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Goodbye non-KISS appliances

willbush.dev

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Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#61

Post by jgrahamc »

msadowski wrote: post #5

I’m about to buy all the appliances to a new place in Europe and could use some more horror stories and learn which brands to avoid. So far I’ve been told to stay away from Samsung ovens. Anyone has any regrets on appliances?

I have had Miele appliances forever and have been very happy with them. My current fridge, dishwasher and dryer are both almost 20 years old. The fridge has never had anything wrong with it, nor has the dishwasher, the dryer needed a new thermostat which I replaced myself. I opted for the simplest models that Miele make.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#62

Post by oldpersonintx »

billti wrote: post #16
Rapzid wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My GE dishwasher made it about 4 years and my range hood just under 6(needs a new blower due to spun bearing now and it was never sealed well). Garbage. But the first year service rate for even high end dishwashers is very high(over 10%!). Got a Bosch and got lucky so far but it still feels like luck..

Likewise. GE dishwasher got a fault after a couple years and spewed water everywhere. Got a Bosch and never had a problem in about 8 years now. It cleans way better too. Simple, reliable, looks and works great.

[dead]

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#63

Post by staticautomatic »

jfim wrote: post #44
computator wrote: post #33

> the combustion engine and hybrid cars are surprisingly reliable The OP brings up an interesting contradiction: appliances have become less reliable but cars have become more reliable. Cars have become worse in some of the same areas as appliances, like the use of touch screens instead of physical controls, but cars have nevertheless become more mechanically reliable. What would explain this opposite trend?

There's a lemon laws for cars in many places, where if it breaks too much you can just return it to dealership for a refund. No such thing for appliances, unfortunately.

In CA you can use the lemon law for other stuff. I got the cost of a laptop back that way in small claims court.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#64

Post by ljf »

jamiek88 wrote: post #50
kmoser wrote: post #23

My parents have a clothes drier from the 1970s and a fridge from the 1990s. They have needed repairs, but they were infrequent and not so costly as to necessitate buying a new unit. My A/C is only four years old and the maintenance guy is telling me one of the fans is drawing too much power and will need to be replaced soon. Despite the part being free under warranty, they want $600 to replace it. This seems to be st…

Anything that doesn’t involve coolant bleeding can easily be done yourself or by a handy pal via the university of YouTube.

After about 3 years my washing machine broke - 3 mins on youtube showed me it was likely the carbon brushes - £5 part from ebay. Took 30 mins to fit once they arrived, and I've had to to the do the job twice more, but now approaching 10 years with the same machine still going strong.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#65

Post by Ma8ee »

computator wrote: post #33

> the combustion engine and hybrid cars are surprisingly reliable The OP brings up an interesting contradiction: appliances have become less reliable but cars have become more reliable. Cars have become worse in some of the same areas as appliances, like the use of touch screens instead of physical controls, but cars have nevertheless become more mechanically reliable. What would explain this opposite trend?

There are fewer car models, and people tend to do more research before buying a car than a fridge. That means that if a model gets a reputation for being unreliable, it actually costs the manufacturer lost sales.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#66

Post by rglullis »

I do not consider myself a Luddite, but the more I hear stories like that the more I feel validated in my "do not rely on anything that I can not fix it myself" principle.

We are past the point where you can not buy a "dumb TV" anymore or to do so you need to pay an absurd premium. The next in line are our home appliances. Your fridge, your vacuum cleaner, your clothes iron... everything will be built in a way that makes you dependent on the vendor.

I know it is easy and tempting to blame "late-stage capitalism" and corporations' endless appetite for growth bringing up Planned Obsolescence, but have we really made ourselves so helpless that we are unable to say "no, I refuse to accept this crap you are offering me"?

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#67

Post by bryanrasmussen »

jfim wrote: post #44
computator wrote: post #33

> the combustion engine and hybrid cars are surprisingly reliable The OP brings up an interesting contradiction: appliances have become less reliable but cars have become more reliable. Cars have become worse in some of the same areas as appliances, like the use of touch screens instead of physical controls, but cars have nevertheless become more mechanically reliable. What would explain this opposite trend?

There's a lemon laws for cars in many places, where if it breaks too much you can just return it to dealership for a refund. No such thing for appliances, unfortunately.

We bought a new stove about 6 years ago, basically had to get induction stove top because that was all that was available. I bought one of the more expensive ones.

That stove top broke after a couple months, but luckily we're in Denmark where the warranty is a year, and when something gets repaired like that it's also under warranty for a year (actually sometimes more). We got that stove top replaced about every 4-6 months for 4 years until finally they did a good enough job that it lasted. The repairman said yeah sometimes it's just like that, ha ha.

No monetary cost but every few months you can't cook for a week.

Luckily I also bought a portable non-induction stove with two plates which we use whenever the main stove has problems.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#68

Post by vladvasiliu »

brodsky wrote: post #25

When we upgraded our appliances, the "smart" or "wifi-enabled" ones were specifically avoided like the plague. "Dumb" appliances - especially fridges, for some reason - are becoming hard to come by, but they do exist. Electrolux, KitchenAid, even LG all make some no-frills models that can save both money and frustration. Hopefully those companies continue serving the "luddite techie" market.

> all make some no-frills models that can save both money and frustration

Actually, those features seem to have become so common that they don't seem to command a price premium anymore. My washing machine was the cheapest that ticked all the boxes I wanted (most importantly size), and it still has some kind of wifi thingy. Ditto for my dishwasher.

They both work perfectly well without any connection to anything, and not once have they even tried to get me to connect them.

For the washing machine, a notification that it's done can be useful. I usually do laundry while I'm either working or playing some game, so 9 out of 10 times I won't hear that it's done and forget to take the clothes out. Now I've taken the habit of setting an alarm to check on it after the estimated time is up.

For the dishwasher, I really don't care. The dishes can stay there until I need them.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#69

Post by iforgotpassword »

msadowski wrote: post #5

I’m about to buy all the appliances to a new place in Europe and could use some more horror stories and learn which brands to avoid. So far I’ve been told to stay away from Samsung ovens. Anyone has any regrets on appliances?

About 8 years ago I got my kitchen redone and went all in on IKEA, mostly because others had horrible waiting times. Now remember it's 8 years later so I don't know how much their stuff changed over time but here's how my stuff is doing:

Fridge: still working perfectly, light, temp control, auto-defrost, fans. I think the compressor got a bit louder but that's it.

Dishwasher: still working fine, the upper basket (or whatever that's called) and its rails show some wear ie tilting downward when pulled out. Sometimes the drainage pump sounds a little strange, maybe something's stuck in there.

Stove: induction, still working fine. Unfortunately all the models they had available had touch buttons on top, probably to make it appear modern. They don't work when your finger is wet or greasy, and the whole stove turns off when water spills on any of the buttons and it starts beeping like crazy. For some funny reason, the stove stopped making beeping noises on button presses. I guess when you don't have real buttons you want this as some form of feedback that the press registered, but the beep sounded really cheap like a square wave. It still beeps when you turn it on or off, and when there's water on the buttons.

Oven: working apart from the bottom heating element. It broke about 3 to 4 years ago. Never bothered to replace it, just using hot air mode now.

They all look like simple no-bells-and-whistles appliances, but also not sturdy. I think in all cases I picked one of the cheapest options.

Bonus nerd stuff on the stove: when the beeping-on-button-press still worked, very rarely one of two things happened: a) a button press registered, but no beep was emitted. b) a beep was emitted but nothing happened. I was suspecting that there's something going on like two completely independent sets of wires going to all the buttons, one for actual functionality, the other one just for beeps, like it was bolted on later by a different department or even company. Maybe the original design had it just beep on power on/off and they wired this in after the fact.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#70

Post by eggdaft »

czechdeveloper wrote: post #59
imjonse wrote: post #9

Appliance engineers probably have their equivalent of "Kubernetes and SPA used for no good reason at all and now we can't focus on the actual features"

By now, making UI with (by now not completely) SPA frameworks specifically made for that task is just better developer experience. I won't go back to pretty much html string concation via templates. Why do people keep pretending it's better in any way is lost on me.

Yeah the backlash against SPAs doesn’t make any sense. Server side rendering is fine for documentation etc. but full applications don’t want to be simulated on a server, client-server makes complete sense.
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