8 ms·

The lifespan of large appliances is shrinking

136 points by mcone 3y ago

spking 3y ago
https://archive.ph/44EcQ https://archive.ph/44EcQ
duckman1 3y ago
[dead]
godzillabrennus 3y ago
Seems like a good time to start an appliance business.
- dhc02 3y ago
  I have been thinking the same thing...
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    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.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      "I would even pay a subscription like Costco" 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.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- csa 3y ago
  Very good appliances that last a long time currently exist. They are just not at the price point that many/most folks prefer to pay.
  - porphyra 3y ago
    My life goal is to buy a True Residential fridge [1]. But I will probably never be able to afford one as it costs more than a car. [1] https://true-residential.com/ https://true-residential.com/
  - jellicle 3y ago
    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.
    - distances 3y ago
      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.
      - reaperman 3y ago
        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. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsAgQvNkvS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsAgQvNkvS8 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deC6hTFMrKI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deC6hTFMrKI 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjV3lhD7y1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjV3lhD7y1w
raziel2701 3y ago
Enshittification is everywhere.
theyeenzbeanz 3y ago
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.
- karlshea 3y ago
  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.
  - brigandish 3y ago
    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.
    - pbmonster 3y ago
      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.
- diogenescynic 3y ago
  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.
- 3y ago
therealdkz 3y ago
by design
diogenescynic 3y ago
I bet this also applies to cars. Seems like cars are getting worse since the pandemic.
- martinky24 3y ago
  Huh? Cars are lasting, on average, longer than they ever have.
  - davidmurdoch 3y ago
    I drive a 98 BMW, albeit with lots of maintenance (that I do my self). You think today's cars will last that long?
    - Tagbert 3y ago
      For sure. Most cars today are more reliable than cars 20-30 years ago. More cars are lasting well past 100K miles and often 200K miles. Sure you have some few cars that have survived since ‘98 but they are not numerous.
      - jjav 3y ago
        > More cars are lasting well past 100K miles and often 200K miles. Cars have lasted over 100K since forever and 200K isn't a big deal. All my cars from the 80s and 90s have over 200K miles.
        smileysteve 3y ago
        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.
lettergram 3y ago
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.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  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.
  - lettergram 3y ago
    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.
- 2143 3y ago
  > 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/ 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.
moandcompany 3y ago
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.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > hard to maintain a revenue stream if your product is good enough to last Servicing. High-end appliances seem to last just fine.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    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.
    - tayo42 3y ago
fhe 3y ago
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.
- larsrc 3y ago
  We just got a new Mac as our fourteen year old iMac is not getting Chrome security updates any more. Otherwise runs fine. Kudos to Apple there.
  - Tarsul 3y ago
    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.
- hasbot 3y ago
  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.
quatrefoil 3y ago
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...
- giantg2 3y ago
  "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.
  - quatrefoil 3y ago
    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...
    - trashtester 3y ago
      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
jaimex2 3y ago
As a consumer you have to do your research more than ever. There are still appliances out there that will outlive you but you need to hunt them down. I recently bought the Gaggia Classic Pro coffee machine for this very reason. You can get into and fix anything in this machine in under 5 minutes.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Shouldn't this be any basic coffee machine? It's a switch, a waterheater, and a hot plate.
  - throwanem 3y ago
    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.
- Suppafly 3y ago
  >Gaggia Classic Pro coffee machine 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.
  - jaimex2 3y ago
    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.
magicalhippo 3y ago
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. [1]: https://www.forbrukerradet.no/cause-for-complaint/ https://www.forbrukerradet.no/cause-for-complaint/
- bfdm 3y ago
  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.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  I think it is good idea to delegate QA to shops. It aligns the incentives to don't sell me crap. And I have no clue about what dishwasher is crap or not, and they do. I wonder what amount of years would be good for an absolute guarantee. Maybe something like 10 years and then 5 years of some limited sort? The guarantee probably need some odometer limit though to prevent commercial or multi housing usage on the long guarantee.
- switch007 3y ago
  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
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    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.
j45 3y ago
It’s wise to get new types of Spillane that will be bulletproof The induction stove that boils water in 40 seconds?
ptek 3y ago
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.
- NackerHughes 3y ago
  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.
  - b112 3y ago
    I'm not sure if you meant this, but I wonder too.. from the perspective of: - energy loss in resource extraction and refinement (steel, aluminum, plastic, etc, etc) - manufacturing energy use - shipping energy use - disposal energy costs of old device (including recycling costs) - all the pollution in the above, versus pollution from local energy sources It's entirely possible that an energy efficient fridge that lasts 2 years, could cost more energy than a fridge from the 60s that keeps on running. So outside of "cash cost" even the energy cost may be higher!
    - fakedang 3y ago
      But those energy costs are externalized from the manufacturer to other players, so no company cares.
      - b112 3y ago
        Precisely. So state mandated longer warranties will level the playing field for all manufacturers, whist improving environmental comcerns.
frellus 3y ago
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.
- ak_111 3y ago
  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...
  - euroderf 3y ago
    "Chinese garbage" might mask a competitive threat. When I was a kid, "Made in Japan" was code for cheap junk. Until Japanese products whomped entire sectors of US employment.
    - ak_111 3y ago
      Interesting, I was raised in the 1980s and even then Japan had a good reputation electronic wise.
      - euroderf 3y ago
        Yes. FWIW my first stereo system was a Pioneer.
rglover 3y ago
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).
- pvdoom 3y ago
  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.
iio7 3y ago
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.
- mjevans 3y ago
  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.
- petra 3y ago
  That software sounds great! Can individuals or small organizations get access to that software ? How ?
  - iio7 3y ago
    As far as I have understood, it's not something you can simply buy. Only certain industries get access to buying it.
- stdbrouw 3y ago
  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.
smitty1e 3y ago
Why is there no market for quality? Privacy? Repairability? Have we any remaining pretense of capitalism?
ccorcos 3y ago
Aside from the typical planned obsolescence for the purpose of recurring revenue, I found this particular example very interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32462954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32462954 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 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.
- switch007 3y ago
  Green/eco almost always means cheaply made and cheap materials. It certainly provided and provides manufacturers cover for cutting quality. It’s getting even more ridiculous these days. “Green underlay “ which is just recycled plastic. “Green clothing” oh also recycled plastic.
Freedom2 3y ago
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.
- jacknews 3y ago
  Fridges and washing machines and so on? Have you documented any of the builds? 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.
  - nolist_policy 3y ago
    Didn't know the Finger is active on HN :) https://www.fingers-welt.de/gallerie/eigen/maschine/kaffee2/kaffee2.htm https://www.fingers-welt.de/gallerie/eigen/maschine/kaffee2/... With hilarious quotes like: > 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! There is a video too.
- larsrc 3y ago
  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.
wtcactus 3y ago
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).
- lozenge 3y ago
  What about the third option, a condenser dryer?
  - wtcactus 3y ago
    I confess my ignorance about the topic. 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?
alkonaut 3y ago
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.
- dist-epoch 3y ago
  There is this person which repairs advanced electronics on youtube - motherboards, video cards, usb sticks, ... At $70 per hour it doesn't take long for repair to become more expensive than a new item.
  - zelse 3y ago
    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.
- johannes1234321 3y ago
  > 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.
stdbrouw 3y ago
> 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?
- inejge 3y ago
  "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.
- Suppafly 3y ago
  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.
perfunctory 3y ago
Always reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
- duckmysick 3y ago
  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-technology~incandescent/screw-in-base-light-bulbs-7/ https://www.mcmaster.com/products/light-bulbs/light-technolo... Sure, the cartel existed. At the same time, the engineering trade-offs are still there.
notorandit 3y ago
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.
Clubber 3y ago
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.
api_or_ipa 3y ago
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. 1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_share https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_share
egberts1 3y ago
Shrinking? Appliances' lifespan shrinking!? They have been given cancer! 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.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  > 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.
  - egberts1 3y ago
    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.
poulsbohemian 3y ago
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...
musicale 3y ago
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.

136 points by mcone 3y ago

spking 3y ago

https://archive.ph/44EcQ https://archive.ph/44EcQ

duckman1 3y ago

[dead]

godzillabrennus 3y ago

Seems like a good time to start an appliance business.

dhc02 3y ago
I have been thinking the same thing...
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  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.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    "I would even pay a subscription like Costco" 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.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
csa 3y ago
Very good appliances that last a long time currently exist. They are just not at the price point that many/most folks prefer to pay.
- porphyra 3y ago
  My life goal is to buy a True Residential fridge [1]. But I will probably never be able to afford one as it costs more than a car. [1] https://true-residential.com/ https://true-residential.com/
- jellicle 3y ago
  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.
  - distances 3y ago
    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.
    - reaperman 3y ago
      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. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsAgQvNkvS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsAgQvNkvS8 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deC6hTFMrKI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deC6hTFMrKI 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjV3lhD7y1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjV3lhD7y1w

raziel2701 3y ago

Enshittification is everywhere.

theyeenzbeanz 3y ago

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.

karlshea 3y ago
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.
- brigandish 3y ago
  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.
  - pbmonster 3y ago
    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.
diogenescynic 3y ago
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.
3y ago

therealdkz 3y ago

by design

diogenescynic 3y ago

I bet this also applies to cars. Seems like cars are getting worse since the pandemic.

martinky24 3y ago
Huh? Cars are lasting, on average, longer than they ever have.
- davidmurdoch 3y ago
  I drive a 98 BMW, albeit with lots of maintenance (that I do my self). You think today's cars will last that long?
  - Tagbert 3y ago
    For sure. Most cars today are more reliable than cars 20-30 years ago. More cars are lasting well past 100K miles and often 200K miles. Sure you have some few cars that have survived since ‘98 but they are not numerous.
    - jjav 3y ago
      > More cars are lasting well past 100K miles and often 200K miles. Cars have lasted over 100K since forever and 200K isn't a big deal. All my cars from the 80s and 90s have over 200K miles.
      - smileysteve 3y ago
        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.

lettergram 3y ago

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.

janalsncm 3y ago
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.
- lettergram 3y ago
  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.
2143 3y ago
> 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/ 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.

moandcompany 3y ago

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.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> hard to maintain a revenue stream if your product is good enough to last Servicing. High-end appliances seem to last just fine.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  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.
  - tayo42 3y ago

fhe 3y ago

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.

larsrc 3y ago
We just got a new Mac as our fourteen year old iMac is not getting Chrome security updates any more. Otherwise runs fine. Kudos to Apple there.
- Tarsul 3y ago
  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.
hasbot 3y ago
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.

quatrefoil 3y ago

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...

giantg2 3y ago
"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.
- quatrefoil 3y ago
  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...
  - trashtester 3y ago
    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

jaimex2 3y ago

As a consumer you have to do your research more than ever. There are still appliances out there that will outlive you but you need to hunt them down. I recently bought the Gaggia Classic Pro coffee machine for this very reason. You can get into and fix anything in this machine in under 5 minutes.

giantg2 3y ago
Shouldn't this be any basic coffee machine? It's a switch, a waterheater, and a hot plate.
- throwanem 3y ago
  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.
Suppafly 3y ago
>Gaggia Classic Pro coffee machine 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.
- jaimex2 3y ago
  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.

magicalhippo 3y ago

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. [1]: https://www.forbrukerradet.no/cause-for-complaint/ https://www.forbrukerradet.no/cause-for-complaint/

bfdm 3y ago
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.
rightbyte 3y ago
I think it is good idea to delegate QA to shops. It aligns the incentives to don't sell me crap. And I have no clue about what dishwasher is crap or not, and they do. I wonder what amount of years would be good for an absolute guarantee. Maybe something like 10 years and then 5 years of some limited sort? The guarantee probably need some odometer limit though to prevent commercial or multi housing usage on the long guarantee.
switch007 3y ago
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
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  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.

j45 3y ago

It’s wise to get new types of Spillane that will be bulletproof The induction stove that boils water in 40 seconds?

ptek 3y ago

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.

NackerHughes 3y ago
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.
- b112 3y ago
  I'm not sure if you meant this, but I wonder too.. from the perspective of: - energy loss in resource extraction and refinement (steel, aluminum, plastic, etc, etc) - manufacturing energy use - shipping energy use - disposal energy costs of old device (including recycling costs) - all the pollution in the above, versus pollution from local energy sources It's entirely possible that an energy efficient fridge that lasts 2 years, could cost more energy than a fridge from the 60s that keeps on running. So outside of "cash cost" even the energy cost may be higher!
  - fakedang 3y ago
    But those energy costs are externalized from the manufacturer to other players, so no company cares.
    - b112 3y ago
      Precisely. So state mandated longer warranties will level the playing field for all manufacturers, whist improving environmental comcerns.

frellus 3y ago

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.

ak_111 3y ago
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...
- euroderf 3y ago
  "Chinese garbage" might mask a competitive threat. When I was a kid, "Made in Japan" was code for cheap junk. Until Japanese products whomped entire sectors of US employment.
  - ak_111 3y ago
    Interesting, I was raised in the 1980s and even then Japan had a good reputation electronic wise.
    - euroderf 3y ago
      Yes. FWIW my first stereo system was a Pioneer.

rglover 3y ago

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).

pvdoom 3y ago
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.

iio7 3y ago

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.

mjevans 3y ago
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.
petra 3y ago
That software sounds great! Can individuals or small organizations get access to that software ? How ?
- iio7 3y ago
  As far as I have understood, it's not something you can simply buy. Only certain industries get access to buying it.
stdbrouw 3y ago
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.

smitty1e 3y ago

Why is there no market for quality? Privacy? Repairability? Have we any remaining pretense of capitalism?

ccorcos 3y ago

Aside from the typical planned obsolescence for the purpose of recurring revenue, I found this particular example very interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32462954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32462954 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 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.

switch007 3y ago
Green/eco almost always means cheaply made and cheap materials. It certainly provided and provides manufacturers cover for cutting quality. It’s getting even more ridiculous these days. “Green underlay “ which is just recycled plastic. “Green clothing” oh also recycled plastic.

Freedom2 3y ago

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.

jacknews 3y ago
Fridges and washing machines and so on? Have you documented any of the builds? 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.
- nolist_policy 3y ago
  Didn't know the Finger is active on HN :) https://www.fingers-welt.de/gallerie/eigen/maschine/kaffee2/kaffee2.htm https://www.fingers-welt.de/gallerie/eigen/maschine/kaffee2/... With hilarious quotes like: > 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! There is a video too.
larsrc 3y ago
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.

wtcactus 3y ago

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).

lozenge 3y ago
What about the third option, a condenser dryer?
- wtcactus 3y ago
  I confess my ignorance about the topic. 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?

alkonaut 3y ago

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.

dist-epoch 3y ago
There is this person which repairs advanced electronics on youtube - motherboards, video cards, usb sticks, ... At $70 per hour it doesn't take long for repair to become more expensive than a new item.
- zelse 3y ago
  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.
johannes1234321 3y ago
> 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.

stdbrouw 3y ago

> 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?

inejge 3y ago
"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.
Suppafly 3y ago
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.

perfunctory 3y ago

Always reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

duckmysick 3y ago
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-technology~incandescent/screw-in-base-light-bulbs-7/ https://www.mcmaster.com/products/light-bulbs/light-technolo... Sure, the cartel existed. At the same time, the engineering trade-offs are still there.

notorandit 3y ago

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.

Clubber 3y ago

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.

api_or_ipa 3y ago

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. 1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_share https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_share

egberts1 3y ago

Shrinking? Appliances' lifespan shrinking!? They have been given cancer! 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.

FireBeyond 3y ago
> 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.
- egberts1 3y ago
  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.

poulsbohemian 3y ago

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...

musicale 3y ago

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.