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From the notes: "These marginal design choices are not the only way to get an efficient unit, since the fridge compressors from the 1940's and 1950's era were v

From the notes: "These marginal design choices are not the only way to get an efficient unit, since the fridge compressors from the 1940's and 1950's era were very efficient, while having consistently longer lives. This failed unit is purely an example of doing just enough to get by until it is someone else's problem." I've been seeing this as a common issue throughout most of the household appliances we've tried to buy in the last ten years. They just don't last.

jackmott 4y ago
Could it be because the information age causes companies to compete on price much more aggressively? You can’t easily prove that your fridge really will last longer, but easy to price the price is low.
- deleted 4y ago
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- willis936 4y ago
  I have the internet at my fingertips. I know a thermostatically controlled toaster is feasible to make into a cheap product because it existed in the 1960s and we now have transistors. Every single toaster is exactly the same with cosmetic differences. They're priced from $10 to $500 with no distinguishing features in the first $200. The market is not working, we just have the tools to realize how badly it's broken.
  - AmericanChopper 4y ago
    The market works fine. For any category of good you can think of there will be producers that make a high quality version of it. Consumers who care about that quality (according to however you’re measuring it) will make their decisions accordingly. Consumers who reveal a preference for caring less about that quality will make decisions based on other criteria. If your complaint is that this requires effort from the consumer, then that’s not something any market could fix. The consumer will always have to consider what their preferences are and how the offerings in the market align with them, if the want to end up purchasing goods/services that align with their preferences.
    - est31 4y ago
      The complaint is that one could manufacture those more expensive high quality products at a larger quantity and, through scaling effects, one would achieve a lower price, which would make them accessible to larger segments of the market. I suppose that would be the market "working". Instead you have manufacturers churning out tons of cheap shit that breaks quickly. I guess most customers don't know how quickly different household appliances break, so they also can't compare that together with price. They have to assume that the more expensive appliances are also higher quality, but how can you judge that as a non-expert? Household appliances are textbook examples of adoption s-curves, and in different phases, different rules apply for the market. Especially in the last phase of the s-curve, those manufacturers are hurt the most which build lasting products, because their own past customers, usually the best source for new purchases from their brand, don't buy from them any more because the need is still met by the still working product. So they either go bankrupt or get bought by one of the manufacturers that put in planned obsolescence and got tons of money from that, or they change their strategy before that happens.
      - AmericanChopper 4y ago
        > The complaint is that one could manufacture those more expensive high quality products at a larger quantity and, through scaling effects, one would achieve a lower price, which would make them accessible to larger segments of the market. That complaint is immature and entirely self-interested. It’s almost always beneficial (except when there’s production shortages) to have a preference that is shared by large segments of the market. It’s not the systems fault if few people share your preferences.
        ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        > That complaint is immature That's a bit rich for you to write -> this thread is addressing a practical problem with consumer goods, and your post is a theoretical, spherical car in a vacuum description of how ideal market should work, and falls apart in the real world. If the model worked perfectly, we would never have problems with slave labour in supply chains because ~0% of consumers are willing to buy them. The fact that we do, indicated that consumers are not able to enforce their preferences, for example because companies lie with no consequences. And if they can lie about slave labour, then they can lie about anything else.
  - yojo 4y ago
    FWIW I love this Panasonic toaster, which is some substantially different toaster tech: https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-NB-G110P-FlashXpress-Infrared-Removable/dp/B008C9UFDI https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-NB-G110P-FlashXpress-Infrar... No thermostatic control, but the defaults are fine for my uses. Currently on year 10. The power button got a little finicky so I have to wedge it with a piece of cardboard to make contact, but otherwise as good as the day I bought it.
  - jiggawatts 4y ago
    This video makes this point very well: https://youtu.be/1OfxlSG6q5Y https://youtu.be/1OfxlSG6q5Y
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > The market is not working, we just have the tools to realize how badly it's broken. "The market" is not a single thing. It's an idea(ology) from economics, and a cultural mythology, that vaguely intersect at some point. We all think we know what "The Market" is, supply, demand, competition and so on. It's existence and operation underwrites many a political argument. Then there is the reality: Walk in to a supermarket and "choose" from 20 different brands of tinned vegetable, grown in the same region, processed in a handful of factories ultimately owned by the same parent company. "Own" a movie, on a device that you don't actually control in any way, that you were effectively forced to purchase, with money you don't have. And so on.... So, in respectful mockery of Thatcher I say "There's no such thing as The Market" - not because I don't believe in the values of property, choice, competition, innovation.... but because we don't have these, and haven't for some time. The myth of "The Market" lives on the place of early (real) capitalism as we head toward "consumer communism".
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      > respectful mockery of Thatcher There is no need to do anything "respectfully" of Thatcher. She should have been hanged. I wouldn't piss on her grave for fear the warmth would comfort her.
    - gruez 4y ago
      > > The market is not working, we just have the tools to realize how badly it's broken. >"The market" is not a single thing. Who seriously think it is? I think most people here knows that "the market" doesn't refer to an actual thing or place, just like "the internet" doesn't refer to an actual actual thing or place.
      - nonrandomstring 4y ago
        > Who seriously think it is? Nobody. I'm not implying anyone is that stupid. It's obviously a figure of speech. Which you get, right?
    - triangleman83 4y ago
      But there are choices, sometimes you're not conscious of the effect of your choice but it was made nonetheless. For your supermarket example, instead of going there you could go to a local farmer's market for those vegetables. It might cost more, but most expect higher quality there than at the supermarket. So there is another "market" option, you shouldn't just expect all your "market" options to be placed in convenient aisles at the grocery store. If you live in the city and have to drive over an hour to get to a farmer's market, well that was also a choice you made. Perhaps you didn't make that choice because you wanted to be away from locally grown produce, but the supermarket being your only option is a consequence of that choice. I'm not trying to be a jerk, just trying to point out that much of the choices we make will reduce the other choices we have and we should be conscious of the ones that drive us to become mindless consumers and remove other options from us in the market.
  - tuatoru 4y ago
    > I know a thermostatically controlled toaster is feasible to make into a cheap product because it existed in the 1960s Having bought a toaster and electric kettle recently, I completely agree with your main point: buy the cheapest one you can bear to look at, because they're all the same in the essentials. But this anecdote about your aside might be diverting. One of my earliest extended memories (in the 1960s) is watching my dad repair our toaster. winding new resistance wire around the mica central divider. (The toaster was a manual model with flip-open sides, toasting one side of the bread at a time.) I don't think automatic toasters were all that cheap in the 1960s. Not everywhere, anyway, if repair of a manual toaster was worthwhile to do.
    - blihp 4y ago
      Manual repair of just about everything was worthwhile to do back then. Partly it was because labor was cheap and physical stuff was expensive (which has inverted) and partly because the overall <pick the appliance> was well built enough otherwise where one could expect to get years more service out of it post-repair. This approach doesn't payoff nearly as well when everything in the device is engineered to be within an inch of it's life once the warranty period ends. (if you're lucky)
- Skunkleton 4y ago
  Sounds right to me. When you look at markets where reliability is important, you see appliances that are the same. You can get good quality commercial washing machines.
- moooo99 4y ago
  > You can’t easily prove that your fridge really will last longer, but easy to price the price is low. I'm not so sure about that. In my experience people tend to be less price sensitive with household appliances (big one time purchases that are supposed to last long) than they are with other more expensive items. Most people I know tend to be lifelong customers if they have good experiences with a specific brand and are very willing to share that brand as a recommendation. The problem is, those good experiences don't seem to hold true anymore. Price hasn't been a good indicator for product quality and life expectancy for a while. I've seen this first hand with my family. My parents were very willing to spend significant amounts on stuff like dishwashers, fridges, or washing machines. Despite sticking to the brands they had good experiences with, the product lifetime decreased with every new product purchase. It has come to the point that they don't care for the brand they used to trust, they are just buying the stuff thats cheap and checks all the boxes. These companies seem to have traded high customer loyalty (and possibly a very efficient organic marketing channel) for more frequent sales but higher price competition. I have no insights into those companies, but I'm not sure if that was an intelligent long term play.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    It's worse now - the cheaper product often lasts longer (as it's simpler) - I have a fridge/freezer thing that has basically no controls and no computers, and it chugs along. Newer refridgerators with fancy water faucets and computers and locks have failed in the time I've had it. Had a washer blow out on a computer control board; $750 for the board. A similar washer blew out on the dial, $35 for the dial.
    - cudgy 4y ago
      Similar story with old Honda’s. Simple cars that just worked with few problems, but they were simple cars with few electrical motors and digital features. Automatic, heated, air conditioned seats? No. Automatic climate control? No. Speed adjusted suspension? No. Speed adjusted stereo volume? No. Etc. However, some manufacturers like Saab actually delivered all this with excellent reliability only to be rejected by the US market and driven into the ground by General Motors. What is a quality manufacturer to do?
- oezi 4y ago
  The manufacturers are all gaming the system by releasing new models so quickly (and in so many varieties) that any design flaw of a model cannot be used to make a purchasing decision because the comparable old devices are no longer available.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Or there is one or two manufacturers for all the various brands. "Whirlpool brands include Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Amana, Magic Chef, Admiral, Norge, Roper, and others. See all items in Dishwasher Dishrack. Whirlpool also makes various appliance models for Sears / Kenmore." And once you start looking up part numbers you realize it goes even further.
  - npteljes 4y ago
    100%. Information asymmetry, and also the glut of options make informed consumer decisions much harder than they need to be.
- vidarh 4y ago
  Could be. E.g. the majority of consumer grade ice machines on Amazon (at least in the UK) uses a mechanism that is near identical. This extends to mostly copying a design flaw: Most of them a compartment used to immerse cooled metal rods in water, which then rotates out of the way to let the ice cubes fall into the ice compartment when done. Most of these are made out of plastic, with a motor rotating only one side. Problem is when it's stopped mechanically by simply hitting the end of the range of motion, which means the motor effectively ends up trying to twist the compartment. This works fine for casual use - the plastics holds for a while. But use it enough, and you get cracks developing. It's trivial to fix - some of the designs have an optical diode to stop rotation in one direction, but weirdly not in the other, and doing that in both directions would solve it But I'm thinking that apart from not just coming up in testing (it takes a lot of cycles before it breaks), a lot of these problems spread because of cost cutting in the product development phase. It's a pretty obvious flaw if you observe the above mechanisms, and while you can cut a few cents of the bill of materials, without extensive testing you won't know for sure that it won't fail within the warranty window (they do if you use them as heavily as I use mine) and it doesn't take a very high failure rate to make an extra optical diode and wiring worth it. If people did product dev from scratch you'd expect at least some of them to decide it'd be worth it, but almost all of these are clearly just blindly copied designs (I'm sure multiple models must also be manufactured on spec by the same manufacturer). As a result there's little real competition, and few customers will be aware there are better alternatives, especially because it takes quite a bit of wear and tear and so most people don't shop for these types of products often enough to realistically compare, and as you point out it's hard to prove (and takes a long time to develop a reputation).
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > You can’t easily prove that your fridge really will last longer Yeah you can, it's called warranty
sydd 4y ago
Yep, some are so shitty that the whole product category becomes garbage. We went on an adventure with blenders: 1. We bought a Bosch hand blender (maxomixx) because it looked sturdy and was priced near the top at the mall -- thought that the brand and the price tag would guarantee that it would last. It broke after 8 months, turns out that the coupling between the mixer and the body is made of plastic that wore off. I called the Bosch service hotline, they told me that the whole body is one "part" that I can buy for ~80% of the original price. 2. Went back to the mall looking for one with metal coupling, turns out there is NONE. All of them are garbage with the same fault point. But luckily there is a wide selection of standing blenders, where some of them had much more massively looking, metal gears. Bought one from Electrolux. It broke after 3 months, this time the bearing on the bottom of the blender cup started leaking the grease into our food... 3. Gave up trying to get a blender from the mall, bought a Vitamix for 7x the price, which we're happy with for the last 3 years. Yes, there is plenty of planned obsolence out there, and one of the greenest things you can do is buy premium stuff that will last you a lifetime (if you can afford it :/ )
- ygra 4y ago
  Interestingly, the Bosch food processor we have has a plastic coupling between the motor and the meat grinder attachment on purpose, so if anything gets stuck, it's a 5 € plastic part that's broken, instead of a more expensive and less accessible one. So a plastic coupling alone doesn't sound that alarming in general.
  - s0rce 4y ago
    I think Kitchenaid's have that too, I remember repairing one years ago with my dad.
    - justinlloyd 4y ago
      Yes, they precisely have that. Have repaired three Kitchenaid mixers over the years, from different eras. Even in the higher end machines where it is almost all metal gears and parts, the helical gear box in those too is all plastic parts for easy and cheap replacement, and so that anything getting stuck doesn't burn out a more expensive elctrical motor. I have an immersion blender that also has plastic gears, and even though the motor is sold as a single unit that is not an FRU, you can take it apart and service it with off-the-shelf gears you can source from eBay. The two coffee grinders I have, high quality metal burrs, plastic gearing, for the same reason. My higher quality power tools- track saw, drills, etc, all plastic gearing, metal everywhere else. It just makes sense when it comes to repairs, though can be frustrating when they strip out. That said, most consumer crap made today is complete shite.
userbinator 4y ago
They are designed to die just slightly past the warranty, so they can sell you another. Of course, the statistics means that quite a few units won't even last until then. Before manufacturing tolerances were as tight, they'd error on the side of caution and overbuild, resulting in a wider MTBF curve. There were both many early failures as well as ones which far exceeded their expected life. Now, the standard deviation is much smaller so the end-of-life has become more well-defined both at the cost of nothing much lasting longer nor shorter than expected.
- markus_zhang 4y ago
  So I guess the best strategy is to use them as much as possible and make sure they break in the first year...
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - theonemind 4y ago
    I remember someone who bought a low-mileage used car under warranty. The transmission started acting funny and making strange noises, but the dealer wouldn't do any repairs because it worked. I think he was about 8 months into a 12 month warranty. He drove in such a way as to make sure it didn't work before the warranty was up, and then they fixed it.
    - qes 4y ago
      Surely driving the vehicle in a manner that was certain to break the transmission within 4 months caused no other excessive wear in the vehicle, right? Sounds like a terrible idea, really.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    trolling manufacturer stats is quite a fun idea.
- umeshunni 4y ago
bombcar 4y ago
There's a small subset that avoid it - but the only one I know of is the Speed Queen machines that are identical to their commercial offerings - and have remained basically the same for decades. One way to gauge it is see how available repair parts are (all systems eventually wear out) and what the costs look like.
- geoffeg 4y ago
  The quality and warranty are the primary reasons I bought a Speed Queen washer and dryer a few years ago. Most reviews say the washer isn't the best at actually cleaning clothes but 99% of the time I don't need to remove stains or dirt, I just need to wash clothes from daily use. In addition to the reliability I really like the controls. Nothing fancy, very easy and obvious with a 7-segment LED display that will likely last forever.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Speed Queen warranty is 5 years and price was 3x LG washer from Costco. Costco gives 4 year warranty with Costco credit card. So I just buy appliances from Costco and assume I will have to replace sometime after 4 years. As one data point, all of my LG Costco appliances from almost 4 years ago are still working fine, through very heavy use. We probably use washers/dryers 10+ cycles per week due to babies/toddlers. The LG inverter linear compressor fridge is still as silent as the day we got it.
    - User23 4y ago
      Old American made washers are running 40 years later. Speed Queen isn’t really about the warranty, it’s about the implications.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        I prefer the implication of having it in writing. If Speed Queen’s data showed them their machines lasted 40 years, then they would advertise them with a 40 year warranty to maximize sales. Since they do not, it is safe to say that Speed Queen does not want to bet their machines will last 40 years. So why should I bet they will last longer than their stated warranty period? It is possible that Speed Queens are worth more because they are more repairable, but I have no interest in spending my time repairing my washer/dryer. And calling a technician would be $100/hour plus parts, at which point I might as well buy a new machine.
mbesto 4y ago
> They just don't last. Two words: planned obsolescence.
RichardCNormos 4y ago
People value low prices more than they value longevity.
- cudgy 4y ago
  This is the root of the problem. Quality machinery costs more and most people think they are getting a good deal when they buy junk at cheap prices. However, sometimes you get lucky buying cheap stuff that lasts and that is the experience we like to remember and try to repeat.
  - randallsquared 4y ago
    It's the root of the general problem, but as noted elsewhere by another commenter, paying a lot more doesn't actually provide much signal that the product isn't junk.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      For beancounters, a brand's reputation for expensive but long-lasting products is an amazing opportunity to "create shareholder value" and boost (short-term) profits by cutting corners on quality. Obviously the reputation will eventually adjust and this strategy will stop working, but besides the disgruntled customers, bonuses have been paid, people have been promoted and shareholder value was created. By the time the brand dies the people involved would've moved on to their next victim. Paying more indeed isn't a reliable signal because even if a brand truly has a reputation for reliable stuff there is no guarantee someone isn't pulling the aforementioned strategy in the background.
      - cortesoft 4y ago
        Also, if you make machines that last a long time and are easily repairable, pretty soon you will saturate the market and won't have any new customers. If you can only sell to each person once, you won't have a sustainable business. All the companies that made things that last forever went out of business.
PontifexMinimus 4y ago
> I've been seeing this as a common issue throughout most of the household appliances we've tried to buy in the last ten years. They just don't last. I've had the same experience. E.g. I bought a kettle 2 years ago and it lasted for 6 months. Previous kettles have lasted many years (as they should).
- archi42 4y ago
  I accidentally just reasoned about kettle for another comment, but removed that part again. First, TIL: Since in the US the mains voltage is 120V, kettle there have less power (or would trip the circuit protection/burn out old sockets) than our 240V kettles (Amazon offers plenty 2200W units, might be a legal limit). It's obvious, but I totally forgot to consider this. Anyway, the main failures to expect from a kettle is a failing heating element or leaky sealing. Both can be avoided by using induction. But with induction stoves becoming the norm for new kitchens (at least around here), all you need is a suitable, passive kettle instead of the kettle+base. Plus a 3.7kW induction field will be faster to boil water than something that plugs into a 240V/16A socket. Only reason to go with a standalone kettle appliance are "smart" kettles with more precise temperature control (some teas should be prepared at specific temperatures). TL;Dr: Upgrade to an inductive stove, get a passive kettle for it, be happy :)
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    Induction is great, but an electric kettle costs like 10 bucks while changing your stove is a huge investment that includes replacing all your pots and pans, plus if you were using gas before now your household electricity consumption grows very noticeably. Not really a comparable option in my opinion.
    - archi42 4y ago
      Depends on where you live. Around here (SW Germany) non-induction electric stoves with resistive heating elements under a special glass ("Ceranfeld") are much more common for home-use than gas. So when these fail, swapping to induction is relatively easy; picking gas over electric means a lot of extra effort for many people. Personally, when buying new pots and pans in the last decade, I picked only those that work with induction (payed something like 20 Euro extra, in total); so when we finally swap the stove, we only have to replace one pan. Several friends make the same complaint, and I never understood why they didn't plan ahead (induction is not that new, especially when some of them only moved out from their parents in the last 5 to 10 years). The induction kettle of friends definitely is much faster than both their old kettle (1.[2,5] kW) and ours (2.2kW); and I am not sure if they even have a 3.7kW field. Edit: If course assuming that you eventually get a new stove anyway, at least at some point in the future. If you're settled in your house/flat for live and have a gas stove you're happy with & that will survive you, then the point is of course mood.
KennyBlanken 4y ago
To save everyone a lot of time: he finds that a sintered bronze bearing has worn and allowed metal-on-metal contact elsewhere in the unit. He theorizes it's the oil, which he demonstrates is very thin at room temperature. Which is meaningless - film strength doesn't have to be high if there isn't high pressure between sliding surfaces. The claim that fridges from the 40s and 50s were very efficient is nonsense. Even a 10-20 year old fridge is very inefficient compared to a modern fridge. It's as easy as looking at energy star ratings. > When it becomes a problem, it goes to the dump where all the foamed-together plastic parts will not be feasible to separate nor recycle. It's never been economical / feasible to manually take apart an appliance for recycling. They're shredded and the plastic/metal chunks separated mechanically for the raw materials.
- cudgy 4y ago
  Old refrigerators may not be as efficient, but they were built better internally and last longer. The savings from an efficient refrigerator that only lasts a few years is meaningless.
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  You'd have to stick an ammeter on it, but I bet a 50s fridge is pretty efficient because they are manual defrost only. Most modern full-size fridges are auto defrost – essentially they suck down electricity to heat up the cooling system. The efficiency gains over a couple decades ago are due to moving from fixed, mechanical timers to computer controlled adaptive defrosters.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >I bet a 50s fridge is pretty efficient because they are manual defrost only That doesn't seem like a fair comparison. It's like saying a bike is "pretty efficient" compared to an e-bike because it doesn't consume any energy (infinite efficiency!)
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
nly 4y ago
It's very similar phenomenon to shrinkflation. Instead of getting more expensive, items are just getting lower quality
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sgustard 4y ago
Another possible cause: Do people even know how to make high-quality products any more? Who are the top 1% of refrigerator engineers, and do they still even go into refrigerator design, or did they become wall street quants instead? This is the same thing I wonder when I eat at crappy restaurants. It's not like the staff knows how to make good food and they choose not to do it. They don't know how!
- naikrovek 4y ago
  Engineering doesn’t change. If it was learned by one it can and will be learned by another. Manufacturers know how to make quality parts, they are just not able to, or choose not to, for whatever reason. Aftermarket parts business is a large portion of an appliance or vehicle manufacturer’s bottom line, so they make decisions to augment the profit of that business, including sacrificing quality on the appliance or vehicle.
- m-ee 4y ago
  Top refrigerator engineers are probably making lab freezers. I imagine a lot consumer hardware is JDM these days. Parent company mostly doing industrial design (if that) and the rest is farmed out to China where they have a standard design they're working from.
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    That reminds me of something I always wondered: during that window (I'd say, roughly 1975-2000) where Japan had strong brand equity for "quality, reliable, innovative", why did they seem to make no footprint in the US appliance sector? I've never seen a Panasonic washer or Sony fridge. It wasn't a "we can't make/ship big things with relatively low value density" factor (they made cars, after all) and I'm assuming they were making something for domestic consumption (or were they buying Whirlpool fridges for Tokyo apartments?). Was there some tarriff situation keeping them out of this sector?
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      >during that window (I'd say, roughly 1975-2000) where Japan had strong brand equity for "quality, reliable, innovative", why did they seem to make no footprint in the US appliance sector? I've never seen a Panasonic washer or Sony fridge. I have a Panasonic washer and fridge. They're great. >I'm assuming they were making something for domestic consumption (or were they buying Whirlpool fridges for Tokyo apartments?) Whirlpool and other western brands have no presence in Japan for appliances. It's all Panasonic, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, plus Haier, and for the cheap brand, Iris Ohyama. Virtually all appliances are made in Japan, or some (usually cheap ones) in China by Japanese companies. They probably don't bother with the US because American consumers don't want to pay for quality, and they'd have to re-engineer everything for American sizes and preferences. American appliances look nothing like Japanese ones.
danielheath 4y ago
A theory I've been developing explains this. When there wasn't enough to go around, capitalism was amazing. It created tremendous wealth, such that for the first time in history, in large parts of the world, there's enough for everyone. My theory is: Back then, the market for most goods was under-served, so the way the rich got richer was by creating more goods, since you could sell everything you could make (almost always at a profit). However, in a saturated market, the incentives change; because you can produce far more than you can sell, the rich almost exclusively get richer by taking market share from other players. Making something last 50 years instead of 10 at a 1% cost premium becomes a bad idea, because people care about the headline figure.
- demomi 4y ago
  Paradoxically, back when the market was LESS efficient, the extra slack afforded higher standards because they could overengineer something and still sell it easily. It always comes down to supply and demand. Supply of generic products like compressors and blenders skyrocketed. Increase the supply enough and you get a race to the bottom. All market inefficiency has been squeezed out of the market. The market has arrived at an equilibrium of making some things just high enough quality that they last longer than a few months while being as cheap as possible. Anyone trying to make something higher quality gets squeezed out. Unless there's also much higher demand to compensate for it.
  - danielheath 4y ago
    The market only trends to maximum efficiency if information is sufficiently cheap for enough participants. Most people have no cost-effective way to find out how long an appliance will last, so the market cannot find the most efficient lifetime for appliances.
  - mechagodzilla 4y ago
    There is enormous survivorship bias with this 'stuff was way better back in the day' argument - there have always been awful products produced, but those get replaced quickly. An awful fridge from the 1950s was replaced by the 1960s. Engineers weren't deliberately overengineering things back then out of some sense of pride, they were just worse at engineering (and material science) - some things were over-engineered, because we didn't know better ways to solve that problem, and some things were under-engineered for the same reason. I think the increased cost of labor relative to manufactured goods is a big driver of this perceived change, as nobody wants to pay a repair guy $500 to come out and fix their $500 fridge. If the fridge cost $20k we would probably still fix them and they would have a long lifetime (and the repair guy would still charge $500, like an HVAC guy), but there is almost no market for a $20k fridge when a $500 fridge is available.
judge2020 4y ago
> since the fridge compressors from the 1940's and 1950's era were very efficient Is this only true for fridges? Because this video on a 1984 washing machine versus one from today[0, timestamp relevant] shows a big difference in efficiency from then to now. 0: https://youtu.be/NHrPcx0xkGU?t=776 https://youtu.be/NHrPcx0xkGU?t=776
- userbinator 4y ago
  He shows the instantaneous/peak power in watts, not total energy used, and didn't even use the same meter for both. I think the actual difference is not quite so much.
jupp0r 4y ago
Sounds similar to a solid number of software engineering departments too.
gonehome 4y ago
Often it’s someone comparing a cheap modern version with some super high-end appliance from the 50s (because cheap low margin options didn’t exist back then). If you were buying a $7k fridge today to compare - that’d be interesting.
fithisux 4y ago
"This failed unit is purely an example of doing just enough to get by until it is someone else's problem" this is the trademark of humans.
GCA10 4y ago
Very true of hot-water heaters, too. We had the misfortune of recently needing to replace the "original" one that came with our house when we bought in in 1997. The installer told us that all current models, including some quite expensive ones, are warranted to last seven years and might give us a few more. "But you won't get 25 years out of anything today." Thinner vessels seem to be the main culprit. That does save a few dollars on materials costs.
hubraumhugo 4y ago
We should collect more data on product longevity and repairability. I'm trying to build a community for this: On https://exitreviews.com https://exitreviews.com, consumers can learn how long products last, where they break, and how to fix them.
- niklaslohmann 4y ago
  That's a cool idea ; feel free to use https://www.haaartland.com/ https://www.haaartland.com/ for this. best/Niklas
- alliao 4y ago
  I like the idea, would be helpful to include (if not already) where the product is sold. Toyota famously added a small metal block in the US to pass IIHS's small overlap crash test but that small block doesn't exist in other Asian countries. The modern production line is so efficient they can do that level of customisation for every market individually...
adhesive_wombat 4y ago
My plan if I magically become a billionaire is to start a consumer goods (and maybe tools) brand that makes devices that are "just good". They won't be bristling with pointless and fragile features (like WiFi in everything), they won't have overwrought styling and decorative frills, but they will do things like not skimp on 0.1g of plastic in critical places, MOSFETs, UV stabilization, etc. Captive cables avoided. Metal preferred over plastic, and spares provided at cost. Wearable parts should be off-the-shelf components where possible. Parts lists and schematics provided. Any API should be open and documented. They won't be priced or marketed as premium, they're "just good" and you shouldn't have to pay extra on top just for the logo of all you wanted was a working, long-lived device. Then, importantly, stick to it and not ride laurels all the way down to the bottom of the barrel. And refuse to sell out to larger competitors who will then gut quality. The reason it's on my Magic Billionaire list is because I cannot imagine I'd get the investment to set up a brand that isn't designed to squeeze every last penny out of the products, but rather simply provide "just good" products.
- endymi0n 4y ago
  As this category used to exist (and partly still does in my country with Miele, but is considered niche), I doubt you‘ll get much product market fit there. Total Adressable Market is the nerds who care, i.e. barely anybody.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    Miele gouge like hell on spares, a new door for my fridge-freezer costs about as much as the entire unit, including 2 doors, did. The door cover is maybe one of the top things to want replacing on a fridge. Also the plastic door trays are clearly suffering from "material use optimisation" because the hinges break off due to insufficient material support. On the other side, the thing is still working, but it's only been 8 years. But I do agree about the TAM, which is why it's contingent on being an idle billionaire.
    - scrlk 4y ago
      FWIW Miele refrigeration products are made by Liebherr and many are rebadged for Miele. You might be able to find an equivalent Liebherr product and save money by buying the Liebherr part instead.
iforgotpassword 4y ago
> which sacrificed its life span in the name of some modicum of energy savings. These marginal design choices are not the only way to get an efficient unit, since the fridge compressors from the 1940's and 1950's era were very efficient. This one surprised me. I need to do some digging. Did they get worse after the 50s? I know that an old fridge I had in the basement, probably from the 80s/90s, was horrible in that regard. It pulled 300W when the compressor was running, and about 20W when idle (why!?). I threw it out a long time ago, so I don't have the exact figures anymore, but over a day it consumed at least 3 to 5 times as much as the bigger one in my kitchen that was new at that time. And it was notably cooler in the basement too, so that should've worked in favor of the old one.
- touch_abs 4y ago
  Old ones did a few things really well; they typically have the hot radiator coils on top, or better separated from the internals (at the cost of space) better insulation (at the cost of internal space), and didnt have built in defrosters (or air circulation). They also used a somewhat more effective (but worse for the environment) refrigerant, freon. After the 50s, we demanded a larger volume, not just being larger but also sacrificing insulation and ideal hot-side placement. And we had to change the refrigerant used (and get rid of latching doors). Several features that were poor from an energy standpoint became standard (auto-defrost, air circulation).
  - alliao 4y ago
    i'm quite interested in Vacuum Insulation Panel (VIP) used in some fridges nowadays, it seems the edges and punctures would be their down fall, but it does make for some strikingly thin fridge walls...
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Absolutely awful experience with air conditioners. They keep malfunctioning every two years. Meanwhile my parents have a 25 year old aircon with heavy duty copper wiring that’s still going strong. I’ll pay a premium for appliances that are simply built to last, but there’s nothing on the market built to that spec anymore.
- namdnay 4y ago
  Really? What type? Here in Europe they’re invariably Japanese heatpumps (Daikin, Hitachi etc) - crazy reliable
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Europe is generally better for reliability from personal experience. You guys are blessed with better regulations that force manufacturers to build better.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      There's nothing stopping you from buying Japanese heatpumps in the US. They sell them there regularly.
eternalban 4y ago
It's not just household appliances. I happen to like 'On' sport shoes, for the comfort and the design. And like clockwork, after 6 months of use (walking mind you) holes develop in the fabric where the shoe bends as you walk. First pair, I assumed it was a fluke. Second pair, it became clear it is inherent in the product. Send pictures to On sports and was told it is not covered by warranty. "Normal wear and tear". I guess it is Swiss Cheese Technology (tm)! (p.s. these are not cheap shoes. And the company must be aware of this issue since my 2 pairs developed holes in the same precise place and clearly because the material they use can't repeatedly flex.)
rob_c 4y ago
so when do we get to ask where they come from now compared to then?
Serenacula 4y ago
It is worth mentioning that there is a survivorship bias inherent to this problem. The older designs that were well made tended to be the one that lasted, and so become the ones we see today, whereas the poor quality old designs already failed.
stewx 4y ago
I think a public policy solution to this could be to require a minimum warranty period for certain kinds of appliances, to force the manufacturers to increase the product quality.
danans 4y ago
> since the fridge compressors from the 1940's and 1950's era were very efficient This statement is very suspect without a citation, because since the 1970s, new refrigerator energy consumption has dropped 3x while volume has doubled [1]. As far as I can tell, fridge efficiency data from before then isn't available, but it's highly unlikely that compressors were more efficient even further back in time. Some of the improvement in efficiency is undoubtedly much better insulation and seals, but the compressors have definitely become more efficient, which is also why refrigerators are so much more quiet today than they used to be. 1. https://www.energy.gov/articles/proof-pudding-how-refrigerator-standards-have-saved-consumers-billions https://www.energy.gov/articles/proof-pudding-how-refrigerat...
eternityforest 4y ago
It seems to be almost completely unique to some but not all types appliances. There are almost no functional household products on earth I'd choose an older version of, in fact I don't think I own anything that I wouldn't prefer over the older version. But for some reason stuff other than cars and power tools that experience significant forces seem to at times get worse. I guess everything is probably built with the same tech over craftsmanship mindset and there's a few things where that results in things not lasting.

jackmott 4y ago

Could it be because the information age causes companies to compete on price much more aggressively? You can’t easily prove that your fridge really will last longer, but easy to price the price is low.

deleted 4y ago
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willis936 4y ago
I have the internet at my fingertips. I know a thermostatically controlled toaster is feasible to make into a cheap product because it existed in the 1960s and we now have transistors. Every single toaster is exactly the same with cosmetic differences. They're priced from $10 to $500 with no distinguishing features in the first $200. The market is not working, we just have the tools to realize how badly it's broken.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  The market works fine. For any category of good you can think of there will be producers that make a high quality version of it. Consumers who care about that quality (according to however you’re measuring it) will make their decisions accordingly. Consumers who reveal a preference for caring less about that quality will make decisions based on other criteria. If your complaint is that this requires effort from the consumer, then that’s not something any market could fix. The consumer will always have to consider what their preferences are and how the offerings in the market align with them, if the want to end up purchasing goods/services that align with their preferences.
  - est31 4y ago
    The complaint is that one could manufacture those more expensive high quality products at a larger quantity and, through scaling effects, one would achieve a lower price, which would make them accessible to larger segments of the market. I suppose that would be the market "working". Instead you have manufacturers churning out tons of cheap shit that breaks quickly. I guess most customers don't know how quickly different household appliances break, so they also can't compare that together with price. They have to assume that the more expensive appliances are also higher quality, but how can you judge that as a non-expert? Household appliances are textbook examples of adoption s-curves, and in different phases, different rules apply for the market. Especially in the last phase of the s-curve, those manufacturers are hurt the most which build lasting products, because their own past customers, usually the best source for new purchases from their brand, don't buy from them any more because the need is still met by the still working product. So they either go bankrupt or get bought by one of the manufacturers that put in planned obsolescence and got tons of money from that, or they change their strategy before that happens.
    - AmericanChopper 4y ago
      > The complaint is that one could manufacture those more expensive high quality products at a larger quantity and, through scaling effects, one would achieve a lower price, which would make them accessible to larger segments of the market. That complaint is immature and entirely self-interested. It’s almost always beneficial (except when there’s production shortages) to have a preference that is shared by large segments of the market. It’s not the systems fault if few people share your preferences.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        > That complaint is immature That's a bit rich for you to write -> this thread is addressing a practical problem with consumer goods, and your post is a theoretical, spherical car in a vacuum description of how ideal market should work, and falls apart in the real world. If the model worked perfectly, we would never have problems with slave labour in supply chains because ~0% of consumers are willing to buy them. The fact that we do, indicated that consumers are not able to enforce their preferences, for example because companies lie with no consequences. And if they can lie about slave labour, then they can lie about anything else.
- yojo 4y ago
  FWIW I love this Panasonic toaster, which is some substantially different toaster tech: https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-NB-G110P-FlashXpress-Infrared-Removable/dp/B008C9UFDI https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-NB-G110P-FlashXpress-Infrar... No thermostatic control, but the defaults are fine for my uses. Currently on year 10. The power button got a little finicky so I have to wedge it with a piece of cardboard to make contact, but otherwise as good as the day I bought it.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  This video makes this point very well: https://youtu.be/1OfxlSG6q5Y https://youtu.be/1OfxlSG6q5Y
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > The market is not working, we just have the tools to realize how badly it's broken. "The market" is not a single thing. It's an idea(ology) from economics, and a cultural mythology, that vaguely intersect at some point. We all think we know what "The Market" is, supply, demand, competition and so on. It's existence and operation underwrites many a political argument. Then there is the reality: Walk in to a supermarket and "choose" from 20 different brands of tinned vegetable, grown in the same region, processed in a handful of factories ultimately owned by the same parent company. "Own" a movie, on a device that you don't actually control in any way, that you were effectively forced to purchase, with money you don't have. And so on.... So, in respectful mockery of Thatcher I say "There's no such thing as The Market" - not because I don't believe in the values of property, choice, competition, innovation.... but because we don't have these, and haven't for some time. The myth of "The Market" lives on the place of early (real) capitalism as we head toward "consumer communism".
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    > respectful mockery of Thatcher There is no need to do anything "respectfully" of Thatcher. She should have been hanged. I wouldn't piss on her grave for fear the warmth would comfort her.
  - gruez 4y ago
    > > The market is not working, we just have the tools to realize how badly it's broken. >"The market" is not a single thing. Who seriously think it is? I think most people here knows that "the market" doesn't refer to an actual thing or place, just like "the internet" doesn't refer to an actual actual thing or place.
    - nonrandomstring 4y ago
      > Who seriously think it is? Nobody. I'm not implying anyone is that stupid. It's obviously a figure of speech. Which you get, right?
  - triangleman83 4y ago
    But there are choices, sometimes you're not conscious of the effect of your choice but it was made nonetheless. For your supermarket example, instead of going there you could go to a local farmer's market for those vegetables. It might cost more, but most expect higher quality there than at the supermarket. So there is another "market" option, you shouldn't just expect all your "market" options to be placed in convenient aisles at the grocery store. If you live in the city and have to drive over an hour to get to a farmer's market, well that was also a choice you made. Perhaps you didn't make that choice because you wanted to be away from locally grown produce, but the supermarket being your only option is a consequence of that choice. I'm not trying to be a jerk, just trying to point out that much of the choices we make will reduce the other choices we have and we should be conscious of the ones that drive us to become mindless consumers and remove other options from us in the market.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  > I know a thermostatically controlled toaster is feasible to make into a cheap product because it existed in the 1960s Having bought a toaster and electric kettle recently, I completely agree with your main point: buy the cheapest one you can bear to look at, because they're all the same in the essentials. But this anecdote about your aside might be diverting. One of my earliest extended memories (in the 1960s) is watching my dad repair our toaster. winding new resistance wire around the mica central divider. (The toaster was a manual model with flip-open sides, toasting one side of the bread at a time.) I don't think automatic toasters were all that cheap in the 1960s. Not everywhere, anyway, if repair of a manual toaster was worthwhile to do.
  - blihp 4y ago
    Manual repair of just about everything was worthwhile to do back then. Partly it was because labor was cheap and physical stuff was expensive (which has inverted) and partly because the overall <pick the appliance> was well built enough otherwise where one could expect to get years more service out of it post-repair. This approach doesn't payoff nearly as well when everything in the device is engineered to be within an inch of it's life once the warranty period ends. (if you're lucky)
Skunkleton 4y ago
Sounds right to me. When you look at markets where reliability is important, you see appliances that are the same. You can get good quality commercial washing machines.
moooo99 4y ago
> You can’t easily prove that your fridge really will last longer, but easy to price the price is low. I'm not so sure about that. In my experience people tend to be less price sensitive with household appliances (big one time purchases that are supposed to last long) than they are with other more expensive items. Most people I know tend to be lifelong customers if they have good experiences with a specific brand and are very willing to share that brand as a recommendation. The problem is, those good experiences don't seem to hold true anymore. Price hasn't been a good indicator for product quality and life expectancy for a while. I've seen this first hand with my family. My parents were very willing to spend significant amounts on stuff like dishwashers, fridges, or washing machines. Despite sticking to the brands they had good experiences with, the product lifetime decreased with every new product purchase. It has come to the point that they don't care for the brand they used to trust, they are just buying the stuff thats cheap and checks all the boxes. These companies seem to have traded high customer loyalty (and possibly a very efficient organic marketing channel) for more frequent sales but higher price competition. I have no insights into those companies, but I'm not sure if that was an intelligent long term play.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It's worse now - the cheaper product often lasts longer (as it's simpler) - I have a fridge/freezer thing that has basically no controls and no computers, and it chugs along. Newer refridgerators with fancy water faucets and computers and locks have failed in the time I've had it. Had a washer blow out on a computer control board; $750 for the board. A similar washer blew out on the dial, $35 for the dial.
  - cudgy 4y ago
    Similar story with old Honda’s. Simple cars that just worked with few problems, but they were simple cars with few electrical motors and digital features. Automatic, heated, air conditioned seats? No. Automatic climate control? No. Speed adjusted suspension? No. Speed adjusted stereo volume? No. Etc. However, some manufacturers like Saab actually delivered all this with excellent reliability only to be rejected by the US market and driven into the ground by General Motors. What is a quality manufacturer to do?
oezi 4y ago
The manufacturers are all gaming the system by releasing new models so quickly (and in so many varieties) that any design flaw of a model cannot be used to make a purchasing decision because the comparable old devices are no longer available.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Or there is one or two manufacturers for all the various brands. "Whirlpool brands include Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Amana, Magic Chef, Admiral, Norge, Roper, and others. See all items in Dishwasher Dishrack. Whirlpool also makes various appliance models for Sears / Kenmore." And once you start looking up part numbers you realize it goes even further.
- npteljes 4y ago
  100%. Information asymmetry, and also the glut of options make informed consumer decisions much harder than they need to be.
vidarh 4y ago
Could be. E.g. the majority of consumer grade ice machines on Amazon (at least in the UK) uses a mechanism that is near identical. This extends to mostly copying a design flaw: Most of them a compartment used to immerse cooled metal rods in water, which then rotates out of the way to let the ice cubes fall into the ice compartment when done. Most of these are made out of plastic, with a motor rotating only one side. Problem is when it's stopped mechanically by simply hitting the end of the range of motion, which means the motor effectively ends up trying to twist the compartment. This works fine for casual use - the plastics holds for a while. But use it enough, and you get cracks developing. It's trivial to fix - some of the designs have an optical diode to stop rotation in one direction, but weirdly not in the other, and doing that in both directions would solve it But I'm thinking that apart from not just coming up in testing (it takes a lot of cycles before it breaks), a lot of these problems spread because of cost cutting in the product development phase. It's a pretty obvious flaw if you observe the above mechanisms, and while you can cut a few cents of the bill of materials, without extensive testing you won't know for sure that it won't fail within the warranty window (they do if you use them as heavily as I use mine) and it doesn't take a very high failure rate to make an extra optical diode and wiring worth it. If people did product dev from scratch you'd expect at least some of them to decide it'd be worth it, but almost all of these are clearly just blindly copied designs (I'm sure multiple models must also be manufactured on spec by the same manufacturer). As a result there's little real competition, and few customers will be aware there are better alternatives, especially because it takes quite a bit of wear and tear and so most people don't shop for these types of products often enough to realistically compare, and as you point out it's hard to prove (and takes a long time to develop a reputation).
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> You can’t easily prove that your fridge really will last longer Yeah you can, it's called warranty

sydd 4y ago

Yep, some are so shitty that the whole product category becomes garbage. We went on an adventure with blenders: 1. We bought a Bosch hand blender (maxomixx) because it looked sturdy and was priced near the top at the mall -- thought that the brand and the price tag would guarantee that it would last. It broke after 8 months, turns out that the coupling between the mixer and the body is made of plastic that wore off. I called the Bosch service hotline, they told me that the whole body is one "part" that I can buy for ~80% of the original price. 2. Went back to the mall looking for one with metal coupling, turns out there is NONE. All of them are garbage with the same fault point. But luckily there is a wide selection of standing blenders, where some of them had much more massively looking, metal gears. Bought one from Electrolux. It broke after 3 months, this time the bearing on the bottom of the blender cup started leaking the grease into our food... 3. Gave up trying to get a blender from the mall, bought a Vitamix for 7x the price, which we're happy with for the last 3 years. Yes, there is plenty of planned obsolence out there, and one of the greenest things you can do is buy premium stuff that will last you a lifetime (if you can afford it :/ )

ygra 4y ago
Interestingly, the Bosch food processor we have has a plastic coupling between the motor and the meat grinder attachment on purpose, so if anything gets stuck, it's a 5 € plastic part that's broken, instead of a more expensive and less accessible one. So a plastic coupling alone doesn't sound that alarming in general.
- s0rce 4y ago
  I think Kitchenaid's have that too, I remember repairing one years ago with my dad.
  - justinlloyd 4y ago
    Yes, they precisely have that. Have repaired three Kitchenaid mixers over the years, from different eras. Even in the higher end machines where it is almost all metal gears and parts, the helical gear box in those too is all plastic parts for easy and cheap replacement, and so that anything getting stuck doesn't burn out a more expensive elctrical motor. I have an immersion blender that also has plastic gears, and even though the motor is sold as a single unit that is not an FRU, you can take it apart and service it with off-the-shelf gears you can source from eBay. The two coffee grinders I have, high quality metal burrs, plastic gearing, for the same reason. My higher quality power tools- track saw, drills, etc, all plastic gearing, metal everywhere else. It just makes sense when it comes to repairs, though can be frustrating when they strip out. That said, most consumer crap made today is complete shite.

userbinator 4y ago

They are designed to die just slightly past the warranty, so they can sell you another. Of course, the statistics means that quite a few units won't even last until then. Before manufacturing tolerances were as tight, they'd error on the side of caution and overbuild, resulting in a wider MTBF curve. There were both many early failures as well as ones which far exceeded their expected life. Now, the standard deviation is much smaller so the end-of-life has become more well-defined both at the cost of nothing much lasting longer nor shorter than expected.

markus_zhang 4y ago
So I guess the best strategy is to use them as much as possible and make sure they break in the first year...
- deleted 4y ago
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- theonemind 4y ago
  I remember someone who bought a low-mileage used car under warranty. The transmission started acting funny and making strange noises, but the dealer wouldn't do any repairs because it worked. I think he was about 8 months into a 12 month warranty. He drove in such a way as to make sure it didn't work before the warranty was up, and then they fixed it.
  - qes 4y ago
    Surely driving the vehicle in a manner that was certain to break the transmission within 4 months caused no other excessive wear in the vehicle, right? Sounds like a terrible idea, really.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  trolling manufacturer stats is quite a fun idea.
umeshunni 4y ago

bombcar 4y ago

There's a small subset that avoid it - but the only one I know of is the Speed Queen machines that are identical to their commercial offerings - and have remained basically the same for decades. One way to gauge it is see how available repair parts are (all systems eventually wear out) and what the costs look like.

geoffeg 4y ago
The quality and warranty are the primary reasons I bought a Speed Queen washer and dryer a few years ago. Most reviews say the washer isn't the best at actually cleaning clothes but 99% of the time I don't need to remove stains or dirt, I just need to wash clothes from daily use. In addition to the reliability I really like the controls. Nothing fancy, very easy and obvious with a 7-segment LED display that will likely last forever.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Speed Queen warranty is 5 years and price was 3x LG washer from Costco. Costco gives 4 year warranty with Costco credit card. So I just buy appliances from Costco and assume I will have to replace sometime after 4 years. As one data point, all of my LG Costco appliances from almost 4 years ago are still working fine, through very heavy use. We probably use washers/dryers 10+ cycles per week due to babies/toddlers. The LG inverter linear compressor fridge is still as silent as the day we got it.
  - User23 4y ago
    Old American made washers are running 40 years later. Speed Queen isn’t really about the warranty, it’s about the implications.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I prefer the implication of having it in writing. If Speed Queen’s data showed them their machines lasted 40 years, then they would advertise them with a 40 year warranty to maximize sales. Since they do not, it is safe to say that Speed Queen does not want to bet their machines will last 40 years. So why should I bet they will last longer than their stated warranty period? It is possible that Speed Queens are worth more because they are more repairable, but I have no interest in spending my time repairing my washer/dryer. And calling a technician would be $100/hour plus parts, at which point I might as well buy a new machine.

mbesto 4y ago

> They just don't last. Two words: planned obsolescence.

RichardCNormos 4y ago

People value low prices more than they value longevity.

cudgy 4y ago
This is the root of the problem. Quality machinery costs more and most people think they are getting a good deal when they buy junk at cheap prices. However, sometimes you get lucky buying cheap stuff that lasts and that is the experience we like to remember and try to repeat.
- randallsquared 4y ago
  It's the root of the general problem, but as noted elsewhere by another commenter, paying a lot more doesn't actually provide much signal that the product isn't junk.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    For beancounters, a brand's reputation for expensive but long-lasting products is an amazing opportunity to "create shareholder value" and boost (short-term) profits by cutting corners on quality. Obviously the reputation will eventually adjust and this strategy will stop working, but besides the disgruntled customers, bonuses have been paid, people have been promoted and shareholder value was created. By the time the brand dies the people involved would've moved on to their next victim. Paying more indeed isn't a reliable signal because even if a brand truly has a reputation for reliable stuff there is no guarantee someone isn't pulling the aforementioned strategy in the background.
    - cortesoft 4y ago
      Also, if you make machines that last a long time and are easily repairable, pretty soon you will saturate the market and won't have any new customers. If you can only sell to each person once, you won't have a sustainable business. All the companies that made things that last forever went out of business.

PontifexMinimus 4y ago

> I've been seeing this as a common issue throughout most of the household appliances we've tried to buy in the last ten years. They just don't last. I've had the same experience. E.g. I bought a kettle 2 years ago and it lasted for 6 months. Previous kettles have lasted many years (as they should).

archi42 4y ago
I accidentally just reasoned about kettle for another comment, but removed that part again. First, TIL: Since in the US the mains voltage is 120V, kettle there have less power (or would trip the circuit protection/burn out old sockets) than our 240V kettles (Amazon offers plenty 2200W units, might be a legal limit). It's obvious, but I totally forgot to consider this. Anyway, the main failures to expect from a kettle is a failing heating element or leaky sealing. Both can be avoided by using induction. But with induction stoves becoming the norm for new kitchens (at least around here), all you need is a suitable, passive kettle instead of the kettle+base. Plus a 3.7kW induction field will be faster to boil water than something that plugs into a 240V/16A socket. Only reason to go with a standalone kettle appliance are "smart" kettles with more precise temperature control (some teas should be prepared at specific temperatures). TL;Dr: Upgrade to an inductive stove, get a passive kettle for it, be happy :)
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  Induction is great, but an electric kettle costs like 10 bucks while changing your stove is a huge investment that includes replacing all your pots and pans, plus if you were using gas before now your household electricity consumption grows very noticeably. Not really a comparable option in my opinion.
  - archi42 4y ago
    Depends on where you live. Around here (SW Germany) non-induction electric stoves with resistive heating elements under a special glass ("Ceranfeld") are much more common for home-use than gas. So when these fail, swapping to induction is relatively easy; picking gas over electric means a lot of extra effort for many people. Personally, when buying new pots and pans in the last decade, I picked only those that work with induction (payed something like 20 Euro extra, in total); so when we finally swap the stove, we only have to replace one pan. Several friends make the same complaint, and I never understood why they didn't plan ahead (induction is not that new, especially when some of them only moved out from their parents in the last 5 to 10 years). The induction kettle of friends definitely is much faster than both their old kettle (1.[2,5] kW) and ours (2.2kW); and I am not sure if they even have a 3.7kW field. Edit: If course assuming that you eventually get a new stove anyway, at least at some point in the future. If you're settled in your house/flat for live and have a gas stove you're happy with & that will survive you, then the point is of course mood.

KennyBlanken 4y ago

To save everyone a lot of time: he finds that a sintered bronze bearing has worn and allowed metal-on-metal contact elsewhere in the unit. He theorizes it's the oil, which he demonstrates is very thin at room temperature. Which is meaningless - film strength doesn't have to be high if there isn't high pressure between sliding surfaces. The claim that fridges from the 40s and 50s were very efficient is nonsense. Even a 10-20 year old fridge is very inefficient compared to a modern fridge. It's as easy as looking at energy star ratings. > When it becomes a problem, it goes to the dump where all the foamed-together plastic parts will not be feasible to separate nor recycle. It's never been economical / feasible to manually take apart an appliance for recycling. They're shredded and the plastic/metal chunks separated mechanically for the raw materials.

cudgy 4y ago
Old refrigerators may not be as efficient, but they were built better internally and last longer. The savings from an efficient refrigerator that only lasts a few years is meaningless.
inferiorhuman 4y ago
You'd have to stick an ammeter on it, but I bet a 50s fridge is pretty efficient because they are manual defrost only. Most modern full-size fridges are auto defrost – essentially they suck down electricity to heat up the cooling system. The efficiency gains over a couple decades ago are due to moving from fixed, mechanical timers to computer controlled adaptive defrosters.
- gruez 4y ago
  >I bet a 50s fridge is pretty efficient because they are manual defrost only That doesn't seem like a fair comparison. It's like saying a bike is "pretty efficient" compared to an e-bike because it doesn't consume any energy (infinite efficiency!)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

nly 4y ago

It's very similar phenomenon to shrinkflation. Instead of getting more expensive, items are just getting lower quality

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sgustard 4y ago

Another possible cause: Do people even know how to make high-quality products any more? Who are the top 1% of refrigerator engineers, and do they still even go into refrigerator design, or did they become wall street quants instead? This is the same thing I wonder when I eat at crappy restaurants. It's not like the staff knows how to make good food and they choose not to do it. They don't know how!

naikrovek 4y ago
Engineering doesn’t change. If it was learned by one it can and will be learned by another. Manufacturers know how to make quality parts, they are just not able to, or choose not to, for whatever reason. Aftermarket parts business is a large portion of an appliance or vehicle manufacturer’s bottom line, so they make decisions to augment the profit of that business, including sacrificing quality on the appliance or vehicle.
m-ee 4y ago
Top refrigerator engineers are probably making lab freezers. I imagine a lot consumer hardware is JDM these days. Parent company mostly doing industrial design (if that) and the rest is farmed out to China where they have a standard design they're working from.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  That reminds me of something I always wondered: during that window (I'd say, roughly 1975-2000) where Japan had strong brand equity for "quality, reliable, innovative", why did they seem to make no footprint in the US appliance sector? I've never seen a Panasonic washer or Sony fridge. It wasn't a "we can't make/ship big things with relatively low value density" factor (they made cars, after all) and I'm assuming they were making something for domestic consumption (or were they buying Whirlpool fridges for Tokyo apartments?). Was there some tarriff situation keeping them out of this sector?
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >during that window (I'd say, roughly 1975-2000) where Japan had strong brand equity for "quality, reliable, innovative", why did they seem to make no footprint in the US appliance sector? I've never seen a Panasonic washer or Sony fridge. I have a Panasonic washer and fridge. They're great. >I'm assuming they were making something for domestic consumption (or were they buying Whirlpool fridges for Tokyo apartments?) Whirlpool and other western brands have no presence in Japan for appliances. It's all Panasonic, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, plus Haier, and for the cheap brand, Iris Ohyama. Virtually all appliances are made in Japan, or some (usually cheap ones) in China by Japanese companies. They probably don't bother with the US because American consumers don't want to pay for quality, and they'd have to re-engineer everything for American sizes and preferences. American appliances look nothing like Japanese ones.

danielheath 4y ago

A theory I've been developing explains this. When there wasn't enough to go around, capitalism was amazing. It created tremendous wealth, such that for the first time in history, in large parts of the world, there's enough for everyone. My theory is: Back then, the market for most goods was under-served, so the way the rich got richer was by creating more goods, since you could sell everything you could make (almost always at a profit). However, in a saturated market, the incentives change; because you can produce far more than you can sell, the rich almost exclusively get richer by taking market share from other players. Making something last 50 years instead of 10 at a 1% cost premium becomes a bad idea, because people care about the headline figure.

demomi 4y ago
Paradoxically, back when the market was LESS efficient, the extra slack afforded higher standards because they could overengineer something and still sell it easily. It always comes down to supply and demand. Supply of generic products like compressors and blenders skyrocketed. Increase the supply enough and you get a race to the bottom. All market inefficiency has been squeezed out of the market. The market has arrived at an equilibrium of making some things just high enough quality that they last longer than a few months while being as cheap as possible. Anyone trying to make something higher quality gets squeezed out. Unless there's also much higher demand to compensate for it.
- danielheath 4y ago
  The market only trends to maximum efficiency if information is sufficiently cheap for enough participants. Most people have no cost-effective way to find out how long an appliance will last, so the market cannot find the most efficient lifetime for appliances.
- mechagodzilla 4y ago
  There is enormous survivorship bias with this 'stuff was way better back in the day' argument - there have always been awful products produced, but those get replaced quickly. An awful fridge from the 1950s was replaced by the 1960s. Engineers weren't deliberately overengineering things back then out of some sense of pride, they were just worse at engineering (and material science) - some things were over-engineered, because we didn't know better ways to solve that problem, and some things were under-engineered for the same reason. I think the increased cost of labor relative to manufactured goods is a big driver of this perceived change, as nobody wants to pay a repair guy $500 to come out and fix their $500 fridge. If the fridge cost $20k we would probably still fix them and they would have a long lifetime (and the repair guy would still charge $500, like an HVAC guy), but there is almost no market for a $20k fridge when a $500 fridge is available.

judge2020 4y ago

> since the fridge compressors from the 1940's and 1950's era were very efficient Is this only true for fridges? Because this video on a 1984 washing machine versus one from today[0, timestamp relevant] shows a big difference in efficiency from then to now. 0: https://youtu.be/NHrPcx0xkGU?t=776 https://youtu.be/NHrPcx0xkGU?t=776

userbinator 4y ago
He shows the instantaneous/peak power in watts, not total energy used, and didn't even use the same meter for both. I think the actual difference is not quite so much.

jupp0r 4y ago

Sounds similar to a solid number of software engineering departments too.

gonehome 4y ago

Often it’s someone comparing a cheap modern version with some super high-end appliance from the 50s (because cheap low margin options didn’t exist back then). If you were buying a $7k fridge today to compare - that’d be interesting.

fithisux 4y ago

"This failed unit is purely an example of doing just enough to get by until it is someone else's problem" this is the trademark of humans.

GCA10 4y ago

Very true of hot-water heaters, too. We had the misfortune of recently needing to replace the "original" one that came with our house when we bought in in 1997. The installer told us that all current models, including some quite expensive ones, are warranted to last seven years and might give us a few more. "But you won't get 25 years out of anything today." Thinner vessels seem to be the main culprit. That does save a few dollars on materials costs.

hubraumhugo 4y ago

We should collect more data on product longevity and repairability. I'm trying to build a community for this: On https://exitreviews.com https://exitreviews.com, consumers can learn how long products last, where they break, and how to fix them.

niklaslohmann 4y ago
That's a cool idea ; feel free to use https://www.haaartland.com/ https://www.haaartland.com/ for this. best/Niklas
alliao 4y ago
I like the idea, would be helpful to include (if not already) where the product is sold. Toyota famously added a small metal block in the US to pass IIHS's small overlap crash test but that small block doesn't exist in other Asian countries. The modern production line is so efficient they can do that level of customisation for every market individually...

adhesive_wombat 4y ago

My plan if I magically become a billionaire is to start a consumer goods (and maybe tools) brand that makes devices that are "just good". They won't be bristling with pointless and fragile features (like WiFi in everything), they won't have overwrought styling and decorative frills, but they will do things like not skimp on 0.1g of plastic in critical places, MOSFETs, UV stabilization, etc. Captive cables avoided. Metal preferred over plastic, and spares provided at cost. Wearable parts should be off-the-shelf components where possible. Parts lists and schematics provided. Any API should be open and documented. They won't be priced or marketed as premium, they're "just good" and you shouldn't have to pay extra on top just for the logo of all you wanted was a working, long-lived device. Then, importantly, stick to it and not ride laurels all the way down to the bottom of the barrel. And refuse to sell out to larger competitors who will then gut quality. The reason it's on my Magic Billionaire list is because I cannot imagine I'd get the investment to set up a brand that isn't designed to squeeze every last penny out of the products, but rather simply provide "just good" products.

endymi0n 4y ago
As this category used to exist (and partly still does in my country with Miele, but is considered niche), I doubt you‘ll get much product market fit there. Total Adressable Market is the nerds who care, i.e. barely anybody.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  Miele gouge like hell on spares, a new door for my fridge-freezer costs about as much as the entire unit, including 2 doors, did. The door cover is maybe one of the top things to want replacing on a fridge. Also the plastic door trays are clearly suffering from "material use optimisation" because the hinges break off due to insufficient material support. On the other side, the thing is still working, but it's only been 8 years. But I do agree about the TAM, which is why it's contingent on being an idle billionaire.
  - scrlk 4y ago
    FWIW Miele refrigeration products are made by Liebherr and many are rebadged for Miele. You might be able to find an equivalent Liebherr product and save money by buying the Liebherr part instead.

iforgotpassword 4y ago

> which sacrificed its life span in the name of some modicum of energy savings. These marginal design choices are not the only way to get an efficient unit, since the fridge compressors from the 1940's and 1950's era were very efficient. This one surprised me. I need to do some digging. Did they get worse after the 50s? I know that an old fridge I had in the basement, probably from the 80s/90s, was horrible in that regard. It pulled 300W when the compressor was running, and about 20W when idle (why!?). I threw it out a long time ago, so I don't have the exact figures anymore, but over a day it consumed at least 3 to 5 times as much as the bigger one in my kitchen that was new at that time. And it was notably cooler in the basement too, so that should've worked in favor of the old one.

touch_abs 4y ago
Old ones did a few things really well; they typically have the hot radiator coils on top, or better separated from the internals (at the cost of space) better insulation (at the cost of internal space), and didnt have built in defrosters (or air circulation). They also used a somewhat more effective (but worse for the environment) refrigerant, freon. After the 50s, we demanded a larger volume, not just being larger but also sacrificing insulation and ideal hot-side placement. And we had to change the refrigerant used (and get rid of latching doors). Several features that were poor from an energy standpoint became standard (auto-defrost, air circulation).
- alliao 4y ago
  i'm quite interested in Vacuum Insulation Panel (VIP) used in some fridges nowadays, it seems the edges and punctures would be their down fall, but it does make for some strikingly thin fridge walls...

spaceman_2020 4y ago

Absolutely awful experience with air conditioners. They keep malfunctioning every two years. Meanwhile my parents have a 25 year old aircon with heavy duty copper wiring that’s still going strong. I’ll pay a premium for appliances that are simply built to last, but there’s nothing on the market built to that spec anymore.

namdnay 4y ago
Really? What type? Here in Europe they’re invariably Japanese heatpumps (Daikin, Hitachi etc) - crazy reliable
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Europe is generally better for reliability from personal experience. You guys are blessed with better regulations that force manufacturers to build better.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    There's nothing stopping you from buying Japanese heatpumps in the US. They sell them there regularly.

eternalban 4y ago

It's not just household appliances. I happen to like 'On' sport shoes, for the comfort and the design. And like clockwork, after 6 months of use (walking mind you) holes develop in the fabric where the shoe bends as you walk. First pair, I assumed it was a fluke. Second pair, it became clear it is inherent in the product. Send pictures to On sports and was told it is not covered by warranty. "Normal wear and tear". I guess it is Swiss Cheese Technology (tm)! (p.s. these are not cheap shoes. And the company must be aware of this issue since my 2 pairs developed holes in the same precise place and clearly because the material they use can't repeatedly flex.)

rob_c 4y ago

so when do we get to ask where they come from now compared to then?

Serenacula 4y ago

It is worth mentioning that there is a survivorship bias inherent to this problem. The older designs that were well made tended to be the one that lasted, and so become the ones we see today, whereas the poor quality old designs already failed.

stewx 4y ago

I think a public policy solution to this could be to require a minimum warranty period for certain kinds of appliances, to force the manufacturers to increase the product quality.

danans 4y ago

> since the fridge compressors from the 1940's and 1950's era were very efficient This statement is very suspect without a citation, because since the 1970s, new refrigerator energy consumption has dropped 3x while volume has doubled [1]. As far as I can tell, fridge efficiency data from before then isn't available, but it's highly unlikely that compressors were more efficient even further back in time. Some of the improvement in efficiency is undoubtedly much better insulation and seals, but the compressors have definitely become more efficient, which is also why refrigerators are so much more quiet today than they used to be. 1. https://www.energy.gov/articles/proof-pudding-how-refrigerator-standards-have-saved-consumers-billions https://www.energy.gov/articles/proof-pudding-how-refrigerat...

eternityforest 4y ago

It seems to be almost completely unique to some but not all types appliances. There are almost no functional household products on earth I'd choose an older version of, in fact I don't think I own anything that I wouldn't prefer over the older version. But for some reason stuff other than cars and power tools that experience significant forces seem to at times get worse. I guess everything is probably built with the same tech over craftsmanship mindset and there's a few things where that results in things not lasting.