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Expensive fridges are dying, leading to fraud claims

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Re: Expensive fridges are dying, leading to fraud claims

#101

Post by CoastalCoder »

29athrowaway wrote: post #30
oldpersonintx wrote: post #2

our LG fridge died within two years they replaced the compressor (only due to a class action suit compelling them to), but I expect it will die prematurely again anyway I keep thermometers in the fridges and check them all the time an independent appliance repair guy told me changing brands won't help much, they are all junk now and he mostly does installations instead of repairs I responded..."even Bosch dishwashers…

MBAs did it again! Your refrigerator was too reliable, so it had to be MBAed so you can keep buying new ones each year. Make MBAs illegal.

> MBAs did it again! Your refrigerator was too reliable, so it had to be MBAed so you can keep buying new ones each year.

Should we blame individual MBAs, or the governments that create the market / regulatory environments that make such choices rational (or even necessary for survival)?

E.g., governments could alter consumer-protection laws to make it financially unwise for a manufacturer to sell devices likely to fail in the first 10 years.

Re: Expensive fridges are dying, leading to fraud claims

#102

Post by jstarfish »

notaustinpowers wrote: post #42

I don't think I could bring myself to buy an expensive or "luxury" appliance. I've had the same white 2-door fridge for 5 years and it's probably 15 years old at this point. Never once had an issue with it, not even a burnt-out light bulb. If you want reliability, buy appliances like you're a landlord.

Heh. Our house came with a fancy IoT piezoshit dishwasher that had three pumps in it; one died within a year, the second died a year later, and after $800 spent fixing it we were quoted another $800 to fix the control panel on top of the door once it got steamed to death.

I replaced it with the cheapest washer Lowe's had for $425 and it's been painless for years. It's what a landlord would have done.

Tech for domestic life hasn't advanced since the 1970s. We have self-driving cars, but you still have to fold your own laundry.

Re: Expensive fridges are dying, leading to fraud claims

#103

Post by pkulak »

beauzero wrote: post #34
timcobb wrote: post #5

I recently bought a house with what I can only describe as some "zany" appliances. For example: - An impeller-based washer that doesn't cover clothes in water, even with the "deep water" setting, and soil level all the way up. It frequently doesn't submerge half the stuff during the pre-soak. It's a $1,000 washer and I routinely pour water into it from the sink. - A fridge with a giant ice maker in the refrigerator,…

I recommend Speed Queens for washing machine and dishwasher. We have them in our house and barn the prosumer versions not the coin ops. Have survived everything from nails-horse blankets and even a miswired 220 on the dryer.

I just sold an old Speed Queen dryer (20 years old!) for like $200, and the guy who bought it told me that he resells them and it's worth way more than that. I get why it will never break down; it's just a metal box with two resistive coils, a drum, a fan, and a single dial.

But while it will run forever, it also consumes 5,000 watts and pumps conditioned air out of my house the entire time it's running (when my vent isn't clogged, which is never). I replaced it with a heat pump dryer and love it. Yes, it's 1000 times more complicated, and yes, it may (will?) require repair at some point, but it plugs in to a 120-volt outlet, and requires no venting at all. Maybe I won't love it in a decade, but life is short. :D

Re: Expensive fridges are dying, leading to fraud claims

#104

Post by danaris »

justinpombrio wrote: post #17
yterdy wrote: post #7

Worked in an appliance warehouse. We had two types of fridges coming back as carry-outs for new purchases: ancient models that were probably as old as I was, and models from a few years before the pickup date. Very little middle ground. Also, without being an engineer or technician, it did always seem to me that fridges were like cars in that you had "luxury" models that were standard frames with fancy (often less-th…

> Also, without being an engineer or technician, it did always seem to me that fridges were like cars in that you had "luxury" models that were standard frames with fancy (often less-than-useful) features, and then actual luxury with brand names most people had never heard of, which had normal features implemented to a high standard and with excellent support. As a consumer, would there be a way to tell the differenc…

That's what Consumer Reports exists for.

Re: Expensive fridges are dying, leading to fraud claims

#105

Post by bluGill »

adrianmonk wrote: post #88
legitster wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A fridge with a giant ice maker in the refrigerator, not in the freezer. We have one of these on our ancient fridge. In a way, it actually makes sense - a lot of the stresses of an ice maker are having all of the mechanics being forced to operate in freezing temperatures.

I'll ask the obvious question: isn't one of the main challenges of an ice maker getting the water to freeze? How does this happen in the refrigerator compartment, where the air temperature is above freezing?

While one might have existed, I've never seen a fridge that has cools for the fridge and freezer size. They all have one set of coils between the compartment and then some sort of baffle to control how much cold goes to each section. It is a small engineering problem have another baffle blowing cold are to the ice maker.

Re: Expensive fridges are dying, leading to fraud claims

#106

Post by 1letterunixname »

A consequence of low/no information buyers who don't talk to repair people, don't read Consumer Reports, and don't consider the lifecycle TCO of a major appliance. My grandparents had a Thermador side-by-side built-in for 25 years until parts for it became too expensive or unavailable to replace. My parents had some cheap, ugly yellow GE early-80's refrigerator that lasted 40+ years.

If customers fail to realize some manufacturers adopted and went beyond intentional planned obsolescence, then they brought it on themselves throwing money away by expecting a different result. That's either stupidity or insanity.

Re: Expensive fridges are dying, leading to fraud claims

#107

Post by bombcar »

singleshot_ wrote: post #98
justinpombrio wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, without being an engineer or technician, it did always seem to me that fridges were like cars in that you had "luxury" models that were standard frames with fancy (often less-than-useful) features, and then actual luxury with brand names most people had never heard of, which had normal features implemented to a high standard and with excellent support. As a consumer, would there be a way to tell the differenc…

Tell the vendor you are equipping a restaurant?

This works for some things, but not others.

For example, commercial laundry equipment comes from VERY FEW manufacturers, and you may never have heard of UniMac https://unimac.com/product/washer-extractors/uw-series-high-... but you probably have heard of their little brother, Speed Queen. Blendtec is another example.

But some things are vastly different between commercial and residential. Commercial ovens often have no heat shielding at all (because they're meant to be installed in a commercial kitchen and used all the time) and so the sides can get very hot. Not what you want in a home kitchen!

You can find some names, and check what they offer in residential versions.

But the surest way is to find people who work with them talking about them.

Re: Expensive fridges are dying, leading to fraud claims

#109

Post by bombcar »

nagisa wrote: post #89
pintxo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: Miele just rebrands Liebherr fridges. At least in Europe, guess the US is no different.

Liebherr fridges & freezers are known to be very good too, if only a slightly cheaper due to carrying a less fancy trademark.

This is another trick, find out the high quality brands and find who they're OEMing, and get those.

Parts websites for appliances can be good hints.

Re: Expensive fridges are dying, leading to fraud claims

#110

Post by apantel »

johngossman wrote: post #91
apantel wrote: post #13

We're currently living through a race to the bottom in everything: technology (degradation of platforms like Google and FaceBook — Google has become practically unusable; proliferation of bots, SEO junk, AI junk; also the degradation and over-complication of hardware, e.g. these fridges: overly-complicated smart appliances that don't last long; "they don't build things like they used to"), society (social media, pola…

May I politely suggest you step away from the computer and go read something optimistic? "Factfulness" perhaps? Or https://futurecrunch.com/ if you must continue to surf.

I’m actually generally optimistic. I’ve spent my whole life singing the tune of tech optimism. But it’s starting to seem like we’re passing an inflection point specifically with respect to being able to maintain a grip on the real. Most of the things I put in my rant have to do with losing our grip on the real: the platforms are degrading because search results are now mostly created by people who are in the business of gaming search engines, as opposed to people who are in the business of sharing real information. The social media sites are overrun by bots, and even the real profiles are sharing curated if not fake snapshots of their lives. They’re not sharing their realities. The erosion of the barrier to entry in publishing has made it possible for anyone to “publish” anything, so it’s very hard to figure out what is real reporting on real things happening in reality. AI is going to enable the deepfaking of basically anything. You won’t be able to tell what is real from what is fake in basically any digital media. These days you can’t trust product reviews to be from real people. You can’t trust the people making the products. You can’t even trust branded products you see on the internet because Amazon doesn’t care to gatekeeping truth. You can’t trust ads you see on YouTube because Google doesn’t care to filter out fraud. FaceBook outright shoves completely unreal sponsored crap into everyone’s news feeds because few people post real updates anymore… FaceBook has to create an illusion of activity to fill the feeds.

Everything is becoming like this. If you want to buy a reliable product, good luck! It’s not easy to do that anymore because incentives are so misaligned: you can’t trust the quality of the products, you can’t trust reviews — trust is breaking down so widely that to bypass that fact is foolish. It needs to be considered. Trust is everything.

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