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How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

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Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#241

Post by denton-scratch »

TFA describes Electrolux as a mid-range manufacturer. I guess that's about right; their products aren't cheap "break-on-day2" crap, but they're not up there with Miele and Bosch.

Electrolux is a Swedish company that has quietly bought-up most of the European brands, like Hotpoint and AEG. When you buy one of those brands, you are buying the Electrolux standard of service. The service engineers are a third-party. Last time I looked, there was no contact information on the Electrolux website. And TBH, I think it must be at least a decade since I saw Electrolux-branded products in stores.

I think Electrolux' business is like those cheapo Chinese companies that buy up good bicycle brands, and then drastically downgrade the product. So be careful if you're buying white goods in Europe: you could be buying Electrolux in mufti.

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#242

Post by dclowd9901 »

lostlogin wrote: post #64
promiseofbeans wrote: post #36

We've got a similar thing in New Zealand: the Consumer Guarantees Act. The people who sold the broken thing to you can either fix it, replace it, or refund you the cost of it. The decision is unfortunately up to them, so they sadly often replace things rather than fixing them. Consumer NZ is usually used as the independent source for expected product lifetimes: https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/appliance-life-expe…

It’s fantastic. No, I wouldn’t like the extended warranty thanks - I’m covered already.

In a way, Aus and NZ are taking advantage of other countries’ paltry consumer protection laws. I’m sure manufacturers have not priced in the cost of handling consumers in those countries who use those protections. If they ever do, you can bet they’ll spread the cost to all territories.

It’s silly that the US doesn’t set up similar protections. While manufacturers race to the bottom, we (consumers) could race to the top.

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#243

Post by mschuster91 »

creshal wrote: post #129
mschuster91 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but many prefer a smaller thickness/bezel etc. There would not be an issue for Apple or Samsung to design a backplane that uses screws to hold the phone together, eliminating the need for glue entirely. It just looks a bit ugly.

It is so easy indeed that Samsung has been making such phones for over a decade. If people started putting their money where their mouth is, maybe they'd even sell.

People buy what is advertised to them, let's be real. Yes, Samsung offers such devices, and I for example have an Active Tab 3 as my daily driver (despite its issues, such as the screen being glued to the case, and the glue is not water-tight when it gets even remotely warm).

But most people are going to buy what their telco offers on sale, and that is iPhones and Samsung Galaxy S series. Everything else is specialty that you need to buy in cash.

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#244

Post by inkyoto »

cdelsolar wrote: post #214
hug wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, as an Australian, what is unenviable?

your gigantic spiders

Australia's most venomous spiders are actually small.

But yes, pretty much everything in Australia will try to kill you: it has world's most venomous snakes, world's most venomous spiders, saltwater crocodiles, sneaky dropbears, dengue fever carrying mosquitoes, world's most venomous jellyfish and sea snakes, and, of course, the IT consultants who will eat one alive.

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#245

Post by mschuster91 »

bell-cot wrote: post #118
mschuster91 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

phew, at that age I'd really be worried about the seals for the gas oven and about the insulation of the wiring for the electric one.

[Took a look at my stove] Nope, all the easily-accessed wiring (under the stove top - which lifts like a car hood, for quick clean-up after a pot boils over) is in excellent shape. Insulation colors look a bit faded, but that's it. (Yes, all those wires bend a bit when you either remove a burner, or lift the top. But the design is such that the radius of those bends is extremely large, compared to the diameter of the…

Faded colors in something that's usually covered point towards a serious degradation of the insulation.

I'd recommend you get an isolation tester device and an instruction on how to use it by a local electrician. That way you can (relatively) easily check your house installation - not just devices but also the home's wiring itself - against danger due to insulations going bad, before someone gets hurt or devices start tripping the GFCI.

Speaking of GFCI, I seriously hope you and everyone else reading this thread has all their wiring protected by one. If not, please please please get it retrofitted ASAP, and if you can afford it, retrofit a combination of thermal fuse, GFCI and arc fire detector. Electrical issues are a leading cause for domestic fires.

> Guess: "Gas Seals" was a checklist item for that last service man at church. I think we have our gas stove, water heater, and furnace looked at every 7-ish years by someone from the local gas company.

Good, then you should be good to go (and it's crazy that the pipes, fittings and interior seals are still intact at that age and not dried out!), although 7 years is quite the stretch. Here in Germany, the norm is once a year for furnaces/water heaters - personally I had an emergency repair to be done as in well below a year the water heater went from "perfect emissions" to "dangerous CO levels". The cause turned out to be cat fur being sucked in and burning up, depositing soot on the burners.

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#246

Post by inkyoto »

speedgoose wrote: post #237
hug wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, as an Australian, what is unenviable?

Your pro-coals politicians perhaps. And you don’t drive on the right side of the road.

> And you don’t drive on the right side of the road.

Well. There is nothing left to discuss then.

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#247

Post by denton-scratch »

duckmysick wrote: post #137
0xEF wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not call any of that a debunking, even quasi. Just a different dance around the same hard-to-swallow pill. Company X makes a great product that everyone only needs one of and lasts a long time. Over time, the market starts to dwindle and. Company X is going broke. Now, Company X must either invest in innovation or reduce the lifespan of its current offering. There's nothing inherently evil about this concept,…

How do the manufacturers of long-lasting one-off-purchase products survive? Stuff like doors, windows, roof tiles, floor tiles, faucets, staircase railings, fences, etc. Are they filling Chapter 13 or are they in the process in reducing the lifespan so their products are replaced every couple of years? What's their secret?

> are they in the process in reducing the lifespan so their products are replaced every couple of years?

My experience: swan-neck kitchen taps all now seem to be quite different in design from one-another. To replace a washer, you have to dive under the sink, completely dismantle the tap, replace the washer, and re-assemble the tap. And the new taps start dripping after just a couple of years.

So you have to hire a plumber; and he'll probably work faster (i.e. lower charges) if he's fitting a new tap than repairing an old one. So you might as well order a new tap before you call the plumber out.

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#248

Post by bell-cot »

nijave wrote: post #135
bell-cot wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 years seems darn short for an oven. The (electric) one I have now is from the late 1960's, and perfectly functional. At church, our (gas) kitchen oven is about a century old - and the last service man we had said that it should be good for another century, if we're careful not to let it rust out.

I wonder if this takes into account all the cheap crap installed in apartments/for-rent units. Those seem to last closer to 10 years depending on abuse and quality (usually just getting scraped up, cosmetically damaged). It seems like those Samsung/LG smart appliances are constantly breaking (especially fridges) Really it seems anything with a circuit board is more likely to break (which I suppose is somewhat intuiti…

Around here (Ann Arbor, MI) - I hear far more complaints about failed household appliances from friends living in houses than apartments. Possibly that's because the homeowners can't "just call Maintenance" to fix the problem. But I've also heard that many appliance manufacturers have "rental" models - relatively basic, but much more reliable - because landlords buy at scale, and don't tolerate unreliable crap.

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#249

Post by kojeovo »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #236
jvm___ wrote: post #217

I bought a cool wifi, internet connected picture frame from a thrift store. It had someone else's pictures on it, so I went into the menu and selected "Factory Reset" After that it never booted past the setup pages with a "unable to get token" message. I messaged the company who was very responsive but the end result was that they said it was unfixable and to return it to the store. It was only $8, but I was looking…

At a certain point we have to stop describing these situations as you "owning" something which broke, and instead describe it as you leasing the picture frame from that company for $0 (with an initial upfront cost) and the company failing to holdup on it's side of the deal.

Well you do own the physical frame itself. It's more so the "smart" part being leased.

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#250

Post by marcosdumay »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #167
Youden wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't as simple as them wanting to make more money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY Key points from an AI summary: - Incandescent bulbs had to balance factors like light output, efficiency, and lifespan - hotter filaments produced brighter, whiter light but reduced bulb lifespan. - Longer-lasting bulbs were less efficient and produced dimmer, yellower light, so they were not simply "better" products b…

This sounds like classic corporate bamboozlery. Find some real trade off that actually exists and then exaggerate its importance or pretend that no other solutions can be found when in fact they don't want solutions because the problem is profitable. Undoubtedly there are some alternate materials you could make a light bulb out of that present a trade off between longevity and efficiency. But there will also be mater…

> Undoubtedly there are some alternate materials you could make a light bulb out of that present a trade off between longevity and efficiency.

You seem to be out of your depth here, while accusing people of propaganda.

Anyway, no there aren't. The efficiency x longevity trade-off is inherent to the incandescent bulbs, you can't just wave all of Quantum Mechanics away. Material changes will increase or decrease the entire pair, and bulbs were already made with the best material that could possibly be used.

And leds, of course are different.

Anyway, nobody on the entire thread is denying that the cartel wanted to increase profits. What people are trying to say is that reality is more complex than looking at a single organization goals and deciding what happens.

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