Goodbye non-KISS appliances

So a tfal pan is legit in Europe, but a Chinese cheap knockoff in Canada, the brand name sold to Canadian Tire.

Bosch, Siemens, Neff, is all the same brand underneath and there is little difference between the models across years. Just get something that is offline.

On top of that, with scratch and dent, you do get what you pay for at some point. If an appliance is visibly damaged you don’t know what happened to it: could have been dropped, hit with a truck, returned due to problems/abuse, etc. When physical damage is involved you don’t know if it can exacerbate a design weakness, loosen some screws, whatever you might dream up.

I get it, a lot of appliances are cheap shit that aren’t “built like they used to.” But also, nobody twisted OP’s arm to buy a fridge with an LCD touch screen.

Here’s another thing: good, built-to-last-decades appliances exist and just cost a lot because that’s what they cost to produce. We can’t really blame appliance manufacturers for either the decline of American purchasing power and/or the change in consumer preferences toward shopping on price and nothing else.

You can buy a tank of a washing machine like a Speed Queen but you also get into it knowing you’re paying three or four times the cost of an equivalent shit box. And here’s the thing, if the shit box goes for 6 years without repair/replacement and the Speed Queen lasts 20, congratulations, the shit box wins on TCO. On top of that, your money can sit in your bank account or be used for something else instead of being paid up front for the appliance.

It’s the same deal with refrigerators like Sub-Zero. I talked to an appliance technician who told me all the luxury brands are less reliable, but I think the more accurate statement is that customers don’t call for repairs and blow money on labor costs for their cheap refrigerators, they just buy a new one. When you look at Sub-Zero and similar offerings, they mostly eschew gimmicks, often not even bothering with a water dispenser and going with a basic ice machine instead.

They’re not universally good, because there are shit brands in that space too (like Viking), but you’ve got a lot more quality options at that price point.

I think one solution to the situation of disposable goods might be a disposal tax that the manufacturer and customer share half and half. Or, improve warranty laws for product categories that should last longer. Nobody’s going to make a shitty fridge if you make a 10 year warranty mandatory.