Europe is very densely populated and well developed with much less developed neighbours which makes Europe very suspectable to environmental issues. If something bad happens in or nearby the continent, people in Paris or Rome can feel it through rent increase, a saturation of health services, an influx of people who somehow should be dealt with. If bombs go off in Syria things happen in Hungary. The place is very interconnected.

EU has to deal with the protection of the environment just like any other issue that can cause large migrant movemenets. Throwing away things when you don't have to, inefficient appliances etc. are all stuff that must be addressed to preserve the peace in the continent. Europe's contemporary way of life is quite fragile.

Three years ago the main bearing in my washing machine broke down. Found a detailed video on Youtube for repairing the exact same machine, started disassembly. 45 minutes in, I discovered that in my machine that was a couple years newer than the tutorial, Bosch had plastic welded shut the drum, so you had to replace the entire thing. Replacement part cost went from $20 to $180 IIRC.

Adding insult to injury, the flange in question had the bolt holes and locating features for the gasket still present.

> the flange in question had the bolt holes and locating features for the gasket still present.

That sounds like classic cost-savings methodology. They found a cheaper way to attach two parts while keeping the same tooling and reducing parts-count.

What would have been suspicious is if they had kept the expensive features and welded it shut.

Cheap is often not maintainable as a side-effect. That doesn't mean it was the primary goal.

Often, making things easy to fully take apart increases manufacturing costs. So there needs to be a trade off.

Because of competition on prices, prices points, the fact the break downs are relatively rare. the priority is often to squeeze manufacturing costs.

The question is that of marketing.

Can we make a marketing page that shows an easy to repair washing machine - and shows us that over 10 years, if we do the repairs ourselves - we'll save some money ? And the hassle of replacing to a new machine often ?

At least some segment of the population, the DIY'ers may buy such machines.

The Youtube videos were a great help, but even though the part I needed was available, all the steps along the way to getting the part and fixing the machine made it clear that this was not a process aimed at consumers with the ability to repair such a machine. The manufacturer chose representatives in each country it sold machines in were you had to buy the part (at €100 with shipping not cheap, but acceptable), but the serial numbers never really matched exactly, and the model I had always had one extra letter left unexplained, making buying the part a gamble.

The part fitted and the repair did work perfectly, even though I had to order the stainless bolts I needed to replace the worn originals from somewhere else (a web shop with a sensible interface).

This device was seemingly designed to be repaired (or at least not prevent it), but documentation and lack of sensible part numbers made it harder then it needed to be. Interesting experience though, it feels good to extend the life of the machine by a few years this way.

The consumer cannot easily distinguish between $400(dies after 10 years) and $300 (dies after 4).

When I was born, my parents had a hoover twin-tub. It was still working 20 years later when I left home.

The first washing machine I bought lasted twelve years (the control panel had to be replaced once). I think I eventually replaced it because I had moved house, and it didn't fir in the new kitchen. Nowadays it doesn't seem to be possible to buy dishwashers and washing machines that last longer than 4 years. I threw out my "old" dishwasher after just one year; it had broken down 5 times since I bought it brand-new, each time for the same reason: failed heater. Each time I had to wait several weeks for the mechanic to show (manufacturer's warranty, contracted out to a service company). Each time, I asked the mechanic if he could recommend a make/model that would be more reliable. And each time I was told that I might as well buy a cheap one, they all break down as quickly as one another.

These mechanics are seeing what I am seeing: machines that break down much sooner than they used to 15 years ago. Well, that's a market failure; it's what government regulation was invented for.

In the 80s and 90s the distinction and spread across the market was real. The buyouts and takeovers hadn't consolidated into just a few mega groups. The expensive fridge or washing machine was built, and lasted very differently.

Now we have Samsung et al building £1,500 premium fridge freezers and £800 washing machines that are just as unrepairable as the cheap crap.

It goes far wider than just appliances though.

If I were you, I would rely less on my mechanic to recommend me a product, and more on something like Consumer Report, which has a much more methodical and rigorous approach to assessing and comparing the quality of the products they test.

[1] https://blog.yaleappliance.com/most-reliable-front-load-wash...

While it might be true that a higher price doesn't necessarily entail higher quality, it seems to me that higher quality almost always entails a higher price.

Without a tilt sensor they needed to use metal bearing because an out of balance load would break plastic bearings. But now with the tilt sensor plastic ones could be used.

If you want to know whether a product has an high chance to work in 2-3 year time you are out of luck, especially with SKUs changing all the time.

For example, these are washers made to last and be fixable:

https://speedqueen.com/products/home-products/front-load-was...

Further complicated because whilst there are companies that build reputations on quality, that reputation can stick around long after the quality has gone down, so there's a constant temptation to cheap out for short term profits.

I suppose the classic example of this is Mercedes Benz in the 90s.

I can't classify pricing with 9s to be a "trick". No one is being tricked, the price is right there.

In Germany, legislation has been proposed that manufacturers must label the expected lifetime. I am opposed to this as it may lead to stuff breaking down shortly thereafter. On the other side I would be fond of two things: All parts must be serviceable and a minimum period of spare part availability.

Everything is already value engineered, designed for a specified lifetime, that's how we get those low prices and low material use. Labeling would just make it explicit. I work in an oil pipeline design group and even these things have expected lifetimes (30 years). So even megaprojects like bridges, skyscrappers, aircraft carriers, everything designed has an expected lifetime.

Think of a car that may have 3 years warranty but a service life of maybe 10 or more years.

In some EU countries the law mandates that manufacturers clearly state the warranty period and the average service life (where you can use the product reasonably within the original parameters). So the manufacturer must be able to fix/replace (not necessarily for free) the product if hidden flaws caused it to fail within the average lifetime period. This means only manufacturers who are certain their product is up to the task will declare a longer life and charge a premium but also guarantee that period of support.

Most products have warranties that are far shorter than their expected service life. Clothes may have as little as 30 days warranty but the reasonable expectation is for a far longer expected lifetime.

If my kettle has a warranty and breaks down, it's on the manufacturer. If it's only within the design lifetime? What if 10% don't last the design lifetime, wheres the cut off if relevant? If I buy a kettle that lasts the design lifetime, but is deemed not to for the purposes of the law, do I get compensated?

These are genuine questions, I am in favour of publishing this kind of information, it occurs to me that poorly thought out rules would be useless though.

Depending on the law some EU countries already expect the manufacturer to be able to fix or replace products that failed due to hidden defects within the average service life. So a manufacturer has a vested interest in declaring realistic figures because they are expected to support them. The "1000 year kettle" would have to have spare parts available for the period.

It's really funny to see the backlash on demanding such a basic premise of capitalism as information transparency in a forum like this.

Chapter?

But my point is, what is lying? If a kettle is designed to last 10 years, it's reasonable to expect that 100% won't last that long, so what percentage should we reasonably allow to break in that time, 10%? 20%? 50%?. If the manufacturer was found to be lying, do I with my still working kettle get compensated?

And your answer raises other concerns, who is this consumer advocacy group that's going to lead this? Is it reasonable to assume some proportion of people are going to direct their complaints there? This to me doesn't seem like an easy thing to police at all.

If there's reasonable doubt (ie a large number of complaints about the kettle failing), the manufacturer has to provide sales statistics and test results and will be judged accordingly. As for the consumer advocacy groups: it's pretty standard in Europe to have these (and they are the only ones to initiate something like class-action). As for the metrics: everything is measured, I'm sure, we can come up with a sensible metric?!

And parallel to that there are also companies adverting their 10,15 or 25 year warranty[1]. Now you can choose who you want to give your money to.

That being said I have no problem per se with forcing companies to offer long warranties.

[1] a further thing to look at is of course what these warranties actually cover and how likely you are to actually get help when your appliance breaks 17 years after you buy it. A 25 year warranty is useless (and should probably be illegal to advertise) if it's so full of loopholes and caveats that no one can practically make any claims against it.

What products that have extended warranties usually have in common is that they are expensive and represent significant investments for the average buyer. If you buy a car, a fridge, a washing machines, etc, you want a guarantee that you will be able to amortise that investment over as long a time as possible.

No one stops a manufacturer from offering a product with a 5 year warranty, and in fact they do. Shop for products made for businesses and you will find 5 year warranties. However, they cost much more, and consumers are choosing not to pay more for the products with 5 year warranties, and instead choosing to go with the 1 year warranty.

Miele was known for making very durable products, however, even they over the years had to acknowledge that consumers were opting to purchase cheaper products from competitors, so they had to do the same to stay in business.

[1] Unless you have some reason to believe the insurance is priced too low.

Insurance is usually provided by a regulated entity and implicitly backed by the government in the even that the insurer fails. Their regulators also provide redress for consumers against unfair treatment without the need to resort to the courts and the terms usually have to be fair too.

Warranties are typically provided by the vendor who may well be financially unsound and willing to treat a customer less fairly, contain significant legal loopholes and require redress through the courts or perhaps a binding arbitration tribunal.

And most machines probably do work for many years, just not sufficiently enough to offer a longer warranty. Which is fine for most homes, since you're not running a mission critical operation and a few days to pick out a new washer isn't going to kill you. A business that needs machines to work might find it worth shelling out more for a quality product that rarely quits or can be fixed on site.

Companies have to sell and they have to survive. Thus they have to build products that people will buy and make a profit out of it.

Those cuts take time to filter down into public consciousness, because companies are incapable of measuring the value of quality

Did you contact Miele about your just out of warranty breakage? Their reaction to that would be interesting.

But for Miele prices I don't want to be at their mercy. I want a lasting product. When waiting for the repair I looked around. Many competitors have similar offerings (functionality) with a 5 year warranty at 2/3 of the price point (or even less).

That's good? As far as it goes, it's a good smell at least.

I'm not of a view that a warranty guarantees no faults. To my mind it is the manufacturer saying they will stand by their product for the warranty period, that they expect no faults, and putting their money on the line to prove it. So I'm not particularly in favour of castigating companies for any unreliability, if they handle it correctly.

Having said all this, I did just check what Miele's warranty is, I was expecting 5+ years, but it's only 2 years, so your point about competitors is a good one.

I suppose it highlights a good point about what we as consumers should do. Should we go with Miele that everyone knows is good quality, but only offers a 2 year warranty. Or should we go with the competitor with the 5 year warranty? I suspect most of us would take the first option, when we should really be taking the 2nd.

Edited to add: Miele offers a 10 year warranty extension, at roughly 20% of the original price. It is left as an exercise for the reader what such a premium means for the expected failure rate...

But there is not the consumer alone. The world, other people, the earth wants lasting appliances.

Where are the end to end stats that show that this is better than recycling an old appliance to replace it with a new one that is more energy and water efficient?

Where are the actual stats that show that breaking down just out of warranty with no parts available is a real issue?

Also, there are no "other people" we all are consumers of these appliances.

Oh, you aren't actually interested in arguments? Why didn't you tell us earlier!

Fridges and Freezers are the only appliances I'm aware of where it works out like that though.

Edit: Here's a case study for those that don't believe me.

http://www.t2c.org.uk/chilling/new-case-study-of-20-yr-old-f...

I wonder whether this calculation holds once you account for the energy used to develop, construct, market and transport the new fridges that replace the older-but-working fridges. It's a genuine question - I haven't seen such calculation done. My current intuition is that the extra marginal energy used in manufacturing a new fridge dwarfs the energy savings of replacing the old one before it dies.

This [1] gives the embodied energy for a fridge as 5900 Mj which equals 1600 kwh.

So broadly speaking you new fridge 'pays' for itself in 2 years. I suspect its worse that, but even if its 5 years, my point still stands.

[1] https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Appliance

I don't necessarily agree with downvoting your post, but your argument _is_ poorly constructed. It seems to come from a place of reflexively opposing regulation, rather than thinking about whether this makes sense. In other words, I think people downvote because it doesn't seem to be in good faith, but ideologically driven.

My argument isn't poorly constructed, I commented to promote discussion not to be lynched. You are trying to second guess what I wrote too much. It seems very common here for people to try to see implied meaning everywhere instead of reading what is actually written.

The sad reality is that it is not possible to think critically and to dissent on many topics these days. It is already decided what the correct opinion is, facts are irrelevant. Look at my comments in this thread: There are no reasoned replies to any of them...

If that is what you meant to write then your argument was indeed _very_ poorly constructed. It's certainly more flimsy than many replies you received.

You literally said "Greta Thunberg is not always there to tell you what to think"

Great, so hopefully we can have a substantial discussion on the topic at hand.

It's easy to stomp into a discussion and demand "stats", and then accuse people of irrational thinking when they don't immediately produce them. I'm sure someone has put together some statistics about repair costs, but I'd have no idea how to find them. The companies have no interest in helping compile numbers on their own service and parts, so good luck.

What I do have is lots of experience. As a property manager I've dealt with a hundred appliances. I work with a dozen dealers and repair people. I can get my old washers and fridges fixed easily; parts are everywhere, and every repairman knows how to change out a compressor on an old whirlpool compressor, or the tensioner on an old Maytag washer.

In contrast, my 15 year old Dacor range is a prime target for right-to-repair laws. It's built to last forever, but Dacor doesn't sell parts, and only makes schematics and repair manuals available to "certified" repair shops. There is only one in my city, and they wanted $500 dollars to replace my control board. Luckily I managed to find a used control board on ebay for $80 and did it myself. Took me a couple hours to do a job that would have taken minutes if only I'd had the manual. Easy stuff, should be totally accessible to owners and every repair shop, but Dacor likes to restrict the manuals to dealers so they can try to sell you a new one.

Then consider the nightmare of LG fridges. When the compressor went bad on my 2012 LG fridge, the cheapest repair estimate I could find was over a thousand dollars. There are only a few companies in my city who will do warranty repairs on LG fridges with linear compressors. There are a couple others who will no non-warranty work, but the repair won't be under warranty so if the new compressor goes bad (which is not unlikely on these new fridges), you're SOL. I have yet to find a used appliance reseller that sells refurbished LG fridges; when they haul away LG fridges, they are always scrapped. So what I have is a four thousand dollar fridge that lasted seven years. This is a common problem with LG fridges.

Washing machines are another whole world of pain.

So yes, I'll definitely be voting for every right-to-repair initiative that comes my way.

You know, you could easily read online about this stuff if you want. Try Yale Appliance's blog for a start. But then again, your comments make it seem like you didn't come here because you're curious.

I don't think the customers are a big force here, from my experience is the same part that breaks first but is there a strong enough incentive for the producer to investigate the issue and make that part stronger? If the customer will buy a new product or a new part that is extremely expensive then the producer is encouraged to engineer that part to break exactly when the warranty is over.

I have a question, maybe someone here knows the answer, why are everyone make a new model each year that most of the time seems to be a redesign that brings nothing new, As an example I use same keyboard model and each time I buy a replacement it has changed a bit in design and internals, making them almost incompatible for salvaging components from one and fixing other)

Of course they are. Customers are not stupid, they know what they are doing. They know that a cheap appliance will last long enough and that "in 10 years I'll want to buy a new one anyway".

> why are everyone make a new model each year that most of the time seems to be a redesign that brings nothing new

Because that's what sells. You need 'new' to convince people to buy it, certainly to buy it at the same price it was last year.

I like the microsoft natural 2000 keyboard, it has a soft rest place that it scratches and in max 2 years it gets destroyed and the cable where it enters the case gets bent and used. So I now have 3 or 4 models that I bought over the years, there is no actual improvement, all the complaints in the reviews like noisy space bar were not addressed, just some small visual changes. So I am wondering why they did a new design,it probably costs a lot, did they found a way to gut 1$ worth of plastic?

If we think at the environment and not at profits for the keyboard case there are 2 imediate things you could do:

- sell the soft rest parts, there are easy to change if compatibility is not broken (i done it myself no special tools were needed but I transplanted them from a different one)

- make the cable easy to replace (like you have with HDMI screens) so if I destroy the cable I can buy and just replace it rather then open the keyboard and find a different keyboard and grab the cable from that.

IF the above would be costly to implement then maybe they can address the problem and make an improved design.

Other example, I have a water pump, it has inside it a plastic/rubber balloon thing. This balloon will break every few months. I am wondering that they could make it 2 times more expensive and last 2 times more and it would be great because of the time and comfort lost when you have to replace it. But my waster time and confort plust he fact the old plastic thing goes into garbage is not factored in the producer calculations. So after this thing broke for the n-the time on me I would pay 10 times more and have it last 10 times more, I don't want cheap and bad but I do not have a choice.

I admit there is a small chance that it is impossible to make this component stronger but this change is extremely small, probably the current one is the perfect balance for the producers and is at the threshold where the users won't give up and buy a new pump(you have no idea if a different model does not have same issue)

I want to buy Miele, or any other quality brand, but if anything breaks (which we know will happen), the service technician has a two hours drive to get to my place, which I have to pay. IOW, the top quality brands mostly offer service in densely populated areas (and it makes businesses sense for them)...

The UK had a catastrophic fire potentially caused by a cheap fridge freezer.

White goods cause a few house fires.

This page says 5 a day: https://www.electricalsafetyfirst.org.uk/media-centre/press-...

This page says 60 per week: https://news.sky.com/story/eight-house-fires-a-week-caused-b...

We need white goods to be safer, and people don't chose safer, they choose cheaper, so we need regulations.

What does annoy me though is that you have to pay a premium for appliances which are ‘built in’ over the equivalent model which is not built in, despite the built in version being less complicated (no door handles, for example).

This is the problem that needs to be addressed. The right to repair is not only about quality, price or durability. It is also a philosophical and strategic standpoint?

Many consumers are smart enough to understand that 'cheap' is a property calculated over the lifetime of the product.