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.
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.
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_cartel
Much appreciated