Decrease or remove altogether sales tax/VAT on appliances that come with a 10-year guarantee.
They Used To Last 50 Years
171–180 of 877 posts
Re: They Used To Last 50 Years
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Occam's razor goes on a different path if you know a little bit about the guts of the product. The difference between a top 1% appliance and an average appliance is probably less than $10 of materials and $5 in labor.
Very unlikely. Once you work in manufacturing you realize that components are actually very expensive, not a $10 joke.
I know that weight makes a big difference when shipping parts or complete machines. So the cost of shipping magnifies when you use heavier materials.
Re: They Used To Last 50 Years
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
A really long warranty only helps if the company remains solvent. I would be happier with something the manufacturer was confident was serviceable. Control boards that approach the cost of a high end smartphone are unreasonable, but also common.
I always had this dream of starting a company where my disruption to whatever industry, say home appliances, or cars, isn't that I'm doing something new, per say, its that I'm engineering everything the company would sell with DIY easy access fixes in mind, and actually publish (and ship with the product) the repair manual so people can just order the parts (with some margin, nothing crazy i'd think) and be on their…
Many cars are largely DIY-friendly already. I do all of the work on our cars except tires, exhaust, bodywork/paint, and manufacturer recalls.
In the last 15 years, I can only recall one time a car went into a shop for a reason other than the above and that was an independent shop where I was too busy to deal with the job. That's across a Mercedes, a Jeep, a Honda CR-V, and Alfa Romeo, and some classic Mustangs.
There are a few marques that are DIY-unfriendly (hello, BMW), but most cars can be effectively DIY maintained. A DIY-friendly car would not be as disruptive as perhaps you think.
Re: They Used To Last 50 Years
#174When we moved into this house 12 years ago, I got the cheapest, simplest, most "mechanical" washer and dryer set that Lowe's offered (I think it's branded GE).
Haven't had a single problem other than the light inside the dryer eventually burned out when a housemate left the door open.
I know that when one of them eventually fails, it will hopefully be a cheap and simple mechanical fix.
I have no desire to own a "major appliance" (W/D, dishwasher, fridge) that has LCD screens, Internet connectivity, or any of those features that you don't really need and are just another point of failure. I manage computers all day at work, I don't want to come home and have to apply a firmware update to my washing machine.
Re: They Used To Last 50 Years
#175Look for a brand called "Speed Queen". They generally make commercial washers, but have a few home units they sell as well. They're all built like tanks, and some still have old mechanical controls. I have a mechanical set, and love it. https://youtu.be/O8L9PIjYngk
I love my speed queen. Made in Wisconsin, I believe.
Re: They Used To Last 50 Years
#176I've worked on hundreds of domestic appliances. Newer ones from any manufacturer are indeed failing more often, and are designed worse. The only explanation is that this is on purpose - just like cars or laptops or smartphones, they are designed to fail faster so you buy new ones. Planned obsolescence, plain and simple. The best appliances today, by the way, are made by Bosch/Siemens and Miele. None of the other manu…
Someone forgot to tell Rotel this (the Hi Fi company). My amplifier and pre-amp from 1997 are still going strong this day today, 20 years later.
My Infinity Kappa 6.1 speakers are the same age; just had to refurbish/replace the cone surrounds a few years ago. If anything they sound better than when I bought them. :-)
So considering this: You're right, there's probably more money in the strategy of planned obsolescence.
Re: They Used To Last 50 Years
#177It'd be nice if someone would create modular appliances so that as efficiencies are achieved the inefficient part could be replaced. It'd be even nicer if mfgs had standards so that many parts could be interchanged without any work or adjustments.
I've had to replace switches, as well as some cheap plastic parts which should sell for a couple of dollars at most, but they go for $20-40, and that's if you know how to buy them, if you get a repair person to replace the part, not counting the labor, those parts are going to run some multiple of the Amazon prices.
Re: They Used To Last 50 Years
#178that appliances in the US are cheap is partially the result of the fact that manufacturers are not responsible for the disposal costs. I From Wikipedia: "Although appliance recycling is still quite new, countries have been making the effort to enact laws and regulations regarding the electric waste. Early addressing of waste home appliance recycling started with Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Germany."
Also from Wikipedia is the top photo from that article. "New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: mounds of trashed appliances with a few smashed automobiles mixed in, waiting to be scrapped". So perhaps not a fair cover photo since most any appliance would be junked after being under water for days.
Re: They Used To Last 50 Years
#179I must say that this is one of my primary use cases for ibGib. The point is to have a review system (and advertising) that is not superficial but rather the "review" lasts the lifetime of the product. When you buy an appliance, you ibGib it. This means you take pics of the machine, the model number, the guarantees, manuals, etc. Then periodically (or at the very least when it dies or has a failure) you ibGib _that_. It is basically big (& open) data with tamper resistant integrity (no deletes, hashed content, public identity, more).
E.g. Still very early days (only me on full stack), but here is the ibGib I just did the other day when we got a new calphalon pan: https://www.ibgib.com/ibgib/pic%5EF1D5A3B90BB7580442405402A7...
(This particular use case is like a product-lifetime blog.)
Re: They Used To Last 50 Years
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "The only explanation..."? What about "never attribute to malice..." and Occam's Razor. Experience tells us that the simplest explanation for manufacturer's behavior is the kind of malice called "maximizing profit, all else be damned". That's Occam's Razor in use right there -- we would need to get out of our way to invent morally good businesses, incompetent engineers who can't get things to last, and modern conve…
Maximizing profits also involves making products at the price points customers want. If customers don't want to pay for 50 year appliances, why should they make one?
I do want to pay more for a 50 year appliance. How can I tell it will last 50 years?
I was going to suggest that a lengthy warranty would be a good guide, but gcb0 below says their LG came with a 10 year warranty which was worthless because it didn't cover one part.