens/Bosch one breaking due to a very simple part that just can't be replaced because of the way the machine is (deliberately?) constructed. Just getting to that place can slice your hand open if you are not careful. So this is all just to say: I get it and I am in. BUT. There no reliable way for me to know that that if I pay 4x as much as that I'll get 4x as much durability. For all I know, my Miele could also break in a year and then what?
I would even pay a subscription like Costco meets Ikea to make sure the business is always there to produce quality products (not just when I need to buy an appliance), but I want strong governance and controls to prevent enshittification, change in control to someone who is going to squeeze the business and leave it for dead, etc.
Maybe pitch the idea. A Kirkland brand large appliance line doesn't seem so far fetched. It could be beneficial to the higher end manufacturers they contract with if the revenue structure looked right.
Thank God for American Hpme Warranty, it actually does pay at least two-fold over 5-year worth of its premium costs.
This is not a shill but a testimony of the ridiculous lifespan of dishwasher, refrigerators, stove, garbage disposals, washing machines, dryer, and air conditioner condensor unit.
EDIT: and a water heater. House was built in 1990.
> Thank God for American Hpme Warranty, it actually does pay at least two-fold over 5-year worth of its premium costs.
Hah, your experience was very different to mine, then.
Bought a house two years ago, realtor purchased an AHW policy.
I knew the AC was on its last legs from inspection, and no problem, since it was an older 80% old refrigerant system, probably closing on 30 years old. Figured it could wait one summer, in between all the other purchases with a new home.
That year, Seattle decided to have a heat wave. Maybe not much for those in Phoenix, but four days in a row of 105F+. That's still hot.
And it's even hotter when you have no AC, as ours died a couple of hours into day 1.
So I call the HWC. They "are having trouble" finding someone for "emergency service". Their idea of "emergency service" is "we have a company that will be out there in four WEEKS".
So I found someone who could come out that day, for a surcharge. Reasonable. And the AC was dead. But this company were nice - the tech said "no promises, no commitments" and he did some shifty magic and got it running for about six more hours before it was permanently to the graveyard.
So we started getting quotes for a new HVAC system.
Responses from AHW:
- we won't pay if you don't use our suppliers
- we won't pay if you don't choose from our list of models (which were all low end, 80%, 1 stage systems)
- even if you use our supplier, we won't pay above $X. If they quote you higher, the difference is on you.
- if you used another contractor for ANY maintenance work on the existing system, we won't pay
- if the maintenance schedule wasn't followed (whether you owned the system/property at the time), we won't pay
There's a common phrase in each of those statements.
Yep, by having annual inspection of HVAC, we were able to prove due diligence.
And they came next day, and replaced it in four days.
Sure, it was hot but the Popular Mechanic in me made a couple of makeshift swamp coolers and we could have ride out the entire heat waves using those jerry-rigged contraptions.
on the other hand, my 10 year old mac mini still runs fine, although it no longer supports the latest OSX and many of the more recent APP's. But as a media/entertainment device, light duty file server, and even coding the occasional throwaway program, it comfortably holds its ground.
I'm not sure why you think that is remarkable. My daily driver is a homebrew PC that I put together myself (the second PC I've ever built). It can't be upgraded to Windows 11 but runs Windows 11 fine, runs all modern software fine including games though only at the lowest graphics setting.
yeah but on the other hand a perfectly fine ipad mini from 2012 is basically unusable since 2017 or so because you cannot use most apps anymore since you cannot update the OS anymore and old versions of apps are depreciated.
FWIW my parents bought me a washer and a dryer for college for $100 a piece in the 1990s. I replaced them 25 years later because the washer was starting to walk. The dryer was fine. I could have easily fixed the washer. That should be the standard.
Interesting to note is that the rated life time (1,000 hours) stayed the same after the cartel dissolved. Even the ones available today have the rated life time in the same order of magnitude: https://www.mcmaster.com/products/light-bulbs/light-technolo...
Sure, the cartel existed. At the same time, the engineering trade-offs are still there.
Not in XXI century C.E.
If they wanted to make appliances last longer they could do it. Simply they push you to buy more. Which is in the exact opposite direction.
I provide software to car restoration industry. Absolutely this … modern cars are becoming paperweights much quicker than their previous generations. Now are they safer/quieter/more efficient, absolutely ! Are they in landfill less than 10 years, absolutely…
Is there a good source of data on this? On the one hand, I could believe that newer cars have better engineering which makes many components more reliable. On the other hand, crumple zones and expensive bodywork mean that modern cars are Fabregé eggs that can be easily totaled in minor accidents. And increases in the complexity and scope of what cars do can increase the cost of maintenance and make them go obsolete faster.
That’s a good start, but it would help to know more about how long cars from different model years last. Those numbers would be consistent with increasing reliability over time, but that’s not the only possible explanation. For example, if there is a cohort of 2000-2010 year cars that keeps running and getting older, while more recent cars are replaced more often, it could result in an increasing average age over time while new cars get less reliable.
This. It's not that I don't believe the article per se, but it doesn't come much further than 'technician says' which I find hard to consider as evidence for various reasons. Moreover, and that's the major flaw imo, it talks about 'appliances' as one big group as if all are alike and all brands and price ranges behave the same, and gives examples like fridges with icemakers which is a thing which is fairly new in e.g. Europe and I wouldn't buy anyway because I have no need for it.
Would be interesting to see how a plain fridge holds up, how long current 'normal' diswashers and washing machines etc last compared to the past, and that split up per brand/model group/price category. Also because anecdotally I haven't encountered issues, but that could just as well be because my expectation is different or I just had luck or I just happened to buy the right thing. I mean, I have several examples, but just to name one: my expensive cordless drill is now about 17 years old and I got a new battery for it recently making it again as powerful as it used to be. It has had zero issues and I renovated 2 houses with it. Is that expected? Did I just get lucky? I don't know, but price divided by hours of usage this thing costs close to nothing yet works great and for what I'd consider a pretty long time.
While many individual components may be better, or the chassis may be stronger and more rigid due to manufacturing improvements, materials, adhesives, etc, a lot of newer cars seem to have far more subsystems, arguably more complexity, and accordingly more failure modes.
It is technically correct that having more potential failure modes is not the same as being more likely to fail, but... now there are many more ways that car subsystems can fail, and they can render the car unusable, force the car into "limp mode," or reduce overall long-term reliability. The added complexity can also increase the cost of repair, rendering the repair a non-economical choice for the owner.
For a car, examples can include drive/brake by wire controls, traction controls, a variety of fuel efficiency (e.g. variable cylinder management), additional emissions controls, etc.
Some examples of non-powertrain related features can include windshield rain sensors, headlight leveling sensors, etc.
The manufacturer trend toward smaller-displacement turbocharged engines in ICE designs in pursuit of emissions and fuel economy performance is one of the most obvious areas of added complexity and failure modes where the long-term trade-offs are questionable. In general, serviceability has gone down, with greater need for maintenance. Fuel economy in actual driving applications often aren't as good as promised on paper and end up being comparable to the naturally aspirated engines they replaced.
The ownership experience of stuff when new versus after five or ten years is now a very different experience. Many things seem to be more obviously designed for lease or designed to be "reliable" within its factory warranty window.
If I paid for a heated seat subscription in a new vehicle, would the manufacturer would also ensure that the heated seats were still physically working if it broke?
Not to mention that whole pandemic thing and its effect on the economy. People who weren't allowed to work for a couple of years aren't going to be able to afford newer cars.
American car brands traditionally did not last 100k miles until the Japanese brands flooded the American markets in the 1980s.
There are performance automobiles, though, (Porsche, Nissan) that don't use hydraulic lifters in their "consumer" vehicles and require valve adjustment at 100k miles.
200k miles is actually a pretty big deal still, as it's about the lifetime of efficiency valve stem seals, crank bearings, and catalytic converters, and self tensioning timing chains.
20 years is also the upper limit on rubber and plastics; so if a car is 20 years old and hasn't had all of its suspension bushings, hoses, and seals replaced, they need to be on the list.
Then you have the Ford Ecoboost head gasket issues and Chevy collapsible lifter failures which have led to less than 100k mile life of engines in the last decade on about 10% of their cars.
But you're mixing things which are regular maintenance with things which are a larger repair job.
It almost feels like you're saying the mileage a car lasts is about how many miles it can last without maintenance?
Adjusting valves (on cars that need it) is a regular maintenance item.
Cat converters, timing chains or belts are also maintenance items. Same for bushings, hoses, seals. None of these are a big deal. (Well, a few seals might be, depending on access).
Valve stems and crank bearings are a more major engine rebuild. I've never had to do this on any car even into the 200k-250k mile range. But if it is necessary, the car is back on the road after that, so it still "lasts".
> Cat converters, timing chains or belts are also maintenance items. Same for bushings, hoses, seals. None of these are a big deal.
Each of those are major service items that, at 200k miles, often individually exceed the value of the depreciated automobile at shop times * shop rate. (which, unless it's a appreciating car is ~ traditionally $2000). So most people don't change them, which leads to cascading failure. (ie timing chain costs more than the value of the car, so eventually it stretches and the valves crash)
Well you have a different take on "major service". If maintenance is not allowed, it is true that going past 200K gets difficult.
But if you're open to doing maintenance, the car will usually last a lot longer than that.
Timing belts are routine maintenance (60K on most cars I've had), takes me about an hour. A cat converter takes even less, four bolts (may vary by car of course).
Hoses are for the most part very easy, though occasionally there is a hose that's very inaccessible to changing it is more work. Still doable. Bushings depend on access but most I can think of have been easy. Seals vary, depending on location. Some are easy some are harder.
> exceed the value of the depreciated automobile
That's a strange criteria, why would you care?
Maintenance is not like remodeling a kitchen, you will never get your money back on resale from doing maintenance. Whether it is less, or more, than the market value of the car doesn't change anything.
All that matters is whether it is cheaper to do this maintenance on the car you own, or go buy a whole new car. In nearly every case it is cheaper to do the maintenance than to buy a new (or used) car, so makes more sense to do that.
You're on to something; old cars lasted over 200k miles just as much as new ones do, if you're willing to spend the value of the car on engine and transmission rebuilds more often. (and fight rust proactively)
Maintenance vs Value is not that strange of a criteria; it tends to be the criteria warranties (and, in case of accident, theft, or flooding: auto insurance).
But newer cars do last longer, 200k miles pretty easily for many brands (the Ecoboost head gasket and collapsing lifter issue that destroy a camshaft being the American outlier of the last decade).
Timing belt is a great example of making maintenance easier and more cost effective than a timing chain, and is one of the major factors that took automobiles from 100k to 200k miles. (Timing Chain / Timing Chain tensioner early failure was an issue on Fords for a period of time)
Yep. My 2012 Tundra still runs well and looks good. The only issue is that over time the steering wheel has been polished smooth by all my driving over the years. I am at 160,000 miles and expect to get to at least 250,000.
You're using a BMW as an anecdote yet quibbling about Toyota's marketshare? Of course not every single care manufactured today will last forever. Some are junk. Some, like Toyota are quite good and with proper care and maintenance survive a long time. I could add Nissan and Honda to this group. There are other makers that are also building very good automobiles.
Today's automobiles are generally very reliable and with proper maintenance, long lasting.
My anecdote was about how new cars, including BMWs, aren't reliable as my old BMW.
Generally, I think a lot of older cars were built to be more reliable than cars are today.
The automatic transmission fluid in a new BMW is considered "lifetime" by BMW. BMW defines "lifetime" as 100000 miles. They advise to never change the fluid unless the transmission is being rebuilt.
How can you say that so confidently? New cars (post-pandemic is very recent) inherently don't haven't been around for long enough to say for sure what their lifespan will be. We just have to guess based on how they feel.
I mean, it's cool to pin it on manufacturers trying to increase margins, or on "planned obsolescence" - but a lot of it is our doing. We're willingly enabling it. There are manufacturers that make simple and serviceable appliances; for example, most Frigidaire fridges don't have cool-looking displays, wifi connectivity, and other bells and whistles. But how many Frigidaire products are sold every year, compared to LG or Samsung? These brands are not only loaded to the brim with "smart" features, but many technicians refuse to work on them due to poor design and poor availability of parts. So when they break after 2-5 years, they are destined for the dump.
This day and age, the knowledge is at our fingertips. But when shopping, we select the appliance with the most futuristic LCD and that plugs into Alexa to notify us that the laundry is done...
Life cycle ownership: Just like handling hazmat in industrial processes is considered the ownership of the entity using the materials, so too should the waste stream resulting from the end of life of the product. Encourage products that are easy to dis-assemble into mostly parts that can be usefully recycled (used by someone else!)
TCO and Right to Repair assistance. All service manuals and instructions should be public domain. Parts with various cryptographic keys and enclaves must also be serviceable by future end users; physical access (and possibly installed jumpers or other easily replaced parts) to reset and enroll in a new security domain must be part of the design. (I would like to see PCs ship with a 'jumper' connected to a physical key position. Enabling that jumper would E.G. allow BIOS updates, including changing the installed / enabled list of allowed signing authorities, including locally provided options. Empower the end user.)
Firmware blobs for the various chips on a product should also be submitted to the copyright office(s) and ownership of the product constitutes a valid license to obtain a new copy of the blob (for programming / replacement of any chips).
> I would like to see PCs ship with a 'jumper' connected to a physical key position. Enabling that jumper would E.G. allow BIOS updates, including changing the installed / enabled list of allowed signing authorities, including locally provided options. Empower the end user
This would make most users never update their BIOSes, even for security fixes.
> This day and age, the knowledge is at our fingertips.
I don't feel this way at all. I don't know how to access information about products that I know to be unbiased. I can certainly find comparison websites and blog posts, some of which I'm sure are unbiased, but it's not clear to be how to reliably ascertain which is which.
Product reviews were never the right place to look, because they don't get published after 10 years of use. But unlike in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s, you are one search away from appliance repairman forums that lay it bare.
I confess to not having done this when I first bought my LG appliances, but that's on me. And then when they broke and I called a number of SF Bay Area appliance repair shops and they all said "we don't touch LG", I had an epiphany.
I always try to research my appliance purchases, but longevity info is decidedly not at my fingertips. Had not considered appliance repairman forums, that's a nice idea (until it gets commonly known and then abused).
I'm also not sure how much the repairment knowledge will help besides information about general brand quality. By the time some appliance makes the repair rounds it is probably no longer for sale because it has been replaced by a newer model that may be better or worse.
although my new business spams appliance repairman forums with bogus information to drive up value of crap products sounds like a surefire service to sell Samsung etc. perhaps these forums being mainly old school internet would be better protected against this kind of abuse than say Facebook or other engagement algorithm gameable sites.
"This day and age, the knowledge is at our fingertips."
I disagree, there's lots of 'information' at your fingertips, but not knowledge. It's really a ton of work to find well designed and built appliances, that can be repaired etc, but that also have modern efficiency and essential features.
You can no longer necessarily even trust the expensive brand names, as many of them seem to be cashing-in on their, um, cachet, and reputation, and churning out similar junk to the rest of them.
"but many technicians refuse to work on them due to poor design and poor availability of parts. So when they break after 2-5 years,"
That's the point - only junk fridges would need to be worked on in the first 5 years. I know if a freezer from the 80s and a fridge from the 60s that have never seen a technician in their lives. At this rate, that one from the 60s will probably have a longer lifespan than I will.
Appliance repairmen existed in the 1980s, we probably had more of them per capita than we do now, and they had their hands full. The idea that it's often easier to toss out an appliance than to repair it is a newer trend...
Actually, from my personal experience, the biggest decline in durabilty for many types of appliances happened during the 1980s, and may have started in the late 70s.
Btw, half of the problem was that repairs really started to require more specialized knowledge and equipment around that time, due to a sharp rise in the use of electronic components to control anything from a hair dryer to a car. To some extent this was the cost of progress, but it's pretty clear that manufacturers saw the benefit in either preventing repairs to force customers to buy new or to profit from "authorized" repairs in various ways.
And as both salaries and income taxes went up quickly in the 80s where I lived, qualified technicians went up in price much more quickly than the machines they repaired.
There was perhaps one thing pulling in the opposite direction during that decade, though, and that was the high interest rates. If you had to borrow money to get something new, repairing the old one (whether it was a TV or a car) still made sense
It's a straightforward outcome thanks to dropping prices of household electronics. If a new car was the price of a new dishwasher, that would signal the end of car repair shops too.
>It's a straightforward outcome thanks to dropping prices of household electronics. If a new car was the price of a new dishwasher, that would signal the end of car repair shops too.
This, I don't know why so many people fail to recognize this. I suppose part of it is inflation so they forget that basic appliances used to cost 10x what they cost now. My parents had to save up to buy a microwave, I could buy one a week and only be mildly inconvenienced. I just helped a buddy move a fridge that cost ~$1000, that would have been something like $4000 in 1980 dollars.
> for example, most Frigidaire fridges don't have cool-looking displays, wifi connectivity, and other bells and whistles. But how many Frigidaire products are sold every year, compared to LG or Samsung? These brands are not only loaded to the brim with "smart" features, but many technicians refuse to work on them due to poor design and poor availability of parts. So when they break after 2-5 years, they are destined for the dump.
I quickly searched HomeDepot.com and see at least 10 LG and 10 Samsung refrigerators without “bells and whistles”.
The downstream reality of globalization and JIT. Push domestic labor overseas to eek out more profits, the products reduce in quality, and you get the surface-level appearance of making more money. Really, though, you're just long-term increasing the cost of everything else because what you save in labor, you lose in shipping costs, returns, customer support, and inflation of your national currency (more money printing to offset employment/entitlement deficits created by off-shoring).
Its not really the move overseas itself that reduce in quality, its the conscious choice to both use cheaper materials and provide less training to that cheaper labor.
