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France wants companies to make appliances that last longer

washingtonpost.com

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Re: France wants companies to make appliances that last longer

#21

Post by swatow »

molyss wrote: post #18
swatow wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything that gives customers more accurate information should lead to better-functioning markets. Not if the information is vague or subjective or manipulable (as I think "expected lifespan" would be), or if that information is very costly for the manufacturer to estimate, or for the government to verify. Sometimes its better to let the market work on its own, e.g. through product reviews.

unfortunately, product reviews don't give any information whatsoever on the lifespan of any product, instead focusing on the instant gratification, ease of use and shiny new things. Maybe that's what the consumer wants, but maybe that's just the only information they have access to in order to decide how to get the most bang for their bucks. Giving different information will at least let everyone decide what they bel…

You're not considering the cost of obtaining this information. And plenty of reviews that I read contained information on the lifespan (usually in the form of "this broke! zero stars!")

Re: France wants companies to make appliances that last longer

#22

Post by eru »

bobbles wrote: post #13
rodgerd wrote: post #2

The title of the article seems... misleading. It implies the French government is forcing companies to manufacture products in a particular way, when what they are doing is forcing manufacturers to disclose to customer they planned lifespan of a product. Which, by the way, seems like an excellent proposition. As a (potential) customer I can factor in lifespan with features and price for things I buy and make a better…

Would be great if they standardised on 'price per year of use' like they do now in australia where food always has to have the $/100g or $/100ml in addition to the unit price. (Many supermarkets were basically rorting people by charging more for the 'bulk' items but labelling them as best value)

In Britain they also have some unit-price law. But Tesco blatantly abuses it: eg one kind of apple is priced by piece, the next goes per 100g (or per 1kg, but converting between 100g and 1kg is simpler).

Re: France wants companies to make appliances that last longer

#23

Post by molyss »

swatow wrote: post #21
molyss wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately, product reviews don't give any information whatsoever on the lifespan of any product, instead focusing on the instant gratification, ease of use and shiny new things. Maybe that's what the consumer wants, but maybe that's just the only information they have access to in order to decide how to get the most bang for their bucks. Giving different information will at least let everyone decide what they bel…

You're not considering the cost of obtaining this information. And plenty of reviews that I read contained information on the lifespan (usually in the form of "this broke! zero stars!")

any company a little bit serious will do some statistical analysis on expected lifespan of their product. Without speaking about planned obsolescence, you want to know what warranty to give to your customers, which parts will break first and so on. We are already paying the price to get the information. We just don't have access to it.

And "it broke" just tells me it has a very short lifespan, but won't let me know if some stuff has a 6 months vs 6 years lifespan. "short lifespan" is fundamentally different from "not working".

We're used to the former (unfortunately), but won't consider the latter acceptable, except maybe when buying obviously overly cheap stuff

Re: France wants companies to make appliances that last longer

#26

Post by bigbugbag »

rodgerd wrote: post #2

The title of the article seems... misleading. It implies the French government is forcing companies to manufacture products in a particular way, when what they are doing is forcing manufacturers to disclose to customer they planned lifespan of a product. Which, by the way, seems like an excellent proposition. As a (potential) customer I can factor in lifespan with features and price for things I buy and make a better…

> The title of the article seems... misleading.

The content too…

> (...) what they are doing is forcing manufacturers to disclose to customer they planned lifespan of a product.

This part was removed from the law mid-february by the senate as reported by numerama[1] on feb 17th.

What the law says is that deliberately limiting a product expected life during the design process is punishable by law with a maximum sentence of 2 years if prison and 300k € fine. Everybody understands that this is mostly for show as it is hardly enforceable.

[1]: http://www.numerama.com/magazine/32252-le-delit-d-obsolescen...

Re: France wants companies to make appliances that last longer

#27

Post by unfunco »

bobofettfett wrote: post #25

This will make everything more expensive. E.g. take Bosch/Siemens and Miele. Miele stuff really lasts forever but costs 2x that of Bosch/Siemens household stuff. If I could afford it, I'd buy Miele.

But how many times do you have to replace the Bosch and Siemens appliances? It might be a bigger initial investment, but over a lifetime it will likely work out cheaper.

Re: France wants companies to make appliances that last longer

#28

Post by Natsu »

bigbugbag wrote: post #26
rodgerd wrote: post #2

The title of the article seems... misleading. It implies the French government is forcing companies to manufacture products in a particular way, when what they are doing is forcing manufacturers to disclose to customer they planned lifespan of a product. Which, by the way, seems like an excellent proposition. As a (potential) customer I can factor in lifespan with features and price for things I buy and make a better…

> The title of the article seems... misleading. The content too… > (...) what they are doing is forcing manufacturers to disclose to customer they planned lifespan of a product. This part was removed from the law mid-february by the senate as reported by numerama[1] on feb 17th. What the law says is that deliberately limiting a product expected life during the design process is punishable by law with a maximum senten…

I think perhaps they should instead mandate something like showing price per year of manufacturer's warranty. Then the manufacturers would have to compete on one front or the other.

Re: France wants companies to make appliances that last longer

#29

Post by bigbugbag »

unfunco wrote: post #27
bobofettfett wrote: post #25

This will make everything more expensive. E.g. take Bosch/Siemens and Miele. Miele stuff really lasts forever but costs 2x that of Bosch/Siemens household stuff. If I could afford it, I'd buy Miele.

But how many times do you have to replace the Bosch and Siemens appliances? It might be a bigger initial investment, but over a lifetime it will likely work out cheaper.

Economics are bs, don't think in terms of money but in terms of resources. A resource based calculation removes the uncertainty of the money based one, longer lasting products are cheaper.

Let's say we have a finite stack of resources and assume that price is representative of the manufacturing costs. This stack of resources allows to build 10 products of the "lasting forever" grade or 20 of the "replace sooner" grade. We decide to build 5 of the first and 10 of the second. The 5 will outlast the 10 and chances are they will last much longer. Making "replace sooner" grade profits the manufacturer and is only valid if we had infinite resources which we don't.

This is a short term vision of maximizing manufacturer profits while artificially increasing the economy in volume. Too bad this is ruining the whole world for living beings in the process.

Re: France wants companies to make appliances that last longer

#30

Post by spiritplumber »

unfunco wrote: post #27
bobofettfett wrote: post #25

This will make everything more expensive. E.g. take Bosch/Siemens and Miele. Miele stuff really lasts forever but costs 2x that of Bosch/Siemens household stuff. If I could afford it, I'd buy Miele.

But how many times do you have to replace the Bosch and Siemens appliances? It might be a bigger initial investment, but over a lifetime it will likely work out cheaper.

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

(Terry Pratchett, obviously)

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