Expensive fridges are dying, leading to fraud claims

There are several circuit boards and a display/keypad board in the unit. The Miele factory repairman tried replacing each one (at a cost of about $1000 apiece) and it still didn't fix it! (The unit was out of warranty)

The actual culprit: The heating element behind the back (used for convection) is wired (in the US) to be between the two phases of the 220 volt line. One phase is always connected to one end of the element, the other side is switched. The element developed a fault somewhere in the middle and shorted to ground. (This line had no GFCI on it). So 110 volts was flowing through half the heating element at all times. We discovered this ourselves after the repairman left with the unit unfixed (they were "waiting for parts") and we looked at the circuit diagram he left behind.

The Milele repair technician didn't check for this--a $75 part that failed--and wanted to replace all the electronics inside.

We reported to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission because we thought this was a serious design defect and they did get involved. Miele conceded that they didn't need to replace thousands of dollars of circuit boards and display boards inside the product.

Even if we outlawed MBAs, we'd still have a business environment in which companies that maximize their profitability potentially outcompete more customer-centric companies.

A profit-maximizing strategy potentially gives them more money, which in turn lets them lower their prices, ramp up faster in newer markets, etc.

I don't think it matters much whether or not people have MBAs. Market dynamics will exist regardless of whether we teach people about them.

I think your real complaint lies elsewhere in the system.

It depends on the thing, but in general I don't think that assumption is terribly valid. The problem is that "viable" and "maximally profitable" are two different things. Companies have decided to chase the latter exclusively -- but that's a choice to satisfy short-term greed, it's not a reflection on what a viable business has to look like.

I think it's more reflective of how much the exercise of capitalism has degraded since those times.

The issue I've seen is, especially for out of warranty equipment, they're in a pretty tough spot: if they diagnose it as a part swap, and put a couple hours in diagnostics and part swap, and it doesn't fix it, the customer is unlikely to be happy with throwing that money away, and may not want to continue that process. So is the shop going to eat it?

For example: I have a Samsung inductive range. Love it. But, a couple years ago 2 of the elements stopped working. Unlike an old resistive range, the entire rangetop is a "sealed" unit, cost of probably north of a grand. Inside that unit are some boards and other items that can be replaced, but now you're talking another hour to get into. There are 3-4 boards in there, running $200-300 for the likely candidates.

In researching this, I found field repair techs were strongly recommending just replacing the whole range. Because the cost of a tech doing the repair is a grand+ plus a couple hours, or 4 hours and rolling the dice on which board needs replacement, possibly having to do it twice with house calls between hardware orders.

Or, the third option is to get a tech in that can disassemble the range and diagnose the likely bad solder joint and reflow it... That's the option I selected, because me and my 13yo son were the techs. BUT, no repair shop is going to want to risk doing that.

So, just throw away the range and get a new one is what they recommand.

Seems like a design or manufacturing flaw to me though. Probably should be a much bigger contact area if it's getting that hot that it's blowing the solder I thought it might be a cold joint, but I reflowed it pretty good the first time and it happened again.