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Major appliances used to last 20 years, but not today. This article tracks with my experience and with what several repair people have told me. Many of the "nam
by dreamcompiler 7y ago
Major appliances used to last 20 years, but not today. This article tracks with my experience and with what several repair people have told me. Many of the "name brands" of yesteryear have consolidated and moved their factories offshore to save money. They've also started designing compressors specifically to last 5 years or less, and repairing or replacing a compressor costs more than a new fridge.
The other trick (more common on washing machines) is to build electronic control boards that last 5 years or less, so when the washer breaks you have to pay $500 for a new control board. Washing machines used to have mechanical controls that lasted 30 years. Now we have electronic controls with no moving parts that theoretically could last forever but they die in a couple of years, usually because of poor power supply design or overheating.
This is deliberate. The companies have figured out that customers will tolerate it and go buy a new appliance every 5 years. Every company wants that recurring revenue stream.
Why doesn't competition solve this problem? Many of the big name brands (Whirlpool, Maytag, Amana, Kitchenaid, Jennair, etc.) are all the same company now [0]. Kenmore and LG are still separate but on the whole there's very little competition. The government should never have allowed this degree of consolidation.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool_Corporation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool_Corporation
- dreamcompiler 7y agoUPDATE: I was wrong. Whirlpool did in fact make Kenmore branded appliances for Sears (though Whirlpool wasn't their only manufacturer.) So Kenmore's not independent after all.
- amelius 7y agoThis problem will be solved by service/subscription business models. If you pay for a service, it is in the interest of the supplier to make the product last for as long as possible.
- twiceaday 7y agoWhy would they let any business model take shape unless it makes them as much or more money?
- SpaceL10n 7y agoYou're missing the point entirely. I want to buy a thing, not rent it, whether that's for 5 years or in perpetuity... I'm tired of paying rent.
- api 7y agoYou're right, but the problem is that businesses must have recurring revenue to exist. During the roll out phase, such as when appliances were a new thing and everyone wanted to buy one, companies could make super reliable appliances and they would still get recurring revenue because there was a ton of unmet demand. Now everyone has a fridge, washing machine, etc. If they all lasted 30 years you would have a serious problem with keeping the supply chain alive. In the end what would probably happen is that the price would explode since now a new fridge would be more of a small run custom manufacturing job than a mass produced item. Trouble there is that people won't pay $2000 for a fridge even if it is extremely well built and will last 30 years. Play this out and you can see what happens. Enter the cheap competitors who make appliances that last 5 years... pretty soon the market looks exactly like it does today. Large industrial supply chains aren't simple machines. You basically can't turn them off and then on again. A ton of the seemingly irrational nonsense in markets stems from the fact that everything has to find recurring revenue to stay "hot" or you just lose it entirely. We can't go back to the moon because we stopped going, so we lost the supply chain for the Saturn V.
- jogjayr 7y agoAs long as the population and number of new households keeps increasing, there will always be demand for new appliances. The analogy to the Saturn V doesn't really hold up. There's also a ton of unmet demand in developing countries. Companies can continue to have their always-growing markets of yesteryear over there.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoOr the government ties tax policy to the robustness of their products. 5 year lifetime? 90% tax for you!
- alextingle 7y ago
- breakingcups 7y agoProblem is, in this case the supplier would have no interest in limiting power usage for example. The interests still do not align right.
- gregoryl 7y agoIsn't this a natural outcome of efficiency improvements in refrigeration? I thought the rule of thumb was replacing them every 4 years or so, why would they over-engineer components with lifespans greater than this?
- userbinator 7y agoI'd say the only real improvement has been better insulation; if anything the newer "more environmentally friendly" refrigerants are less efficient than the CFCs that they replaced, which were specifically chosen for their nearly ideal properties at everything besides ozone depletion and global warming (which was unknown at the time.) I restored a 92-year-old refrigerator, which involved reinsulating it, among other things. The compressor and rest of the hermetic system is original, as is the refrigerant. It actually consumes far less power than most people would guess --- on par with the newest high-efficiency models which I suspect would not last nearly a century.
- gregoryl 7y agoFascinating! I need to find a new fridge (new apartment, the fridge spot in the kitchen is a stupid size); will look into the refurb approach.
- IAmEveryone 7y agoRather than seeing this as a conspiracy, it’s worth considering that the cause of shorter lifespan is simply our improved ability to build cheaply. For mechanical products with many parts (any one of which breaking would break the machine) variability of lifespan is extremely sensitive to variability of lifespan of each individual part. So to reach a certain reliability, i. e. „less than 10% failure rate in the first five years“ you needed to overprovision to such a degree that the 90% remaining after five years would tend to life on indefinitely. Material science has radically improved. Every part comes with precise expected lifetime. That allows building „crap“ where everything fails after exactly five years (or whatever you plan for). While shorter lifetimes may well be in the manufactures‘ interest, it isn’t clear that they aren’t also in the consumers‘ and public interest, at least some of the time. Use of material and energy can be drastically reduced. Prices have come done way more than lifetimes have. And at least in the current moment, energy efficiency is improving at a pace where running 20-year old appliances is wrong both financially as well as ecologically.
- TheCraiggers 7y agoI recently replaced a freezer. (Yes, this is purely anecdotal.) Comparing the Energy Star rating from my old freezer to the new one, I'm saving just a dollar a month. Now, I have no idea what the calculations would be to figure out the carbon cost of that electricity versus what it cost to actually make and ship that freezer. But I'm guessing it's close to a wash. According to Energy Star's own website, "replacing your old freezer with one that has earned the ENERGY STAR could save you $195 over the next 5 years." I'm guessing the figures they're using are on the extreme ends of the spectrum, but that still doesn't seem that impressive when you consider the production costs. Which, admittedly, I have no idea of, but assume are not great because refrigerant and insulation are involved.
- donmcronald 7y agoYeah. The environmental cost of manufacturing a new appliance and disposing of an old one needs to be considered. I just don't see how replacing could be more environmentally friendly than repairing. I wonder if the whole ENERGY STAR thing is just an industry wide marketing gimmick to change the public's perception so we can sell ourselves on the idea of throwing so much waste into a landfill.
- sixothree 7y agoThe junky rusted refrigerator in my garage (that I got for $200 in 1995) has never failed me like this beautiful expensive one has. Sometimes it just stops cooling. It reports inside temperatures 20+ degrees below what they are. They replaced the motherboard. They replaced the entire fridge. At least once a year I lose all of my food.
- ireflect 7y agoCheck out local used appliance stores. You can probably get something ~10 years old that will look new enough but still be somewhat reparable and non-smart. Shops that sell used appliances generally also repair them, so they'll know what's most reparable and you'll be able to go back to them for parts. Support the repair and used-goods economy, otherwise we'll just have disposable options.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoI still have two refrigerators bought in 1997. They work fine and cost $5/month to run. Company is out of business and I'll probably never find any as nice when I finally have to replace them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jasonjayr 7y agoI had to have a control board replaced on a Maytag Dryer, under waranty. Since I watched the tech do it, I could not shake from my head -- "this could be a tiny script plus a RPi or an Arduino with a Relay board" Is anyone working on something like that, or are liabilities to great?
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoIn Germany if your appliance breaks down and causes damage to your apartment, your insurance will not cover you if you've made out of spec modifications to it.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoExactly. Arduino is more than capable. The programming is trivial and the components are super cheap; we're not talking rad-hard parts here. I'm thinking for my next washer I'll take the board out and re-solder all the joints, put a decent power conditioner on it, and add a fan and decent capacitors. Should last forever. Or better yet, open source washing machines.