It's a trade-off. People don't want appliances that break down after a few years but they also want cheap appliances... In this case it seems to boil down to:

It's a trade-off. People don't want appliances that break down after a few years but they also want cheap appliances... In this case it seems to boil down to: "In the end he replaced the light bulb (which hadn't worked for years, we hadn't bothered replacing it) and the message had gone away anyway."... i.e. the guy could have replaced the light bulb when it broke and perhaps nothing would have happened in the first place. So this article comes across as complaining too much, frankly.