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Well, sort of. I disagree. I think if the planned lifetime of a product was on a specially formatted government mandated sticker, like how the power usage / cos
by makmanalp 12y ago
Well, sort of. I disagree. I think if the planned lifetime of a product was on a specially formatted government mandated sticker, like how the power usage / cost of air conditioners or lightbulbs are displayed, then I think a lot of people would be inclined to make a proper calculation and buy the best cost to lifetime ratio.
Right now there is information asymmetry - we don't know the expected lifetime so we have to choose by other factors. Brand reputation, amazon reviews, relative cost signaling, what the box looks like, etc. If we did know this info, it'd weigh in very heavily.
Then of course there's the problem of how to incentivize companies to not lie about that number ...
- rodgerd 12y ago> Then of course there's the problem of how to incentivize companies to not lie about that number ... In New Zealand we don't have the published information, but consumer law has been applied such that if things don't last a "reasonable" length of time (e.g. 5 years for a TV) the retailer has a responsibility to repair or replace[1]. In the same vein I imagine that, if manufacturers were forced to replace anything that didn't meet the claimed lifespan at the time of sale then manufacturers would quickly become very good at providing numbers that aligned with real-world failure rates and lifespans. [1] "We don't have those any more" is not an excuse - if you sell a TV that breaks after a year and can't repair it, you'll be replacing it with the closest current equivalent model.