6 ms·

It only really needs to be on the upper managements desk: "The $3.57 you save on capacitors per unit will cost you $50 in lost good will." On the other hand t

It only really needs to be on the upper managements desk: "The $3.57 you save on capacitors per unit will cost you $50 in lost good will." On the other hand there is a balance between longevity through simplified maintenance and replacing aged appliances with newer and significantly more efficient models.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sandworm101 2y ago
And being $3.57 more expensive than the other guy will deny you 90% of sales on amazon or any other online marketplace.
- asah 2y ago
  Sadly, there's has no system for long term reviews. In my dreams, Amazon/etc would engage customers about their durable products and ask how often you still use the product and it/when you're thinking of replacing it... Given the economics, I wonder if best buy could pay customers $10 for a survey of their old products, knowing that it'll inspire upgrades etc.
  - me_me_me 2y ago
    i lost my faith in amazon. its all alibaba rebrands and mass fake reviews, plus amazon pushing their own chepo brand into every search. its shocking how amazon went from 'me getting a package every week' to 'i go there only if i have too'
    - nucleardog 2y ago
      Amazon is now, largely, just Aliexpress with faster shipping and easier returns (and higher prices). Even in areas where they have brand name products, it's often impossible to surface them through their search. (I've, many times, failed to find something there and then went and searched Google/etc and the top result has been... an Amazon link to exactly what I'm looking for.) And if you purchase through Amazon, there's no reason to believe it's not gray market or something else where you may end up having issues with support/warranty if you ever need. And combined with the inventory commingling, even if you find brand name products there you can't be sure you'll actually receive it and not a knock-off. So it really only makes sense to order things that are already the cheap/knock-off quality anyway. So... yeah, there was a nice period of time there where Amazon was just "shopping made more convenient". These days it's "Aliexpress made more convenient". Unless I'm setting out to buy cheaply made Chinese imports with no warranty, I'm not even go to start looking on Amazon. There's little reason to.
  - lancesells 2y ago
    That's Anti-Amazon behavior. Whatever is going on with their Alibaba-like store is not about finding good products.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    I would not spend 10 seconds of my time writing a product review or answering a survey like that. If Amazon is interested in selling good products they can hire product testers who will do teardowns, destructive testing, and running them through a 5-year simulated use durability test.
  - themaninthedark 2y ago
    Do you pay for Consumer Reports?
- kristopolous 2y ago
  They have the data to infer reliability rates based on things like returns, time to purchase similar item, frequency of repeat purchase, etc. Over the volume of say Amazon, The noisiness of varied intent will normalize itself out across a sector. They could surface this as a reliability metric on some kind of relative scale. They could...
ffsm8 2y ago
Alternative phrasing: "the $3.57 you save (per unit) today will give you a $100.000 end of year bonus, but cost the company millions in future lost sales" Guess what theyre gonna do?
- andsoitis 2y ago
  > but cost the company millions in future lost sales Isn’t the company going to make more sales in the future (and hence more profit)? And isn’t replacing stuff with new versions going to lead to improvements in people’s lives through more efficient, quieter, and more effective technology?
  - pilchard123 2y ago
    Sure, but if the exec in question has moved on to another company by then, what do they care?
  - godshatter 2y ago
    It's been my experience that newer technology, though being more efficient, etc, breaks much faster than the old powerhouse tech from the 50's, 60's, and the 70's. I don't see my 1950's-something oven dying anytime soon. It will outlive me if I don't replace it for that one shiny new feature I convince myself I just have to have, or because it doesn't match my curtains. So, yes, replacing stuff with new versions will bring more and more sales as opposed to building something that will last. Hence "planned obsolescence" and the war on making things repairable that we've seen lately. Great for business, bad for the customer.
    - Sanzig 2y ago
      To be fair, it's a bit more subtle than that. There's a level of survivor bias involved - all the unreliable appliances from the 50s-70s have long since been hauled off to scrap metal recycling, so what's left are the long-lived ones. Modern electronics certainly can be made with much higher reliability than their mid-century ancestors, but the driving factor that prevents this is aggressive cost cutting that happily shaves pennies off COGS to shift the statistical distribution to the left. Unless consumers are willing to pay more for long-lived devices, this is doomed to continue.
aeyes 2y ago
> replacing aged appliances with newer and significantly more efficient models Are we still expecting to make significant efficiency improvements for appliances in the next 30 years? Will it be enough to justify the production of a new appliance? Legal warranty for appliances like washers, dryers, refrigerators among others should probably be raised to at least 5 years.
- vel0city 2y ago
  The thing that gets me about modern warranties on appliances is how weasely they'll market their warranties. I've got GE clothes washer and dryer proudly proclaiming their 10 year warranty. It's a 10 year warranty on the motor and the drum (IIRC). Not on the motor inverter unit, which had a one-year warranty. Guess which part is likely to fail? Guess what that GE service tech is going to recommend you do after he prices out several hundred dollars of parts he thinks he might need because he's too lazy to actually diagnose the issue? An LG dishwasher with a similar 10 year warranty on the pumps and what not in the dishwasher. Awesome, great. The display panel has failing LEDs. Is that under that warranty? Nope. Who cares about the pump not technically failing if one can't know what mode the dishwasher is in? If they're going to stick a sticker on the face advertising their warranty on an appliance it should cover the whole appliance. Not just a small handful of parts that should practically never fail under regular use while all the surrounding stuff has a nearly useless warranty. I'm so salty about warranties and support these days I usually try and do every possible thing I can do to fix the problem myself before obviously voiding a warranty before I ever bother calling their support. So worthless most of the time.
  - aaron_m04 2y ago
    Not to mention binding arbitration with opt-out that is a pain in the ass. I had to go through this for an LG washer recently.
VoodooJuJu 2y ago
>if you cut corners, you may be rich, but then I'll think you're a bad boy! Uh oh, a moral judgement from a peasant? Say it aint so. Anything but that. I'm literally shaking right now. Anyway, here are some actual incentives: - If you do some shady corner-cutting, you'll be legally compelled to trade in your Bugatti and drive a used Kia the rest of your life - If this chemical causes bodily harm to me, we shall inflict bodily harm on thee - A portion of the profits will be placed in a trust and will be passed down to your children, if and only if your product lasts long enough to be passed down to our children - If you (banker) lose our money, you will lose your head
- saturn8601 2y ago
  These rules discourage new businesses from starting and you end up in a situation like France where their largest company is some fashion company formed eons ago (probably before all the regulations).
  - mmooss 2y ago
    France is an extremely wealthy country with possibly the best quality of life in the world - many would say better than in the English-speaking countries home to most of HN.
  - wiz21c 2y ago
    > These rules discourage new businesses from starting No. They encourage new businesses to start without compromising on the fundamental stuff.
vkou 2y ago
> "The $3.57 you save on capacitors per unit will cost you $50 in lost good will." Or it might cost you $0 in lost good will, and will gain you $5 in sales because many price-sensitive people will buy the thing that's cheapest, without doing an omniscient analysis of its quality. Not to mention that gold-plating your capacitors won't do you much good if some other part is expected to fail first.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

sandworm101 2y ago

And being $3.57 more expensive than the other guy will deny you 90% of sales on amazon or any other online marketplace.

asah 2y ago
Sadly, there's has no system for long term reviews. In my dreams, Amazon/etc would engage customers about their durable products and ask how often you still use the product and it/when you're thinking of replacing it... Given the economics, I wonder if best buy could pay customers $10 for a survey of their old products, knowing that it'll inspire upgrades etc.
- me_me_me 2y ago
  i lost my faith in amazon. its all alibaba rebrands and mass fake reviews, plus amazon pushing their own chepo brand into every search. its shocking how amazon went from 'me getting a package every week' to 'i go there only if i have too'
  - nucleardog 2y ago
    Amazon is now, largely, just Aliexpress with faster shipping and easier returns (and higher prices). Even in areas where they have brand name products, it's often impossible to surface them through their search. (I've, many times, failed to find something there and then went and searched Google/etc and the top result has been... an Amazon link to exactly what I'm looking for.) And if you purchase through Amazon, there's no reason to believe it's not gray market or something else where you may end up having issues with support/warranty if you ever need. And combined with the inventory commingling, even if you find brand name products there you can't be sure you'll actually receive it and not a knock-off. So it really only makes sense to order things that are already the cheap/knock-off quality anyway. So... yeah, there was a nice period of time there where Amazon was just "shopping made more convenient". These days it's "Aliexpress made more convenient". Unless I'm setting out to buy cheaply made Chinese imports with no warranty, I'm not even go to start looking on Amazon. There's little reason to.
- lancesells 2y ago
  That's Anti-Amazon behavior. Whatever is going on with their Alibaba-like store is not about finding good products.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  I would not spend 10 seconds of my time writing a product review or answering a survey like that. If Amazon is interested in selling good products they can hire product testers who will do teardowns, destructive testing, and running them through a 5-year simulated use durability test.
- themaninthedark 2y ago
  Do you pay for Consumer Reports?
kristopolous 2y ago
They have the data to infer reliability rates based on things like returns, time to purchase similar item, frequency of repeat purchase, etc. Over the volume of say Amazon, The noisiness of varied intent will normalize itself out across a sector. They could surface this as a reliability metric on some kind of relative scale. They could...

ffsm8 2y ago

Alternative phrasing: "the $3.57 you save (per unit) today will give you a $100.000 end of year bonus, but cost the company millions in future lost sales" Guess what theyre gonna do?

andsoitis 2y ago
> but cost the company millions in future lost sales Isn’t the company going to make more sales in the future (and hence more profit)? And isn’t replacing stuff with new versions going to lead to improvements in people’s lives through more efficient, quieter, and more effective technology?
- pilchard123 2y ago
  Sure, but if the exec in question has moved on to another company by then, what do they care?
- godshatter 2y ago
  It's been my experience that newer technology, though being more efficient, etc, breaks much faster than the old powerhouse tech from the 50's, 60's, and the 70's. I don't see my 1950's-something oven dying anytime soon. It will outlive me if I don't replace it for that one shiny new feature I convince myself I just have to have, or because it doesn't match my curtains. So, yes, replacing stuff with new versions will bring more and more sales as opposed to building something that will last. Hence "planned obsolescence" and the war on making things repairable that we've seen lately. Great for business, bad for the customer.
  - Sanzig 2y ago
    To be fair, it's a bit more subtle than that. There's a level of survivor bias involved - all the unreliable appliances from the 50s-70s have long since been hauled off to scrap metal recycling, so what's left are the long-lived ones. Modern electronics certainly can be made with much higher reliability than their mid-century ancestors, but the driving factor that prevents this is aggressive cost cutting that happily shaves pennies off COGS to shift the statistical distribution to the left. Unless consumers are willing to pay more for long-lived devices, this is doomed to continue.

aeyes 2y ago

> replacing aged appliances with newer and significantly more efficient models Are we still expecting to make significant efficiency improvements for appliances in the next 30 years? Will it be enough to justify the production of a new appliance? Legal warranty for appliances like washers, dryers, refrigerators among others should probably be raised to at least 5 years.

vel0city 2y ago
The thing that gets me about modern warranties on appliances is how weasely they'll market their warranties. I've got GE clothes washer and dryer proudly proclaiming their 10 year warranty. It's a 10 year warranty on the motor and the drum (IIRC). Not on the motor inverter unit, which had a one-year warranty. Guess which part is likely to fail? Guess what that GE service tech is going to recommend you do after he prices out several hundred dollars of parts he thinks he might need because he's too lazy to actually diagnose the issue? An LG dishwasher with a similar 10 year warranty on the pumps and what not in the dishwasher. Awesome, great. The display panel has failing LEDs. Is that under that warranty? Nope. Who cares about the pump not technically failing if one can't know what mode the dishwasher is in? If they're going to stick a sticker on the face advertising their warranty on an appliance it should cover the whole appliance. Not just a small handful of parts that should practically never fail under regular use while all the surrounding stuff has a nearly useless warranty. I'm so salty about warranties and support these days I usually try and do every possible thing I can do to fix the problem myself before obviously voiding a warranty before I ever bother calling their support. So worthless most of the time.
- aaron_m04 2y ago
  Not to mention binding arbitration with opt-out that is a pain in the ass. I had to go through this for an LG washer recently.

VoodooJuJu 2y ago

>if you cut corners, you may be rich, but then I'll think you're a bad boy! Uh oh, a moral judgement from a peasant? Say it aint so. Anything but that. I'm literally shaking right now. Anyway, here are some actual incentives: - If you do some shady corner-cutting, you'll be legally compelled to trade in your Bugatti and drive a used Kia the rest of your life - If this chemical causes bodily harm to me, we shall inflict bodily harm on thee - A portion of the profits will be placed in a trust and will be passed down to your children, if and only if your product lasts long enough to be passed down to our children - If you (banker) lose our money, you will lose your head

saturn8601 2y ago
These rules discourage new businesses from starting and you end up in a situation like France where their largest company is some fashion company formed eons ago (probably before all the regulations).
- mmooss 2y ago
  France is an extremely wealthy country with possibly the best quality of life in the world - many would say better than in the English-speaking countries home to most of HN.
- wiz21c 2y ago
  > These rules discourage new businesses from starting No. They encourage new businesses to start without compromising on the fundamental stuff.

vkou 2y ago

> "The $3.57 you save on capacitors per unit will cost you $50 in lost good will." Or it might cost you $0 in lost good will, and will gain you $5 in sales because many price-sensitive people will buy the thing that's cheapest, without doing an omniscient analysis of its quality. Not to mention that gold-plating your capacitors won't do you much good if some other part is expected to fail first.