I wonder if anyone has ever talked about how difficult it is to challenge capitalist imperatives while capitalists own all the factories and their supply chains.
Indeed, I know someone who has an early 1980’s Kenmore Microwave, Made in Japan, with a single dial control for the timer and the damn thing is still working in the kitchen.
Oh, do I am reminded of those damned stacks of inkjet printers in some forgotten room in the office, or my cousin’s small collection of cut-rate plastic washing machines in his backyard.
In any system, once mass manufacture became normal, a product is expected to last for a certain period of time until it breaks, and whether it could be repaired or not. But right now and in this age where most manufacture of consumer goods is now conducted by one country on this planet, any corporation will want to keep profits and business going, so by consequence with planned obsolescence they reduce the product’s quality or lifetime which will of course force the consumer to replace the product with a new one anywhere from a few years to a few days. And why corporations are increasingly anti-repair by the day, by adding minute deliberate changes in their products in their attempts to defeat what they call “unauthorized” repair.
I still can’t believe how normalized not repairing your own things became in just a period of decades. My grandparents, now deceased, were born in the thirties. Repairing things is just what you did all the way up until their fifth decade, when it started to change. Even they noticed how they just went along with it over time, since technology got past what two former farm kids who grew up without electricity could easily understand.
Ya… That just won’t work, at least here in the states. Those old appliances were great and lasted forever but they consumed a massive amount of energy, they would never pass federal regulations now a days.
Also fridges from the 50s had a tiny tendency to explode from time to time.
Bold of you to assume those federal regulations still exist
Ummm… They do. Since you know… They sell them… In the US.
1 I’m not really being that serious, 2 even if the regulations vanished; companies are lazy, they wouldn’t just switch production.
Little bit of this, little bit of that.
I’m sure it’s possible to fix those issues without reducing its lifespan to one day over its warranty.
There was a startup that wanted to build exactly that, a washing machine that would last a lifetime.
I like what they’re going for, but it’s not so much “it will never break” but that it’s easy to swap out the parts that break or become obsolete.
You’re using past-tense, did they fail?
Can’t see anything about where to get one
And the site copyright is 2021
I don’t think they are doing much anymore
That front display it has definitely looks like it would die in a decade so I’m doubtful they achieved their goal. So many failure points.
Every part doesn’t have to last forever if the parts can be replaced…
Washing machine of Theseus
Yes and no. Yes they should build those old patents in a general sense. No they should not follow those patents exactly because they contained things like asbestos and lead.
Reliable appliances already exist. They cost 10x what the cheap stuff costs and very, very few people buy them because “why would I get this washing machine for $5000 when I can get this other one with more features for $500?”.
TBF, there are lot of the “10x as expensive” appliances that are absolute garbage, have awful reliability and are very expensive to repair. The “best” would be to buy commercial kitchen gear, but it isn’t pretty enamel colors or designer chic. Of course there are still a few reliable standouts like the typical Kitchen Aid stand mixer, but like you said, a hand mixer can be had for $50, and Kitchen Aids can cost $500+.
Also the sturdier machines are heavier, take up more space in tiny appartments, and consume more power. I was looking for juicers the other day and deciding between an industrial one and a cheap plastic one. THe industrial one was enormous and used 700W, while the cheap one used like 25W. THe industrial one wasnt even that much expensive, like 2-3x the price of the cheap one, but would take up much more space in my kitchen.
FYI: today’s Kitchen Aids are not the beasts of durability of years gone by
I’ve had one for a decade, moderate use, and it works great. Importantly, it is repairable. The company offers many replacement parts and there are aftermarket ones as well.
And WiFi.
And AI.So much of the world’s problems comes from that if you have one product that 8.99 and the other thats 9.99 everyone will buy the first one without question
Exactly. People paid high prices for high quality appliances back in the 50s and 60s because there was no other option. Now we have choices. So if you want quality appliances, just pay more for them.
But even then, you never know if you’re paying for higher quality, or you’re just being sold shit at a higher price.
Back in 2000 I bought a pair of North Face shoes, when they were known as being a quality outfitter company. They were amazing shoes and I would replace them about every 3 years… Then around 2012 they had completed their shift to a fashion brand and their shoes barely lasted 6 months, but still cost the same.
Exactly. Am I paying for a brand or the product?
People also made more, dollar to dollar, so they could afford a more expensive appliance…
And if they didn’t? Well, we don’t think about them when we think of the idealized appliances of the past.
The only thing is just VEEEERY MINOR gap in purchasing parity of salaries bro
what? real compensation is up
What compensation?
Will annoyingly also consume the power of a small neighborhood
My trusty garage fridge looks almost identical.
My parents have 3, they are older then my parents.
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just a reminder that survivorship bias is a huge thing. There have been shitty products from back then too. Many. We just don’t see them now, because only the few good products have survived. The same happens today.
Its not all planned obsolescence and not all obsolescence is bad. Imagine having a 40 year old fridge that doesn’t cool shit and burn 3 times the energy.
2 tips for good quality products now: end capitalism and spend money on the right products (not just convenience) and the right people to repair them.
and the right people to repair them.
Also, the right to repair them.
There have been shitty products from back then too. Many. We just don’t see them now, because only the few good products have survived.
So we built on that knowledge and kept making the good ones as they were and didn’t see how cheap we could make them right? …right?
It’s more complicated than that. It’s literally that sometimes two of the exact same item last for radically different times. It’s not a different design or manufacturing process, just an amorphous series of random factors lining up we call luck.
Mean time between failures is something they do actually measure in manufacturing, and you see interesting results like what hard drive manufacturers do to increase reliability: stress test the drives until the ones destined to fail early fail, and then sell the others.
There are things that can increase reliability, but a lot of the things that make the extreme outliers are just random, and no one documents what they were because they didn’t know it was going not have an effect, good or bad.
Well, sometimes, actually, yes. Unfortunately you have to do the research to figure out if anyone does it right and the people doing it wrong tend to out-marketing spend the good ones.
For example, house came with a garbage disposal. Within 5 years it rusted through, because why would you bother with stainless steel in something that is constantly soaked with water? Did research, didn’t have to spend too much more to get one actually made using stainless steel and that one is still going 15 years later.
Of course sometimes you just don’t have options. Like if you want a microwave, it doesn’t matter what microwave you get from what brand, all of them are just cosmetic variants/brands applied to the exact same microwave made by one company in China.
I remember a video of Linus from LTT going to check out the Sennheiser factory and their high end electro static ($ 19,000 at the time) headset had like a 40% quality fail. Because only the best would be branded as their high end devices.
Most of the ones that didn’t pass were still absolutely fine, just not hitting all the frequencies correctly so they went in the $8000 bin.
Exact same product just some were slightly less performing but still more than useful as a lesser quality product.
Which iirc Linus commented on after initial surprise to see such a high failure rate.
Now that’s a good brand that cares about quality, lesser manufacturers…
A lot of survivorship bias is jsut bias bias.
These appliances would cost similar to 60 years ago? You’ll be spending 2-3 months salary on a washing machine or television. We got used to cheap and poor quality - poor repairability devices in the consumer economy.
Yeah, the bummer is that you can pay that much for appliances, but you are paying for extra features, NOT for extra durability and repairability. They simply don’t make them like that anymore.
Linus and Luke from LTT were talking about this the other day, how you can spend like 20-30 grand on a sub-zero or some other fancy brand fridge, and it will last 50 years like appliances used to. But when you sell your house eventually it will add NO value, the buyer is just going to see “great, the house comes with a fridge like it’s supposed to”. So unless you plan to take the fridge with you from house to house and go through the trouble of replacing it with something normal when you do then the economics just don’t work for most people anymore.
I live in a city below sea level and almost every house has foundation issues. At one point I was living in a house that was over 120 years old. It had been through a fire, had no central support beam, and every time the roof had previously been repaired, instead of removing the old one, a new one was just slapped on top, so there were 3 total roofs. It was kind of a miracle (and probably only because of old style lattice work in the frame) that it never collapsed. Anyway, the foundation in that house was beyond fucked to say the least.
Almost the whole time we lived there we kept having problems with our washer over and over. Our landlord would hire a repairman to fix it, they were never quite sure what was wrong, but they would fiddle around with it until they got it working, then a week later it would just stop working again. Eventually our landlord got so fed up they just got rid of the washer and dryer and bought a brand new really fancy stackable washer and dryer set. They were so pissed when not even a week later we started having the same issue.
Eventually we got a repairman out who figured out the problem. The laundry room was an addition that had been a back porch at one point in history so it was even more janky than the rest of the house. The foundation in that room had become so fucked, it was throwing off the sensors all newer washers have. The landlord had to sell the almost brand new washer, and then go out and find a 20+ year old washer to place next to our fancy dryer.
Anyway, the point is, I could see the value in vintage appliances being included in houses where the age of the home itself may interfere with newer technology.
oh shit this is FASCINATING. i’m glad you had a landlord that at least dealt with the problem instead of blaming you after the first couple times.
The washer and dryer was in our lease, but I think they did tell us if the repairman figured out it was our fault then we would be on the hook.
I listened to that segment. If you’re in a position to do so, it makes sense to buy for life and not have to deal with break downs/ ewaste imo. That’s a privileged position to be in though
Honestly, I don’t think not having a fridge is that big of a deal. If someone actually wants the house they will haggle you down for the cost of a fridge and I would be totally fine with that. Hey, I could have bought a $900 fridge and put it in here, I will give you $900 out of the sell. If you don’t want a $900 fridge you can take that money and put it to the fridge you do want.
Even then you’d be dealing with the hassle of moving a heavy, expensive appliance to a new home.
Sure, totally understand why some people wouldn’t. Me personally, if I spent that kind of money for an appliance I expect to take it with me even if I move.
if i could afford a $50K fridge, i’d pay for an insured professional to move it
fair enough, i guess that’s an option with that kinda dough.
How often are you planning on selling a house though? Don’t you plan to live in it forever?
I’m on my 3rd home. The first I lived in for 10 years, then sold it when I moved to a different state. The 2nd one, in the new state, I lived in for 2 years before I realized the HOA was shady as hell and it was likely that all the owners were going to be on the hook for paying to replace all the storm drains and roads. I’ve been in the current house for 6 years.
I see at least 1 more in the future to escape the hell hole that is NC.
I’ve
ownedpaid a mortgage on three houses and lived in them an average of seven years. I do plan on owning my next house until I die, though.I think it depends, but most people don’t buy a house planning to live in it forever anymore. More likely you upgrade from renting to owning a small apartment or condo, then you move into a starter home, maybe you get married and sell your home because your partner has a home, and then you decide to have kids and the starter home isn’t really big enough anymore, then you get a new job in another city, etc.
Interesting. In my country most people rent so typically if you can afford to buy or build a house you plan to live in there until you die. Sure sometimes circumstances change but the concept of owninc a starter home is completely alien to me.
In the US it varies a lot. Some places, like NYC or DC you might rent forever and that’s perfectly common. Other places which are not as urban focused, think medium cities that are big but not super dense, you could choose to live down town and rent or buy apartments or you could live in the suburbs or rural country. Some people live in small cities far from any major city and options to rent apartments are rare, you are more likely to rent a small house, live in a mobile home, or you own a house of varying quality.
Here is an example: Let’s say you live in Verdigris Oklahoma, outside of Tulsa. Here is a mobile home for $76k with 112 m^2. Here is a home for $195k with 938 m^2 land and 130 m^2 living space. Median income for Tulsa is $41k with married households having a median income of $99k. Tulsa is a 20 minute drive from Verdigris.
If you then get a job offer in Oklahoma City making more money, Oklahoma City has a median income of $67k with family median incomes being $83k (let’s assume your family is beating the median since you’re moving for this job). Here are a few houses that are in or near Oklahoma City 1 2 3 3 4
Here’s another example. Maybe you have a job on the west side of Richmond Virginia. Richmond has a median income of $64k but you live in Chesterfield Virginia maybe in this town home and have a 15 min commute to work. You get a new job on the north side of Richmond and you’re getting married soon. You decide to sell your place, upgrade, and move closer to your new work so you buy this place.
My parents seem to move every 15 years or so, i have no clue what a normal amount is.
Well in Europe we have Miele brand appliances which are close…
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You can get the long lasting ones too. But they will cost you.
Something that most people fail to do on their tools and appliances is maintenance. My house is full of cheap appliances that are pushing 15 or so years of life and running great, but they require work. Filters need to be changed on dishwashers and laundry machines, people never check these often enough. For example, most people I know don’t own an air compressor, which means they never fully clean out all the motor killing dust. Computers, vacuum filters, air purifiers, fridge compressors, all these items need to be blasted with air, way more than you can get from a little can of air like IT people love to use.
Get the proper tools to maintain your things, and even the cheap stuff will last a while.
I got a manscaped electric face razor to replace another cheap one that was dying. It was the first electric razor I got that didn’t come with a tiny bottle of mineral oil for lube and even said in the manual that it didn’t need lube.
I bet if I had listened to that BS, it would be dead already, especially because I have had it fail to start with full battery just from the friction of the blades (giving it a tap can get it going, adding lube makes it run noticeably better).
Fucking liars. Let’s see if it lasts any longer than the other ones even with lube.
Cars are the same way, with “lifetime fluid” that should really be replaced at regular intervals. Zero maintenance appliances are absolutely consumer traps.
Yeah, probably a safe assumption that the intended lifetime for those is around the same as the length of the warranty.
I first read electric fence razor and assumed you might be a robot.
Okay but my parents never maintained much and it all lasted a very long time. I think the point still stands. Things nowadays require much more maintenance. Of course maintaining them will make them last longer
I bet their generation did more than you think. People’s willingness to do maintenance themselves as well as ability to DIY has plummeted over the past few decades. The funny part is YouTube shows detailed instructions on how to do it all, even how to become a handyman, and yet we are more reliant on contractors, technicians, and mechanics than ever before.
You can’t really do that on a lot of modern appliances, because what fails isn’t user-repairable.
The gas dryer we had from the 50s could be fixed with a screwdriver and a pulse.
The electric dryer we have now that we live somewhere without gas has a $1200 controller board (that probably costs $4 for the manufacturer) that goes out every 2 years, so we end up paying a $250/yr maintenance subscription to get it fixed under the “extended warranty”.
We had a washing machine that “failed”. All that was wrong was the relays/water intake valves stopped recieving a signal. Ended up spending a week and an old raspberry pi making a stupid replacement controller because the washer was still sending signals, they just werent making it to the relays for some reason. i still can’t tell what part of the original boards failed. also i only programmed one cycle and it no longer senses fill rate D= but it does wash clothes reliably assuming the water pressure (and hence fill rate) is relatively stable.
That is a scam. It is easy to program the board to stop working after x seconds. Samsung did that with my washing machine - the control board died couple of months after the warranty expired.
Planned obsolescence or engineered obsolescence if you prefer.
It’s like light bulbs. They had a cartel form that drove DOWN the hours of use so that they would expire after only about 1000 hours of use instead of multiple times longer that some bulbs were getting.
Afaik it’s one of the earliest big scams for that
For the dumbasses who downvoted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartelMuch appreciated
I always say this when a question like this comes up:
Find a repair person for what you’re looking to buy and ask them which brands and models last the longest and are easiest to get parts for and repair in your country. They are the people that actually know the answer.
Good quality shit still exists, you just need to pay for it, and if you remember the Terry Pratchett boots story, you’ll know paying more up front is going to save you money in the long run
GNU Terry Pratchett
A man is not dead while his name is still spoken
😭
Yeah people don’t realize that appliances were a LOT more expensive back then too, especially as a proportion of income. A washer dryer set in 1959 cost $380, at a time when the median household income was only $5,400. That means to buy a washer dryer set, they would have to spend 7% of their pre-tax income. Currently, the cheapest washer dryer set will set you back $1300, and the median household income is $83,000, so it’s about 1.5% of the annual household income. If you’re willing to pay what people were proportionally willing to pay in 1959, you can still buy a washer dryer set that will last a lifetime. Most people just aren’t.
Can you really, though? If you can tell me where those are available now (not just expensive, but proven lifetime quality), I would really like to know.
Speed Queen.
If you’re willing to pay what people were proportionally willing to pay in 1959, you can still buy a washer dryer set that will last a lifetime
If only that was true. It isn’t.
The rest is spot on.
It actually is true. Sure the most expensive Maytag is basically the same as the least expensive one with extra computers on it, but if you look at brands like Speed Queen they’re built to last with simple repairable parts. If you haven’t been to a Laundromat, you’ve probably never heard of them, but they are the Queen of laundromat equipment. Why? Because Laundromats lose money when their shit isn’t working and they need rugged equipment that will work for a long time and that they’re able to do maintenance on. When looking at household goods where it seems like you can’t buy good stuff at any price anymore, look at what the pros are using. They will get what they need and someone will be making it for them.
Often times, your only option to cater to that is to go after a product targeted for commercial clients instead of consumer. Washer/Dryer targeted at laundromats. Kitchen equipment for restauraunts. The vendors are dealing with clients that are both more demanding, have the resources to get warranty promises fulfilled, and that have much more experience to quickly recognize a vendor faliing them. You don’t need a large business concern’s stuff to break in a year to get them buying again, but if their stuff does tend to break in a year or two your company won’t be considered for future purchases.
Commercial clients are about the only ones that have a chance of being on equal footing with vendors, the consumer market is so easily snowed by marketing that companies get away with being crap there all the time (worst comes to worst, just pack up your tarnished brand and relaunch with a new, exciting brand, same crap products but consumers will eat it up)
It absolutely is. Buy a Speed Queen.
Don’t just go by the price tag though, because some of the expensive shit is actually cheap but they figured they’d sell more if they give it a premium price (and maybe some chrome-finnished plastic parts to make it look more premium).
I’m not going by the price tag, I’m going by the fact that Speed Queen is literally the only consumer washing machine brand whose machines you can explicitly use in a commercial setting and it won’t void the warranty, per the bond in the back of the manual.
What a Speed Queen washer costs now is roughly what a quality Kenmore or Whirlpool washing machine cost in the 1980s, once you adjust for inflation.
On yeah, that wasn’t meant in response to the Speed Queen recommendation but for the “if you want good, expect to pay more” and just wanted to point out that it doesn’t mean “pay more and you get good”.
When my oven element died (according to my girlfriend made a huge light then that’s it, repair guy said it basically welded) and we had a guy in to check it out he sent some recommendations of brands to purchase based on his fixing (actually had a list ready so it had some random don’t get their dryers but rest is okay for that brand) since it t blew the circuit board too. Though that was only a few months ago so hopefully it’ll work out. I imagine many repair people are willing to let you know their experiences though may want a general place than say specific brand repair ones.
It was amusing how apologetic he was that he couldn’t fix it, I always assume that’s a possibility but was still over $100 to get him there and basically lost money, if you were knowledgeable or prescient. I imagine others aren’t so calm when they hear that.
Th problem with that is most people don’t repair anymore as it’s often cheaper to replace.
And if it’s good quality without breaking down, why would the repair person ever work on it?
This is why I bought Maytag for an appliance… Then 4 years into its 10 “warranty”, I learned that it only covers things with pretty much no chance of breaking during that time and the actual functional bits aren’t covered, like the water pump (washers don’t work too good if the water doesn’t go anywhere).
And the repair cost about as much as I paid for it.
Companies buying companies with stellar reputations and then ride that reputation for every cent it’s worth into the ground… Gotta love capitalism, right?
I got my wife’s broken 4K monitor repaired for the grand cost of £3.50 a few weeks ago.
They were in the market for replacing it anyway because it’s ten years old, but when it wouldn’t turn on it that pushed their decision. Kinda pissed me off, because I was going to get it when the replacement arrived. So I figured it was already fucked, so it wouldn’t hurt to see if it could be repaired.
My boss at work trained as an electrician in the Army, so we opened it, where he immediately clocked a capacitor that was slightly expanded. A multimeter reading confirmed it, so I ordered a replacement. 8p, but I had to buy a pack of five. Add the postage and it came to £3.50.
The repair took 10 minutes, and now I’m the proud owner of a 28" 4K AOC.
That’s great, and learning to repair things yourself can be a great way to keep products running. But most people lack those skills or have acquaintances who’ll do it basically for free.
And to be fair, an awful lot of products these days aren’t built to be repaired anyway.
I was lucky with this monitor.
I’ve done similar to a part on my dryer’s control board, and a GPU’s vram. In both cases, there was no diagnostic needed because the part showed some kind of physical damage. You would be surprised how often things can be fixed for 1% the cost of replacing.
You got it correct there. If it’s junk, open it up, and take a look. It might be obvious. Given the rising cost of stuff like GPUs, this could become more relevant.
I had a mouse chew through the ignition wire on the ignitor on my propane furnace, which blew the board out. It cost me like 400 to do it myself after a repair guy just charged 100 to diagnose it then help3ed me over text swapping everything out. Could have been 2000 for an official repair company and way more for a new one.
Oh that’s a good one. I had a coal stove that had an idle timer (mechanical clock) to keep the fire going when the thermostat wasn’t calling for heat. It stopped working and the factory said they don’t make them anymore, but I could special order a thirty party replacement for $250. I replaced it with an Arduino, a relay shield and a 20 line program for < $10. If I was more electrically inclined, I could have powered it from the stove’s power. Instead, there is a USB cord sticking out the back =]
You sound a lot more electrically inclined than I, if I had help it would be easy enough.
I could stand to have a look at my washer/drier. The washer works perfectly well, but the drier does nothing at all. It runs, but doesn’t dry. It came with the house and they’re usually expensive to run, so I’ve never really worried about it. But I live in England, where rain is our default mode, so it’s a pain to have washing up on racks in the house all the time.
Does it get hot at all? The heating element is just a coil of metal that can break. They can break easily if you put clothes in it that are too wet (like dripping). Once it breaks, it severs the current, so no heat. There should also be a fuse right next to it. These are all simple continuity checks if you have a meter.
Driers are simple machines. I suspect a dead heating element. It’s probably visually broken.
Partly because they’ll know which ones they see least and/or have an easiest time with, but also that the perfect unbreakable machine doesn’t exist; accidents & “acts of god” (as in the insurance term) happen even to the best built appliances. E.g. there’re not many control boards that will survive a lightning strike.
Finally they will know other repair people and will talk shop with them from time to time, not least of all because they also need to buy appliances, and they know this same rule.
Much better than the plastic garbage no one would ever consider fixing. No appliance lasts forever but many may be serviceable.
My miele vacuum is rocking still, as good as many years ago. Asked and took the advice of the vacuum repair guy on reddit!
Even the expensiver stuff is garbage now.
You have to look in a different direction.
High end residential is more features and bullshit. It’s fragile.
You want commercial/industrial like a speed queen. Ugly as shit. No AI. No Wifi. Not even an LCD. Just an analog dial.
Yeah my next washer dryer set will be speed queen because I am sick of buying cheaply built computerized shit and it’s possible it’s the last one I’ll ever buy.
I dont really think “brands” are very meaningful.
Yeah they’re all owned by a couple companies.
That’s why I got a Chiq TV. The local guy said they’re reliable and he can get parts.
Except they’re terribly inefficient and use shit like freon
What if we use the quality of the past with safety and efficiency of today
That would require actual effort
Also, a number of them will still fail quickly. Survivorship bias.
Or you’ll create something that is genuinely better with good longevity and then discover you’ll have next to no sales growth since once somebody buys it, they never need to replace it.
Duralex and Pyrex are also making unbreakable glass (respectively drinking cups and coming utensils) and they are still in business
Duralex has serious issues right now. They are asking for money to survive.
You know if I created a buisness myself and had no shareholders demanding quarterly profit increases, that would be okay.
If it made 1 million in profit after 10 years and then needed to be shuttered that’s fine by me.
I imagine this would make an individual quite wealthy for their lifetime. We just think it’s unviable because we’ve been tricked into believing that a buisness must grow forever to be successful
I definitely agree, it just makes it a more precarious position to be in.
Unless I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, a million over 10 years equates to about 80,000 a year over those 10 years which is the median household income in the US. Far from wealthy and would still require you to work after that 10 years.
Is that the median? Most people I know are poor as hell I guess.
That would be just my income. Adding in my spouses would make it above median. I suppose wether or not you think that qualifies as wealthy is up to you, I know to me with my lifestyle I could really turn that into a strong foundation.
Seriously my income going up to 80k and my spouse’s being the same would be amazing. We could pay off student loans, replace my clunker of a car, get the larger house we’ve wanted (mortgage of course but so much easier to save the down payment), finally get the solar panel setup I want, pad out the retirement account, that’s just a lot of extra income over the time. Keeping my lifestyle the same all doable with that kind of increase in income.
Also never said I’d never have to work again. You could hand me 1 million today, and I think we both know that is not enough to live the rest of our lives on. Still a life altering amount of money.
And I guess this all comes down to.what we mean by “profit”. That’s after all buisness expenses, but I suppose I didn’t think in this hypothetical company if I’d be paying myself a wage or not.
CorningWare had a similar problem with their plates. We’re still using our parents old bowls and plates from the 80s. The stuff we got as wedding presents was mostly chipped or broken before our 10th anniversary.
Hmmm, a state run industry in communist east Berlin that failed in 1990. It’s almost as if their business hit a wall when they couldn’t expand their market through exports. Surely there couldn’t have been any world changing events happening in that town in the latter days of 1989 that might have played a larger role in the demise of a state run business.
If the article in the Wiki is true, their problems with expansion were because no one wanted to resell their product. It’s not even a problem with actual customers, and there probably was enough people who would buy to make growth viable for much longer
Or you could drop your red-scared shades and read the article again: those glasses were made to last, hence were of no interest for those who expected them to break easily in order to sell more.
And they’ll cost $3500
Your appliance will cost 4-10x more. There’s no magic to it. Appliances were like opera. Made for the rich
Do the appliances the rich currently buy follow this rule or do they just get fancier low durability goods
There’s a whole world of super high-end appliances you’ve never even heard of because you’re not worth marketing to.
Yeah but I’m wondering if they’re meaningfully more durable or repairable versus if they’re just happy to eat the massive bills to fix or replace them when shit happens
They are. Usually for commercial purposes, if your business depends on your fridge working, you will get a reliable fridge.
However as of today, you don’t need to spend 10k on an appliance to have a good one. Miele, BSH and Liebherr all have good appliances, long warranties, they sell replacement parts and manuals for DIY.
Probably
Could be worth buying something fancy if it’s easy or cheap to fix and would actually last a lifetime
But I have a feeling they’re just expensive and fancy and not actually gonna last much longer unless it’s commercial grade
I’ve had plenty of regular appliances last well past their warranties so I’m skeptical the super fancy stuff I’ve never heard of it is much different in terms of lifetime unless it’s commercial grade
The commercial-grade appliances at different kitchens where I have worked have needed repair calls, sometimes frequently with dish machines.
It depends. If you are a show off that only cares about aesthetics, then you’re paying for looks, not quality.
In my experience, a great dishwasher is worth the money. I had a Miele that was absolutely silent. Not whisper quiet. Silent.
A good, high quality, refrigerator is also worth it. You don’t know your fridge is shit until you have one that keeps your food fresh, and doesn’t freeze or wilt your produce.
If you are not a baker, or someone who uses the oven on a regular basis, then in my opinion any low tech electric stove will do the trick. Induction top if you like precise temp controls. Getting an oven right is very difficult and normally where you see the well deserved price jump.
The only frustrating thing about my Miele dishwasher was that I couldn’t tell if it was on or not. I loved that thing.
Yeah, I actually like the sound of my dishwasher running… It’s very quiet, but it just sounds like “clean” if that makes sense
I upgraded my simple low tech 10y old Bosch oven by purchasing a top of the line Bosch one (also about 10y old) for 50 Euro and selling my old one for 30.
Now I have an oven that heats up to 300C, has pyrolisis for self - cleaning and has a built in microwave.
I love buying pre-owned stuff.
Heads up on pyrolytic self cleaning, I’ve learned since buying mine that it’s commonly referred to as “self destruct mode” by oven designers as it is not uncommon for it to damage electronic parts, seals and the front glass of the oven, produces carbon monoxide which it will dump into your house and firefighters recommend against using it as sometimes it just goes up in flames.
Most of the time it’s perfectly safe, but has the potential to go wrong just about any time.
I love buying pre-owned stuff.
There is a lot pre-owned stuff not worth spending money on because it’s basically already worn-out. There is also a ton of pre-owned stuff that will last for years more, where the original owner didn’t need it anymore for whatever reason. If you know what to buy, second hand is amazing value. I love getting that value too, but it does take some understanding or knowledge.
They have people take care of their needs. They dont need to worry about it.
So you’re saying we need a start up that sells people.
I think we have tried that before…
Sure, but we’re also going to put the location data from your cellphone on the blockchain
And consume 10x the energy, be made of lead, and dont forget survivorship bias!
id pay a huge premium for appliances guaranteed to last 40 years.
You can already buy appliances like that.
These are the top rated brands by Consumer Reports. The top rated brand by reliability? Their site…doesn’t seem to list prices. That’s never a good sign…But a search of Google shopping indicates that their fridges start at $7000 and up. Quality brands exist. They just cost 3-10 times the cheaper brands.
You’ll call me a curmudgeon for sure, but:
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“75” is kind of a shit high score, with the scale going to 100 and all.
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Demonstration of that point: LG is #2 with a score of 74, in spite of the fact that the terrible track record of their big-dollar linear-compressor fridges has made national news.
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We might also note that the span of scores here is really small; it’s just 8 points on a scale of 100. How meaningful is all this?
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CR’s reports like these are based on CR subscriber surveys. So they’re about consumer experience and sentiment for things bought brand new and generally things bought recently. I wouldn’t expect such a report to say much about lifespan or repair-ability.
I’ve been a CR subscriber forever. I keep thinking I should cancel, though, because I’m not prosperous enough to live the way their target audience apparently lives.
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I was a subscriber to Consumer Reports for years and trusted them implicitly because they seemed so thorough and rigorous. Then they did reviews on a subject with which I am intimately familiar (it was computer related), and I was shocked at how badly they fumbled just about everything. I’ve also seen some really dubious ratings on high ticket items like cars that I knew were not great, so I take their ratings with grain of salt anymore.
The fact that Whirlpool is even on this list makes it a joke to me. I will say I’ve had a Miele dishwasher in the past and it was fucking awesome, and have heard great things about a lot of Bosch appliances. But LG and Whirlpool frequently put out trash appliances.
I rented a house for a while with Miele appliances in it (dishwasher, double oven, steam oven, microwave, and hob), they were amazing. They felt well built, never had an issue (I only lived there for five years though) and had features I would never dream of using, the oven had a sabbath mode or something that you could set up to turn on and cook your food for you a day in advance or something crazy like that.
After moving to my current house I looked into them, they are way too expensive for my blood.
The fact that they seem to fail to comprehend that LG and Signature Kitchen Suite are both made by LG in the same factory, and that Fisher & Paykel and “Cafe” (actually GE) are both owned and made by Haier, and that Thermador and Bosch are also the same company with several of their products being rebadges of each other does not fill me with confidence.
At the very least if they insist on breaking those sub-brands out separately they ought to make at least some mention at the bottom of the chart that they’re actually the same entity.
Seems like there could be a crowdsourced version of Consumer Reports. A standardized battery of tests for each product category, and different youtubers could test products according to the test and produce (ideally reproducible) reports for each product. Not sure how the standardized tests would be created or maintained, or how the whole thing would be funded. But it would be cool to have some common, non-commercialized benchmarks that do what Consumer Reports does, but with better transparency and less opportunity to fudge.
Seems like there could be a crowdsourced version of Consumer Reports.
By the time it gets critical mass to be good crowdsourcing it’ll suffer from astroturfing and spam and other SEO techniques, which will have to be met with stricter and more proactive moderation, which may go a bit too hard and alienate casual users from participation, which will hurt its own reliability.
It’s not an easy problem to solve.
They’re trying to avoid the pitfalls of popularity.
Project Farm on YouTube is an alternative I’ve been happy to have discovered
Torque Test Channel is another good one, but very niche
Yeah, CR has been waving a red flag since the day I discovered them. Their testing methodology is meh and the fact that they (afaik, it’s been decades now) don’t purchase the items they test, but instead request them from the manufacturer, means they are not impartial, thus they cannot be trusted.
I’ve always regarded them as drawing parallel lines to things like the BBB. Sure they put on a decent public image and people put trust in them, but… why? What do they actually do? Specially, what do they do for you? You’re basically purchasing a magazine that is 100% ads. Even if you are already interested in an item in that edition, it’s still literally an ad that you will be reading. A biased ad. That you fucking paid to read. That is bonkers, and yet apparently there is still enough people who willingly buy ads for the company to continue existing.
My rule is if the company has ever made a TV or Cell Phone I will NEVER buy their kitchen appliance.
i feel like this rule accomplishes nothing. Do you just hate LG?
And Samsung. Had one of their appliances. It broke. Less than 10 years old and Samsung doesn’t make parts anymore.
I had to find someone on eBay that could fix it.
Meanwhile the Whirlpool washing machine I bought at the same time had issues and parts were readily available.
It works for Samsung… So, rule is definitely accomplishing something.
I’ve long since learned never to touch Samsung for anything that isn’t a screen or flash memory… Any software or appliances are pretty much trash.
Whats the source of that ranking?
As I mentioned, Consumer Reports.
The second is a mass market brand though.
I find it very suspicious, LG (like Samsung) is famous for unreliable fridges. And Miele sell rebranded Liebherr fridges, which come with 10 year warranty… I wonder what their methodology is (not enough to research but I would if buying an appliance).
I had a Samsung dishwasher in my previous house. Had to replace the pump twice in the 3 years I lived there. Utter garbage. Didn’t clean very well either.
My rule is if the company has ever made a TV or Cell Phone I will NEVER buy their kitchen appliance.
That’s ok.
What about a company that makes appliances and self-propelled Howitzers?
Now that’s a Kia of size worthy of the US roads
Having a Liebherr fridge as a fan of big cranes sounds so ideal.
I have a Liebherr fridge that’s 20 years old, got it second hand and just works like expexted. The plastic elements start breaking piece by piece (a freezer drawer, a door shelf, the lamp cover), but i still consider it trustworthy and would buy again.
They are a bit pricey, but the 10 year warranty gives peace of mind. Quite efficient and silent too, but I think that’s normal for any modern fridge.
I’m told that the cheapeast LG refrigerators with the freezer on top two door are some of the more reliable. The fancy LG fridges have notoriously unreliable linear compressors? that are even MORE unreliable in the USA because we use a different refrigerant than what they were even designed for and they weren’t good before that change.
Thanks to a rather high profile class action lawsuit, LG no longer uses linear compressors in their refrigerators. At least in the US.
That’s the other factor with those older appliances that just keep on going forever. They usually serve one function and serve it well. My kitchenaid mixer is 20 years old. I’m the second owner and it’s still going strong. But those things are also built like tanks. Simple parts. Dirt simple operation. There is no app to control the thing. There’s a single control lever that controls power and speed, in the wonderfully precise measurements of “1 to 10.”
My mixer has two and only two functions - to turn a mixing paddle and to power attachments via a power take-off. All the accessories? They’re cheap and easily replaceable. I have some accessories like an ice cream maker and vegetable spiralizer. They can break without affecting the main unit. Your Grandma’s 50 year old fridge? It has just two, or maybe even just one compartment. One or two doors to keep seals to a minimum. No in-door ice maker. No countless conveniences that make life easier but also produce failure points. Might not even have automatic defrost. It’s just a box that keeps things cold. The most common reason for service calls on modern fridges are issues with the in-door ice makers.
If you wanted a bullet proof fridge setup, your best bet would be to find a single cabinet fridge without a freezer at all and then keep a chest freezer elsewhere as your only freezer. Yes, a bit more inconvenient. But if you want to max out your stats on durability rather than convenience, that’s the way to go.
If you want a device that lasts, buy the version of that device that is as dirt-simple as possible.
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