4 ms·

My parents have a clothes drier from the 1970s and a fridge from the 1990s. They have needed repairs, but they were infrequent and not so costly as to necessita

by kmoser 3y ago

My parents have a clothes drier from the 1970s and a fridge from the 1990s. They have needed repairs, but they were infrequent and not so costly as to necessitate buying a new unit. My A/C is only four years old and the maintenance guy is telling me one of the fans is drawing too much power and will need to be replaced soon. Despite the part being free under warranty, they want $600 to replace it. This seems to be standard in the industry. Same for the capacitor: the part is only $17 but the authorized service companies want several hundred dollars to replace it, a job that should only take 15 minutes. It's almost as if they know they have us over a barrel.

beAbU 3y ago
That dryer will probably use a shocking amount of power. Depending on local power costs a modern compressor dryer will easily pay for itself in a couple of years compared to sticking with the old one.
- leoedin 3y ago
  Yeah, I did the maths with a heat pump drier and found it would pay for itself in electricity savings in a couple of years. And that was before the cost of electricity in the UK tripled. It uses something like 1/4 of the electricity per load, and because it's unvented all the heat remains in the building envelope.
  - switch007 3y ago
    I have to run my heat pump dryer for about 20-30% longer, though. They seem to just think they can get away with gaslighting you about how long it takes to dry clothes. Even on "extra dry" the clothes often aren't dry. It's a fairly decent one, AEG. rrp was ~£650 IIRC
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  Similarly, I just installed a hybrid water heater and it is incredible. My kWH usage for hotwater went from 10% monthly bill to just 3% (and the heat pump tank cools/dehumidifies the basement it's within).
- kmoser 3y ago
  Are you factoring in the more frequent repair costs incurred when the "smart" features fail and incapacitate the whole device?
beAbU 3y ago
Watch out for survivorship bias. How many of those old appliances had to break and fail in the first 10 years for these two to survive.
- kmoser 3y ago
  My appliance repair guy, who repairs appliances all day and has seen it all, told me to hold on to my (relatively old) appliances as long as possible because they are more easily repaired than the newer ones. Sure, it's his job to fix things so he has incentive to repair rather than recommend a replacement (in which he would make $0) but I trust him: when my 20-year-old microwave oven recently died, he said it would be several hundred dollars to fix and would not be worth the money (I agreed). So yes, many old appliances have broken and were likely not worth repairing, but on average all the evidence points to newer devices being more finicky, easily broken, and harder and more expensive to repair than older, simpler devices. Every engineer worth their salt knows that simpler is usually more reliable.
- Tanoc 3y ago
  I've been lucky enough to live in basically the same place since the '90s with almost all the same neighbours, and when I'm invited into the houses of my older neighbours almost all of them have the same appliances they've had since the early 2000s. Meanwhile if I go into the houses of more recently moved in neighbours or younger neighbours who had to restock their houses when they moved in, often times when I enter into their houses to talk I notice that there's a new appliance every few months, almost all replaced due to poor performance or failure. I myself have repaired everything from toasters to microwaves in the last few years as things have aged in my house, and it got me a reputation that has encouraged family members to bring things to me to be fixed. There's a stark difference in how things are made post 2010, and the quality only gets worse post 2020. Often times the cost cutting goes so beyond making manufacturability easier that it makes it impossible to use whatever it is for it's intended purpose for more than a few times. For example older smoke detectors have the boards on legs where the screws go through them, and for high quality ones the legs have threaded brass inserts so that if you tighten things down after replacing the battery you don't have a chance of stripping the threading. Newer ones the boards just float freely inside the case and are held in by snap clips which become brittle after just a couple of years and break easily, meaning you have to glue the board back in after replacing the battery. Key fobs and remotes often suffer the exact same problem of using plastic snap clips which will break the first time you have to pry the body open to replace the CR2032 battery inside. I've had to buy a new car key specifically because of that. Showerheads use soft compound plastics for the flow rings which break down unlike their older rubber variants, not only clogging some of the showerhead's openings but also failing to function as a flow ring and allowing the full force of the pipe's throughput. Freestanding lamps no longer route the cable through the bottom and attach it via a ring inside the body as a double insulator. Instead often times the cable is just glued into a hole in the side, and if you're lucky there's a rubber ring to cap the hole and act as an insulator. I've gotten shocked from cheap metal desk lamps because of this. Clocks these days are just single chips blobbed onto a cheap board with an induction motor powered by a single AAA battery and three plastic gears to move the hands. Most have as severe a drift as minutes per week which gets worse as the batteries lose charge. Old ones used batteries to periodically wind springs under tension or the 60Hz frequency of the electric grid which would move a gear system at a consistent ratio, keeping drift under a few seconds a month. Survivorship bias may be real, but even cheap garbage from the '90s is far better built than anything I can buy now that isn't hand made.
jamiek88 3y ago
Anything that doesn’t involve coolant bleeding can easily be done yourself or by a handy pal via the university of YouTube.
- rentseekingb 3y ago
  1000x this. I’ve started to learn how to do everything myself via YouTube. Am I an expert? Heck no. Can I do a dang reasonable job for easily 1/10th the cost? Sure seems to be true.
  - nicbou 3y ago
    It's not just the cost, but the hassle of booking someone else to fix your stuff. The same is true with all self-repairs.
    - cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
      Yep. I’ve really had to unfortunately that there are so many things that are very hard to just “throw money at”, unless it’s A LOT of money. Just wrangling someone to come and fix my…whatever…can easily take hours and hours of work, no matter what I’m willing to pay.
      - nicbou 3y ago
        This is how I feel about small repairs. Most of the time the five minute fix is easier than dropping the item off at a repair shop. On the other hand some fixes aren't worth getting the tools and doing the research, nor taking the risk of making the problem worse. A big part of adulthood is figuring out what is and isn't worth fixing yourself.
- ljf 3y ago
  After about 3 years my washing machine broke - 3 mins on youtube showed me it was likely the carbon brushes - £5 part from ebay. Took 30 mins to fit once they arrived, and I've had to to the do the job twice more, but now approaching 10 years with the same machine still going strong.
rentseekingb 3y ago
This frustrates me to no end. Nearly every industry feels like a scam now. Outright lying to customers, over-charging them. Heck, I get it, they’re a business and need to make money. But there are reasonable limits.

by kmoser 3y ago

beAbU 3y ago

That dryer will probably use a shocking amount of power. Depending on local power costs a modern compressor dryer will easily pay for itself in a couple of years compared to sticking with the old one.

leoedin 3y ago
Yeah, I did the maths with a heat pump drier and found it would pay for itself in electricity savings in a couple of years. And that was before the cost of electricity in the UK tripled. It uses something like 1/4 of the electricity per load, and because it's unvented all the heat remains in the building envelope.
- switch007 3y ago
  I have to run my heat pump dryer for about 20-30% longer, though. They seem to just think they can get away with gaslighting you about how long it takes to dry clothes. Even on "extra dry" the clothes often aren't dry. It's a fairly decent one, AEG. rrp was ~£650 IIRC
ProllyInfamous 3y ago
Similarly, I just installed a hybrid water heater and it is incredible. My kWH usage for hotwater went from 10% monthly bill to just 3% (and the heat pump tank cools/dehumidifies the basement it's within).
kmoser 3y ago
Are you factoring in the more frequent repair costs incurred when the "smart" features fail and incapacitate the whole device?

beAbU 3y ago

Watch out for survivorship bias. How many of those old appliances had to break and fail in the first 10 years for these two to survive.

kmoser 3y ago
My appliance repair guy, who repairs appliances all day and has seen it all, told me to hold on to my (relatively old) appliances as long as possible because they are more easily repaired than the newer ones. Sure, it's his job to fix things so he has incentive to repair rather than recommend a replacement (in which he would make $0) but I trust him: when my 20-year-old microwave oven recently died, he said it would be several hundred dollars to fix and would not be worth the money (I agreed). So yes, many old appliances have broken and were likely not worth repairing, but on average all the evidence points to newer devices being more finicky, easily broken, and harder and more expensive to repair than older, simpler devices. Every engineer worth their salt knows that simpler is usually more reliable.
Tanoc 3y ago
I've been lucky enough to live in basically the same place since the '90s with almost all the same neighbours, and when I'm invited into the houses of my older neighbours almost all of them have the same appliances they've had since the early 2000s. Meanwhile if I go into the houses of more recently moved in neighbours or younger neighbours who had to restock their houses when they moved in, often times when I enter into their houses to talk I notice that there's a new appliance every few months, almost all replaced due to poor performance or failure. I myself have repaired everything from toasters to microwaves in the last few years as things have aged in my house, and it got me a reputation that has encouraged family members to bring things to me to be fixed. There's a stark difference in how things are made post 2010, and the quality only gets worse post 2020. Often times the cost cutting goes so beyond making manufacturability easier that it makes it impossible to use whatever it is for it's intended purpose for more than a few times. For example older smoke detectors have the boards on legs where the screws go through them, and for high quality ones the legs have threaded brass inserts so that if you tighten things down after replacing the battery you don't have a chance of stripping the threading. Newer ones the boards just float freely inside the case and are held in by snap clips which become brittle after just a couple of years and break easily, meaning you have to glue the board back in after replacing the battery. Key fobs and remotes often suffer the exact same problem of using plastic snap clips which will break the first time you have to pry the body open to replace the CR2032 battery inside. I've had to buy a new car key specifically because of that. Showerheads use soft compound plastics for the flow rings which break down unlike their older rubber variants, not only clogging some of the showerhead's openings but also failing to function as a flow ring and allowing the full force of the pipe's throughput. Freestanding lamps no longer route the cable through the bottom and attach it via a ring inside the body as a double insulator. Instead often times the cable is just glued into a hole in the side, and if you're lucky there's a rubber ring to cap the hole and act as an insulator. I've gotten shocked from cheap metal desk lamps because of this. Clocks these days are just single chips blobbed onto a cheap board with an induction motor powered by a single AAA battery and three plastic gears to move the hands. Most have as severe a drift as minutes per week which gets worse as the batteries lose charge. Old ones used batteries to periodically wind springs under tension or the 60Hz frequency of the electric grid which would move a gear system at a consistent ratio, keeping drift under a few seconds a month. Survivorship bias may be real, but even cheap garbage from the '90s is far better built than anything I can buy now that isn't hand made.

jamiek88 3y ago

Anything that doesn’t involve coolant bleeding can easily be done yourself or by a handy pal via the university of YouTube.

rentseekingb 3y ago
1000x this. I’ve started to learn how to do everything myself via YouTube. Am I an expert? Heck no. Can I do a dang reasonable job for easily 1/10th the cost? Sure seems to be true.
- nicbou 3y ago
  It's not just the cost, but the hassle of booking someone else to fix your stuff. The same is true with all self-repairs.
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
    Yep. I’ve really had to unfortunately that there are so many things that are very hard to just “throw money at”, unless it’s A LOT of money. Just wrangling someone to come and fix my…whatever…can easily take hours and hours of work, no matter what I’m willing to pay.
    - nicbou 3y ago
      This is how I feel about small repairs. Most of the time the five minute fix is easier than dropping the item off at a repair shop. On the other hand some fixes aren't worth getting the tools and doing the research, nor taking the risk of making the problem worse. A big part of adulthood is figuring out what is and isn't worth fixing yourself.
ljf 3y ago
After about 3 years my washing machine broke - 3 mins on youtube showed me it was likely the carbon brushes - £5 part from ebay. Took 30 mins to fit once they arrived, and I've had to to the do the job twice more, but now approaching 10 years with the same machine still going strong.

rentseekingb 3y ago

This frustrates me to no end. Nearly every industry feels like a scam now. Outright lying to customers, over-charging them. Heck, I get it, they’re a business and need to make money. But there are reasonable limits.