I think a more likely explanation is that in the majority of cases when shopping for an appliance and your choices are a $1500 one and a $2000 one, you buy the cheaper one. This forces manufacturers to compete on price, and to cut costs wherever possible to remain profitable.
Additionally, I just spent 30 seconds googling and a washer/dryer set cost $495 in 1953, which is ~$4500 in today's buying power. You can buy a cheap washer/dryer set these days for $500 on sale, which is pretty incredible. I don't know what super heavy duty high end washer/dryer you could get these days for $4500, but I bet you could find one that would last 50 years.
James May (unusually) made a very good point that the "good old days" is an illusion created by survivorship bias, nostalgia, and failure to understand economics. The survivorship bias especially should be obvious:
Lots of cheap crap was made throughout the years, but it didn't survive. We only have examples of the stuff that managed to survive, or was notable in some way. The $50 Smartphone equivalent of the 50's was no more notable than today's version, and no more long-lasting.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=james+may+reass...
I also strongly recommend the mini-motorcycle episode.
"Therefore medieval England must have been full of cathedrals. It must have been amazing!"
Even Lego is looking to cut mfg costs (or has, was an older article) by switching to cheaper plastic, and removing some of the supports.
What kind of world are we living in where we need cheaper plastic?
These product comparisons all fail because today, we can make so much cheaper products than we could back then. And we are now comparing the cheapest crap (even a 100$ keyboard is cheap in comparison to the Model M) with MUCH more expensive products from the past. (Lego might be an exception here, as that product is the same)
Being both non-American and non-public, LEGO are less susceptible to the MBA bean-counting that is at the root of most of the problems described in this thread.
https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/25...
The difference between a top 1% appliance and an average appliance is probably less than $10 of materials and $5 in labor.
Once you work in manufacturing you realize that components are actually very expensive, not a $10 joke.
In the case of a refrigerator, the manufacturer undersized the motor, probably to meet some efficiency standard. The previous years model had an adequate motor, which worked much better.
I've also seen cases (Whirlpool refrigerators) where they included a rubber nipple that was too narrow, and would either freeze up and clog with biofilm. End result was icing of the condenser and evaporator. (Here's a description of the problem: https://partsdr.com/blog/w10619951-updated-drain-tube-fix-ki... )
Then of course, you have Beatz headphones, which really are the next best thing to a scam.
Meanwhile my cheap apartment-scale fridge was made with chewing gum and hope.
http://aceee.org/blog/2014/09/how-your-refrigerator-has-kept...
For refrigerators at least, it doesn't make sense to make them robust enough to last more than 10-15 years since it's worth it to replace them over that time period. My understanding is the vast majority of refrigerators are then recycled. All those metals are valuable.
And all those refrigerants need to be collected to prevent release to the atmosphere.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18176916/ns/business-consumer_news...
the paint, drum, motor, finish, everything looks like new. But, the controller board burned.
I know my way around electronics, mind you, I can see exactly what is wrong (burned transformer), but the whole board is covered in some gelatin that makes any repair impossible.
the power input board is also water proofed with the usual epoxy that you can chip away and do your repair. but the controller board gelatin thing makes it impossible!
oh, and that board not only is NOT covered by the ten year warranty (only the drum and motor) but not a single place carry it. even LG cannot provide me that part for any money in the world. discontinued they say. after 4 years.
if anyone want to pick it up and drive the pristine electronics with an Arduino, msg me. machine is in socal though.
I don't know what the rationale is for the board being covered in a half inch of rubber potting. A smaller coating would have provided a water seal, and this rubber is a heat insulator. Seems counterintuitive to me.
You will have to replace the board if the transformer has an open winding, because all these transformers are application specific. The silicone was burnt around some of the transformer terminals on my board, which scared me, but I didn't find any open windings. The other special part on this board is the cpu, everything else on the board is commodity and it is a real shame that LG decide to use this rubber potting AND screw up the supply of replacement parts.
I think it's a real flaw to integrate switchmode power supplies into control boards.
Experience tells us that the simplest explanation for manufacturer's behavior is the kind of malice called "maximizing profit, all else be damned".
That's Occam's Razor in use right there -- we would need to get out of our way to invent morally good businesses, incompetent engineers who can't get things to last, and modern conveniences that have short lifespans as necessary engineering tradeoffs to explain that away.
I was going to suggest that a lengthy warranty would be a good guide, but gcb0 below says their LG came with a 10 year warranty which was worthless because it didn't cover one part.
Are customers even offered the option?
And why would "50 year appliances" have to be more expensive? The simple parts, and more basic processes used to manufacture them don't sound like costing more. And they could drop most of the electronics, IoT crap, and fancy features. If the average household could buy a fridge in 1970, why wouldn't they be able to afford one today?
Miele sells dishwashers.
And better made things cost more money for lots of reasons -- better materials ($$), more coats of paint (time, materials), heavier duty metals or plastic (time, materials, shipping expense), more careful manufacture, tighter tolerances, and marketing.
> New fridges aren't just a little more efficient, they're incredibly more efficient. A 1986-era 18 c.f. fridge uses 1400 kWh a year, while a modern energy-efficient model uses only 350 kWh — a whopping 75% reduction. At 15¢ kWh, trading in a pre-1986 fridge for a new efficient one would save about $158 a year in electricity costs. And some older fridges are even worse than the average. One reader estimates her savings to be $238 per year for trading in her 1979 fridge for a 2004 model.
There's not some great conspiracy of appliance manufacturers. All those difficult-to-repair parts have been added to make the appliances cheaper, or more energy efficient, or quieter, or speedier and more effective (compare how dishwashers and washing machines and dryers from a few decades ago work to how they do now).
http://www.aei.org/publication/appliance-shopping-1959-vs-20...
200$ in 1959 for a washer = 1600$ today inflation adjusted. So yes I can go on Best Buy's website and pick a mid range washing machine for 1/2 the price. And yes there are plenty of cheaper examples, but the mid range cost in no way justifies 1/5 the the lifespan.
Also, a sidenote - that Hotpoint washer comes with a free 10 year parts warranty - you have to pay for the engineer to come and install it, but Hotpoint will replace any part of the washer for free, or give you a new one if they can't fix it.
And people complain the average machine does not last 10 years. So, unless you found the cheapest washing machine from 1950's it's not exactly a direct comparison.
Take jackets. I guarantee you that a modern windbreaker is in every way better than an old school leather jacket. Lighter, cheaper, requires no maintenance, and lasts longer. But polyester is not as cool as leather and doesn't feel as sustatial so we have the sense that things used to be better. No way. It's just that synthetics like that didn't exist 100 years ago and leather was the best you could get.
I used to buy a nice looking faux-leather jacket from Zara three years ago. The faux leather layer started discoloring making it look like shit after a year and completely peeling off after a year. Worst shit ever. I learned that I have very little need for fancy clothes, and I don't care about styles. But I learned to buy leather jackets after that. A good (not nice) leather jacket is very much worth the money I paid for. Same for shoes, shoes that are built to last are very valuable to me.
I'm hoping the Electrolux I spent $3000 on 5 years ago lasts another 45. That would be great. So far so good though. No rust, no leaks, and the only problem we had to call a service person for turned out to be the fault of our electrician, not the appliance.
Both my washer and dryer failed within 2 months of each other after 6 years.
The dryers main board failed and price to repair was nearly £350 just for the part.
The washers pump and some kind of water sensor failed simultaneously, leading to a constantly filling drum that wouldn't be emptied. Que the film style comedy of water vomiting forth from the soap dispenser tray all over the kitchen.
The warranty is only 2 years standard (thanks for that at least EU) but anything more is paid. No 10 year guarantee anymore!
And mine wasn't the only newer Miele I've seen with expensive early failures as other friends have been caught too.
General consensus of the repair technicians I spoke with was all to get the cheapest non-condensing dryer (white-knight was mentioned as reliable but super cheap to repair if needed) you can and an LG washing machine for the sealed direct drive motor which comes with a 10 year [EDIT - seems they've dropped it to 5 years only now] guarantee.
Bosch dishwasher I'll concede is still going strong after 7 years. And It's really been abused (no filter cleaning for first 5 years!) so I take you point on that.
Reading about this stuff also makes me sad that the rest of the world have such weak consumer protections. In Norway, sellers are obligated to provide 5 years of warranty by law, and the consumer has certain rights such as the right to get a replacement if the product cannot be fully repaired after a certain number of attempts at resolving a problem.
I'm not saying that's the sole cause, but it surely doesn't help when filters aren't cleaned, things aren't replaced at their regular intervals, and other standard maintenance isn't done.
I'm comfortable with buying a used car given the maintenance paperwork and/or maintenance-related receipts are provided. But that's about it.
I'll probably never buy any used household appliance related to hygiene or food consumption -- washing machines, dishwashers, or even a microwave.
Also, do you guys even dishwasher? You clean them by using a wash pack like this[1]. You don't need to physically remove the filter save for a blockage as you just wash it in place.
So yeah, I exaggerated, what a dastardly scallywag!
[1] https://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=25945475...
Now I don't care if they fail in 2 or 3 years because they're the same cost as the repair of an expensive model. And like you say, all appliances fail at some point, so I'll keep fueling this horrible new world we've built for ourselves and let the manufacturers fight it out over price.
It's literally the law in the UK that such goods have a method of being 'taken back' so they don't end up in landfill.
I can't actually put any such goods in landfill if I tried, save for fly tipping. Even then the item would end up through the recycling chain.
I should add that getting rid of big items can be especially difficult, but most appliance delivery includes taking away the old one to .. wherever they go.
And because recycling it is one of the most pointless things you can do. It's sand, we have unlimited quantities of it, the planet is made of it.
I thought the glass process was basically melting sand and adding some trace additives, rather than forcing any chemical reactions uphill. Recycled glass also needs melted (if it doesn't, that's called a reusable bottle, not recycling).
>no filter cleaning for first 5 years!
That's pretty disgusting for something you use to eat.
White Knight dryers are surprisingly good, yeah. The LG washers work fine for 3-5 years, their weakest point is the suspension (really hard to replace) and the drum bearings/spider (irreplaceable), especially if you overload them.
Don't know how reliable they are.
My parents installed Miele appliances in a kitchen remodel about 6 years back. The fancy expensive oven must've broken down 5 times in the first year. I think it eventually settled down though.
Maybe it's different depending on EU country but it should be 2 year manufacturer warranty followed by 4 years covered by the retailer.
See -- no conspiracy theories required, just general greed and irresponsibility. :)
It's not that people 'want' to buy cheap stuff.
That's the mistake PC laptop makers made for 20 years, collective racing to the bottom until they figured out ways to produce $300 laptop. But they eventually learned that a large consumer base had no problem paying $1200 for a MacBook. It turns out, people were willing to pay substantially more for a better product. Now, PC makers are dishing out laptops that are comparable to Apple's.
In my view, main problem is this; when you make washing machine ranging from $500-$2000, inevitably they will share significant number of parts. And the weakest link will most likely be the shared parts engineered to cost, so that they can be profitable in the $500 model.
So why use not bespoke, higher quality parts for the $2000 one? Because it will end up costing more like $4,000-$5,000.
Overall reliability of appliance would shoot up, if a company stopped making their cheapest model so dirt cheap.
I'm pretty sure they do. In that price range you're looking at entry level commercial / heavy duty cycle equipment.
> Overall reliability of appliance would shoot up, if a company stopped making their cheapest model so dirt cheap.
They have to be dirt cheap to compete with decades of used appliances available.
Anecdata: Most people I know outside of my circles of engineers, gamers and well-off college students who disproportionately own Thinkpads, Asus gaming laptops and Macs respectively, still own throwaway PC laptops.
This is not just a VW thing. For the longest time Honda did the same thing: European Accord were sold in the US as Acuras while the US got it's own special Accord.
This is probably due more to the high vehicle taxes and lower volumes of Europe than it is an inherent "cheapness" with Americans.
My experience, as well as facts, don't support that. Cars are lasting longer than ever. The average age of a car on the road is highest it's ever been.... http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/07/29/new-car-sales...
I remember when I was a kid, as a rule of thumb, people would say to expect a car last for 100,000 miles. Now I'd expect closer to double that.
I'm actually pretty amazed at the quality of modern cars.
Despite that, a few minutes with a soldering iron and a trip to home depot, it's fine now (and has a proper fuse holder to boot). I think people are going to have to learn to get more comfortable hacking their appliances moving forward.
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/line3.htm
https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...
There are short-term blips in this data when new vehicle sales surge (or vice-versa), but the average age of vehicles hit a record high of almost 12 years last year, and the long-term trend is clear: our vehicles last much longer than they do in the past. There has also been a population surge in vehicles over 15 years of age, which has been a significant positive secular trend for numerous parts manufacturers and repair shops in the industry, and the increased complexity of the vehicle fleet (more parts that repair shops need quick access to), which has pushed numerous players in the automotive supply chain to invest more in their distribution infrastructure. Cars have become more complex, but the parts in the vehicles also fail much less frequently than they did in the past (though many now integrate more parts and cost more than they have in the past).
I did a bunch of research on the automotive sector for my last job, and it's striking how laymen's views are completely contrary to what is going on in the industry. I don't know much about the other appliance markets, but I wonder if there is a similar misperception issue in the other markets.
As for the short life-cycles in new technology like smartphones, is that really so terrible? My current smartphone is much better than the last one I bought in 2014, and miles better than the first smartphones that were in released in 2009-10. The short life-cycle reflects how quickly the products improved and evolved. That said, the improvement rate has slowed down, so hopefully, people will hold onto their smartphones longer instead of updating just for fashion reasons.
> Interestingly, the high-end machines from Bosch/Siemens made in Germany are higher quality than the ones made in Poland, China, Spain or Turkey.
What's the price difference for a made in Germany Bosch/Siemens v.s. a wherever-it-comes-from Whirlpool? Does it justify shelling out the extra $$$ for it v.s. the expected life to replace the latter when it dies? (presumably sooner than the German one)
[1] https://m.miele.de/haushalt/waschmaschine-1566.htm?mat=07082...
But that's partly because they only make the top end models in Germany, with mid-range models being made in Spain or Poland, and cheaper models in China.
They should last longer, be quieter and have all the extra features, but I'm not sure if it's worth double the price.
I always use last generation high end stuff (refurb or used), and fix it myself.
My Infinity Kappa 6.1 speakers are the same age; just had to refurbish/replace the cone surrounds a few years ago. If anything they sound better than when I bought them. :-)
So considering this: You're right, there's probably more money in the strategy of planned obsolescence.
In audio, it's possible to find products designed to last. My current amplifier is from Bryston, bought about 16 years ago. Their warranty for their analog products is 20 years. (http://bryston.com/pages/faq.html)
Because "Made in Germany" is a badge of honor and the German giants take care to not damage both their own brands as well as the "Made in Germany".
Newer ones from any manufacturer are indeed failing more often, and are designed worse.
The only explanation is that this is on purpose - just like cars or laptops or smartphones, they are designed to fail faster so you buy new ones. Planned obsolescence, plain and simple.
The best appliances today, by the way, are made by Bosch/Siemens and Miele. None of the other manufacturers come close, period.
Interestingly, the high-end machines from Bosch/Siemens made in Germany are higher quality than the ones made in Poland, China, Spain or Turkey.
Same design, but it seems they use lower quality electronics and metals, as the most common failures are with the motors, control boards and bearings.