France wants companies to make appliances that last longer

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-informed decision about which best meets my needs. Anything that gives customers more accurate information should lead to better-functioning markets.

Well, sort of. I disagree. I think if the planned lifetime of a product was on a specially formatted government mandated sticker, like how the power usage / cost of air conditioners or lightbulbs are displayed, then I think a lot of people would be inclined to make a proper calculation and buy the best cost to lifetime ratio.

Right now there is information asymmetry - we don't know the expected lifetime so we have to choose by other factors. Brand reputation, amazon reviews, relative cost signaling, what the box looks like, etc. If we did know this info, it'd weigh in very heavily.

Then of course there's the problem of how to incentivize companies to not lie about that number ...

> Then of course there's the problem of how to incentivize companies to not lie about that number ...

In New Zealand we don't have the published information, but consumer law has been applied such that if things don't last a "reasonable" length of time (e.g. 5 years for a TV) the retailer has a responsibility to repair or replace[1]. In the same vein I imagine that, if manufacturers were forced to replace anything that didn't meet the claimed lifespan at the time of sale then manufacturers would quickly become very good at providing numbers that aligned with real-world failure rates and lifespans.

[1] "We don't have those any more" is not an excuse - if you sell a TV that breaks after a year and can't repair it, you'll be replacing it with the closest current equivalent model.

While good intentioned, I think the customer actually loses.

Take the car industry for example. Quality control variance prior to the 90s (ballpark) was a huge issue, this a result from automakers just being cheap and but also the lack of modern statistical-based end of life testing/analysis. The gov't did have to step in: Lemon Laws. But a couple of automakers responded, produced cars that didn't fall apart, people then voted with their do!lars, and made Toyota and Honda the power houses they are today. Nowdays, 100,000 mile warranty are almost standard, and just about every make of car is reliable.

Now, compare to the appliance industry. A couple thoughts: why aren't their "10 year warranties" on appliances? It's clearly something one would think consumers value, there should be a mfg taking advantage. Instead I only see appliances sold by "authorized retailers", who then try to sell you some b.s. 3rd party warranty.

This shows the entire retail/distribution chain is in on the racket. So fixing the problem will come from a market player solving this problem to deliver more of what the customer wants. Imposing additional reporting requirements on the manufacturers will just result in a 'wahhh, wahhh' our costs went up, we have to pass it on to the customer. So now everyone's appliances are more expensive, and manfucturers and retail partners continue with status quo.

I think that there is a huge untapped market for selling easily repairable appliances to DIYers.