[HN Gopher] Declining quality of consumer-grade products - 2009 ...
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Declining quality of consumer-grade products - 2009 fridge
compressor autopsy
Author : userbinator
Score : 602 points
Date : 2022-08-14 21:09 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.automaticwasher.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.automaticwasher.org)
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Hugged to death, go here.
|
| https://archive.ph/hOrqv
| FpUser wrote:
| Things with the manufacturing have degenerated way too much. My
| strategy - I either buy industrial stuff (preferably second hand
| so I do not have to re-mortgage) or the cheap which of course
| happens more often. Surprisingly cheap sometimes lasts way longer
| than the expensive consumer brands.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| From the notes: "These marginal design choices are not the only
| way to get an efficient unit, since the fridge compressors from
| the 1940's and 1950's era were very efficient, while having
| consistently longer lives. This failed unit is purely an example
| of doing just enough to get by until it is someone else's
| problem."
|
| I've been seeing this as a common issue throughout most of the
| household appliances we've tried to buy in the last ten years.
| They just don't last.
| fithisux wrote:
| "This failed unit is purely an example of doing just enough to
| get by until it is someone else's problem" this is the
| trademark of humans.
| [deleted]
| danielheath wrote:
| A theory I've been developing explains this.
|
| When there wasn't enough to go around, capitalism was
| _amazing_. It created tremendous wealth, such that for the
| first time in history, in large parts of the world, there 's
| enough for everyone.
|
| My theory is: Back then, the market for most goods was under-
| served, so the way the rich got richer was by creating more
| goods, since you could sell everything you could make (almost
| always at a profit).
|
| However, in a saturated market, the incentives change; because
| you can produce far more than you can sell, the rich almost
| exclusively get richer by taking market share from other
| players. Making something last 50 years instead of 10 at a 1%
| cost premium becomes a bad idea, because people care about the
| headline figure.
| demomi wrote:
| Paradoxically, back when the market was LESS efficient, the
| extra slack afforded higher standards because they could
| overengineer something and still sell it easily.
|
| It always comes down to supply and demand. Supply of generic
| products like compressors and blenders skyrocketed. Increase
| the supply enough and you get a race to the bottom. All
| market inefficiency has been squeezed out of the market. The
| market has arrived at an equilibrium of making some things
| _just_ high enough quality that they last longer than a few
| months while being as cheap as possible. Anyone trying to
| make something higher quality gets squeezed out. Unless there
| 's also much higher demand to compensate for it.
| mechagodzilla wrote:
| There is enormous survivorship bias with this 'stuff was
| way better back in the day' argument - there have always
| been awful products produced, but those get replaced
| quickly. An awful fridge from the 1950s was replaced by the
| 1960s. Engineers weren't deliberately overengineering
| things back then out of some sense of pride, they were just
| worse at engineering (and material science) - some things
| were over-engineered, because we didn't know better ways to
| solve that problem, and some things were under-engineered
| for the same reason. I think the increased cost of labor
| relative to manufactured goods is a big driver of this
| perceived change, as nobody wants to pay a repair guy $500
| to come out and fix their $500 fridge. If the fridge cost
| $20k we would probably still fix them and they would have a
| long lifetime (and the repair guy would still charge $500,
| like an HVAC guy), but there is almost no market for a $20k
| fridge when a $500 fridge is available.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > I've been seeing this as a common issue throughout most of
| the household appliances we've tried to buy in the last ten
| years. They just don't last.
|
| I've had the same experience. E.g. I bought a kettle 2 years
| ago and it lasted for 6 months. Previous kettles have lasted
| many years (as they should).
| archi42 wrote:
| I accidentally just reasoned about kettle for another
| comment, but removed that part again.
|
| First, TIL: Since in the US the mains voltage is 120V, kettle
| there have less power (or would trip the circuit
| protection/burn out old sockets) than our 240V kettles
| (Amazon offers plenty 2200W units, might be a legal limit).
| It's obvious, but I totally forgot to consider this.
|
| Anyway, the main failures to expect from a kettle is a
| failing heating element or leaky sealing. Both can be avoided
| by using induction. But with induction stoves becoming the
| norm for new kitchens (at least around here), all you need is
| a suitable, passive kettle instead of the kettle+base. Plus a
| 3.7kW induction field will be faster to boil water than
| something that plugs into a 240V/16A socket.
|
| Only reason to go with a standalone kettle appliance are
| "smart" kettles with more precise temperature control (some
| teas should be prepared at specific temperatures).
|
| TL;Dr: Upgrade to an inductive stove, get a passive kettle
| for it, be happy :)
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Induction is great, but an electric kettle costs like 10
| bucks while changing your stove is a huge investment that
| includes replacing all your pots and pans, plus if you were
| using gas before now your household electricity consumption
| grows very noticeably. Not really a comparable option in my
| opinion.
| archi42 wrote:
| Depends on where you live. Around here (SW Germany) non-
| induction electric stoves with resistive heating elements
| under a special glass ("Ceranfeld") are _much_ more
| common for home-use than gas. So when these fail,
| swapping to induction is relatively easy; picking gas
| over electric means a lot of extra effort for many
| people.
|
| Personally, when buying new pots and pans in the last
| decade, I picked only those that work with induction
| (payed something like 20 Euro extra, in total); so when
| we finally swap the stove, we only have to replace one
| pan. Several friends make the same complaint, and I never
| understood why they didn't plan ahead (induction is not
| that new, especially when some of them only moved out
| from their parents in the last 5 to 10 years).
|
| The induction kettle of friends definitely is much faster
| than both their old kettle (1.[2,5] kW) and ours (2.2kW);
| and I am not sure if they even have a 3.7kW field.
|
| Edit: If course assuming that you eventually get a new
| stove anyway, at least at some point in the future. If
| you're settled in your house/flat for live and have a gas
| stove you're happy with & that will survive you, then the
| point is of course mood.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Something to note is that resistive and (much more
| commonly) gas heating is prone to warping cookware, which
| isn't an issue with those types of heat. However, once
| warped they heat unevenly over induction. So, you may
| find yourself having to change some of your cookware
| anyway (I'm in the same boat btw)
| judge2020 wrote:
| > since the fridge compressors from the 1940's and 1950's era
| were very efficient
|
| Is this only true for fridges? Because this video on a 1984
| washing machine versus one from today[0, timestamp relevant]
| shows a big difference in efficiency from then to now.
|
| 0: https://youtu.be/NHrPcx0xkGU?t=776
| userbinator wrote:
| He shows the instantaneous/peak power in watts, not total
| energy used, and didn't even use the same meter for both.
|
| I think the actual difference is not quite so much.
| sydd wrote:
| Yep, some are so shitty that the whole product category becomes
| garbage. We went on an adventure with blenders:
|
| 1. We bought a Bosch hand blender (maxomixx) because it looked
| sturdy and was priced near the top at the mall -- thought that
| the brand and the price tag would guarantee that it would last.
| It broke after 8 months, turns out that the coupling between
| the mixer and the body is made of plastic that wore off. I
| called the Bosch service hotline, they told me that the whole
| body is one "part" that I can buy for ~80% of the original
| price.
|
| 2. Went back to the mall looking for one with metal coupling,
| turns out there is NONE. All of them are garbage with the same
| fault point. But luckily there is a wide selection of standing
| blenders, where some of them had much more massively looking,
| metal gears. Bought one from Electrolux. It broke after 3
| months, this time the bearing on the bottom of the blender cup
| started leaking the grease into our food...
|
| 3. Gave up trying to get a blender from the mall, bought a
| Vitamix for 7x the price, which we're happy with for the last 3
| years.
|
| Yes, there is plenty of planned obsolence out there, and one of
| the greenest things you can do is buy premium stuff that will
| last you a lifetime (if you can afford it :/ )
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I bought a refurbished Blendtec blender a while back. The jar
| failed after a year and a half; some plastic involved in the
| blade shaft bearing melted from the blender's own rotation.
| It's not designed to be replaceable and so I consider it a
| design flaw. It turns out someone already created a better
| jar with a significantly more robust, replaceable bearing
| assembly. It's called the Alterna-jar or something.
|
| In total I'm in for about $450 and have a powerful blender
| that should last for at least the next decade.
| tenpies wrote:
| > Yes, there is plenty of planned obsolence out there, and
| one of the greenest things you can do is buy premium stuff
| that will last you a lifetime
|
| The annoying part is that you can end up missing on new
| features.
|
| I look at the Zojirushi rice cooker that I bought in college
| - a hefty purchase at the time - the Jaguar of rice cookers
| at a time when I should have been buying the $10 Black and
| Decker rice cooker. It's still with me, over a decade later,
| through countless moves, a handful of girlfriend (who all had
| opinions on it, interestingly), and at least 1,000 bowls of
| rice cooked.
|
| The battery that keeps the time died (I could replace it, but
| I'd have to take it apart and it's technically non-
| replaceable), but other than that it's working perfectly. The
| rice is as good as it ever has been.
|
| My oh most first world of problems? A while ago Zojirushi
| released rice cookers also function as pressure cookers in
| the same device. I'd love to upgrade so I can quickly make
| stews in it, but I cannot possibly retire my old one just
| because it's old.
|
| Most likely I'm going to end up having two Zojirushis because
| well, rice goes pretty well with stew and you can't exactly
| make both simultaneously. And then in 10 years when they make
| one that's both a rice cooker, a pressure cooker, and an air
| fryer; I'll be having this monologue again.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I have a similar story of buying a zojirushi rice cooker
| when spending 1/10th as much would have seemed wiser. That
| was 13 years ago! It turned out to be a great decision
| because it's also still going strong. The clock is still
| good, but now you've got me worried that it's on its way
| out.
|
| I can also relate to your envy of the new models we don't
| need.
| lenocinor wrote:
| Same with my Zojirushi rice cooker, as well as my Zojirushi
| water heater and thermos. Their stuff has lasted a long
| time and performed great for me.
| ornornor wrote:
| > I cannot possibly retire my old one just because it's
| old.
|
| Why not sell it second hand? Someone (even a student like
| you once were?) will happily extract a decade or more of
| value from it and you'll get some of your money back
| towards the upgrade.
| timbo1642 wrote:
| techsin101 wrote:
| I bought a blender off amazon, it literally vaporized in
| first use. All gears turned to powder
| ConceptJunkie wrote:
| We have a blender that we got from my wife's parents. It
| probably dates back to the 1950s, and I love it. It's only
| got two speeds and heavy as anything, but it's probably the
| most solidly-built appliance I own. I also have one I bought
| in the early 90s that's fine as well. I don't expect to ever
| need to buy another one.
|
| But you're absolutely right. Buying cheap stuff is bad in so
| many ways. Since they wear out faster, you end up replacing
| them much more often, which is environmentally bad, and in
| the long run, costs more. The problem is that being expensive
| does not necessarily correlate with lasting long.
|
| When our TV died a few years ago, my kids pooled together and
| bought me a 50" Samsung 4k TV. It's a great device in so many
| ways, but after 3 years, the backlights started failing.
| Right now half the screen is dark, and it would cost almost
| as much as a new TV to get them replaced, with a part that
| probably costs all of $5 to manufacture. So it's been hanging
| on the wall for the last year, because I've been too cheap to
| replace the whole TV, and too scared too attempt the repair
| on my own, since it involves stripping the thing down to the
| frame (and removing that enormous panel). I still might try
| some day. It's worth a $50 gamble to get the TV back. Either
| that or I'll just replace the darn thing. This TV (like all
| modern TVs) is a miracle of engineering, and the thing that
| stopped it from being usable is probably the simplest and one
| of the cheapest components.
|
| My first TV was a hand-me-down from my parents that
| eventually died in late '88 or '89. It was an RCA from 1968.
| Then I bought a 26" RCA TV in 1989 and used it until we
| replaced it with an HD TV in 2012. It still worked fine when
| we got rid of it, and I was sad to see it go, even though we
| had no use for it.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > environmentally bad
|
| How about replacing appliances with new ones? Washers can
| now do both - wash and dry AND it has heat pump. Induction
| cooktop are way more efficient. Instant hot water taps
| translates to smaller hot water cylinders. Japanese style
| fridges spoil less food.
| april_22 wrote:
| Another issue I've experienced with these smart TVs is,
| that the software becomes extremly slow and almost unusable
| after a couple of years.
| lenocinor wrote:
| Seconded. Don't forget updating with ads and spyware.
| I've resolved never to update the software on my TVs
| going forward unless there's a major bug.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Same. Exact. Experience. Mother-in-law has a very old one
| with a metal coupling. Why can't I buy one like that?!
| OJFord wrote:
| If I understand the issue correctly, I have a Bamix model
| with 'metal coupling'. Swiss company, bought on Amazon UK,
| presumably available on Amazon US, no idea about 'malls'.
|
| As an aside, AIUI there are two Boschs, and 'consumer Bosch'
| is merely a marketing/branding department.
| soco wrote:
| In the world of 3D printing where the tagline is "the limit
| is only your imagination" you'd expect to get those plastic
| replacement parts for a dime but nooo the devices are not
| even _designed_ to be replaceable...
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| eru wrote:
| You know that foreign countries don't have to take the
| loans you offer at the interest rates you offer?
|
| In principle especially a wanna-be socialist country like
| the Soviet Union wouldn't need to participate in capitalist
| rituals like this.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Capital is global. Seeks the highest returns wherever
| they are.
| icecap12 wrote:
| GE sold their appliance division in 2016[1].
|
| [1]https://www.ge.com/news/reports/done-deal-ge-sells-its-
| appli...
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| That was long after they sold the Cussen household their
| toasters.
|
| They're responsible for what they sold when they sold it.
| The didn't sell responsibility for stealing my food.
| bogota wrote:
| Its a nightmare anything that will last is now "premium" and
| top of the line. You spend easily 4x what even a good one
| costs and then you get something that lasts as long as
| appliances did 30 years ago. Washers and dryer's drive me mad
| not to mention most kitchen appliances.
| totetsu wrote:
| had exactly the same point fail on a hand blender. the
| plastic teeth of the gear connecting the motor to the blades.
| every other part was still perfectly fine, but it's just
| garbage now.
| jibe wrote:
| _planned obsolence out there_
|
| I don't think it is planned obsolescence, it is just a race
| to the bottom on price. At $30, an immersion blender can't
| have metal gears. Most people value cheapness more than
| quality, so we get cheap junky products. Nylon gears are a
| travesty, but most people prefer replacing crap to paying 7x
| for the Vitamix.
| II2II wrote:
| Metal is not a panacea, and it can often lead to misleading
| marketing. Different metals wear at different rates and
| poor design can still lead to premature failure. Heck the
| viscosity of the lubricant was the cited reason for the
| failure of the compressor. Lubricated devices also need
| maintenance, otherwise the surfaces the lubricant is
| intended to protect will wear. The properties of lubricants
| can also change and cause moving parts to cease.
|
| Engineering is both easy and incredibly difficult. It is
| relatively easy to design something that does a particular
| task (at least for many of the applications being discussed
| here). It is incredibly difficult to design something that
| does its job well or last for a long time.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _Engineering is both easy and incredibly difficult. It is
| relatively easy to design something that does a
| particular task (at least for many of the applications
| being discussed here). It is incredibly difficult to
| design something that does its job well or last for a
| long time._
|
| No, that's relatively easy as well. What's incredibly
| difficult is doing so while keeping the BOM cost under
| control in a competitive market.
|
| Recall the classic saying, "Any idiot can design a bridge
| that will stand up. It takes an engineer to design a
| bridge that will _barely_ stand up. "
| scottLobster wrote:
| For a less cynical take, efficient use of resources is
| important as well. Theoretically every bridge should just
| be a solid wall going straight down to the nearest
| bedrock beneath it, but you can build a lot more bridges
| with the same resources if you use various other
| techniques. :)
| somewhat_drunk wrote:
| Indeed. His engineer brother is essentially designing a
| component that can barely function, just like a bridge,
| because resources are finite.
|
| I have never seen any example of 'planned obsolescence'
| which was anything more than giving the consumer what the
| consumer wants. Modern economy is essentially the peak
| optimization of cost vs utility, i.e. value maximization.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| According to the poster the components their brother
| designs are often more expensive then the standard ones.
| Precisely because it takes a higher tolerance to fail
| between a tight time window. So it is in fact the
| opposite of resources are finite. They are spending more
| to squeeze the consumer.
| jtbayly wrote:
| But!... we don't have any evidence yet. Just a claim. I'd
| love to see some evidence.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| If someone is telling you something, which you have no
| way to verify, it's obscene to cherry pick a piece of
| information to believe, use that to make your point and
| then call out the other piece as an unverified claim
| because it would completely destroy the point.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The notion of a battery tied to a GPIO pin in an HVAC
| thermostat amounts to an extraordinary claim. Unless
| we're talking about a smoke detector or other safety-
| critical item that actually has an expiration date (in
| which case I'd think they would use a real chemical
| timer), there are no obvious explanations for the battery
| other than planned obsolescence.
|
| So, yeah, I'd like to see a model number as well.
| K0balt wrote:
| Plenty of planned obsolescence. I won't go into my rant but
| my brother is an engineer who is paid very handsomely to
| make sure that products outlast their warranty period but
| then fail predictably. He engineers special plastics that
| degrade rapidly after 5 or 6 years, gears that fail after
| 10th no later than 12 years, bearing assemblies that will
| leak but not fail between 4000 to 5500 hours, etc.
|
| Often the components he designs cost more to manufacture
| that components that would last much, much longer. . To
| build a pump that will 99 percent make it to 3000 hours,
| that means half will make it to 9000 hours or more. Unless
| you really, really make sure that 90 percent will also fail
| by 4000 hours. It's not easy to do.
|
| Some products actually incorporate extra parts such as
| batteries that serve no other purpose than to cause the
| unit to degrade after a certain time (honeywell thermostats
| I'm looking at you ... their round thermostat includes a
| lithium cell. When the lithium cell degrades, the at328p
| processor switches to a limping mode that regulates +/- 10
| degrees, but never less than a little over freezing. The
| (soldered) battery just goes through a resistor to a GPIO
| pin. It's just a chemical timer. It serves no other purpose
| than to make the unit need to be replaced.)
|
| I could go on and on and on, but stuff is definitely
| designed to fail in predictable ways in a predermined
| timeframe. Considerable expense is invested in this
| behavior.
| eru wrote:
| What kind of battery goes into the Honeywell thermostat
| you are talking about? Is it one you have to buy from
| Honeywell, or an off-the-shelf part?
|
| If the latter, how does it help Honeywell that you have
| to replace it?
| Jach wrote:
| I'm curious too, but even if something is fairly easy to
| replace or repair a significant amount of people may
| still just buy new and not bother. (My own landlord is
| making this choice over a $100 logic board replacement
| for the garage door opener.)
| eloisius wrote:
| I think the point is that you (or most people) will
| replace the entire unit because it's beyond warranty,
| stops functioning correctly, and a soldered (probably
| special) battery would be difficult to replace.
| eru wrote:
| Yes, a soldered or special battery would be (weak)
| evidence of the tactic of planned obsolescence. A
| standard battery that you can just pop in and out, would
| not be.
| midoridensha wrote:
| There's no such thing as a special battery. No
| manufacturer is going to have some kind of custom battery
| manufactured just for one part; they always come in
| standard sizes and voltages. At the very worst, you could
| hack in a similar-sized battery with the right voltage.
| eloisius wrote:
| There are batteries special enough that I can't pick one
| up at Walmart, and for the general public that may render
| the device kaput. I didn't say it's an unhackable design.
| eru wrote:
| The question is how much hacking would be required.
| midoridensha wrote:
| Probably not much, but that's still far more than the
| average consumer is willing or able to do.
| fomine3 wrote:
| But perhaps BMS expect specific battery product. I don't
| want to take risk by replacing to random Li-ion that not
| matching original BMS.
| ornornor wrote:
| My bicycle light begs to differ. It's a standard 18650
| cell with a protection PCB slapped on top, and both poles
| on the same end of the battery.
|
| This is exotic enough that replacements are very hard to
| find. I can either get the 2 cells needed from the
| manufacturer at about 70% the cost of a new light, or get
| a new light. It's technically repairable/user
| serviceable, it's just not practical to do. Apple is
| playing a similar trick with their 80lbs iPhone repair
| kit to change the battery yourself: technically user
| repairable, practically not.
| midoridensha wrote:
| >My bicycle light begs to differ. It's a standard 18650
| cell with a protection PCB slapped on top, and both poles
| on the same end of the battery.
|
| Huh? You seem to be contradicting yourself: you say it's
| a standard 18650 cell. That's not something custom,
| that's something you can buy from an electronics supplier
| quite easily. And no, having both poles on the same end
| isn't something custom either, that's just a variant you
| can buy. You should be able to find this exact part on
| digikey.com.
|
| >This is exotic enough that replacements are very hard to
| find.
|
| If you can buy something on digikey.com, it's not
| "exotic". They even ship small orders by USPS for cheap.
| It might be "exotic" to a typical consumer, but those
| people don't know how to use a soldering iron.
| eloisius wrote:
| This entire thread is people talking about planned
| obsolescence for _consumer_ devices and you keep making
| the same rebuttals. Typical home owners who buy a
| thermostat at Home Depot or cyclists who buy a tail light
| at a bike shop are unlikely to even know what digikey is,
| let alone order a replacement (especially if you have to
| buy in bulk) and do their own soldering to replace it if
| it's soldered in.
|
| We all know the typical HN reader thinks a fun weekend
| would be spending 6 hours researching part numbers and
| getting out the soldering iron, but we are atypical. Most
| people will assume their product is at the end of its
| life because the warranty has lapsed and it doesn't work
| anymore. Companies are apparently betting on that and
| it's an environmental travesty.
| ornornor wrote:
| It's standard in the sense that a 18650 with a protection
| PCB on top and both poles on the same end isn't exclusive
| to this manufacturer and others use it. There is nothing
| proprietary about it. But it's not run of the mill 18650
| either.
|
| But it's rare enough that it's hard to find. So much so
| that it actually doesn't make economical sense to find
| this (rare, at a premium) variant because it would cost
| about as much or more than a new light (which includes
| new batteries, ironically)
| arcanemachined wrote:
| Your brother should write a book.
| _nalply wrote:
| when he retires?
| april_22 wrote:
| It would be amazing to have a ranking of companies whose
| products actually work and don't break down after some
| years. Might be controversial, but I'd place Apple pretty
| high up there since (excluding the battery thing they
| did), they built really sturdy hardware that lasts and
| offer long software support.
| userbinator wrote:
| _special plastics that degrade rapidly after 5 or 6
| years_
|
| ...so the company making parts with them can then extoll
| the virtues of "biodegradable" in their marketing...?
|
| Also, for those who doubt the claim about the Honeywell
| thermostat having a battery, I did some further research,
| and it does appear to be true:
|
| https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/128526/honeywell
| -th...
|
| https://www.amazon.com/review/R3V5R0MJGEFNXH
|
| But then this video shows that it is relatively easy to
| replace, it's not soldered in place, although the
| comments there do mention that the presence of the
| battery isn't documented anywhere in the original
| instructions:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VKowLXfERo
| somewhat_drunk wrote:
| The first two links you've provided about the battery
| don't prove or even suggest that the battery is
| essentially _intended_ as a chemical timer to disable the
| thermostat when it runs out, which is the gist of the
| claim.
| temeritatis wrote:
| I knew planned obsolescence was a thing, but this is just
| insane to me! At best, it's really disingenuous (which is
| bad enough). No wonder we have so many conspiracy
| theorists. They've somehow socially engineered this
| situation to be acceptable (and relatively unknown).
| themitigating wrote:
| But how can we be sure you are telling the truth about
| who your brother is?
|
| Many people add ficituous evidence of their views because
| they are so sure they are right.
| ornornor wrote:
| I suspect lots of people value cheapness when there is no
| way to tell whether the premium actually reflects quality.
|
| This is for example why flying commercial is such a
| miserable experience: people will look for the cheapest
| ticket that gets them to their destination because the
| whole thing is like being treated like cattle. Why then
| should you pay a single cent more for the same shitty
| experience? Airlines that used to offer a slightly better
| experience have figured this out and also treat you like
| cattle now so they can also offer the route for a low or
| lower price.
|
| This is not unique to airlines, and this is my default mode
| of purchasing things because I've been burnt too many
| times. Unless I know for sure that X brand is much more
| durable and repairable than another, I'll always go for the
| cheapest I can find that meets my needs.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| >Most people value cheapness more than quality, so we get
| cheap junky products.
|
| Well, it would help tremendously if costs per
| month/year/lifetime were more obvious. A lot of people just
| don't know how long certain appliances are supposed to last
| at what price points comparatively. 7x is only a hefty
| price tag upfront when you know it will pay for itself over
| time, but even that is no longer certain.
| jtbayly wrote:
| How many years would you divide by as a "lifetime"?
| That's your new failure year that lots of people would
| prefer for it to last longer than.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Well, you want more people to buy your product so you get
| growth year over year. You can't do that with a basic
| widget that will last 10++ years. Otherwise your growth
| would plateau to the natural population growth rate and
| there would be a thriving 2nd hand market because your
| stuff rarely breaks. Adding complex electronic features is
| an obvious choice now. You can just stop providing updates
| or the electronics will fail.
|
| Cheaper things aren't necessarily bad either. You don't
| want things like fridges and blenders to be items only the
| rich can afford and less robust things are probably fine if
| it was clear under what conditions you can use the item to
| make it last and if the item was easily repairable.
|
| Lastly, I don't think you can blame the manufacturers alone
| either. I know people who don't like used things even if
| they are still good and will always buy new.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| This isn't true of me.
|
| I value quality and price. Unfortunately, while price is
| clearly stated, poor quality is often hidden.
| [deleted]
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| Disclaimer: I have a KitchenAid blender. I only paid 5x for
| it, so I didn't have to pay the Vitamix guerrilla marketing
| part of the deal. But yes, expect something several
| multiples over the nickel-and-dimed stuff.
|
| The high-end blender lines of both brands are made
| domestically, and rate at the top in Consumer Reports. I
| can vouch that both are pretty quiet in operation, for what
| are essentially food-violence machines.
|
| Just because it's a German brand like Bosch doesn't mean
| it's made in Germany, from quality parts, so, buyer beware.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| thats fine, but then why do I get the same problems when i
| pay $200?
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| I had the exact same experience with hand blenders! I went
| for WMF the first time, a brand known at least in Germany for
| its quality. The connection was plastic too, but even worse:
| it didn't have a simple snap in mechanism, but you had to
| rotate it by about 20 degrees after connecting until you
| heard a click. When my mom visited she didn't know and didn't
| do it properly, and you could hear an awful sound. Within
| seconds the plastic connector got completely destroyed. Was
| also just a couple months old, so I went to the store (yes
| they have stores in almost every city that's maybe 200k
| people or more), and they were like "sorry bud, but you can
| get 10EUR off for a new one". WMF is now on my blacklist of
| "crap companies that use their reputation to sell cheap China
| crap for a premium". I was so mad I glued together the
| connector with JB weld and used it for almost another year.
| Cleaning sucked that way though. Now I always get the
| cheapest one on Amazon so I don't have any expectations. When
| I wanted a standing one a couple years later I did that right
| from the start.
| golergka wrote:
| What blenders do professional kitchens buy?
| RileyJames wrote:
| >> "it broke after 8 months"
|
| Why are you being asked to pay for a replacement? Isn't this
| covered under warranty?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Most warranties in the US are only "free from manufacturing
| defects" so if the gear was manufactured to spec, but just
| wore out, then it's not covered
|
| Also a 90 day warranty is not uncommon
| RileyJames wrote:
| There's a problem.
|
| In Australia a 12 month warranty is required. And for
| "expensive goods" it's 24 months.
|
| I'm not sure where the line is, but an iPhone certainly
| falls into the expensive category.
|
| When those battery woes occurred, Apple was required to
| replace batteries, and they did.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| It varies from state-to-state, but "Caveat Emptor" is the
| general rule of the land in the US.
|
| [edit]
|
| It's not quite "Caveat Emptor" but rather "perfect-
| tender" which still requires the buyer to inspect the
| items with "reasonable promptness"
| Loic wrote:
| We have a Vitamix at home, in use every morning. After nearly
| 7 years, the blade block started to leak. They sent a new
| one. It was very interesting to see how they improved the
| design of the block in between.
|
| As I said somewhere else, first buy cheap, if it fails you
| know better what you _really_ need and can buy the _right_
| expensive stuff. If it does not fail, enjoy your luck.
| syntheweave wrote:
| Sometimes it's easiest to do without some appliances.
| Blenders are convenient, but also one more thing to maintain,
| if only just to clean it. Often there's an alternative to get
| something premade. Like, I could make milkshakes...or I could
| take fresh milk and stir it into ice cream.
|
| If it's your hobby to cook more elaborately, of course, you
| still end up in the position of having no quality options.
| But if you're dealing with something sufficiently disposable,
| maybe it makes sense to lean into it. Everyone who writes or
| draws regularly has extra stationary supplies, for example -
| but not everyone goes down the route of getting a converter
| fountain pen and filling it with bottled ink. The extra
| packaging of a disposable pen body is waste, but the all-in-
| one nature of it makes it portable, fungible.
|
| I actually made an attempt to calculate what it would take to
| replace everything I seriously use in my home recently - all
| the cookware, electronics, toiletries, furniture, office
| supplies, clothes, cleaning tools. I estimate that it would
| be under $15k. Whatever I have on top of that is essentially
| just purchases that turned into waste - extra clothes, extra
| furniture, etc.
|
| So most of my outgoing costs are strictly recurring service
| charges: rent, energy, food, transport, insurance, etc. We
| often get appliances in hopes of beating those service
| charges, but then it turns into junk.
|
| On balance, most things can be done more easily than they
| used to be with an appropriate mix of product and service.
| But we also all got on the hedonic treadmill and the promise
| of living better by buying better. Maybe that's not how to
| live better.
| ygra wrote:
| Interestingly, the Bosch food processor we have has a plastic
| coupling between the motor and the meat grinder attachment on
| purpose, so if anything gets stuck, it's a 5 EUR plastic part
| that's broken, instead of a more expensive and less
| accessible one. So a plastic coupling alone doesn't sound
| _that_ alarming in general.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > it's a 5 EUR plastic part that's broken
|
| FWIW you can buy used one for that price
| s0rce wrote:
| I think Kitchenaid's have that too, I remember repairing
| one years ago with my dad.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Yes, they precisely have that. Have repaired three
| Kitchenaid mixers over the years, from different eras.
| Even in the higher end machines where it is almost all
| metal gears and parts, the helical gear box in those too
| is all plastic parts for easy and cheap replacement, and
| so that anything getting stuck doesn't burn out a more
| expensive elctrical motor.
|
| I have an immersion blender that also has plastic gears,
| and even though the motor is sold as a single unit that
| is not an FRU, you can take it apart and service it with
| off-the-shelf gears you can source from eBay.
|
| The two coffee grinders I have, high quality metal burrs,
| plastic gearing, for the same reason.
|
| My higher quality power tools- track saw, drills, etc,
| all plastic gearing, metal everywhere else.
|
| It just makes sense when it comes to repairs, though can
| be frustrating when they strip out.
|
| That said, most consumer crap made today is complete
| shite.
| winrid wrote:
| Your drills have plastic gears simply as a cost saving
| measure. Spend a bit more and you get powdered metal
| gears.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Okay, I'll bite, tell me which drills I should be
| spending a bit more on?
| winrid wrote:
| Not sure. I don't think drill manufacturers advertise
| these details often because they don't want to confuse
| consumers.
|
| You can try to watch teardowns, like this DeWalt by Ave:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHCS7JXfuv0
|
| Gears at 16:40
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Yeah, okay, you got nothing.
| winrid wrote:
| What are you talking about? You claimed the plastic gears
| were used as a failsafe. That's not true, higher quality
| equipment uses metal gears. Drills already have fuses and
| overload detectors built in.
|
| Go watch some teardowns of cheap stuff vs expensive stuff
| and stop being a jerk.
|
| I'm not your mom. I'm not gonna explain everything AND
| shop for you.
| runnerup wrote:
| > the helical gear box in those too is all plastic parts
| for easy and cheap replacement, and so that anything
| getting stuck doesn't burn out a more expensive elctrical
| motor.
|
| I preferred metal "shear pins" for this function ... much
| easier to find replacements for at the local hardware
| store.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Now that I agree with. Unfortunately their usage in lower
| end products, and also the move to lighter weight
| products with higher torque due to brushless motors,
| seems to have reduced their usage. Maybe because they are
| an all-or-nothing failure point. Unless you really abuse
| the gear box, plastic gears don't tend to strip out all
| at once, they just get "worn" or "sloppy." That said, I
| think a lot of products are a race to the bottom in some
| regards.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Most garage door openers too.
|
| Unfortunately, it's an open system, so the grease usually
| dries out after 5-10 years. Undo the 6 screws and put
| some marine grease on them every couple years everybody.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Garage door maintenance, every two years, regular as
| clockwork. In Southern California, with all the dust and
| the dry desert heat, you have to clean them down and
| regrease regularly. If you don't, they get real noisy,
| and then they fail. I've looked at closed system units,
| but they aren't worth the cost vs the 20 or so minutes of
| biennial maintenance. I'd rather have $3 of plastic gears
| strip out that I can reorder through a dozen different
| supplies than actual damage to my door or the
| infrastructure that holds the door. Though that has
| become less of an issue on newer units with excessive
| force sensors.
| rsa4046 wrote:
| I bought and installed a Sommer Evo+ (German made), after
| Chamberlain, Craftsman products crapped out prematurely.
| So far, so good (7 years), extremely quiet; slow, but
| well put together.
| sokoloff wrote:
| They do. I've replaced ours twice in 15 years of
| ownership (and have 3 more replacements in the junk
| drawer, since they came 5-for-$10: ASIN B07Y7S33RF).
|
| It's a pretty elegant design. Unfortunately, a lot of
| people (including my wife, initially) would be prone to
| concluding that the whole unit was "worn out and needed
| replacing".
| phpisthebest wrote:
| That is only true if the parts are available, often times
| companies will change the design annually and discontinue
| the parts making that "easy fix" a time bomb waiting to
| break and now you have to replace the entire thing
|
| 3D printing could resolve some of that, but brands have
| been known to issue take downs or other legal threats over
| people sharing models so....
| Arrath wrote:
| Its common practice for larger devices as well. E.G.
| construction equipment will often have an inexpensive
| rubber coupling between the very expensive 250 HP diesel
| motor and the hydraulic pump or air compressor that provide
| useful working fluids to the tools.
|
| Sometimes they can be a right bastard to replace, but its
| still cheaper and much quicker than replacing a blown
| hydraulic pump and flushing the system to ensure no filings
| escaped the filters.
| sydd wrote:
| There are 2 issues:
|
| 1. They don't sell this coupler as a part. I could get one
| from abroad for like $7+postage and wait weeks for it.
|
| 2. This plastic crap is glued to the motor shaft. I might
| deform the shaft while trying to fix it.
| rodgerd wrote:
| The folks over at Lens Rentals have an excellent blog where
| they tear down lenses and cameras; they've discussed
| previously that plastics and metals have strengths and
| weaknesses, and encouraged people not to simply assume that
| plastic components in a lens tell you anything about
| quality or durability.
| swimfar wrote:
| Was the blender part one of these:
|
| https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4415363
|
| https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3969534
|
| https://www.printables.com/model/172705-bosch-blender-
| coupli...
|
| You could try printing it yourself, or using a 3D printing
| service to get a replacement. It would be interesting to see
| how different material options hold up.
| sydd wrote:
| Yep, its one of these, but 3D printing will not work here.
| The original part is some kind of injection molded, ABS or
| PC with 5-30% glass fiber content. In other words a very
| strong type of plastic, which was not strong enough for the
| job.
|
| FDM printed parts are inherently much weaker than injection
| molded ones, simply it breaks very easily between the
| layers. Even if you print it in the right direction it will
| be much weaker. Maybe parts printed with continuous glass
| fibers could hold up with the original part, which was crap
| in itself.
|
| Until there are affordable printers that can print metal
| this will be crap by design. Or I could buy a CNC that can
| work with steel :)
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This is why I'm glad for EU laws; nowadays their objectives
| is to reduce e-waste. Electronic products now have a
| mandatory warranty of three years; I believe smartphones and
| such electronic devices need to have a lifetime of six.
|
| But one-year warranties have been a thing everywhere for a
| long time I believe, so I hope you got your money back for
| both devices.
|
| A good channel on youtube for these kinds of things is AvE,
| especially his older videos are good breakdowns and
| explanations of mostly electric tools where the creator
| points out things like molding, plastics, but also gears and
| probable failure modes - often a switch or as you mentioned,
| plastic gears or bad / missing bearings. The best device he
| had a teardown of was actually the Juicero, a massively over-
| engineered piece of hardware that was basically an
| inefficient press - as in, you get more juice just by hand-
| squeezing/rolling the overpriced Juicero bags.
|
| Is that company still in business? If it does I'm sure some
| SF companies with too much money on their hands are still
| paying their subscriptions / deliveries.
|
| Edit: it is not, they went out of business in 2017.
| azza2110 wrote:
| I'd happily pay 5x the price of the cheapest product
| available, if I knew I was getting a higher quality product
| with a longer lifetime.
|
| However, I can never tell if this 5x premium actually gets me
| a better core product, or just gets me better branding,
| advertising, aesthetics, and/or superfluous features.
|
| So I usually just buy the cheapest and hope for the best.
| initplus wrote:
| This is the core issue that prevents reliable consumer
| products from becoming more widespread. Even if demand
| exists for more reliable consumer goods, consumers don't
| have the ability to actually evaluate reliability at the
| time of purchase.
|
| Manufacturers can't justify producing a more reliable
| product at a higher price point, because there isn't really
| a way to get consumers to trust that it really is a more
| reliable product worthy of the price.
| krisoft wrote:
| > because there isn't really a way to get consumers to
| trust that it really is a more reliable product worthy of
| the price
|
| That is what warranties are for. You say it is reliable?
| Put it in writing how long you think it will keep working
| and what will you owe the customer if it ain't so.
| salawat wrote:
| MTBF. The Engineer's secret way of measuring relative
| Quality.
|
| MTBF is exec poison. Too high, and the customer doesn't
| come back, you see, or worse, it's too expensive to
| build! (According to finance).
| wizofaus wrote:
| Warranties? If you're gonna charge 3 times more for a
| product, then you should be able to offer a warranty
| that's much better than that for lower spec equivalents.
| Yet that rarely seems to happen.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| It's not easy, but it can be done.
|
| We found Miele for dishwashers. Zwilling for our toaster,
| JennAir for microwave...
|
| We explicitly avoided "smart" anything. I shouldn't need
| to connect my refrigerator to wi-fi.
|
| But we've watched the crap curve take hold on a bunch of
| product categories, especially U.S. brands. Hannah
| Anderson used to make good quality, reliable children's
| clothes that didn't wear out when you looked at them
| funny. Not any more. Other brands that used to make
| clothing that lasted 20+ years now makes thin garbage
| that might last a season. Many of these transitions were
| to "Made in China" manufacturing.
|
| We went to replace a ten-year old electric coffee grinder
| and couldn't find one for less than $1700 that wasn't
| garbage. We switched to a hand grinder as the only
| reasonable alternative.
|
| It is very frustrating to try to find things that will
| last. My parents bought one refrigerator, and it lasted
| for more than 30 years. Most of their stuff they were
| able to get once. Not every two or three years.
| claaams wrote:
| The 20$ coffee grinder I got at target years ago still
| runs great...
| winrid wrote:
| I have one of those, newer than that, and the bearings
| are going out.
| switchbak wrote:
| I must disagree on the coffee grinder front. There's a
| great number of decent options well under your given
| price (I just took the plunge recently).
|
| Brands like Ceado and Eureka make a bunch at various
| price ranges. 600 gets you a decent one, 1200 and you're
| well into very nice grinder territory (unless you wanna
| go all audiophile here).
|
| There's not a ton to go wrong: good motor, bearings, a
| well designed adjustment mechanism and a good hopper
| design. Of those I'd really only expect the bearings and
| motor to die in any reasonable time frame.
|
| If you're that concerned you could always get a
| commercial model. There's no way home use will kill one
| of those, but it'll just be big and impractical.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| We landed on commercial coffee grinders for any with
| motors. The hand mill we ended up with does much better
| for pour-over coffee than any of the electrics at roughly
| a tenth of the price and counter space. Only requires
| elbow-grease and some good hand-torque.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Can I leverage your research for myself...Which hand
| grinder did you go with?
| yladiz wrote:
| I'm not sure what the parent uses but I really enjoy
| using my Comandante Mark IV (which solves some issues
| with Mark III had, namely around body design). It's high
| quality, reliable, and consistent, and also easy to
| maintain since there's only a few parts that need
| cleaning. There are also a range of colors if you want
| something more eye popping. For me the only downside
| (besides price, it's around EUR275) is that I find the
| large logo on the side a little gaudy, but in practice
| it's not that bad.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| The Commandante is one of the ones we would have
| purchased, though it wasn't available when the pandemic
| was in full swing. The one that I ended up with was the
| BPlus Apollo hand-grinder (made in Taiwan).
|
| Very sturdy, easy to use, easy to clean, and surprisingly
| quiet.
|
| Random review: https://www.home-barista.com/blog/bplus-
| apollo-hand-grinder-...
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| The Kinu m47 was unavailable (fire in the factory,
| pandemic...).
|
| Went with the BPlus Apollo. See my response below to
| yaldiz.
| ericd wrote:
| There is a way, it's the reputation that builds over time
| and is associated with your brand. It's why many people
| buy Toyota by default. It's why we paid 5x the price for
| a Miele vacuum (which are awesome, by the way). It's just
| that most people either can't or just won't pay a
| significant premium for it, so those products tend to be
| niche.
|
| Of course, many execs look at brand value as something to
| be harvested for short term gains to the value of their
| options, but that's a different problem.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Not being able to trust brand reputation is the same
| problem, not a different problem.
| benj111 wrote:
| The problem then is if the brand cashes in on the
| reputation while moving production to China and using
| cheaper parts whilst charging the premium price still.
| eru wrote:
| In some sense, the longer the brand has been around, the
| less likely they are to pull an exit scam.
| lazide wrote:
| It's the opposite in my experience - older brands have a
| hard time keeping up with newer trends and are more
| likely to be bought out by PE to 'harvest value', as
| they're not as profitable right now.
| eru wrote:
| In order for something to become old, it has to have
| resisted attempts on its life so far.
| lazide wrote:
| That didn't work out well for Craftsman (or Sears in
| general), Milwaukee, and a bunch of other brands!
| phpisthebest wrote:
| The tool market is an example of that not being the case
|
| Craftsman, Portal Cable, Bosch, Stanley, the list goes on
| and on, of once independent brands that have been bought
| out by mass marketers to sell lower quality tools under
| those names
| ericd wrote:
| Yeah, that's the exec short term gain thing. But it
| doesn't take too much research to check if that's
| happened before pulling the trigger, people are pretty
| vocal when that happens to their favorite brands.
| lazide wrote:
| PE buying a brand to 'harvest the brand value' has become
| extremely common in tools, and has ruined a lot of
| things.
| dllthomas wrote:
| I almost feel like it should be deemed fraud or false
| advertising, although I have no idea how we should draw
| the line and ultimately we probably shouldn't.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| That was liking riding along in your mind as you
| constructed your thought! :)
| tshaddox wrote:
| They have more techniques too, like having store- or
| region-specific models that probably are all essentially
| the same but have different model numbers and slightly
| different feature sets just to make searching for reviews
| and price comparisons more difficult.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| That is more to allow big box stores to advertise "price
| match" when they know no one else as the "exact same
| model"
|
| See this Drill is DW345, we sell DW350, it is 5 better
| jabl wrote:
| This so much. At least over here it's completely
| impossible to find reviews of whiteware (refrigerators,
| washing machines etc.), at most a handful on the local
| reseller homepage.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| even TVs suffer from this - tons of european models have
| different numbering/code, and unless you are die hard fan
| who understands various manufacturers product lines year
| by year, looking for products in Europe based on ie US
| reviews can get tricky.
| NathanielK wrote:
| Sometimes they aren't essentially the same, but instead
| different in invisible ways. DeWalt grinders at Canadian
| Tire used to use plastic parts where metal was typically
| used. Outside of the different SKU it was difficult to
| tell the difference.
| lazide wrote:
| Walmart is notorious for this - they push really hard on
| suppliers to reduce prices, and suppliers usually do so
| by cutting quality. However everyone still pretends it's
| the same (including identical outside appearance).
| jabl wrote:
| Absolutely, it's everywhere, not just in tools. Brand X
| known for quality decides to, well like you said, drop
| production cost and 'harvest the brand value'. Then after
| a while when the reputation is sullied, the same
| conglomerate / holding company launches another 'upscale'
| brand. Rinse and repeat.
| twoWhlsGud wrote:
| Re Miele - my sample size of one dates to 1987 and still
| is my main vac. So at some point in the past they were
| probably quite good (or I got really really lucky). FWIW
| ericd wrote:
| Ha awesome. Before I bought, I did some reading about
| vacuums that repair shops thought were good, Miele seemed
| to top the list at the time. It's been great, despite
| suffering a decent amount of clumsiness-related abuse.
| stevage wrote:
| Yeah just look at the recent reviews of Dyson vacuum
| cleaners. People buying the reputation but the quality
| has gone to shit.
| hgomersall wrote:
| I used to work with a mechanical engineer that was
| formerly at Dyson and he was rather scathing of their
| design policies, the tolerances being calculated badly
| and so on. The effect is everything feels "a bit loose".
| wizofaus wrote:
| Yep, I wouldn't buy Dyson again. If a manufacturer wants
| to preserve its reputation it shouldn't be making
| cordless vacuums with batteries that run out within 10-15
| minutes.
| nuker wrote:
| Many execs have short term personal incentives, so short
| term gains suit fine.
| switchbak wrote:
| I think there's a growing level of knowledge in some
| niches that's leading to higher quality items in some
| circumstances.
|
| In power tools for instance, there's a number of YouTube
| channels that do high quality testing. In some cases some
| identified faults appear to have caught the eye of the
| manufacturer. Hopefully over time this feedback loop will
| result in higher quality products that still hit their
| price target.
| lutorm wrote:
| I don't agree with that. There is a way to clearly signal
| that you're standing behind the quality of your products:
| offer an outstanding warranty.
|
| If I was choosing between brand A and twice as expensive
| brand B, and brand B said "we trust that our stuff will
| last so we offer a 10-year, no questions asked warranty",
| I would go for B in a heartbeat. (As long as it was a
| brand with some history so I can trust they don't just go
| out of business.)
| fomine3 wrote:
| The problem is that the confident is just a confident by
| brand B, and possibly the warranty term is not decided
| from confident but from competitor's warranty term.
| Personally I don't want very long warranty term for some
| products (I came up with PC PSU 12yr warranty). Warranty
| increases product cost that I should pay finally, but
| some products never be used so long by me.
| ouid wrote:
| warranty has been replaced with AAS.
| mellavora wrote:
| Don't know that acronym, is is "a-hat as a service?"
|
| like help lines which charge 80 cents/minute to not help
| you?
| ouid wrote:
| as a service already has 2 'a's.
| ornornor wrote:
| Some brands have gotten around this by offering a 10
| years warranty*
|
| * insert terms so onerous you're very unlikely to claim,
| you have to ship the item on your own dime halfway across
| the world, if defect is deemed not covered (and you bet
| it won't be) disposal at your expense or return as is at
| your expense, extended warranty void if you didn't do
| $frivolousThing at time of purchase and not a day later,
| extended warranty doesn't transfer to new owner, etc.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I've had a blendtec blender for nearly a decade, and
| recently the gasket at the bottom started leaking. When I
| looked up pricing for replacing the container, I found it
| was nearly half the cost of the whole unit.
|
| The motor doesn't sound as good these days, so I considered
| replacing the whole thing. Fortunately after I wiggled the
| gasket it seemed to stop leaking!
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| That gasket melted on mine after 1.5 years. I bought an
| Alterna-jar to replace it. It's a third-party jar with a
| significantly more robust bearing block.
| ConceptJunkie wrote:
| Is it more sturdy and long-lasting? Or does it just have
| wifi capabilities that put your computer network at risk
| for no increase in value whatsoever?
| cudgy wrote:
| Get a Vitamix. 5x the price and seems to last forever. In
| fact, there are even very old (decades old) used Vitamix's
| on eBay that are still running and usually just need a new
| canister.
| rlaabs wrote:
| Modern Vitamix benders (roughly within the last 8 years)
| have the same declining quality issues.
|
| Newer models are typically much lighter. This means they
| now have far less internal material to reduce noise. I
| can't use mine without ear protection since it's about
| chainsaw level of noise. The reduced weight means I also
| need to hold onto it during use otherwise it will vibrate
| itself off the counter.
|
| The company seems to be most interested in selling
| smoothie recipe subscriptions for their blender companion
| phone app. Aside from subscription selling the app is
| pretty much useless -- who wants a phone app to remotely
| control a blender?
| geodel wrote:
| Seems like common problem. Some retarded React App
| developer gets hired. And now business is no longer
| making some solid, long lasting blenders but "Connected
| Healthy Solutions"(r)
|
| I am sure some next generation developers are already
| demanding to install VSCode on fridges so one can code on
| Samsung Smart refrigerators screens.
|
| Wouldn't it be great that while fridge telling about
| running short on Kale green also download a gigabyte of
| NPM garbage to display image of Kale green in a bag?
| rodgerd wrote:
| > Some retarded
|
| Do better.
| nuker wrote:
| Some rodgerd
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| Retarded is a fine word to describe a person that is
| acting like he/she has a mental handcap. Americans are
| sooo annoying with the language policing mania, tou guys
| really need to chill.
| arkadiytehgraet wrote:
| I believe the parent was imploring GP to use stronger
| words more accurately depicting the aforementioned React
| App developer, such as "braindead" or similar.
| rrix2 wrote:
| Nah, you sound like a school kid when you write like
| that.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Baseball used to be America's favorite pastime, Now it
| seems taking offense is the most common pastime...
| cinntaile wrote:
| People seem to use braindead nowadays. A clinical
| condition resulting from an accident, a stroke, ... such
| an improvement.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _who wants a phone app to remotely control a blender?_
|
| Here's an idea: if you find the blender to be too loud,
| go into a different room, close the door, and remotely
| trigger the blender with your smartphone app.
|
| We put our blender in our pantry because we can close the
| door and blend without waking up the baby. Otherwise it
| (Blendtec) is too loud!
|
| EDIT: to the downvoters, this was tongue in cheek. It
| would obviously be better for them to spend more money on
| soundproofing and less on a useless app!
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| This is the worst part about all this smart phone junk
| and cooking. It's normalising leaving the room and then
| cooking something remotely a bit too much.
| mlyle wrote:
| It all depends. Getting notified for time consuming
| things is great.
|
| Having my smoker self-manage its temperature and graph
| the amount of heat it's dumped in is nice. Checking on
| the temperature ramp of the sous vide is nice, too.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Is blending time-consuming? I guess peanut butter takes a
| couple minutes, most blending is < 40s IME.
| mlyle wrote:
| I was just speaking about those specific cases. Running
| the smoker is a 8-20 hour endeavor. Sous vide is 2-6
| usually. Smart devices are kinda nice for this.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Breville seemed to be the better one to go with, but that
| was a while ago, too.
| xahrepap wrote:
| For Christmas we replaced my moms vitamix. She had her
| last one for well over 20 years.
|
| We've had ours for 8 years and it works like new and
| doesn't smell like the motor is burning out like so many
| cheap blenders do.
| christophilus wrote:
| I can't speak to the quality of the new ones, but mine is
| a decade old and still going strong.
| hansvm wrote:
| I can second this motion. I've used a lot of blender-like
| products of various advertised levels of quality, and
| Vitamix is the only thing I've seen that can take massive
| levels of abuse for ages.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| But that only says anything about the units that were
| sold decades ago. It's very common that quality brands
| with very good reputation are bought by some investors,
| and then they start selling the same crap as everyone
| else, but to the premium price that their brand and
| reputation allow them to. And it works surprisingly long
| before the new crap they sell destroys their reputation.
| (I know nothing about Vitamix, they may still be great.)
| [deleted]
| cudgy wrote:
| You are absolutely correct. This happens far too often,
| but I don't think that is the case with Vitamix ... yet.
| bilegeek wrote:
| Anecdotally, new units are about the same quality for a
| higher price than 10-15 years ago. Nothing objective,
| could be wrong; in my late-2000's case, it was from
| Costco, so maybe it was higher priced elsewhere.
| palijer wrote:
| Vitamix is a private, family owned company.
|
| Your statement would be correct for the majority of
| companies however, but Vitamix is actually distinct in
| that regard (currently)
| robotnikman wrote:
| It seems like private family owned companies are the way
| to go when you want something with decent quality that
| will last.
| xnx wrote:
| For 5x price, you can probably get commercial grade.
| jghn wrote:
| Worse yet, even some of the traditional "expensive, but
| built like a tank" companies are starting to shift to being
| "better branding, advertising" from your list.
| lutorm wrote:
| When investors put short-term profit ahead of long term
| brand viability...
| sneak wrote:
| Blendtec, KitchenAid
| yourapostasy wrote:
| _> However, I can never tell if this 5x premium actually
| gets me a better core product, or just gets me better
| branding, advertising, aesthetics, and /or superfluous
| features._
|
| For a wide range of consumables and gear that hackers of
| the physical world would probably like, check out Project
| Farm, protoolreviews, ToolGuyd, and of course AvE on
| YouTube.
|
| For kitchen gear, check out America's Test Kitchen.
|
| I hang out in r/bifl but it isn't as good as it used to be
| for my personal tastes, as there isn't as much of an
| emphasis on repairability as I'd prefer.
|
| I wish there was a trend of someone like AvE doing a
| teardown of junk-quality consumer gear, then by replacing
| certain parts like bad capacitors, plastic gears, _etc._ ,
| turning it into much higher-quality equipment, and open-
| sourcing those small parts' design and manufacturing specs.
|
| One hack I employ is I go straight to the servicing
| departments and find the service technicians, and lately I
| only go to commercial B2B offerings. They are usually more
| than happy to tell you which manufacturers and product
| lines are easiest to diagnose and service (and whether that
| conjunction of characteristics leads to reliability), have
| a reliable supply of parts, maintain that parts supply the
| longest, and have retained all those characteristics the
| most years. It is no more than a 10-15 minute conversation
| most service technicians are happy to have.
|
| They will be _especially_ happy to talk with you if you ask
| them how you can plan to accommodate their service visits
| more pleasant and efficient to work in. HVAC techs in
| particular will trade around site porn of customers who
| planned ahead, put in a proper-sized and sited pad easy to
| roll up to with all their equipment in their work van, with
| provisions for ample shade that doesn 't obstruct the
| equipment airflow. They will <squee> over that more than
| tween girls over the heartthrob _du jour_.
|
| Then I talk up staff at businesses who have to use the
| equipment every day to find out the most annoying aspects
| of using that equipment to determine whether I can put up
| with those idiosyncracies myself.
|
| There are some manufacturers I will absolutely not even
| consider in the US for some equipment, for example. Samsung
| refrigerators; they are not designed to last past the
| warranty, not designed to be easily diagnosed and serviced,
| and their parts supply network reflects that. There are
| some categories of equipment I have absolute requirements
| no matter where I am in the world. Rigging gear where a
| failure puts life and safety at risk I will outright refuse
| to purchase and use from anywhere but Japan, Germany, and
| the US from long-standing manufacturers making it in those
| nations. I will pay the price to import it to where I am
| and wait for as long as it takes to get through customs.
| I'm beginning to stop using Amazon and switching to direct
| from manufacturer, distributors, or retailers listed on the
| manufacturer's web site; the SKU commingling issue has
| gotten out of hand, and Amazon's poor inventory control has
| robbed whatever unique value proposition their logistics
| arm painstakingly built up.
| palijer wrote:
| This is why I love the genre of teardown videos on YouTube.
| There is a while world of engineering minded folks tearing
| down basically everything on YouTube, and saying "what a
| piece of crap" or "such a brilliant engineered design"
| ygra wrote:
| In Germany there's an independent organisation, Stiftung
| Warentest [-4], that anonymously buys various products in
| stores and tests them quite rigorously. Some may say
| perhaps a bit too well (including things like the manual,
| how easy it is to set up a large appliance, or whether
| toxic chemicals are used in parts that are handled), but
| overall they seem to do a very good job. Testing and
| scoring methodology is published as well. I trust them a
| lot more than Amazon or YouTube reviews or some random blog
| that got the product sent by its manufacturer.
|
| [-4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest - the
| article also has a few pointers to international, similar
| organisations near the bottom.
| rahen wrote:
| It seems common all across Europe, maybe the whole
| western world.
|
| Here for France: https://www.60millions-mag.com/tests-
| comparatifs
|
| (I just laughed as I see they even review fries brands,
| and sex toys...)
| floydnoel wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, this is great information. I
| definitely think that independent testing organizations
| are important for quality so it's always great to hear of
| more of them
| Semaphor wrote:
| My issue with them is twofold: a) The "testing too much"
| part, specifically things like how well translated the
| manual is, for example. I don't care. And b), it's a
| blackbox. There are no real details for how they arrived
| at the rating of some subsection.
|
| ETM [0] is subscription funded and their tests are far
| more detailed, and they even show the data (e. g. power
| usage curves for a toaster, measured air replacement
| curves for a fan, etc.).
|
| [0]: https://etm-testmagazin.de/
| ant6n wrote:
| Perhaps the magazine is good, but the website doesn't
| leave a good impression: I search for dehumidifier, and
| all I get is the info about one particular model being
| released, an article that reads more like an ad, without
| any testing done.
| Semaphor wrote:
| They recently (about a year ago) redesigned their
| website, and it's a disaster. I have absolutely NO idea
| what they were thinking. Links aren't working properly,
| and as usual for an SPA, it's slower now. It's even hard
| to actually navigate anywhere now.
|
| Anyway, in this case, they simply have not tested any
| dehumidifiers.
| drekipus wrote:
| We have the same in australia too, called choice
| magazine. https://www.choice.com.au/
| nuker wrote:
| And even better, OzBargain.com.au crowdsourced one liner
| reviews, surprisingly valid :)
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > I trust them a lot more than Amazon or YouTube reviews
| or some random blog that got the product sent by its
| manufacturer.
|
| Yeah same, those reviews are either bought, or made on a
| whim by people who aren't critical of what they buy -
| especially if the company or seller goad them into
| reviewing with giveaways or whatever. There will be good
| reviews, but they will be buried in the thousand+
| mediocre ones.
| grog454 wrote:
| Do they do tear-downs and rate the engineering? That's
| pretty much the only way to determine how likey something
| is to last without using it for ten years.
| sneak wrote:
| AvE does this on his YT channel, though only for hand
| tools and adjacent stuff (he did a Juicero once and it
| was utterly hilarious).
| somewhat_drunk wrote:
| Juicero teardown is one of the best youtube videos ever
| made.
| mschild wrote:
| I don't think they do tear-downs but they do stress test
| them extensively. Their reports also include their
| testing methods in detail. For washing machine testing,
| for example, they independently bought 3 of each model
| and ran each through 1840 cycles. That's equivalent to
| 3.5 cycles per week for 10 years. They checked how the
| machine held up in comparison to the beginning and if any
| repairs were needed.
| stevage wrote:
| The Australia Choice magazine does pretty hefty stress
| tests. No tear downs though.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Same stuff in France : 60 million de consommateurs.
|
| They also provide help to launch class action. ( that
| exists differently than a US class action )
| foobiekr wrote:
| In the US, the closest example is Consumer Reports (
| https://www.consumerreports.org/ ); there actually are a
| lot of these orgs worldwide. It's pretty cool.
|
| They often are somewhat marginal at the edges - e.g., for
| computers. But otherwise they are useful for consumer
| products.
| Gurgler wrote:
| There is a similar organization in the USA: Consumer
| Reports. It used to be a magazine, now I believe it's
| just a website. Entirely funded by subscription - and not
| advertisement or other sponsorship - they tackle entire
| categories of consumer goods in the USA, rigorously
| testing and ranking competing products across many
| metrics.
| game-of-throws wrote:
| Another similar site is https://www.rtings.com/. They do
| very scientific, thorough quality tests. I've only used
| them to buy monitors so far, but it looks like they're
| starting to branch out from tech -- they have new
| categories for blenders and vacuums.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| Hopefully they don't go the same path as the Wirecutter.
| Started out great and small and independent and slowly
| started watering down reviews as they branched into more
| and more areas. They are now owned by the NYTimes and the
| quality of the reviews is much more hit and miss.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| rtings is trying to push a subscription now. I was
| looking up wireless mice latency, and after looking at 5
| mice, I had used up all my free views of "advanced
| metrics" like click latency.
|
| rtings does good work, I'd pay a flat fee for it. But a
| subscription for a website I check every 2-3 years when
| I'm upgrading some tech? I'll just clear my cookies.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I was looking up wireless mice latency, and after
| looking at 5 mice, I had used up all my free views of
| "advanced metrics" like click latency.
|
| If you're specifically looking at mice, you might want to
| check out RocketJumpNinja. The reviews are pretty biased
| towards suitability for FPS, but they are quite in depth,
| and the reviewer is pretty knowledgeable.
| driverdan wrote:
| Wirecutter has always been hit or miss.
| TylerE wrote:
| Their conclusions are somewhat suspect sometimes
| though... with weird qualifications for "best" that often
| barely effect actual functioning. Like, heavily weighting
| quietness over power.
| wtallis wrote:
| Are you referring specifically to their car reviews?
| Those seem to regularly attract criticism for not being
| more like traditional car enthusiast-oriented reviews.
|
| I think that's largely due to car enthusiasts having
| insufficient self-awareness about the degree to which
| their priorities differ from those of mainstream
| consumers. PC gamers and PC building enthusiasts are also
| frustratingly prone to this kind of thing. (I spent
| several years reviewing PC hardware for a living, which
| included constantly fielding comments from readers who
| seemed to be genuinely unable to understand how their
| could be a market for low-end components.)
| 41b696ef1113 wrote:
| Last year, I was looking to upgrade my desktop. Found a
| review that was bemoaning a motherboard because it _only_
| had two M.2 slots. How many consumers use two, let alone
| would benefit from a third?
| fomine3 wrote:
| I have opposite bemoaning for recent motherboards: only
| one PCIe slot (x16) is directly connected to CPU (not via
| chipset). It's useless to have PCIe 5.0 x16 slot even for
| average consumer because 4.0 x8 is still enough for
| modern GPU for gaming and even if it become not enough,
| 5.0 x8 should be enough for foreseeable future. Lack of
| high bandwidth dedicated PCIe slots for other than GPU
| makes the PC less expandable, e.g. video capture, another
| GPU (not for SLI), 10GbE, HBA, etc...
| ziml77 wrote:
| I hate it too. The allocation of PCIe lanes is garbage
| unless you spend $500 on a motherboard. We should have
| had the lanes divided better once we hit 4.0 speeds. At
| 5.0 speeds, it's absurd that 16 full-speed lanes would go
| to a single slot except for very specialist scenarios.
| wtallis wrote:
| Part of the problem is that it's quite difficult to get a
| PCIe 5.0 signal to travel further than the first slot
| while keeping the motherboard price reasonable by
| consumer standards.
| nfriedly wrote:
| I suspect that AMD & Intel push the motherboard
| manufactures in that direction. You can certainly get
| more high-speed PCIe slots if you get one of the higher-
| end product lines (Threadripper, Xeon, etc.)
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Flexible I/O is one of those things Motherboard
| manufacturers reserve for the upper price ranges,
| unfortunately.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Yeah sadly now. PCIe x8/x8 or x8/x4/x4 (bifurcation) from
| CPU was common in standard priced board like Z170X-UD3,
| but now requires mid-high priced board. More flexible
| slots (dynamic switch by PLX chip) is always for
| highends.
| NathanielK wrote:
| Since the only thing consumers use full size PCIe slots
| for now is for a single GPU, extra M.2 slots isn't that
| big of an ask. One M.2 keyed for an interchangeable wifi
| card, one for NVMe storage, and then an extra one if you
| want to upgrade to more storage later. If you only have
| one keyed for storage, you're SoL when you buy a bigger
| one later and it's very inconvenient to move data over.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not a big ask, but it's also quite unimportant.
| Adapter cards to put one M.2 card into a PCIe slot are in
| the $5 range, and better adapters will do four.
| wtallis wrote:
| PC motherboard marketing and reviews usually don't count
| the WiFi card slot when tallying up the number of M.2
| slots (since approximately zero motherboards are sold
| with an _empty_ WiFi-type M.2 slot), so the complaint was
| most likely about not having more than two _storage_
| -type M.2 slots.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I remember reading their computer reviews a few decades
| ago and being gobsmacked at how ignorant their process
| and conclusions were.
|
| I assume that other articles have similar issues, and
| that I'm just unaware because they're not within my area
| of expertise.
| thaeli wrote:
| CR's core failing is, on the surface, their greatest
| strength: they refuse to have any "special" contact with
| any manufacturers. Unfortunately, this also means that
| they don't ask, or listen, when their test procedures are
| nonsensical.
| linkdink wrote:
| At least they're open about how they weighed their
| values. And they give you enough information to draw your
| own conclusions from your own values. Some people want to
| be told what's "best", and they've found a way to make
| everyone (minus one) happy.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| They are also incorruptible.
|
| If they give your product good marks, you are not allowed
| to mention it in your marketing (Not sure how they
| enforce it; maybe they stop reviewing your stuff).
|
| I worked at a company that regularly got top marks from
| them, and our Marketing folks would have fits, because
| they couldn't mention it.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| Sounds great, but Consumer Reports definitely has a
| checkered past. Read about the Suzuki Samurai debacle, in
| which they methodically manipulated their tests (strictly
| for that vehicle, and not any of the others in its class
| that they were simultaneously evaluating), with the goal
| of destroying the vehicle's reputation.
|
| https://www.aim.org/aim-report/aim-report-a-black-eye-
| for-co...
| hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
| I hadn't heard about this, thanks for the link. I did a
| little digging and it doesn't appear be quite as clean
| cut as that article says. For instance, check out https:/
| /www.theautochannel.com/news/press/date/19970422/pres...
| (a CR press release), where they mention internal Suzuki
| documents acknowledging the rollover issue.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| I've read the text of the lawsuit. As you mention, this
| is a press release, so I'm highly skeptical of it. Video
| documentation of CR's manipulation of the tests is on
| YouTube. It's wild stuff:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2Bv9WL3vpY
| hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
| Best guess? CR fabricated their test results because they
| couldn't figure out how to replicate the real-life
| problems on their test course. Which is to say, both
| sides are in the wrong.
| delusional wrote:
| Every review site "fabricates their test reults" thats
| the whole point. You create a test that documents your
| assistent.
|
| The ruling on an appeal makes the argument better than i
| could.
|
| > [The] forst theory is that CU know it was probably
| lying because its employees tries to make the samurai
| flip and we're happy when they suceeded. The second is
| that CU purposely avoided the truth by failing to address
| a potential source of experimental error. Neither of
| these theories withstands serious scrutiny
|
| The opinion end up concluding that the entire reason for
| changing the test setup, along with a description of the
| changes, was present in the article.
|
| What a non-story.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I think Consumer Reports has an opinionated editorial
| voice. But I think that's inevitable in that line of
| work.
|
| SUVs evolved to address the risks pointed out by CR and
| other entities. They mostly have wider wheelbases and
| lower centers of gravity.
| crotchrocketeer wrote:
| Well, at least this wasn't in the "pretend it's better
| direction" so it's a at least still reliable in helping
| pick good quality.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| Not if you were trying to decide between the Samurai and
| the other vehicles CR was "evaluating" (a Wrangler and
| the Bronco II). Internally, CR's testers praised the
| Samurai as having the best handling of the bunch, but
| their editor made sure the public never heard this.
| delusional wrote:
| What are you talking about? The original review literally
| mentioned: "Under the touch of our drivers, all four
| utility vehicles got through the course at 52 mph or
| better. The Suzuki Samurai was actually more maneuverable
| than the others, since it's so much smaller and lighter"
|
| Tell me again how it was some cover up. They literally
| published your argument along with the review.
| mapt wrote:
| I'm not sure what the point is of linking to a reference
| that also features pieces titled:
|
| 'The media lied to you about COVID-19 - TAKE ACTION NOW'
|
| 'Critical Race Theory in schools, take action now!'
|
| 'Gender activists are politicizing the dictionary: TAKE
| ACTION NOW'
|
| 'Stand up for Rush - TAKE ACTION NOW'
|
| 'VOX buries the truth'
|
| 'CNN admits Hunter Biden 'a real problem' for Joe Biden,
| not 'a right-wing media story''
|
| https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Accuracy_in_Media
|
| I am less confident about either your contention or about
| the position you are attacking than about the idea that
| this particular website is going to lie to me about it.
| ConceptJunkie wrote:
| Hey, I love Rush! "Hemispheres" is my favorite album by
| them!
| switchbak wrote:
| I'm still not sure why I'm standing up for Rush, I don't
| even like the band, but I took action. Immediately!
| dijonman2 wrote:
| All sound like accurate headlines in today's political
| landscape.
| midoridensha wrote:
| Why does anyone need to stand up for Rush? It was a great
| band and not really controversial, plus they disbanded
| years ago because the drummer died. They don't exist any
| more, just like Led Zeppelin no longer really exists
| (also because the drummer died, coincidentally).
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| She's Buying the Stairway to Heaven TAKE ACTION NOW
| philwelch wrote:
| It was ridiculous how long it took for them to be
| enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but that
| finally happened a few years back.
| midoridensha wrote:
| The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a complete joke, and
| has nothing to do with real Rock and Roll music. They
| regularly induct musicians and performers who have
| absolutely _nothing_ to do with Rock. It 's best to just
| ignore the whole institution.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Spock: Captain we need to send down a landing party to
| investigate the radiation leak.
|
| Kirk: Send some red shirts.
|
| Spock: They're all in Agile training today.
|
| Kirk: Do we have any rock drummers?
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Just four days ago they played at Red Rocks with Matt
| Stone on drums for South Park's 25th:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lel5JGJfwqQ
|
| RIP Neil Peart
| justin66 wrote:
| Led Zeppelin should reunite with the deceased drummer's
| son playing drums - TAKE ACTION NOW
| ConceptJunkie wrote:
| Jason Bonham made a couple of fun records in late
| 80s/early 90s with his group "Bonham". I'd be up for
| seeing a reunion.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _Led Zeppelin should reunite with the deceased
| drummer's son playing drums_
|
| That's kind of how it worked when Zep was one of the
| recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors a few years back,
| with Ann and Nancy Wilson + _Jason_ Bonham, son of John,
| + others doing _Stairway to Heaven._
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFxOaDeJmXk
| sideshowb wrote:
| That was a bizarre gardening accident.
| tablespoon wrote:
| Who cares, it's easy? I did my part: I just stood up and
| went to the bathroom.
| safety1st wrote:
| So the website also publishes right wing propaganda. Does
| that invalidate the claims in the article he linked? Did
| you read the article before formulating your opinion?
|
| This is basic critical thinking, you don't have to be as
| shallow as many readers of that website probably are,
| you're just choosing to be.
| rsynnott wrote:
| In general, if someone cites a wacky propaganda website
| as evidence for something, I'm going to assume that
| they're doing this because there's no proper evidence. I
| suppose occasionally this isn't the case, and they've
| just made a bizarre choice on what to link, but if it
| walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
|
| Indeed, the real story would appear to be rather more
| nuanced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Motor_Corp.
| _v._Consumer....
| groby_b wrote:
| Basic critical thinking is "if the publication lies in
| every other article, the expected value of this one
| additional article is close to zero".
|
| Critical thinking does not require you to carefully parse
| every bit of garbage on the planet.
| mapt wrote:
| If somebody writes for you a long piece featuring many
| pages of text and references, quoting lawsuits and making
| numerous reasonable-seeming inferences throughout...
|
| The opportunity they have to lie to somebody who is
| unfamiliar with the subject is immense. Falsehood could
| be hiding in any of a thousand places, and it could
| easily require you to hire a team of experts for weeks to
| find it and conclusively debunk it, line by line. It may
| well require decompiling what is functionally or
| literally the source code behind the piece to dismiss
| one's suspicions. "Basic critical thinking" is not
| trivial against a determined adversary.
|
| Whether to take the claims within on face value depends
| on your purpose and on what you know of the writer. In
| this case, it is very easy to become quite familiar with
| this motivation and ethics of the writer in under a
| minute by clicking around the website, and come to the
| reasonable conclusion that this is a place that generally
| attempts to deceive their reader to secure material gain
| for their patrons & movement, and there are likely
| deliberate lies somewhere in the body of the piece. You
| don't even need to read the body.
| emsixteen wrote:
| Are you really wondering why someone is skeptical of an
| article on a website which is already clearly willing to
| publish falsehoods?
| Jerrrry wrote:
| All of those are objectively true.
|
| Please list one of those that are false, so you can be
| educated.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| headsoup wrote:
| Sure it's stupidly sensationalized, but most of those
| statements listed are true.
| tomohawk wrote:
| I'm a member of CR, but they obviously have their biases
| and blind spots.
|
| Sometimes they start with a premise they want to prove
| instead of just providing a straight review of the
| products. They may do this by selecting the criteria (key
| performance metrics), for example.
|
| Sometimes, they just don't competently evaluate the
| products because they fail to take into account real
| world consumer needs.
|
| The quality of reviews in CR these days doesn't hold a
| candle to what CR used to provide, but I remain a member
| because even a weak signal is better than the other
| random stuff out there like Amazon reviews.
| nobodyofnote wrote:
| They actually do allow you to mention it in marketing;
| I've worked with them for a consumer product. What you
| can't do is use it in "paid" marketing.
|
| Emails, social media posts, website landing pages,
| collateral in-store/retail is all fully acceptable. You
| can also pay additional fees to them for additional
| materials to use in communications.
| pandaman wrote:
| It is apparently allowed to put a link to the review,
| saying "Check out how CR reviewed us" e.g.
| https://www.lg.com/us/laundry
| grepfru_it wrote:
| I've had great success with them, my vacuum is going
| strong after 13+ years, washer and dryer great after 9
| years. But I'm still harboring negative feelings about
| their car reviews. They marked the 2013 Ford Edge as a
| great vehicle with minimal flaws, but when they reviewed
| the 2014 Ford Edge they found an array of problems and
| lowered the score. While I was researching and shopping
| for my Ford Edge I found the 2013 and 2014 were exactly
| the same cars. I think they enhanced the weld points for
| ANCHOR points to support 60lbs instead of 45lbs, but that
| was the extent of changes.. small and incremental. Yet CR
| faulted them for excess road noise, stiff suspension, and
| reliability. I test drove both mode years and they both
| performed and sounded exactly the same. Major parts
| including suspension were interchangeable as well. We
| went with the 2013 to save money before the CR reviews
| for 2014 came out. It made me realize their reviews are
| not consistent, especially when Tesla Model S went from
| having top marks to all of a sudden being scored very
| low. These are not cars that drastically changed between
| the years, so just buyer beware YMMV
|
| FWIW, I do love my Ford Edge and it is still the daily
| driver for our household
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| I had a problem with them where their rating methodology
| for carpet cleaners was not adequate. So the cleaner with
| strongest cleaning capability was like 10th in the list,
| instead of first
| mcphage wrote:
| My dad always used Consumer Reports to pick products,
| and... I dunno, they didn't seem to be super great.
| switchbak wrote:
| I've seen some reviews for which I know a fair amount,
| and often the testing and rating rubric are ...
| Bewildering and unsophisticated. I love the idea of
| Consumer Reports a lot more than the actual thing itself.
| mcphage wrote:
| > I love the idea of Consumer Reports a lot more than the
| actual thing itself
|
| Yeah, exactly. I really love the idea, but not the
| results.
| abawany wrote:
| Consumers Report still has a magazine - I subscribe to it
| for a lower cost than the online access.
| cptnapalm wrote:
| It's still a magazine. Source: I work at a library and
| put the September 2022 issue on the shelf last week.
| avar wrote:
| Undervalued option for a hand blender: A power drill with a
| blender attachment, it'll easily beat any store bought
| immersion blender when it comes to reliability.
|
| Of course you might end up wishing for crappy plastic gears
| over something with enough torque to shear a finger off...
| liminalsunset wrote:
| In this case, the power drill actually has a torque limit
| feature (normally used for putting in screws, without
| stripping them). If the blender attachment gets stuck, the
| drill "cams out" and does not get damaged at all, unlike
| plastic gears.
| hnxs wrote:
| my vitamix is turning six. i would love to buy the equivalent
| of a vitamix for anything whenever possible
| nfhshy68 wrote:
| Your country needs consumer laws. If something craps out like
| that within a reasonable timeframe for the thing to last you
| get a refund or replacement. Generally people expect a
| blender to last for more than a year or two, you'd get your
| money back after 8 months here easy.
|
| Same goes for whiteware that's expected to last more than 5
| generally.
|
| Shops still somehow sell extended warranties though. Crooks.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| >Yes, there is plenty of planned obsolence out there, and one
| of the greenest things you can do is buy premium stuff that
| will last you a lifetime (if you can afford it :/ )
|
| Economically this is almost always the case.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| If you can identify the good boots. That's the problem--
| quality is hard to identify these days.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Wisdom of the crowd:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/
| bombcar wrote:
| For food-service you can often find commercial-grade stuff
| which still has some durability to it - but it will NOT have
| things like "be quiet" or "small portion size" or "cheap"
| usually.
| ars wrote:
| This doesn't work in all categories, but when the product
| breaks before a reasonable lifetime you buy a new one, and
| return the old one.
|
| The store ships it back to the manufacturer, and if they are
| smart they tear it down and improve whatever caused it to
| break.
|
| If enough people did this quality would improve.
| thfuran wrote:
| Yeah, except that you're not getting your money back
| because almost nothing has a warranty that extends nearly
| to it's reasonable lifetime, so the manufacturer has no
| particular interest in stopping you from buying another
| one.
| ars wrote:
| You get your money back when your return the defective
| item for a refund.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| not when the return is a year after purchase (even
| shorter for most products these days)
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| You don't claim the warranty. You buy the new one, put
| the old broken one in the new one's box, and return that.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| I believe this is called fraud, but you do you.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Well, on some ethical level so is what manufacturers are
| doing. Race to the bottom!
| thfuran wrote:
| No, a bad deal isn't fraud.
| jacknews wrote:
| The problem isn't just with poor quality, but with
| integration or lack of modularity/standardization.
|
| I've had exactly the same problem with blenders, several
| times, where for example a small plastic tab that secures the
| blender bowl to the motor base snaps off, making the whole
| thing useless.
|
| It would not be such an issue if these couplings were
| standardized in some way, so that you could buy a
| replacement, other than the manufacturer's hugely price
| inflated spare part.
|
| Contrast the situation with when your PC graphics card or
| memory stick fails, you can just buy a commodity replacement,
| rather than junking the whole PC, screen, keyboard.
|
| The more philosophical problem of course is that market
| capitalism's one incentive is to make profit. Making good
| products is only incidental to that imperative, and clearly
| not always a requirement.
| seb1204 wrote:
| Commercial range of devices often are better as they need to
| endure much more uses.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Commercial grade devices are often not suitable for home
| use - for example commercial dishwashers are a totally
| different beast, their cycles are like 10 minutes and they
| are meant for disinfection nore than cleaning. They need
| frequent maintenance, dont come with a pump, dont tolerate
| long periods of non use, etc.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I noticed this when looking into coffee grinders.
|
| A commercial one is a problem at home unless you make 20
| coffees a day because it is going to retain a lot of
| grinds (not a problem if you have a lot of throughput, it
| won't go stale). It will also be noisy and big.
|
| A prosumer one should be quite and good for not retaining
| grinds, but would be bad for commercial as it wont be
| fast enough (ten times slower), and you you don't want to
| wait grind for every shot. Also a prosumer one would look
| nicer probably.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| FWIW I've had a Baratza grinder going strong with daily
| use for 5+ years
| hnbad wrote:
| I take it you don't live in the EU? Because regardless of
| what warranties the seller provides, all consumer electronics
| generally have a 2 year legal minimum guarantee and the first
| two blenders you describe definitely would have been covered
| by it. Bosch would have had to replace that plastic part, not
| "sell" it to you.
|
| I'm not saying this to dunk on Americans. I'm just saying
| this is a problem that can be addressed with proper consumer
| protection regulations. Mind you, products will still fail
| and need to be replaced but this incentivizes manufacturers
| to aim for 2 years of use rather than 2 months.
|
| Of course the real problem is that the broken device becomes
| your problem once the legal guarantee runs out and
| electronics waste is just handled in bulk, disregarding the
| environmental impact and resource waste. All the long-term
| damage becomes an externality so companies will optimize for
| limiting the lifetime of components to the least they can get
| away with because longer lasting products mean fewer sales.
| dghughes wrote:
| It's the indifference and apathy that is annoying. Just
| yesterday I was told "did you check online" from a local
| business that was complaining that nobody buys local.
|
| Or my new hated phrase "ready to ship" on store websites, in
| other words they don't have it. Why would I get it shipped to
| them and then have to call when I can just order it direct.
|
| Between crap quality, apathetic store staff, and no inventory
| it's become a pain to buy anything locally or online even
| just a regular toaster.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| For kitchen appliances you should try to get restaurant grade
| if you can afford it. Won't solve all the problems but
| Restaurant appliances are made for heavy use so are more
| durable compared to home kitchen appliances. Last 1-2 years
| would have been a good year to get 2nd hand restaurant
| appliances with the many restaurants going out of business.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| On Blenders, I got mine from the free/donation pile at the
| dump. It's glass, all metal and proudly declares itself
| "solid state". It has 14 speeds with a high and low and
| smells vaguely of ozone when you turn it on. It's
| bulletproof.
| userbinator wrote:
| About the ozone, you might want to replace the brushes
| and/or polish the commutator. Blenders of that design use
| brushed motors, and the brushes are a wear part (although
| they can last a long time).
| ornornor wrote:
| And they're dirt cheap and usually easily accessible.
| sbf501 wrote:
| I try to buy kitchen stuff from kitchen supply stores, not
| the mall. If you've ever been to a quality restaurant where
| the kitchen is visible from the seating area, you can see
| that they don't use fancy-ass pots and pans, because they are
| very hard on cookware (heavy vollrath aluminum with no
| coating, no stainless steel!). Same goes with their
| appliances: if a kitchen is using an appliance, you know it
| has been abused.
|
| I would have tried these first:
|
| Light duty:
|
| https://www.restaurantsupply.com/waring-wsb33x-quik-
| stik-7-i...
|
| Turn it up:
|
| https://www.restaurantsupply.com/waring-wsb40-quik-stik-
| plus...
|
| Bring the noise!...
|
| https://www.restaurantsupply.com/robot-coupe-
| mp600-turbo-23-...
| derefr wrote:
| On the other hand, some components get _so_ abused in a
| commercial /industrial setting, that they're considered
| consumable parts of the machine, making "long life if
| lightly used" into a complete non-consideration in the
| design process.
|
| You probably don't want a commercial-kitchen dishwasher;
| IIRC you're expected to have someone in to replace the
| hoses in them every year or two, because they make those
| hoses out of plastics that are tolerant to higher
| temperatures, but at the expense of plasticizer degradation
| (becoming stiff + brittle) after just sitting around at
| ambient temperature-and-pressure for a few years. A
| residential dishwasher, while not able to clean as well,
| will be able to start up just fine after years of disuse;
| which is more what you want in a house or apartment that
| might go years sitting empty.
| sbf501 wrote:
| I didn't know that. At least it is understood up front!
|
| I really would like one of the bar water jets they use
| for cleaning the mixers/shakers, tho!
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| Commercial dishwashers work completely differently from
| home ones. They are designed to use the same water across
| multiple loads. Home ones clean way better but take 1.5
| hours per load rather than the 3 minutes commercial ones
| use. Have you ever actually used a commercial dishwasher?
| They are about as similar to a residential dishwasher as
| a Porsche is to a dump truck.
| 14 wrote:
| Same issue with a Dremel. Stopped spinning so opened it up
| and found it had a plastic coupler. Junk. Luckily I was able
| to find a 3d file and print a new coupler with my printer.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I had a higher end Dremel that would intermittently die
| because the brushes got stuck in their channels once the
| motor warmed up. I was so happy when the speed controller
| died and I replaced that garbage with a $20 Menard's unit
| that's been bulletproof.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Fantastic you could 3D print the part. That's beautiful.
| That's how you fuck their business, and good that you did,
| they should sell quality.
| 14 wrote:
| I love my 3d printer. Last Christmas opened up a brand
| new hot wheels track and told the kids not to touch it so
| we didn't lose any parts. They waited patiently as I
| built it. Get toward the end and realize a clip for the
| tracks was missing no fault of the kids. Damn. Quick
| search and find a 3d file for new clip. Printed within 30
| minutes and kids had their track. So much easier then
| calling the company and dealing with waiting for a part
| and not having the receipt anymore. Was really nice
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > I called the Bosch service hotline, they told me that the
| whole body is one "part" that I can buy for ~80% of the
| original price.
|
| It's eight months old. They *have* to replace it under
| warranty.
| ddingus wrote:
| We had a similar experience tooling up our kitchen. I ended
| up buying used, high quality appliances from an earlier era.
|
| Best move ever! Our Kitchen Aid mixer, for example, is metal
| construction, has servicable motor parts, and just works.
| Well, it did get glitchy a month or two back. I took it
| apart, saw flour everywhere. Hit it with compressed air,
| greased up some things, cleaned the motor brushes and mating
| parts, put it back together and it's like new!
|
| Toaster, blender, can opener, all the same deal. When I get
| them, I do a quick test and refurb on them. Doesn't take
| long, and often I can get parts, depending on what it is.
| Once I know the device, I feel like I can depend on it. And
| going used = ultra cheap. It's kind of crazy how cheap.
|
| And these things are simple. They have the features they need
| to and that's kind of it. Attachments are not hard to find
| either.
|
| Worst case it's a bad call. Oh well, try again.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I bought a Ankarsrum assistent for the sole reason it was
| designed in the 40s and comes with 10y warranty for the
| motor.
|
| I am so tired of "cheap" stuff breaking.
| RachelF wrote:
| There's a law of economics [1] that describes how bad
| products drive out good ones if they look the same:
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law
| wizofaus wrote:
| Gresham's law is about (physical) currencies though - while
| it could arguably be somewhat extended to consumer
| products, the latter _can_ typically be distinguished
| readily on more than just their superficial appearance. The
| fact that it 's hard to accurately do so at point of
| purchase for most consumers is definitely part of the
| problem though.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Sounds similar to a solid number of software engineering
| departments too.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| To save everyone a lot of time: he finds that a sintered bronze
| bearing has worn and allowed metal-on-metal contact elsewhere
| in the unit. He theorizes it's the oil, which he demonstrates
| is very thin at room temperature. Which is meaningless - film
| strength doesn't have to be high if there isn't high pressure
| between sliding surfaces.
|
| The claim that fridges from the 40s and 50s were very efficient
| is nonsense. Even a 10-20 year old fridge is very inefficient
| compared to a modern fridge. It's as easy as looking at energy
| star ratings.
|
| > When it becomes a problem, it goes to the dump where all the
| foamed-together plastic parts will not be feasible to separate
| nor recycle.
|
| It's never been economical / feasible to manually take apart an
| appliance for recycling. They're shredded and the plastic/metal
| chunks separated mechanically for the raw materials.
| userbinator wrote:
| _Even a 10-20 year old fridge is very inefficient compared to
| a modern fridge. It 's as easy as looking at energy star
| ratings._
|
| Do you think the manufacturers aren't gaming those ratings
| either?
|
| The energy efficiency of fridges over time has definitely not
| been monotonic either. The ones that use the most were the
| late 60s-80s models that sacrificed insulation thickness for
| more interior volume.
| liminalsunset wrote:
| The problem with many energy efficiency ratings, including
| Energy Star and that controversial California "ban gaming
| PCs" one, are that they are designed around "power consumed
| for a particular use case", where use case is defined as
| "watch TV for the household average number of hours per
| day", not normalized for whether the picture quality was
| great or poor. In the gaming PC case, there was a
| bureaucratic formula based on how many ports the computer
| had, and having lots of ports allowed you to use more
| energy because it was considered a "high expandability"
| computer, regardless of whether it was reasonable for the
| computer with empty extra ports and no different parts to
| use more power. And it focused almost exclusively on
| "turned off or standby" power, not power in use.
|
| In the case of TVs, manufacturers game the numbers by
| rating efficiency "as shipped to the consumer at factory
| default settings." The manufacturer just sets the
| brightness to 20%, and throws a warning on the screen if
| the customer tries to change it, saying "the TV may use
| more energy". Of course, in the store, the TV is set to
| Store Mode, which means the brightness is often even higher
| than 100%, and the TV has a sticker about how efficient it
| is. Nobody would buy a TV that was dimmed permanently to
| the Eco Mode, but technically, you can "watch the very dim
| TV", so it counts.
|
| This means that the composite "energy efficiency score" is
| not calculated with "output" or "work done" or "function
| realized" held constant. The text of the standards often
| does not define exactly the outcomes to be achieved.
|
| Thus, it is entirely possible for a manufacturer to produce
| products with a degraded functionality in exchange for
| "better energy efficiency", regardless of whether worse
| functionality may cause the consumer to use the item for
| twice as long. (i.e. some government restricting the
| wattage of vacuum cleaners, which may cause vacuum cleaners
| to become less effective instead of more efficient, causing
| increased run time)
|
| In the case of fridges, you might imagine how a
| manufacturer might skimp on "lasts long", "how much space
| the fridge takes compared to how much space is inside", and
| other things like this.
| hakfoo wrote:
| I thought early fridges did surprisingly well because they
| tended to be smaller and the frost-free mechanisms are
| wasteful on multiple levels (they're running a heater, and
| then probably have to run the cooler more to compensate)
| gruez wrote:
| >Do you think the manufacturers aren't gaming those ratings
| either?
|
| Oh cmon, you can't categorically dismiss an entire
| government program with an offhand comment like that. You
| need to at least provide some sort of evidence supporting
| your claim.
| umeshunni wrote:
| But I saw on your YouTube channel that.. do your research
| man...
|
| /s
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > They're shredded and the plastic/metal chunks separated
| mechanically for the raw materials.
|
| The plastics recycling industry is over 90% fraud, just like
| the carbon credits market.
|
| There are thousands of cases of Australian garbage turning up
| in indonesia with trash bags marked with the name of the
| local authority responsible for managing it. Plastic from UK
| is either burned in Poland to power cement production, or is
| sorted in Turkey and send to the third world to kill children
| and sea turtles.
|
| I throw plastic in the trash to make sure it never leaves the
| country, but stays here and goes into landfill and doesn't
| hurt anyone. And to make sure the true cost of disposing of
| it is paid.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > Plastic from UK is either burned in Poland to power
| cement production'
|
| It's basically burning fossil fuel. Too bad about the
| dioxins though.
| userbinator wrote:
| Depends on which type of plastic. Burning anything
| halogenated is really bad, but e.g. polypropylene or
| polyethylene is comparable to natural gas in terms of
| emissions (CO2+H2O) because they contain only C and H.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Yeah but if you ask people no one thinks "burning it"
| would count as recycling, but it does.
| gruez wrote:
| >The plastics recycling industry is over 90% fraud [...]
|
| >Plastic from UK is [...] sorted in Turkey and send to the
| third world to kill children and sea turtles.
|
| So in other words, they're sending recycling to third world
| countries to be sorted because the cost of labor is
| cheaper, and those countries have bad waste management
| practices so the unrecyclable materials end up in rivers or
| whatever. I guess this counts as fraud if you think that
| putting something in recycling means that it'll definitely
| be reused somehow. Many people might even legitimately hold
| this belief. However, if you do a little bit of thinking
| you know this is an impossible goal/strawman. For one,
| people frequently miscategorize their recycling, which
| means things that can't be recycled end up in recycling.
| Obviously those won't be reused. Also, no recycling
| technology is perfect, and there's bound to be something
| that gets up too degraded/contaminated to be properly
| recycled. Meanwhile, I'm not aware of any active efforts to
| portray recycling as some sort of 100% perfect waste
| remediation, so I'm not sure where the fraud angle is from.
| It's a case of mismatched consumer expectations at best.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > because the cost of labor is cheaper, and those
| countries have bad waste management practices...
|
| If you are running any kind of business, say house
| insulation, you take money to fully insulate a house,
| don't insulate 90% of the house, and then attempt to
| mislead the customer into thinking the job is done, you
| have commited fraud or embezzlement.
|
| If these companies are paid to recycle but recycling is
| not happening, then someone has commited fraud. Also the
| contract does not say 'you can dump unresycleable stuff
| into the ocean' - they are suppose to dispose of it
| properly.
|
| It is their job to audit their supply chains and to make
| sure the job is done. If I know from public sources that
| majority of plastic that goes to their contractors in
| Turkey are commiting fraud, then a company with an army
| of lawyers knows it too.
|
| If they continue using contractors in knowledge that
| their contractors are fradulent, but are telling me that
| plastic is being recycled, they are defrauding me. When
| major western media publishes a video of masked armed men
| chasing their reporters in Indonesia for investigating
| 'recycling', it should be clear to anyone that this is
| massive organised crime.
|
| You don't get to blame this on 'those countries' because
| our countries are not doing shit either. We created the
| problem and we outsourced it by contracting literal mafia
| in Indonesia. Your taxpayer dollars are used to pay mafia
| bosses and to bribe Indonesian officials, sponsoring
| corruption in 'those countries'.
|
| This is not just my opinion, there have been multiple
| investigations and convictions for recycling fraud.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/news/brothers-sentenced-
| for-14...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-
| recyc...
| gruez wrote:
| >If you are running any kind of business, say house
| insulation, you take money to fully insulate a house,
| don't insulate 90% of the house, and then attempt to
| mislead the customer into thinking the job is done, you
| have commited fraud or embezzlement.
|
| Okay, but even in your example of insulating a house,
| there are areas that can't be insulated. For instance,
| it'll be insanely expensive to insulate the studs
| themselves, because they're load-bearing. A reasonable
| consumer would understand that you can't replace the
| entire surface of a house with insulation, just like a
| reasonable consumer would understand that not everything
| they put in recycling is going to be recycled.
|
| >If these companies are paid to recycle but recycling is
| not happening, then someone has commited fraud. Also the
| contract does not say 'you can dump unresycleable stuff
| into the ocean' - they are suppose to dispose of it
| properly.
|
| Without specifics it's hard to argue either way. I'm not
| aware of recycling contracts that stipulate x% must be
| recycled. Can you provide some references here? Here in
| the US counties/cities only does recycling as a money-
| making measure. If they market rate for recycled outputs
| drops too much, some jurisdictions end up landfilling the
| recycling.
|
| >https://www.gov.uk/government/news/brothers-sentenced-
| for-14...
|
| Looking at the story it seems like it's less "taking
| e-waste and dumping it in a river somewhere" and more
| "submitting fraudulent invoices".
|
| >https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-
| recyc...
|
| >The exporters make millions by charging retailers and
| manufacturers a fluctuating tonnage rate for plastic
| waste recovery notes - currently PS60 a tonne. Retailers
| buy these plastic export recovery notes - Perns - to
| satisfy the government they are contributing something to
| recycling plastic packaging waste.
|
| This seems like an issue with a government program
| intended to curb plastic waste, rather than consumers
| being misled. Prior to your comment I wasn't even aware
| of the existence of such a program. That's not to say the
| fraudulent behavior is acceptable, but it's slightly
| different than what we were originally discussing which
| is _consumers_ being somehow deceived that what they put
| in recycling actually ended up in a river somewhere.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| > _Okay, but even in your example of insulating a house,
| there are areas that can 't be insulated. For instance,
| it'll be insanely expensive to insulate the studs
| themselves, because they're load-bearing_
|
| ignoring for a second that modern insulation is just
| blown onto whatever surface you want, and obviously
| doesn't affect load bearing properties,
|
| the analogy is about doing 90% of your job and acting
| like you did 100% of it
|
| even if you personally think that extra 10% is hard
|
| even if you personally think that extra 10% shouldn't be
| your responsibility
|
| you still have to do it for it to not be fraudulent
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Okay, but even in your example of insulating a house,
| there are areas that can't be insulated.
|
| Then thats what you have to tell that to the client, and
| the client is free to look for a different proffeshional
| if he is not happy.
|
| However if you lie, and client thinks thay you have
| insulated things that are impossible to insulate, thats
| fraud. And that's happening.
|
| > I'm not aware of recycling contracts that stipulate x%
| must be recycled
|
| Think about, whats the point of a recycling contract that
| says 'you could recycle only 0.1% if you feel like it'?
|
| > we were originally discussing ... consumers being
| somehow deceived
|
| that happens too. I have taken my old electronic goods to
| a commercial recycler. You have to pay to dispose of
| large appliances.
|
| Now I realise there is about 60% chance that they took
| out and sold the valuable copper, and the rest is sitting
| in a river somewhere, leaching heavy metals and poisonong
| children
| gruez wrote:
| >However if you lie, and client thinks thay you have
| insulated things that are impossible to insulate, thats
| fraud. And that's happening.
|
| I agree fraud is happening in the UK, because the
| government specifically set up a market for recycling
| credits. However, I doubt consumers are thinking of that
| when they're chucking their appliances in the garbage
| bin. I myself were not aware of such a program, and
| unless such a program is widespread that example has
| limited applicability.
|
| >Think about, whats the point of a recycling contract
| that says 'you could recycle only 0.1% if you feel like
| it'?
|
| That's... basically how I treat most public recycling
| bins. They're some hopelessly contaminated with non-
| recyclables that I assume they're collected as trash.
| It's entirely unreasonable to expect that just because
| someone put something in the recycle bin, that the city
| would bend over backwards to ensure it's recycled. Again,
| I'm also not saying that there aren't people who actually
| believe that ("wishcycling" is a thing), but what I'm
| saying is that anyone who has given the topic a bit of
| thought would realize that:
|
| 1. not everything can be recycled
|
| 2. even something that could theoretically be recycled,
| can be contaminated so that it can't be recycled
|
| 3. recyclers are subject to economic constraints
|
| 4. therefore, it's entirely unreasonable to expect that
| everything that you throw in recycling ends up recycled
|
| Applied to the original topic of appliances/electronics,
| this means that I expect they recycle the bits that are
| economically feasible to recycle, and toss the rest.
|
| >that happens too. I have taken my old electronic goods
| to a commercial recycler. You have to pay to dispose of
| large appliances.
|
| Right, but is the service you're paying for "getting rid
| of the electronics in a way that complies with local
| laws" or "getting rid of the electronics in a way that
| complies with local laws, _and ensure that it gets
| properly recycled_ "?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > I expect they recycle the bits that are economically
| feasible to recycle, and toss the rest.
|
| So last year I had a lot of old electronics, I
| spesifically looked for a recycler, not a landfill.
|
| I spesifically asked if they can recycle the old
| motherboard before handing it over. If they said no, I
| would go to someone else. I was prepared to pay a
| reasonable fee.
|
| Maybe there is someone in Uk that does actually recycle
| 95% of the motherboard and charges PS2 for their service,
| but they can't get any business because of all the
| fraudsters that pretend to recycle for free and actually
| don't
|
| There is no way to distinguish between the 0.001%
| recycler and 100% recycler.
| cudgy wrote:
| Old refrigerators may not be as efficient, but they were
| built better internally and last longer. The savings from an
| efficient refrigerator that only lasts a few years is
| meaningless.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| You'd have to stick an ammeter on it, but I bet a 50s fridge
| is pretty efficient because they are manual defrost only.
| Most modern full-size fridges are auto defrost - essentially
| they suck down electricity to heat up the cooling system. The
| efficiency gains over a couple decades ago are due to moving
| from fixed, mechanical timers to computer controlled adaptive
| defrosters.
| gruez wrote:
| >I bet a 50s fridge is pretty efficient because they are
| manual defrost only
|
| That doesn't seem like a fair comparison. It's like saying
| a bike is "pretty efficient" compared to an e-bike because
| it doesn't consume any energy ( _infinite_ efficiency!)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| gambiting wrote:
| And also, if anyone actually reads the page linked - just
| below his post you can see a reply from an appliance repair
| shop, stating that they repair about 1500 refrigerators a
| year, and they see maybe one compressor failure a year -
| further stating that modern compressors, even with their
| shitty design, are still the most reliable part that will
| outlast the rest of the applience by a mile.
|
| And yeah, I agree with them actually - there's no way 1950s
| compressors had such low failure rates.
|
| I do recall seeing an american ad for some oven brand from
| the 50s, where the leaflet advertised that an average
| consumer shouldn't expect to repair it more than 2-3 times in
| a 5 year period - and that was advertised as a selling point!
| elzbardico wrote:
| He is not arguing old fridges were as efficient as modern
| ones, but the compressors. From what I know, most modern
| fridge efficiency usually boils down to better isolation.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Is compressor not evolved from 50s? Looks hard to believe.
| Isn't modern refrigerators use inverter compressor? I
| suspect that some other improvements exists.
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| compressors have only two simple characteristics,
| compression ratio and volume. A fridge doesn't require
| anything special and is essentially the same piece of
| metal since the 50's exept theres probaly alot less metal
| in modern ones.
| touch_abs wrote:
| Not true, if you can compress a real refrigerant slower
| you get better performance; modern control systems that
| can ramp up and down are significantly more efficient
| than older on-off styles.
| fomine3 wrote:
| It's too simplified while talking efficiency. Let's see
| how much A/C become efficient over decades.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Absolutely awful experience with air conditioners. They keep
| malfunctioning every two years.
|
| Meanwhile my parents have a 25 year old aircon with heavy duty
| copper wiring that's still going strong.
|
| I'll pay a premium for appliances that are simply built to
| last, but there's nothing on the market built to that spec
| anymore.
| namdnay wrote:
| Really? What type? Here in Europe they're invariably Japanese
| heatpumps (Daikin, Hitachi etc) - crazy reliable
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Europe is generally better for reliability from personal
| experience. You guys are blessed with better regulations
| that force manufacturers to build better.
| sgustard wrote:
| Another possible cause: Do people even know how to make high-
| quality products any more? Who are the top 1% of refrigerator
| engineers, and do they still even go into refrigerator design,
| or did they become wall street quants instead? This is the same
| thing I wonder when I eat at crappy restaurants. It's not like
| the staff knows how to make good food and they choose not to do
| it. They don't know how!
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Do people even know how to make high-quality products any
| more?
|
| Is it even possible to lose this knowledge? Surely they know
| how to make good reliable products, they simply choose not
| to...
| naikrovek wrote:
| Engineering doesn't change. If it was learned by one it can
| and will be learned by another. Manufacturers know how to
| make quality parts, they are just not able to, or choose not
| to, for whatever reason. Aftermarket parts business is a
| large portion of an appliance or vehicle manufacturer's
| bottom line, so they make decisions to augment the profit of
| that business, including sacrificing quality on the appliance
| or vehicle.
| m-ee wrote:
| Top refrigerator engineers are probably making lab freezers.
| I imagine a lot consumer hardware is JDM these days. Parent
| company mostly doing industrial design (if that) and the rest
| is farmed out to China where they have a standard design
| they're working from.
| hakfoo wrote:
| That reminds me of something I always wondered: during that
| window (I'd say, roughly 1975-2000) where Japan had strong
| brand equity for "quality, reliable, innovative", why did
| they seem to make no footprint in the US appliance sector?
| I've never seen a Panasonic washer or Sony fridge.
|
| It wasn't a "we can't make/ship big things with relatively
| low value density" factor (they made cars, after all) and
| I'm assuming they were making something for domestic
| consumption (or were they buying Whirlpool fridges for
| Tokyo apartments?). Was there some tarriff situation
| keeping them out of this sector?
| midoridensha wrote:
| >during that window (I'd say, roughly 1975-2000) where
| Japan had strong brand equity for "quality, reliable,
| innovative", why did they seem to make no footprint in
| the US appliance sector? I've never seen a Panasonic
| washer or Sony fridge.
|
| I have a Panasonic washer and fridge. They're great.
|
| >I'm assuming they were making something for domestic
| consumption (or were they buying Whirlpool fridges for
| Tokyo apartments?)
|
| Whirlpool and other western brands have no presence in
| Japan for appliances. It's all Panasonic, Hitachi,
| Mitsubishi, Toshiba, plus Haier, and for the cheap brand,
| Iris Ohyama. Virtually all appliances are made in Japan,
| or some (usually cheap ones) in China by Japanese
| companies.
|
| They probably don't bother with the US because American
| consumers don't want to pay for quality, and they'd have
| to re-engineer _everything_ for American sizes and
| preferences. American appliances look nothing like
| Japanese ones.
| GCA10 wrote:
| Very true of hot-water heaters, too. We had the misfortune of
| recently needing to replace the "original" one that came with
| our house when we bought in in 1997. The installer told us that
| all current models, including some quite expensive ones, are
| warranted to last seven years and might give us a few more.
| "But you won't get 25 years out of anything today."
|
| Thinner vessels seem to be the main culprit. That does save a
| few dollars on materials costs.
| danans wrote:
| > since the fridge compressors from the 1940's and 1950's era
| were very efficient
|
| This statement is very suspect without a citation, because
| since the 1970s, new refrigerator energy consumption has
| dropped 3x while volume has doubled [1]. As far as I can tell,
| fridge efficiency data from before then isn't available, but
| it's highly unlikely that compressors were more efficient even
| further back in time.
|
| Some of the improvement in efficiency is undoubtedly much
| better insulation and seals, but the compressors have
| definitely become more efficient, which is also why
| refrigerators are so much more quiet today than they used to
| be.
|
| 1. https://www.energy.gov/articles/proof-pudding-how-
| refrigerat...
| stewx wrote:
| I think a public policy solution to this could be to require a
| minimum warranty period for certain kinds of appliances, to
| force the manufacturers to increase the product quality.
| userbinator wrote:
| They are designed to die just slightly past the warranty, so
| they can sell you another. Of course, the statistics means that
| quite a few units won't even last until then.
|
| Before manufacturing tolerances were as tight, they'd error on
| the side of caution and overbuild, resulting in a wider MTBF
| curve. There were both many early failures as well as ones
| which far exceeded their expected life. Now, the standard
| deviation is much smaller so the end-of-life has become more
| well-defined both at the cost of nothing much lasting longer
| nor shorter than expected.
| umeshunni wrote:
| > They are designed to die just slightly past the warranty,
|
| Or more likely, they set the warranty period to be just below
| the MTBF
| sneak wrote:
| Thankfully in Europe it is minimum 24 months by law.
|
| This I assume is also why amazon.de won't let you access
| invoices a while after purchase without talking to a CSR.
| gambiting wrote:
| People keep mentioning this, and it's just not true - or
| people misunderstand what the law actually is.
|
| The EU directive on this says that all products sold here
| should be free of _manufacturing defects_ within the
| first 24 months(it 's 6 years for most products
| actually). But the key word here is _manufacturing
| defect_. Furthermore, the law clearly states that any
| fault found within the first 6 months is presumed to have
| been a manufacturing defect, anything found afterwards it
| 's up to the consumer to prove that it was a
| manufacturing defect and not a fault that developed
| later.
|
| As you can see, that's not the same as unconditional
| 24-month warranty - if your laptop dies 23 months in,
| good luck proving that it died because of a manufacting
| defect without hiring an expert to do so. Yes some places
| will repair it anyway to avoid the hassle, but it's _not_
| codified in the law.
|
| On the bright side, EU(and UK) make the seller
| responsible for the products sold, so if your item breaks
| and the seller goes "oh well you need to go to the
| manufacturer to get it fixed" you can politely decline
| and demand that they repair/replace/refund it for you -
| that's the law.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Well, significantly before - if you were warrantying 50% of
| your stuff you wouldn't be making much money..
| IshKebab wrote:
| > They are designed to die just slightly past the warranty,
| so they can sell you another.
|
| Not quite. They're designed to last at least as long as the
| warranty so that they don't lose money on returns. At least
| based on my experience in Dyson.
|
| They don't _deliberate sabotage_ anything like some people
| seem to think. Like there 's no 5 year clock that is
| programmed to break so you have to buy another. If some part
| is cheap and lasts 20 years they aren't going to deliberately
| weaken it _just_ so it breaks after 5 years.
|
| What actually happens is they reduce the cost of expensive
| parts as much as possible (to save money) subject to the
| constraint that it can't fail within the warranty.
|
| Part of the reason why early versions of products are often
| more reliable than later ones - they haven't sold very many
| so there's no financial incentive yet to do extensive cost-
| down optimisation (and they haven't had time).
|
| It's still not great IMO but it's not outright evil. Your
| average Redditor thinks there are lightbulb conspiracies
| around every corner and that's just untrue.
| alliao wrote:
| the greatest trick dyson did was to turn vacuum an almost
| whiteware category item lasting 10-20yrs into 5yrs cycle
| product... so in that regard even if it lasted 10yrs by
| accident they're still well within tolerable profit margin
| over customer's life time projection
|
| also it sucks well which does help
|
| apple watch is of similar trajectory kudos to these two
| products
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Like there's no 5 year clock that is programmed to break
| so you have to buy another.
|
| Sounds a lot like printers and their ink cartridges.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| So I guess the best strategy is to use them as much as
| possible and make sure they break in the first year...
| theonemind wrote:
| I remember someone who bought a low-mileage used car under
| warranty. The transmission started acting funny and making
| strange noises, but the dealer wouldn't do any repairs
| because it worked. I think he was about 8 months into a 12
| month warranty.
|
| He drove in such a way as to make sure it didn't work
| before the warranty was up, and then they fixed it.
| agumonkey wrote:
| trolling manufacturer stats is quite a fun idea.
| [deleted]
| hubraumhugo wrote:
| We should collect more data on product longevity and
| repairability. I'm trying to build a community for this: On
| https://exitreviews.com, consumers can learn how long products
| last, where they break, and how to fix them.
| niklaslohmann wrote:
| That's a cool idea ; feel free to use
| https://www.haaartland.com/ for this.
|
| best/Niklas
| alliao wrote:
| I like the idea, would be helpful to include (if not already)
| where the product is sold. Toyota famously added a small
| metal block in the US to pass IIHS's small overlap crash test
| but that small block doesn't exist in other Asian countries.
|
| The modern production line is so efficient they can do that
| level of customisation for every market individually...
| bombcar wrote:
| There's a small subset that avoid it - but the only one I know
| of is the Speed Queen machines that are identical to their
| commercial offerings - and have remained basically the same for
| decades.
|
| One way to gauge it is see how available repair parts are (all
| systems eventually wear out) and what the costs look like.
| User23 wrote:
| Speed Queen is worth the money. Happy customer here.
| geoffeg wrote:
| The quality and warranty are the primary reasons I bought a
| Speed Queen washer and dryer a few years ago. Most reviews
| say the washer isn't the best at actually cleaning clothes
| but 99% of the time I don't need to remove stains or dirt, I
| just need to wash clothes from daily use. In addition to the
| reliability I really like the controls. Nothing fancy, very
| easy and obvious with a 7-segment LED display that will
| likely last forever.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Speed Queen warranty is 5 years and price was 3x LG washer
| from Costco. Costco gives 4 year warranty with Costco
| credit card.
|
| So I just buy appliances from Costco and assume I will have
| to replace sometime after 4 years.
|
| As one data point, all of my LG Costco appliances from
| almost 4 years ago are still working fine, through very
| heavy use. We probably use washers/dryers 10+ cycles per
| week due to babies/toddlers. The LG inverter linear
| compressor fridge is still as silent as the day we got it.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| LG linear compressor failure rates triggered a class
| action suit that LG lost
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, that is why I mentioned it. I was expecting mine to
| fail by now too, but so far, no problem. I think the
| design or quality may have improved after the initial
| batches.
| User23 wrote:
| Old American made washers are running 40 years later.
| Speed Queen isn't really about the warranty, it's about
| the implications.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I prefer the implication of having it in writing.
|
| If Speed Queen's data showed them their machines lasted
| 40 years, then they would advertise them with a 40 year
| warranty to maximize sales.
|
| Since they do not, it is safe to say that Speed Queen
| does not want to bet their machines will last 40 years.
| So why should I bet they will last longer than their
| stated warranty period?
|
| It is possible that Speed Queens are worth more because
| they are more repairable, but I have no interest in
| spending my time repairing my washer/dryer. And calling a
| technician would be $100/hour plus parts, at which point
| I might as well buy a new machine.
| User23 wrote:
| You realize most so-called warranties are issued with the
| expectation that the overwhelming majority will never
| make a claim let alone collect on it right? To put it
| plainly I don't care a whit about warranties, I just
| don't want the hassle of an unnecessary repair job.
| croon wrote:
| > You realize most so-called warranties are issued with
| the expectation that the overwhelming majority will never
| make a claim let alone collect on it right?
|
| Wouldn't that mean they should have longer stated
| warranty than estimated lifetime?
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| the lack of a longer warranty does not decrease the
| likelihood of unnecessary repair jobs
|
| in other words, if BrandX had products they believed
| would last 40 years, they would have a warranty that says
| so, and it would not decrease the reliability 1 iota
| User23 wrote:
| Loan me a million dollars and I'll pay you back in 40
| years. No? Does that sound meaningless? Thought so.
| bombcar wrote:
| A product can last X years without being something you
| want to warranty for that time - because "last" can mean
| "keeps working with maintenance and repairs" vs "works
| without a hitch for the whole time.
|
| Also, longer warranties can be a selling point (speed
| queen does this with the same exact internals being sold
| with a higher warranty on the 'fancier' ones which just
| add some more features to the board).
|
| And, a company has to hold monies on the books for
| warranty service, so a defined warranty period that is
| not unreasonable can help with that.
|
| But the "best" company in a given market only needs to
| warranty beyond the nearest competitor.
|
| Speed Queen also is implicitly dealing with people who
| would buy the "lifetime" warranty residential unit and
| run it in a commercial setting, where the wear parts
| _would_ wear out.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is true, but I figure for higher value products, the
| warranty period gets closer to the product's mean time
| before failure.
|
| If the Speed Queen cost 50% more, I would be inclined to
| buy it. But at 3x the price, I feel like it's just easier
| for me to replace, and since it is Costco, I trust that
| the process will be easy.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Have you ever tried to use your "warranty"? It's a
| "lifetime warranty", the lifetime being the core
| components of the washing machine. When it dies, that's
| it's lifetime.
|
| There is little enforcement of warranties from the FTC.
| They cannot afford to do investigations, because they are
| civil litigation.
| bombcar wrote:
| Note it's Costco's warranty - they take the product back
| and ship it to the manufacturer, and just deduct the
| amount from the next payment to them.
|
| If the manufacturer doesn't like it, they get dropped by
| Costco like a hot potato.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I have not used Costco warranty before, but I have not
| seen a reason to doubt Costco's services.
|
| https://www.costco.com/appliance-warranty-calculator.html
| cbruns wrote:
| My LG linear inverter fridge from costco has been loud
| from day 0.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If it is still under your Costco warranty, I would claim
| the warranty. LG advertises it as being less noisy (I
| hear zero noise from my fridge).
| sizzle wrote:
| Thoughts on Maytag?
| liminalsunset wrote:
| Maytag is owned by Whirlpool Corporation, which makes
| ~all of the various appliance brands I've seen here in
| Canada except for the newer LG/Samsung etc. Any "FSP"
| branded parts are made by Whirlpool.
|
| For what it's worth, the Speed Queen washer/dryers people
| seem to like, appear to also share parts with Maytag [1],
| which means Whirlpool made, or uses, or shares at least
| designs for parts, even though Speed Queen is owned by
| Alliance Laundry Systems, who also make the Huebsch
| machines in apartments, which, are commercial grade, but
| still not free of problems (i.e., >half of front loading
| machines in one place I've been in have the marbles-in-
| bearings sound when spinning, which a newly replaced
| machine didn't)
|
| Some models of Speed Queen washers I've seen people open
| on YouTube look suspiciously like a Whirlpool "direct
| drive" 90s washer.
|
| [1] https://ibb.co/PzQxxP6 - I searched for "speed queen
| transmission" on DuckDuckGo Images and found this listing
| that mentions compatibility between that and Maytag. I
| also recognize that transmission as a Whirlpoolish thing.
|
| Given that most appliances around me are made by
| Whirlpool, I don't personally have anything to compare
| them to. I haven't personally seen many extreme design
| flaws, but the parts are built down to a cost. For
| example, all of their dryer motors are epoxied together
| instead of bolted, like every other motor, probably to
| save cost at assembly, and conveniently prevents oiling
| and servicing of the bushing/bearing. The washer pumps
| for the aforementioned "direct drive" washers are sealed,
| and if something gets jammed, you can't take them apart
| to unjam them (though I've unjammed one before, and they
| don't cost much, and there is a ~good reason to seal it
| shut).
|
| However, whatever evils, if any, Whirlpool puts into
| their machines, at least you can get the parts, and
| compatibles exist, and junkyards are probably full of
| compatible parts, simply because the parts are all shared
| between most Whirlpool appliances in existence.
|
| I've had one example of a bad experience with the
| electronic controls on a Maytag front load washing
| machine. I don't consider a single sample to be
| representative, but the software on the control was poor
| and refused to spin-dry a blanket after washing it. It
| wasn't because the machine was unbalanced. It would
| rotate the blanket very slowly (zero shaking), and just
| decide not to do anything else. It eventually did it
| after a bout of unplugging, pushing buttons, and cursing.
| eternalban wrote:
| It's not just household appliances.
|
| I happen to like 'On' sport shoes, for the comfort and the
| design. And like clockwork, after 6 months of use (walking mind
| you) holes develop in the fabric where the shoe bends as you
| walk. First pair, I assumed it was a fluke. Second pair, it
| became clear it is inherent in the product. Send pictures to On
| sports and was told it is not covered by warranty. "Normal wear
| and tear". I guess it is Swiss Cheese Technology (tm)!
|
| (p.s. these are not cheap shoes. And the company must be aware
| of this issue since my 2 pairs developed holes in the same
| precise place and clearly because the material they use can't
| repeatedly flex.)
| rob_c wrote:
| so when do we get to ask where they come from now compared to
| then?
| jackmott wrote:
| Could it be because the information age causes companies to
| compete on price much more aggressively? You can't easily prove
| that your fridge really will last longer, but easy to price the
| price is low.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| Sounds right to me. When you look at markets where
| reliability is important, you see appliances that are the
| same. You can get good quality commercial washing machines.
| moooo99 wrote:
| > You can't easily prove that your fridge really will last
| longer, but easy to price the price is low.
|
| I'm not so sure about that. In my experience people tend to
| be less price sensitive with household appliances (big one
| time purchases that are supposed to last long) than they are
| with other more expensive items. Most people I know tend to
| be lifelong customers if they have good experiences with a
| specific brand and are very willing to share that brand as a
| recommendation.
|
| The problem is, those good experiences don't seem to hold
| true anymore. Price hasn't been a good indicator for product
| quality and life expectancy for a while. I've seen this first
| hand with my family. My parents were very willing to spend
| significant amounts on stuff like dishwashers, fridges, or
| washing machines. Despite sticking to the brands they had
| good experiences with, the product lifetime decreased with
| every new product purchase. It has come to the point that
| they don't care for the brand they used to trust, they are
| just buying the stuff thats cheap and checks all the boxes.
|
| These companies seem to have traded high customer loyalty
| (and possibly a very efficient organic marketing channel) for
| more frequent sales but higher price competition. I have no
| insights into those companies, but I'm not sure if that was
| an intelligent long term play.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's _worse_ now - the cheaper product often lasts longer
| (as it 's simpler) - I have a fridge/freezer thing that has
| basically no controls and no computers, and it chugs along.
|
| Newer refridgerators with fancy water faucets and computers
| and locks have failed in the time I've had it.
|
| Had a washer blow out on a computer control board; $750 for
| the board.
|
| A similar washer blew out on the dial, $35 for the dial.
| cudgy wrote:
| Similar story with old Honda's. Simple cars that just
| worked with few problems, but they were simple cars with
| few electrical motors and digital features. Automatic,
| heated, air conditioned seats? No. Automatic climate
| control? No. Speed adjusted suspension? No. Speed
| adjusted stereo volume? No. Etc.
|
| However, some manufacturers like Saab actually delivered
| all this with excellent reliability only to be rejected
| by the US market and driven into the ground by General
| Motors. What is a quality manufacturer to do?
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Where to start... Similar story with old
| Honda's. Simple cars that just worked with few problems,
| but they were simple cars with few electrical motors and
| digital features.
|
| No they weren't. Japanese manufacturers brought all sorts
| of whiz-bang doohickeys over by the boatload. That was
| one of the ways the Japanese luxury cars were able to
| compete with the Germans. Even if you go back further
| you'll find stuff like the 2nd gen Accord which was the
| world's first car to offer automated navigation. Even if
| not electronic, Honda brought over a bunch of really
| complex mechanical things like four wheel steering. Even
| the old carburetors of 70s and 80s Hondas were among the
| most complex you're ever likely to encounter.
| However, some manufacturers like Saab actually delivered
| all this with excellent reliability
|
| lol. no. I say this as a Saab fan: Saabs have never been
| reliable. Ever. The (pre-GM) 9000 made the news for being
| fire prone. The Trionic stuff while fascinating was not
| reliable in the slightest, or as Saabnet puts it: 100% of
| engines equipped with direct ignition have had a direct
| ignition cassette failure. Transmissions were delicate.
| Climate control...
|
| If you mean _older_ Saabs, well the two stroke stuff has
| its own set of problems. They 're neat cars but were just
| different enough to make it difficult to find a competent
| mechanic. Saab already had one foot in the grave by the
| time GM bought them.
|
| https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Feds-investigate-
| Saab-90...
| cudgy wrote:
| How many Saabs have you owned?
| bombcar wrote:
| The joke I heard was Saab stands for Swedish Automobile,
| Always Borken.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > You can't easily prove that your fridge really will last
| longer
|
| Yeah you can, it's called warranty
| oezi wrote:
| The manufacturers are all gaming the system by releasing new
| models so quickly (and in so many varieties) that any design
| flaw of a model cannot be used to make a purchasing decision
| because the comparable old devices are no longer available.
| npteljes wrote:
| 100%. Information asymmetry, and also the glut of options
| make informed consumer decisions much harder than they need
| to be.
| bombcar wrote:
| Or there is one or two manufacturers for all the various
| brands.
|
| "Whirlpool brands include Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid,
| Jenn-Air, Amana, Magic Chef, Admiral, Norge, Roper, and
| others. See all items in Dishwasher Dishrack. Whirlpool
| also makes various appliance models for Sears / Kenmore."
|
| And once you start looking up part numbers you realize it
| goes even further.
| vidarh wrote:
| Could be.
|
| E.g. the majority of consumer grade ice machines on Amazon
| (at least in the UK) uses a mechanism that is near identical.
| This extends to mostly copying a design flaw: Most of them a
| compartment used to immerse cooled metal rods in water, which
| then rotates out of the way to let the ice cubes fall into
| the ice compartment when done. Most of these are made out of
| plastic, with a motor rotating only one side. Problem is when
| it's stopped mechanically by simply hitting the end of the
| range of motion, which means the motor effectively ends up
| trying to twist the compartment. This works fine for casual
| use - the plastics holds for a while. But use it enough, and
| you get cracks developing. It's trivial to fix - some of the
| designs have an optical diode to stop rotation in one
| direction, but weirdly not in the other, and doing that in
| both directions would solve it
|
| But I'm thinking that apart from not just coming up in
| testing (it takes _a lot_ of cycles before it breaks), a lot
| of these problems spread because of cost cutting in the
| _product development_ phase. It 's a pretty obvious flaw if
| you observe the above mechanisms, and while you can cut a few
| cents of the bill of materials, without extensive testing you
| won't know for sure that it won't fail within the warranty
| window (they _do_ if you use them as heavily as I use mine)
| and it doesn 't take a very high failure rate to make an
| extra optical diode and wiring worth it. If people did
| product dev from scratch you'd expect at least some of them
| to decide it'd be worth it, but almost all of these are
| clearly just blindly copied designs (I'm sure multiple models
| must also be manufactured on spec by the same manufacturer).
|
| As a result there's little real competition, and few
| customers will be aware there are better alternatives,
| especially because it takes quite a bit of wear and tear and
| so most people don't shop for these types of products often
| enough to realistically compare, and as you point out it's
| hard to prove (and takes a _long_ time to develop a
| reputation).
| willis936 wrote:
| I have the internet at my fingertips. I _know_ a
| thermostatically controlled toaster is feasible to make into
| a cheap product because it existed in the 1960s and we now
| have transistors. Every single toaster is exactly the same
| with cosmetic differences. They 're priced from $10 to $500
| with no distinguishing features in the first $200.
|
| The market is not working, we just have the tools to realize
| how badly it's broken.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| The market works fine. For any category of good you can
| think of there will be producers that make a high quality
| version of it. Consumers who care about that quality
| (according to however you're measuring it) will make their
| decisions accordingly. Consumers who reveal a preference
| for caring less about that quality will make decisions
| based on other criteria.
|
| If your complaint is that this requires effort from the
| consumer, then that's not something any market could fix.
| The consumer will always have to consider what their
| preferences are and how the offerings in the market align
| with them, if the want to end up purchasing goods/services
| that align with their preferences.
| npteljes wrote:
| No it's doesn't work "fine". One of the failings is the
| artificial information asymmetry imposed by the
| companies' constant churn of products. By the time we get
| some non-seo actual reviews of the model A1000, it's out
| of stock and you can only buy A1000b and A2000, both made
| from different components. The market _can 't_ work as
| intended under these circumstances, because there's no
| way for the consumer to make an informed decision.
|
| Consumers signal their preference for quality all the
| time. By buying the pricier stuff. But sometimes,
| somehow, there's no option anymore to buy X stuff - try
| buying a desktop CPU without Intel ME or AMD PSP for
| example. They just put it in every one of the CPUs at one
| point and that was that. People are not going to not buy
| newer CPUs.
| christophilus wrote:
| It works in some areas and not in others. I buy iPhones
| because I get 10 years out of them. Same for MacBooks.
|
| We just need a kitchenware company that takes the quality
| mantle and seriously maintains it over the course of 40
| years. I bet it's a niche that would actually work if
| someone tried it. You just have to keep the MBAs out of
| the company somehow.
| valleyer wrote:
| The newest iPhone you could have bought in 2012 was an
| iPhone 5, which was 32-bit and doesn't support anything
| newer than iOS 10. You'd basically not be able to run any
| apps from the last three or four years. (And apps from
| before then may stop working if they depend on servers
| that have been shut down, under the assumption that
| everyone who cares has updated.)
|
| I totally support your mission. I'm writing this on an
| 8-year-old Mac that I hope to eke out a full decade from.
| I just don't think iPhones (or Macs, really -- mine
| already can't run the newest OS, and its Safari can't
| display WebP images that are popping up increasingly
| across the Web) are a good example.
| jbay808 wrote:
| > For any category of good you can think of there will be
| producers that make a high quality version of it.
| Consumers who care about that quality (according to
| however you're measuring it) will make their decisions
| accordingly.
|
| I've been a consumer my whole life, and I still struggle
| to "make my decisions accordingly" because it's so
| difficult to find trustworthy information about quality,
| especially the qualities that matter to me. It can take
| an exhaustingly long time to gather this information,
| there are no shortcuts, and price and quality are often
| only loosely correlated.
|
| Worse, after putting in the effort, I frequently find
| that those high-quality products and their makers
| disappear from the market, being outcompeted by junk.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Yeah, no.
|
| Nobody makes high quality cassette tape mechanisms. It
| doesn't make sense to make ten of a custom cassette tape
| mechanism, only at least tens of thousands, so, they
| don't. But the market for thousands of these mechanisms
| is for the _cheapest possible_ not good quality. So you
| simply can 't buy good quality.
|
| It was possible in the 1980s, at great expense, for the
| humble cassette tape to sound pretty good, the Nakamichi
| Dragon is the most famous high end tape deck.
|
| But you can't do that today. There are a handful of
| Chinese manufacturers, spitting out variations on the
| same basic cheapest possible "eh, it's good enough"
| mechanism and that's the entire market.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Why does nobody mass produce a high quality version of
| this outdated technology that only myself and a small
| collection of enthusiasts care about? Has the free market
| failed yet again?
| bluGill wrote:
| I will produce one in my garrage for a price. I know good
| preamps can be bought off the shelf. I'm not sure about
| the heads, so I'll have to do some research, if I have to
| make the head cost goes up because I need to buy tools I
| don't have. Some for the other parts, some I can make
| already with tools I have, some I can buy quality, others
| I'll need to charge enough to pay for tools.
| hakfoo wrote:
| I saw an interesting schematic to use a cut off casette-
| tape head to read the magnetic stripes on credit cards.
|
| I wonder if the reverse could be done-- using the heads
| that are still (likely) in production for use in card
| readers, then using some DSP magic to reconstruct a
| decent audio product?
| djkivi wrote:
| Well, the cassette tape is obsolete, unlike toasters or
| refrigerators.
| tialaramex wrote:
| The original comment offered no such exclusions. If we
| want to say only that the free market will provide
| whatever it wants and we can like it or lump it suddenly
| that's not very attractive is it?
| enragedcacti wrote:
| A more modern example would be dashcams. The vast
| majority of products on the market are using the same
| sensors and the same SoCs, and the image quality
| difference is practically negligible between <$100 units
| and $400 ones. A dashcam with the image quality of even a
| GoPro doesn't exist, no matter how much money you are
| willing to spend.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AnyhHl3_tE
| est31 wrote:
| The complaint is that one could manufacture those more
| expensive high quality products at a larger quantity and,
| through scaling effects, one would achieve a lower price,
| which would make them accessible to larger segments of
| the market. I suppose that would be the market "working".
| Instead you have manufacturers churning out tons of cheap
| shit that breaks quickly. I guess most customers don't
| know how quickly different household appliances break, so
| they also can't compare that together with price. They
| have to assume that the more expensive appliances are
| also higher quality, but how can you judge that as a non-
| expert?
|
| Household appliances are textbook examples of adoption
| s-curves, and in different phases, different rules apply
| for the market. Especially in the last phase of the
| s-curve, those manufacturers are hurt the most which
| build lasting products, because their own past customers,
| usually the best source for new purchases from their
| brand, don't buy from them any more because the need is
| still met by the still working product. So they either go
| bankrupt or get bought by one of the manufacturers that
| put in planned obsolescence and got tons of money from
| that, or they change their strategy before that happens.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > The complaint is that one could manufacture those more
| expensive high quality products at a larger quantity and,
| through scaling effects, one would achieve a lower price,
| which would make them accessible to larger segments of
| the market.
|
| That complaint is immature and entirely self-interested.
| It's almost always beneficial (except when there's
| production shortages) to have a preference that is shared
| by large segments of the market. It's not the systems
| fault if few people share your preferences.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > That complaint is immature
|
| That's a bit rich for you to write -> this thread is
| addressing a practical problem with consumer goods, and
| your post is a theoretical, spherical car in a vacuum
| description of how ideal market should work, and falls
| apart in the real world.
|
| If the model worked perfectly, we would never have
| problems with slave labour in supply chains because ~0%
| of consumers are willing to buy them. The fact that we
| do, indicated that consumers are not able to enforce
| their preferences, for example because companies lie with
| no consequences. And if they can lie about slave labour,
| then they can lie about anything else.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > this thread is addressing a practical problem with
| consumer goods
|
| The problem of selecting for quality is exactly what I am
| talking about, and it is very simple to accomplish. I do
| it myself routinely, so I know that it takes a bit more
| than 0 effort, but it is a very simple problem to manage,
| and anybody can do it. The actual immature complaint is
| that not enough people have the same preferences as you
| do. Which you just have to get over, and accept that you
| live on a planet with 7 billion other people, and a lot
| of them (no matter what they say), actually don't care
| about a little bit of slave labor in the supply chain of
| their new TV.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > lot of them (no matter what they say), actually don't
| care about a little bit of slave labor in the supply
| chain of their new TV
|
| So we can't trust what consumers say they want, but we
| can trust what you say they wan't?
|
| What is the basis for this extraordinary claim?
|
| So far your argument reads a lot like 'market is
| infalliable, if it doeant serve your needs, its your
| fault. And even if you find it ever fails, it's your, the
| consumers fault too. No flaw in the system is possible'
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > So we can't trust what consumers say they want, but we
| can trust what you say they wan't?
|
| I'm not saying they want anything. I'm saying that what
| they want is revealed by their choices and not how they
| might answer any particular question when prompted. In
| economics this is called a revealed preference.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > I'm saying that what they want is revealed by their
| choices
|
| You still have not addressed how does this square with
| lying.
|
| What should happen when I ask primark staff and they say
| 'there is no slave labour'?
|
| Is it also my responsibility to fly to Taiwan, break into
| the factory and defeat their security in a shootout, to
| find out that thwy use slave labour?
|
| At least I hope the state won't protect primarc in case I
| want to make sure they are not lying before I buy a
| t-shirt?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > You still have not addressed how does this square with
| lying.
|
| That's just regular fraud. It's already illegal.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| >it is very simple to accomplish.
|
| Given you don't have details on the quality of the item
| you are buying how do you accomplish that?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| You don't have information unless you seek to find it.
| The information is available and if you choose not to
| seek it then you have nobody but yourself to blame.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| How do I get details on the design changes that make it
| less reliable as a consumer?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _because their own past customers, usually the best
| source for new purchases from their brand, don 't buy
| from them any more because the need is still met by the
| still working product_
|
| Doesn't this neglect word of mouth? If you ask someone on
| HN, they will tell you to buy your vacuum cleaners and
| dishwashers from Miele and your washers and dryers from
| Speed Queen, budget permitting.
|
| To the extent that scales to the world at large, the
| quality manufacturers will take business away from their
| competitors who don't get recommended as often.
| yojo wrote:
| FWIW I love this Panasonic toaster, which is some
| substantially different toaster tech:
| https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-NB-G110P-FlashXpress-
| Infrar...
|
| No thermostatic control, but the defaults are fine for my
| uses.
|
| Currently on year 10. The power button got a little finicky
| so I have to wedge it with a piece of cardboard to make
| contact, but otherwise as good as the day I bought it.
| tuatoru wrote:
| > I know a thermostatically controlled toaster is feasible
| to make into a cheap product because it existed in the
| 1960s
|
| Having bought a toaster and electric kettle recently, I
| completely agree with your main point: buy the cheapest one
| you can bear to look at, because they're all the same in
| the essentials.
|
| But this anecdote about your aside might be diverting. One
| of my earliest extended memories (in the 1960s) is watching
| my dad repair our toaster. winding new resistance wire
| around the mica central divider. (The toaster was a manual
| model with flip-open sides, toasting one side of the bread
| at a time.)
|
| I don't think automatic toasters were all that cheap in the
| 1960s. Not everywhere, anyway, if repair of a manual
| toaster was worthwhile to do.
| blihp wrote:
| Manual repair of just about everything was worthwhile to
| do back then. Partly it was because labor was cheap and
| physical stuff was expensive (which has inverted) and
| partly because the overall <pick the appliance> was well
| built enough otherwise where one could expect to get
| years more service out of it post-repair. This approach
| doesn't payoff nearly as well when everything in the
| device is engineered to be within an inch of it's life
| once the warranty period ends. (if you're lucky)
| jiggawatts wrote:
| This video makes this point very well:
| https://youtu.be/1OfxlSG6q5Y
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > The market is not working, we just have the tools to
| realize how badly it's broken.
|
| "The market" is not a single thing. It's an idea(ology)
| from economics, and a cultural mythology, that vaguely
| intersect at some point.
|
| We all think we know what "The Market" is, supply, demand,
| competition and so on. It's existence and operation
| underwrites many a political argument.
|
| Then there is the reality:
|
| Walk in to a supermarket and "choose" from 20 different
| brands of tinned vegetable, grown in the same region,
| processed in a handful of factories ultimately owned by the
| same parent company.
|
| "Own" a movie, on a device that you don't actually control
| in any way, that you were effectively forced to purchase,
| with money you don't have.
|
| And so on....
|
| So, in respectful mockery of Thatcher I say "There's no
| such thing as The Market" - not because I don't believe in
| the values of property, choice, competition, innovation....
| but because we don't have these, and haven't for some time.
| The myth of "The Market" lives on the place of early (real)
| capitalism as we head toward "consumer communism".
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > respectful mockery of Thatcher
|
| There is no need to do anything "respectfully" of
| Thatcher. She should have been hanged.
|
| I wouldn't piss on her grave for fear the warmth would
| comfort her.
| gruez wrote:
| > > The market is not working, we just have the tools to
| realize how badly it's broken.
|
| >"The market" is not a single thing.
|
| Who seriously think it is? I think most people here knows
| that "the market" doesn't refer to an actual thing or
| place, just like "the internet" doesn't refer to an
| actual actual thing or place.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Who seriously think it is?
|
| Nobody. I'm not implying anyone is _that_ stupid. It 's
| obviously a figure of speech. Which you get, right?
| triangleman83 wrote:
| But there are choices, sometimes you're not conscious of
| the effect of your choice but it was made nonetheless.
|
| For your supermarket example, instead of going there you
| could go to a local farmer's market for those vegetables.
| It might cost more, but most expect higher quality there
| than at the supermarket. So there is another "market"
| option, you shouldn't just expect all your "market"
| options to be placed in convenient aisles at the grocery
| store.
|
| If you live in the city and have to drive over an hour to
| get to a farmer's market, well that was also a choice you
| made. Perhaps you didn't make that choice because you
| wanted to be away from locally grown produce, but the
| supermarket being your only option is a consequence of
| that choice.
|
| I'm not trying to be a jerk, just trying to point out
| that much of the choices we make will reduce the other
| choices we have and we should be conscious of the ones
| that drive us to become mindless consumers and remove
| other options from us in the market.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| > which sacrificed its life span in the name of some modicum of
| energy savings. These marginal design choices are not the only
| way to get an efficient unit, since the fridge compressors from
| the 1940's and 1950's era were very efficient.
|
| This one surprised me. I need to do some digging. Did they get
| worse after the 50s? I know that an old fridge I had in the
| basement, probably from the 80s/90s, was _horrible_ in that
| regard. It pulled 300W when the compressor was running, and
| about 20W when idle (why!?). I threw it out a long time ago, so
| I don 't have the exact figures anymore, but over a day it
| consumed at least 3 to 5 times as much as the bigger one in my
| kitchen that was new at that time. And it was notably cooler in
| the basement too, so that should've worked in favor of the old
| one.
| touch_abs wrote:
| Old ones did a few things really well; they typically have
| the hot radiator coils on top, or better separated from the
| internals (at the cost of space) better insulation (at the
| cost of internal space), and didnt have built in defrosters
| (or air circulation). They also used a somewhat more
| effective (but worse for the environment) refrigerant, freon.
|
| After the 50s, we demanded a larger volume, not just being
| larger but also sacrificing insulation and ideal hot-side
| placement. And we had to change the refrigerant used (and get
| rid of latching doors). Several features that were poor from
| an energy standpoint became standard (auto-defrost, air
| circulation).
| alliao wrote:
| i'm quite interested in Vacuum Insulation Panel (VIP) used
| in some fridges nowadays, it seems the edges and punctures
| would be their down fall, but it does make for some
| strikingly thin fridge walls...
| Serenacula wrote:
| It is worth mentioning that there is a survivorship bias
| inherent to this problem. The older designs that were well made
| tended to be the one that lasted, and so become the ones we see
| today, whereas the poor quality old designs already failed.
| mbesto wrote:
| > They just don't last.
|
| Two words: planned obsolescence.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| My plan if I magically become a billionaire is to start a
| consumer goods (and maybe tools) brand that makes devices that
| are "just good". They won't be bristling with pointless and
| fragile features (like WiFi in everything), they won't have
| overwrought styling and decorative frills, but they will do
| things like not skimp on 0.1g of plastic in critical places,
| MOSFETs, UV stabilization, etc. Captive cables avoided. Metal
| preferred over plastic, and spares provided at cost. Wearable
| parts should be off-the-shelf components where possible. Parts
| lists and schematics provided. Any API should be open and
| documented. They won't be priced or marketed as premium,
| they're "just good" and you shouldn't have to pay extra on top
| just for the logo of all you wanted was a working, long-lived
| device.
|
| Then, importantly, stick to it and not ride laurels all the way
| down to the bottom of the barrel. And refuse to sell out to
| larger competitors who will then gut quality.
|
| The reason it's on my Magic Billionaire list is because I
| cannot imagine I'd get the investment to set up a brand that
| isn't designed to squeeze every last penny out of the products,
| but rather simply provide "just good" products.
| april_22 wrote:
| The printer market is probably one of the worst when it comes
| to this. Everything just keeps breaking down and not working
| and I don't know a single company that makes printers that
| actually last.
| fleddr wrote:
| This is easily solved, just subscribe to the HP Cloudcare
| Print Feed Spool Renewal program for a lifetime of print
| happiness. Terms and conditions apply.
| martindbp wrote:
| I have some more anti-feature requests for you:
|
| 1. I don't need a digital clock or timer on my appliances
|
| 2. No loud beeps whenever a touch button is pressed or a dial
| is turned or when the microwave is done
|
| 3. No blue LEDs that somehow light up the whole room at night
|
| 4. Physical dials where it makes sense (temperature, time
| etc) instead of clunky touch crap
| 0xfeba wrote:
| There was a microwave at a job that would, of course, beep
| when you pressed a button or the timer was done. But also
| when you opened or closed the door.
|
| Had a electric kettle that also beeped. I removed the piezo
| buzzer.
| martindbp wrote:
| I had a microwave that beeped loudly at every interval of
| the duration dial. Just imagine it for a second.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| And I promise not to skimp on controls and displays. Sure
| you can set up any device using only 4 seven segment
| displays and 2 buttons, with each button overloaded with
| about 12 functions. But that just means that although I
| advertised my cooker has a timer-start function,
| functionally, it doesn't have such features as they're
| impractical to learn and use.
| martindbp wrote:
| Ah, but how would I turn off the kid safety lock if it
| doesn't involve tapping Imperial March on two separate
| buttons in canon?
|
| After my kid randomly pressed a bunch of buttons on our
| stove the alarm kept randomly turning on, sometimes in
| the middle of the night and I could not for the life of
| me figure out how to turn it off. But one day it stopped.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| I had to find a manual for my washing machine to disable
| the child lock which accidentally got turned on. There's
| no symbol (maybe kids are onto that these days), you just
| have to intuit which buttons you have to hold at the same
| time.
|
| Plus points: you can turn the beep volume down.
|
| Minus points: without a manual you would never in a
| million years figure out the magic sequence to get into
| the menu and when you did what the numeric menu codes
| mean.
| endymi0n wrote:
| As this category used to exist (and partly still does in my
| country with Miele, but is considered niche), I doubt you'll
| get much product market fit there.
|
| Total Adressable Market is the nerds who care, i.e. barely
| anybody.
| alliao wrote:
| I have a 2015 or so era Miele and have taken apart the dish
| washer and some design decisions are a bit dubious too..
| cost down of physical relay from traditional bulky
| electromechanical relay to solid state (without heatsink
| might I add) and situated on top of the dish washer where
| it's warm. you can tell they don't really care enough about
| it, as the location which worked for older style relay but
| would be hostile for newer relay which on paper have better
| reliability.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Miele gouge like hell on spares, a new door for my fridge-
| freezer costs about as much as the entire unit, including 2
| doors, did. The door cover is maybe one of the top things
| to want replacing on a fridge. Also the plastic door trays
| are clearly suffering from "material use optimisation"
| because the hinges break off due to insufficient material
| support.
|
| On the other side, the thing is still working, but it's
| only been 8 years.
|
| But I do agree about the TAM, which is why it's contingent
| on being an idle billionaire.
| scrlk wrote:
| FWIW Miele refrigeration products are made by Liebherr
| and many are rebadged for Miele. You might be able to
| find an equivalent Liebherr product and save money by
| buying the Liebherr part instead.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Right, but these are the kind of games that I, as a
| consumer, do not expect to have to play with an ethical
| producer that truly just cares about making good
| products.
| archi42 wrote:
| At first your competing with manufacturers who save the
| pennies and invest in marketing/branding over reliability.
| And those will do anything to outcompete you (including
| metagaming like legal actions and smear campaigns). Because
| if your claims hold, you might reduced the market cap by a
| few percent, maybe even more. This means losing out on a lot
| of sales now and the "recurring" sales (because crap breaks
| after 2 or 3 years) for another decade.
|
| Later, when you mostly saturated your target market, you're
| mostly earning on the sales of spare parts (which you produce
| in bulk every few years and sell from your inventory). Also,
| you now have to enter the next market or let go of most of
| your people. That cycle then repeats, and maybe you re-enter
| a market to make the next version of a product.
|
| Did you think about a kickstarter to bootstrap with a
| mechanically relatively simple product, and on which you
| could compete with a relatively small mark up? E.g. a coffee
| grinder over a fully automatic coffee maker; or probably
| something even more simple.
| dls2016 wrote:
| This sounds more like a critique of capitalism than
| anything.
|
| What I find absurd is the re-badging of appliances. A
| clothes dryer or a gas furnace is a very simple device. So
| simple, in fact, that you will find the same control board
| inside a wide variety of seemingly "different" products.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Well, these terrible products are a result of capitalism-
| as-implemented, so, pretty much, yes.
|
| Though I'd say it's more a critique of the belief that
| "the market" must be "right": on the
| manufacturer/investor side that "immediately profitable"
| is the main goal and that "cheap right now" is the goal
| on the customer side. In fact this is now so normalised
| that _customer_ and _consumer_ are almost synonymous,
| even for things that should, by rights, outlive the
| customer without being consumed.
|
| Both these views can be rational (if you, the company, go
| bust this year, you can't make a good product ever, and
| you, the customer, may well want a blender now, not in 10
| years when you can afford one that will last another 20).
| But they result in a Hotelling's Law joint race to the
| bottom (with a froth of shatteringly expensive artisanal
| Veblen-esque goods more for fashion then utility at the
| opposite end).
|
| Perhaps "the market's" view of value is not actually a
| good description of long term utility.
|
| And probably the most galling part of this is that with
| same amazing manufacturing methods and process control
| used now to shave a product to just barely good enough
| not to be warranty returns, you could produce wonderful
| products on the other side of the line[1]. Probably for
| only a few percent off the bottom line. But then you'd
| get pounded into the economic sand by corner-cutters and
| double-dippers who sell multiple bad products to the same
| customers in sequence.
|
| [1]: The difference between a MOSFET driver circuit that
| fails after a year and one that basically never fails
| could be pennies, say.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > Did you think about a kickstarter
|
| Honestly, I could not think of anything that would make me
| miserable more than battling up from ground level in this
| kind of market, using my few personal savings as
| collateral. Kind of the same reason I don't intend to get
| into politics.
|
| Yes, I'm giving up on a chance to make something better,
| but I won't make anything better from an early grave.
|
| I'm content to work for a company that I think is making
| good products. I have never worked for a company making
| cheap crap, and I hope I never will.
| archi42 wrote:
| I feel very much the same :)
|
| Maybe we both "just" need to find a niche (or simple
| enough) product that can be started as an extended hobby.
| But I fear these are often not very interesting or won't
| even make us millionaires. How about electric tooth
| brushes, have these any relevant flaws these days?
|
| Another small thing: We have a cat toy that moves via
| vibration (they love it), but the 3 tiny 312-type cells
| only survive for at most 30m. We even tried those specced
| for hearing aids (180mAh instead of 30mAh), but they seem
| to have trouble with the current and don't live much
| longer; so using it is not only moderately expansive, but
| produces a lot of unnecessary waste. A small LiPo with
| USB-C charger could fit, but of course then the margin
| would drop sharply.
| nly wrote:
| It's very similar phenomenon to shrinkflation. Instead of
| getting more expensive, items are just getting lower quality
| RichardCNormos wrote:
| People value low prices more than they value longevity.
| mbesto wrote:
| Probably true, but it's also almost entirely impossible to
| know for sure whether a product has longevity. Yes, this is
| why branding is important (see Tumi or Briggs & Riley for
| examples), but it's very difficult to _actually_ know whether
| the product will last outside of a contractual guarantee.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| this is just your opinion.
|
| People have no way to know longevity of the product they are
| buying
| kube-system wrote:
| Not between a $100 product and a $120 product on a store
| shelf. Because the difference is slim to none. They are all
| similar quality.
|
| Pretty much anything within about an order of magnitude in
| price will be value engineered like everything else.
|
| Go to a specialty store with 10x the budget and they'll
| hook you up with something where price was not a primary
| engineering factor.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Will they? Or will they hook you up with feeling superior
| while selling you the same crap branded differently?
| kube-system wrote:
| You can be ripped off at any price level, but you won't
| get a premium product for budget prices. Reputation and
| quantification is, of course, key.
|
| For example, the $1200 chair I'm sitting on is
| unquestionably better quality than the $120 chair it
| replaced. The $120 chair had no warranty, only the
| retailer's return policy. The manufacturer of the $1200
| chair will gladly send someone to my house for free to
| replace a squeaky wheel more than a decade from now.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Maybe some do, but I don't think that is the root of the
| problem. A lot of people would be happy to buy a more
| expensive product if they knew they would get a better
| product. But we don't know that. A lot of more expensive
| brands are just design and marketing. And models often aren't
| sold long enough so I still can buy something that some
| reviewer (which I should try to make sure isn't paid by the
| manufacturer) praise after actually using for a couple of
| years.
|
| So, as usual, it's an information problem. We don't pay for
| quality, because it's almost impossible to know that we
| actually get what we pay for. So it's more rational to buy
| some cheap stuff and hope for the best instead of paying 5
| times as much and be disappointed again when the stuff
| breaks.
| mannschott wrote:
| This is the root of the problem for me as well.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > And models often aren't sold long enough
|
| This is so annoying. There are pointless model churn for
| everything. You can't keep up and get a understanding of
| what is quality or not becouse when a device has been on
| the market for a while and you can know if it last it is
| out of production.
| konschubert wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| People nowadays also don't seem to mind to replace their
| items more frequently to get newer ones for possibly better
| features. Being too sturdy is almost a disadvantage.
|
| (I'm not saying it sacrificially; I think both sides have a
| point.)
| rightbyte wrote:
| I believe this is on old merits from the time where stuff
| actually got better. Wont the "new model" is implied to be
| better wear off by now?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| If you buy something expensive it won't last any longer than
| the cheap shit. Most of the core components are the same, you
| just get more features.
| api wrote:
| The key is usually to buy commercial grade, but that can be
| up to 10X as expensive.
|
| Consumer grade stuff has been a race to the bottom on price
| and quality for years with glitzy bullshit features like
| WiFi support making up in marketing.
| cudgy wrote:
| This is the root of the problem. Quality machinery costs more
| and most people think they are getting a good deal when they
| buy junk at cheap prices.
|
| However, sometimes you get lucky buying cheap stuff that
| lasts and that is the experience we like to remember and try
| to repeat.
| randallsquared wrote:
| It's the root of the general problem, but as noted
| elsewhere by another commenter, paying a lot more doesn't
| actually provide much signal that the product isn't junk.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| For beancounters, a brand's reputation for expensive but
| long-lasting products is an amazing opportunity to
| "create shareholder value" and boost (short-term) profits
| by cutting corners on quality. Obviously the reputation
| will eventually adjust and this strategy will stop
| working, but besides the disgruntled customers, bonuses
| have been paid, people have been promoted and shareholder
| value was created. By the time the brand dies the people
| involved would've moved on to their next victim.
|
| Paying more indeed isn't a reliable signal because even
| if a brand truly has a reputation for reliable stuff
| there is no guarantee someone isn't pulling the
| aforementioned strategy in the background.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Also, if you make machines that last a long time and are
| easily repairable, pretty soon you will saturate the
| market and won't have any new customers. If you can only
| sell to each person once, you won't have a sustainable
| business.
|
| All the companies that made things that last forever went
| out of business.
| ornornor wrote:
| It feels like a middle ground would be to make shit that
| lasts and decent amount of time AND sell the parts at a
| decent cost to keep them working for ever.
|
| Parts provide a regular revenue stream, consumers don't
| have to buy a new appliance every three years, and
| swapping a gear doesn't cost 75% of a new appliance.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| If companies can't produce the high quality goods that we
| want and need, then what are they good for? They were
| supposed to compete with each other to see who can make
| the best products, not the cheapest junk.
|
| This pathological capitalism has to go away forever. It's
| bad for consumers and bad for the environment. Companies
| exist because society allows them to exist, and they're
| allowed to exist because people believe they will fulfill
| their wants and needs. If they keep failing us in such
| spectacular ways, there's no reason for them to keep
| existing.
| iSnow wrote:
| But a lot of people actually want companies to produce as
| cheap as possible - be it because they are poor or
| because they dislike regulatory interventions for
| ideological reasons.
|
| Not saying this is great and I try to buy higher-quality
| goods if possible, but the reality is that needs and
| wants of high-income persons might be different to those
| of the poor.
| randyrand wrote:
| That's not true.
|
| But Amazon, Walmart, Whirlpool, GE, etc, have no useful
| indications for longevity.
|
| There's no way to know how long your fridge will last before
| you buy it. So why spend more when you literally have no idea
| if it's actually better quality?
| hnick wrote:
| And more than consumer protection. At least here in Australia
| we have the ACCC, even though it feels somewhat weaker than
| usual in recent years, it can still help. It probably
| contributes to the so-called 'Australia Tax' we have on
| products here in addition to our small market and large
| distance. But at least a TV or car manufacturer offering a 4
| year warranty here is still obliged to replace it later if
| it's reasonable to expect such an expensive product to last
| longer than 4 years.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| What does this say about the longevity of items priced higher
| in their category?
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Except with any decent brand being sold down the river for a
| quick buck and all sources of review being paid shills the
| choice for most people that don't know the specific niche
| extremely well isn't cheap and crap vs. expensive and
| quality, it's cheap and crap vs. expensive and crap but with
| more failure modes.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Planned obsolescence went so far that often appliances has a
| higher TCO than 10 years ago.
|
| The cheap ones by lasting very little. The reliable ones by
| being very expensive.
| fossuser wrote:
| Often it's someone comparing a cheap modern version with some
| super high-end appliance from the 50s (because cheap low margin
| options didn't exist back then).
|
| If you were buying a $7k fridge today to compare - that'd be
| interesting.
| swayvil wrote:
| If the quality of things goes down. And your wealth remains
| consistently such that you can just afford to pay your bills
| (that is, keep yourself supplied with all the necessary things).
| Then poverty is happening. And it is being masked.
|
| Food and shitty food are both called food but they are not the
| same thing. Their sameness is a trick of language.
| replygirl wrote:
| pipe and representation of pipe are both called pipe but they
| are not the same thing. their sameness is a trick of language
| nazgulnarsil wrote:
| If you want to see the true cost of quality items look into
| commercial versions built for high uptime. They are often 5x the
| price or more of consumer versions. For some things this is worth
| it.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| And tend to be much more easily serviced, and parts more
| readily available, and even when parts are no longer available,
| or there's a long lead time, a maintenance contractor will be
| able to conjure one up from a wrecked machine or have a new
| part fabricated.
| nimbius wrote:
| sounds like a lack of proper QC and insufficient or the wrong
| grade of oil was added...but, home compressors are this weird
| sealed monstrosity that can never be properly serviced without a
| byzantine amount of hacky gizmos anyhow so...
|
| -\\_ (tsu) _/-
| coryfklein wrote:
| I disagree that consumers are to blame. Believe me, I would be
| willing to pay 50% more for my fridge if I could know for certain
| that it would last decades longer than another. It is incorrect
| to say that consumers have a choice between "high quality/long
| lasting" and "cheaper but dies sooner", and for multiple reasons!
|
| 1. An uneducated consumer cannot distinguish between the two.
| Both products will bear labels reading "Extremely high quality,
| we take pride in our work, energy efficient AND better quality
| than all our competitors!"
|
| 2. Brands and manufacturers are taking these shortcuts uniformly.
| So consumers can't simply rely on buying a machine of a certain
| brand.
|
| 3. These issues don't show up for (apparently) 13 years! Even IF
| a consumer identifies a brand with a strong evidence-based
| reputation for quality, that brand may have lowered standards
| sometime in the past 13 years and they would have no way of
| knowing.
| type0 wrote:
| Some apparent changes in recent years have been how bad certain
| manufacturers been riding the praise of older products and
| greatly decreasing the quality of components in microwaves. Are
| there any brands that still produce good micros? Does Toshiba or
| Panasonic still produce good microwaves or do they also suffer
| from decrease in quality?
| fleddr wrote:
| I think the speed of product turn-over has a lot additional
| harmful side effects beyond things just breaking down.
|
| Reviews have effectively become meaningless. There's so many
| contenders in each category releasing so many products frequently
| that reviewers are playing catch-up but are also overwhelmed.
| They can only spend a short amount of time per product which
| makes most reviews superficial. As a shopper, it's become
| impossibly hard to find good products. Most reviews just read out
| the specs, they explain what it is, not how good it is.
|
| In the rare case that you do find a good one, its production
| lifespan is very limited, so you can't buy it again. Or it can't
| be repaired as nobody knows how, or there's no parts.
|
| Most products can't even be serviced at all, as not only is there
| no knowledge, the repair cost would exceed the production cost.
| Even the idea "buy local for better service" no longer applies.
| They can't fix it either, they'll handle it exactly the same way
| as a larger retail channel.
|
| There barely is a distinction anymore between A brands and B
| brands. Same limited lifespan.
|
| Even A brands get away with gross usability defects as
| effectively there isn't much of a feedback loop. By the time a
| product is widely considered to be bad, the next one is already
| there. Even if you were to consider boycotting a brand, you'll
| soon learn the other brands are no different, exceptions aside.
| dirtyid wrote:
| 500+ comments and no one seems to be discussing the first reply
| in the OP by small appliace company that alleges new compressors
| rarely fail (and he guestimates possibly less than compressors
| from decades ago) and are one of the better components of new
| refrigerators.
| jjcm wrote:
| The server seems to be having some issues. Here's the video the
| article discusses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpnnLQNgUiQ
| ropable wrote:
| I think that there's always an element of survivor bias in these
| stories; everyone remembers the relatively-new appliance which
| broke and had to be returned, but not the many similar appliances
| which hum on for years. To draw any broad conclusions from a
| small sample size is silly.
| flir wrote:
| It's called Value Engineering.
|
| How do you increase total profit on an item? You either increase
| market share, or you reduce unit cost.
|
| When you start out, the first of these is the better choice (not
| least because you're trying to build a reputation). When you're
| mature, the second is.
|
| There's a guy called AvE on youtube whose tool teardowns
| illustrate this really well. The top-end tools obviously have
| different design goals - stuff like easily replaceable
| sacrificial components that are designed to fail, so expensive
| components are saved.
| stevehawk wrote:
| You mean it's market demand and manufacturers are competing on
| price to maximize sales and not some conspiracy about planned
| obsolescence and "things were better in my day!"?
|
| i refuse to believe such a logical argument
| xxs wrote:
| I'd give an example with a printer.
|
| Refillable Ink-jet - a very low cost per page, indeed. After
| some time (approx 2y - warranty time in the EU; 5-6k
| pages/year), it started having an issue feeding paper, press
| the button to retry, it may work - frustrating, I know. 'Till
| one day it stopped altogether. It took me some time to figure
| it out - in short the tension springs were anemic to a high
| extent. So no tension on the paper rolls - no feed. Replacing
| the springs with imported ones (around 5-6 times more tension
| force) has made the printer not skip a page.
|
| The original springs like 1 cent together. The replacement
| cost was like 40cent for 10 - retail. There is no way the
| manufacturer was unaware.
| juve1996 wrote:
| Things that break lead to greater sales. How do you deal with
| this?
|
| If they're competing on sales, then they need to optimize for
| the point at which it can break without losing brand
| confidence.
| xxs wrote:
| >There's a guy called AvE
|
| I think his name is Chris, actually. Other than that, the
| infamous inverse bathtub curve.
| [deleted]
| throwbacktictac wrote:
| Not that fast food is a hallmark of quality but I've also noticed
| that fast food quality has gotten worse. I may have you matured
| away from the flavor but I used to enjoy a good Carl Jr/Hardy's
| burger, a Chipotle burrito and some Mc Donald's menu item. Now it
| taste like the oils is never cleaned or cleaned with some
| chemical that leaves an after taste.
|
| This is a good thing because now I gotten pretty good at cooking
| some of the dishes at home.
| [deleted]
| disfadbish wrote:
| Is it a chemically/almost tinglingly after taste? I have found
| that with so many fast food places, McDonald's fries and
| nuggets have it the strongest. I chalked it up to either very
| dirty oil (save money by changing it more infrequently) or some
| sort additive to the oil these massive operations produce that
| I am sensitive to.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| I've had this issue with McDonalds fries... I swear they did
| something to them because from one day to another they became
| worse.
| ethanzh wrote:
| I believe they switched from frying them in beef tallow to
| vegetable oils
| bluGill wrote:
| They have switches oils several times that I know of. Some
| of the early veritable oils didn't taste too bad, but were
| probably worse than beef tallow for your health. Now the
| oils are as healthy as you can get for deep frying, but the
| taste isn't as good.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Why are people so ashamed to admit they like fast food online?
| "I matured away from the flavor" Dude McDonalds is fucking
| good, I don't care how old you are.
| sunpazed wrote:
| My 15 year old Sony LCD TV is built like a brick, and has never
| had an issue (nor a firmware update). Meanwhile, my 6 month old
| Sony OLED Smart TV has given me nothing but grief. Recently had
| to replace the entire OLED panel -- understandably it's not a
| repairable part -- which is 80% of the TV itself.
|
| In another example, we replaced our 20 year old microwave with a
| modern LG (we moved house and the old microwave didn't fit). The
| LG faulted within 15 months of use.
| donohoe wrote:
| Anecdotal, but I'm currently dealing with a broken fridge. It's
| less than 2 years old and the compressor failed.
|
| Repair tech said to contact a Frigidaire even though it has no
| warranty. He said he's seen a stack of compressor failures on
| relatively new fridges.
| 43920 wrote:
| This just happened to me too - 3 year old Frigidaire, failed
| compressor. Would be interesting if this really is a trend
| rather than just anecdotal, but I suppose we'll never know.
|
| What's ridiculous is the lack of reasonably-priced replacement
| parts. I tried to get the fridge repaired, and the cost of a
| new compressor + the cost of having someone swap it was more
| than the cost of an entire new fridge.
| donohoe wrote:
| Same! I complained (nicely) to Frigidaire and they are
| covering cost of full repair.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| What's the lifespan of modern software compared to a fridge?
| g42gregory wrote:
| So have Inflation, Shrinkflation, and now Qualiflation?
| downboots wrote:
| Don't forget wage stagnation :)
| jl6 wrote:
| Mises proposed that in a planned economy, there is a fundamental
| flaw called the economic calculation problem: essentially, it is
| almost impossible to calculate optimal resource allocation
| because doing so amounts to knowing every single person's needs,
| and every detail of every factor of production, at all times. The
| information is too hard to get. Only markets can sufficiently
| simplify the problem by providing price as a universal point of
| comparison. That was his theory.
|
| Unfortunately, the success of price as a simplifying mechanism
| also hides all of the information from which the price emerged.
| This makes it almost impossible to determine whether the price is
| low because the materials are poor quality, or because the labor
| was underpaid, or because environmental standards were bypassed
| through offshoring, or because the manufacturing process was
| particularly efficient. Clearly we hope it is due to the latter,
| but determining so amounts to solving the economic calculation
| problem.
|
| But, rather than abandoning all hope, I believe the answer lies
| in consumers demanding supply chain transparency. This isn't
| going to enable an efficient planned economy, but it might enable
| individuals to make better decisions about the purchases for
| which they care most.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Good supply chain transparency is about as difficult as an
| efficient planned economy, actually. Supply chain transparency
| was by very very far the biggest issue.
|
| Actually planning the economy is a polynomial time problem to
| solve exactly for linear situations, and ~n*log(n) to
| approximate fairly well both for linear and nonlinear
| situations. Consumer demand is solved by using markets for
| everything except capital.
|
| And so revealing accurate information turned out to be by far
| the most difficult task, at which planned economies routinely
| suffered catastrophic failures. For example, the USSR
| overestimated grain production by around 2x for the Holodomor
| due to misreporting and lies at every single level (the ensuing
| catastrophic and tyrannical resource distribution is a whole
| other topic). Until the 1990s, Soviet planners highly valued US
| spy informations on their economic situation as it was vastly
| more reliable than their own.
|
| Planned economies are far more reliant on this data of course,
| and that is why they are far more affected. Actually finding a
| sufficiently efficient organisation of production is not that
| big of a challenge either in theory or in practice, the issue
| is mostly figuring out exactly what you've got to organize.
|
| Unfortunately Mises did not have the algorithmic intuition to
| figure out that the calculation part is completely doable (even
| when you assume a perfect efficient market which is
| theoretically impossible unless P=NP and entropy stops existing
| and even then only for linear systems, the exact solution can
| be found at worst in cubic time to the number of industries).
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I suspect that many manufacturers would love more
| transparency in the supply chains they themselves depend on,
| and are only a little less in the dark than their consumers.
| [no personal knowledge of industry, just an observation from
| various news accounts over the years];
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Most definitely, the issue is they won't want to be the
| ones providing transparency into their own operations, for
| a variety of reasons.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| There are some things that you don't want to last more than about
| 10 years. Big CRT TVs and laptop computers come to mind. My
| elderly parents have a bunch of things that still work, but once
| they pass the kids are taking them straight to the landfill.
| matwood wrote:
| I recently replaced a basic washer and dryer that had lasted 20
| years. I went to buy new ones and asked the person for basic
| models that would last 20 years again. He laughed and said
| nothing he sold would last that long anymore. I'm glad he was
| honest, but it made me sad.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| As I'm in the middle of replacing a one-year-old LG fridge I've
| been doing a bit of reading. Apparently rotary compressors like
| this require exceptionally precise tolerances to achieve any
| manner of reliability.
|
| Thirteen years doesn't strike me as particularly bad. Not great,
| but not bad. That 80-year-old fridge the repair shop guy is
| bragging about is almost certainly not an auto defrost unit. So,
| sure, it's probably close to a modern fridge in power consumption
| but the tradeoff is you'll have to scrape ice out of it
| periodically.
|
| https://hbr.org/1989/03/cold-competition-ge-wages-the-refrig...
|
| Edit:
|
| Pretty early on I got a couple wireless temperature probes and
| used rtl-sdr to pipe the data into a TimescaleDB instance (and
| slapped Grafana in front of it).
|
| I have no idea what the actual problem was because LG was keen on
| a refund over a repair. The symptoms were failure to cool and ice
| buildup on the evaporator getting into the fan and making a
| racket. The tech diagnosed a bad thermistor which brought the
| freezer temp during defrost down from 50degF to about 30-40degF.
| Even though the tech took a steam gun to the evaporator, it took
| about two weeks before enough ice built up and fell into the fan
| _again_. At this point the fridge wasn 't getting below 40degF
| either and my landlord decided to take them up on the refund
| offer.
|
| Could've been a bad compressor as one of the failure modes is
| inability to pump refrigerant. The compressor itself sounded like
| a ringing bell. I stopped caring because nobody at LG cares and
| they are not positioned to actually service their appliances.
| It's likely a design flaw they either already know about or don't
| want to know about. Getting through to a person empowered to do
| anything is nearly impossible and their techs have a miserable
| time trying to get parts from their poorly run warehouses. I'm a
| bit apprehensive that other companies have joined the race to the
| bottom, but for now LG is solidly in _never again_ territory for
| me.
| bombcar wrote:
| Auto-defrost is nice for the first X years, until it starts to
| ... not defrost as much or as well. Sometimes the simpler ones
| are nicer, even if they require a bit more thought/work to use.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Most full sized residential fridges are auto defrost these
| days. I think it's been that way since the 80s or so.
|
| I've a 2003 build Whirlpool fridge that's been just fine. In
| that era the defrost logic is usually mechanical and if/when
| the defrost timer fails it's a $30 part that's fairly easy to
| replace.
|
| The LG that I just junked uses electronics to control the
| defrosting. That gets expensive to fix but (I think) that's
| also not what failed in that piece of crap.
| bombcar wrote:
| The failures I've seen are the heating element dying
| (annoying in one fridge because of how it was wedged in,
| real pain to replace), the drain pipe clogging (this can be
| really annoying to clean), or the computer just giving out
| (usually takes the whole fridge, but I've seen it just lose
| the defrost).
|
| All three are more annoying to deal with than a fridge
| where you just know you gotta defrost it now and then
| (chest freezers still had that for longer, maybe still do).
| userbinator wrote:
| Only one year? Was it the compressor or did something else fail
| first?
| ipython wrote:
| LG and Samsung both have this problem. I suffered from it for
| years - like clockwork every three months the fan would stop
| spinning and the fridge would stop working until I took a hair
| dryer to the built up ice behind the rear panel.
|
| Good news was it encouraged us to clean out our fridge on a
| regular basis!
|
| I eventually fixed it by ordering a new thermistor and
| relocating it on the line (I read about it in a service
| bulletin somewhere)
|
| I also replaced the warming probe at the bottom just in case it
| was blocking up but I don't think that was the root cause.
|
| Once I took those actions, the fridge worked great.
| Unfortunately we now no longer have a clean refrigerator,
| however.
| [deleted]
| LoriP wrote:
| Have to say I love this use case of TimescaleDB and Grafana - a
| perfect example of time series data used for something small
| and useful to prove a theory. In case anyone's tantalized the
| TimescaleDB YouTube channel has some great free how-to videos
| on setting up TimescaleDB and Grafana.
| j45 wrote:
| It's often worth buying the first few generations of a new
| appliance - they are often over-engineered to some degree - or
| the MTTF isn't quite known to swap out parts.
|
| A few years ago I replaced my dishwasher with a European one. It
| was great, quiet. Then, it wasn't. I learned because it doesn't
| have a heating element and you have to load the dishes in a
| particular way to have a chance at maximum drying.
|
| I listened to the service technician go on about the particular
| way to use this machine for about 20 minutes and asked them if I
| bought a decent dishwasher to think about my dishwasher, or to
| never think about my dishwasher again.
|
| Since then, I've has had to replace the key convector to open and
| close it for it to run. Based on other well engineered products
| and European brands, I'm comfortable that the failure is
| engineered to ensure my LTV to the brand is longer.
|
| Perhaps a European car that falls apart after a certain amount of
| mileage is a status symbol for some. They are wonderful to drive,
| but I have better things to do.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > I learned because it doesn't have a heating element
|
| Is it so humid that you need one? I find the need for one
| absurd since I never used a machine with one and place
| everything in the correct orientation subconsciously.
| trimbo wrote:
| GE appliance repair guy told me not to give up my 2006-era
| washer/dryer when he was replacing the drain hose. Unfortunately
| I had to. A year later an LCD screen went bad and would cost $1K
| to fix. So I bought a new LG.
|
| The problem is they aren't built to last well _nor_ be
| economically repairable. I 'd take one or the other (or both!).
| adrr wrote:
| Easy solution. Charge a 25% recycling VAT style tax on products
| that don't offer a 10 year no strings attached in-home pickup
| warranty.
| kube-system wrote:
| It was a premium product at the time and it was priced
| accordingly. Only 85% of Americans could afford one at that time.
| Appliances today are dirt cheap for a reason.
|
| The reasons everyone has a fridge today isn't because everyone is
| rich, it's because fridges are cheap.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| It would be pretty cool if we made decisions that led both to
| better pay for most Americans and for higher quality projects.
| We've destroyed the labor movement so most workers have no
| bargaining power. Real wages have barely risen since 1980,
| despite huge gains in productivity. Then in order to make
| products cheap enough for impoverished workers to afford, we
| cut every corner we can.
| millimeterman wrote:
| Real compensation has tracked with productivity gains quite
| nicely, though a growing gap did start to emerge in 2008.
| https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-
| watch/gr...
|
| Two things that _are_ real issues are
|
| - Compensation includes benefits, and much of the increase in
| compensation has been eaten up by healthcare costs. This
| means wages haven't increased nearly as much.
|
| - There is a growing gap in productivity inequality within
| labor which has led to growing income inequality. Those
| productivity and income increases have disproportionately
| gone to the upper percentiles of workers.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| > Real compensation has tracked with productivity gains
| quite nicely
|
| This goes counter to what I have read. For example: "Net
| productivity grew 59.7% from 1979-2019 while a typical
| worker's compensation grew by 15.8%, according to EPI
| data..."
|
| https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-
| gro...
| millimeterman wrote:
| The EPI's numbers are wrong/misleading for a few reasons.
|
| - The productivity and compensation graphs are often
| inflation-adjusted using incomparable deflators.
| Productivity is measured using a GDP inflator (which
| includes investments) whereas compensation is measured
| using a CPI deflator (which only includes consumer
| products). CPI is historically higher[1] which means
| compensation is artificially being deflated more than
| productivity.
|
| - The most well-known graph from the EPI[2] shows
| productivity for all workers but shows compensation for
| only 80% of workers, with the provided reason being to
| exclude high earners like management and executives.
| Which, sure I guess, but surely the two metrics should be
| kept consistent.
|
| If you correct for these errors you end up finding a
| productivity/compensation gap that is much smaller than
| the EPI claims, though notably not zero. The EPI
| themselves have a figure that includes all workers and
| uses matching deflators ([3], figure C, "Real producer
| average hourly consumption") so perhaps some of the blame
| here is on readers.
|
| I think this BLS paper on the subject[4] is well worth a
| read. An interesting result they found is that the
| industry with the greatest productivity/compensation gap
| is...computing. Probably not the jobs people usually
| imagine when they think of stagnating pay.
|
| 1. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/comparing-
| the-cpi-...
|
| 2. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
|
| 3. https://www.epi.org/publication/understanding-the-
| historic-d...
|
| 4.
| https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/pdf/understanding-
| the-...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Interesting, I will take a look thanks!
| est31 wrote:
| It's not a "too bad we can't make it more durable because that
| would increase the parts cost" situation, at least not solely.
| It's also a "how can we make this product break quickly and
| make it badly repairable so that you have to buy a new one"
| situation, aka planned obsolescence.
| kube-system wrote:
| In monopolistic industries, this happens. But in other
| consumer markets, value manufacturing _still_ win, because of
| significant information disparities and /or consumer
| preferences.
|
| If your competition makes a shitty fridge for $1000 with
| bearing that will fail at 15 years on average, and you make
| the exact same thing with bearings that will last 30 years
| for $1010, most people will look at the exterior, say "these
| look the same", and buy the competitors model.
|
| And you can advertise that all you want, and next week your
| competition will put $3 of extra steel in the door handle to
| make it feel more solid than yours and write the word
| "professional" on the door. Now your product looks like a bad
| deal.
|
| Now you might say that people are making bad decisions. But
| are they really? Most Americans don't keep their house for 30
| years, so why do they care if the fridge fails before then?
| It's someone else's problem.
|
| This is why market positioning is a complicated discipline.
| It isn't just "make a good thing for a good price"
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| It is a bit of a lemon market, because no one can tell (or
| few can) from the claims, looks, etc. how reliable it will
| actually be.
|
| I am keen to research stuff online more. I avoided buying
| the more expensive "Zip" water system, and instead got a RO
| system and my own chiller. An RO system is mostly plastic
| and pipes, with most of the $ going into the cartridges. So
| good value for money. Ugly... but it is under your sink so
| who cares.
|
| It was cheaper (about 1/3 of the price all up), and all the
| Zip users bemoan how unreliable it is. I also remember
| anecdotally how many times I have seen an out of order tap
| of theirs in an office or other place. They also don't
| filter quite as well as an RO (but they do filter well
| enough if taste is the concern).
|
| You don't always get better buy paying more, or going with
| the famous brand. I think you have to research all the
| things.
| kube-system wrote:
| In the mass consumer market there really isn't much
| variation in the design lifetime. Everyone prioritize low
| construction costs and shoots for about the same timeline
| (last long enough that you don't piss people off or get
| warranty work). Most of the difference in observed
| reliability isn't planned, but circumstantial: bad design
| decision, etc.
|
| If you really want something engineered differently, you
| need to look at something where cost is _not_
| prioritized, which won't be something that costs 20%
| more, or even 100% more. It'll probably cost at least an
| order of magnitude more at least.
| kingTug wrote:
| What if I'm rich and just want reliable appliances? It's a wild
| goose chase.
| stevehawk wrote:
| GE Cafe line. Now you can be broke like everyone else but
| your appliances won't
| canadaduane wrote:
| I've been using looria.com lately, and it seems to be
| tracking a pretty good "signal" using Reddit and other
| sources of consumer feedback that are currently more reliable
| than Amazon ratings.
| kube-system wrote:
| Nah, that's for normal consumers looking for a good value.
| If you're _rich_ , whoever buys your appliances for you
| will get them from the local Viking/Sub-Zero/etc dealer.
| newsclues wrote:
| How rich?
|
| Start making quality appliances that work, are serviceable
| and affordable (maybe financing?). There seems to be a market
| and I think lots of people would be happy to work in an
| American factory making quality stuff for American homes.
| kube-system wrote:
| Premium/commercial brands exist.
| hardolaf wrote:
| Heck even without going "premium", you can pretty much just
| buy LG or low-end Bosch models of most things and be fine.
| But if you buy Samsung, you might as well budget for a
| replacement ASAP.
| kube-system wrote:
| Agreed. Bought all new appliances 10 years ago, and the
| only ones that have given me trouble have been Samsungs.
| tekno45 wrote:
| i wonder if samsung products in Korea are better? How did
| they get so big outside of phones?
| kube-system wrote:
| Samsung has long been a huge conglomerate before
| smartphones ever existed. Smartphones just make them a
| household name in the US.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| This just means it's only a matter of time before
| LG/Bosch realize they're leaving money on the table and
| start cutting corners (while still keeping the prices
| high).
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Buy commercial appliances from a restaurant supplier.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| It's a good idea, but commercial equipment is often ugly in
| the context of a hole kitchen, and usually aren't built to
| fit in standard sized alcoves which many newer homes have.
| archi42 wrote:
| The trick is to have two kitchens. One for actual use
| (maybe even by staff) the other for representative
| purposes or for light use once per month ;-)
|
| This tongue-in-cheek comment is inspired by relatives who
| actually have two kitchens: One in the house with the
| store and manufacturing space (with space for 6 people to
| eat), one in the house they live in (and about twice as
| big, with no sitting space). The former is used all the
| time (often it's "the boss" cooking for the employees and
| visitors), and the other one, well... she said they don't
| actually need it, but he enjoys cooking a lot and is
| really good at it, so a spacious and nice kitchen was his
| treat for their successful store (it happens to look
| representative as well, but the purpose is actual
| cooking).
| seb1204 wrote:
| Continuing gp train of thought you would need to search for a
| supplier that 85% of people can't afford anymore.
| s0rce wrote:
| I found a company called Unique based in Canada that makes
| ovens and stoves without all the electronics (which are
| really the only part in stoves I've ever had issue with, the
| rest is very simple mechanically and either doesn't fail or
| is easily repaired). My brother got one and is really happy.
| smileysteve wrote:
| I'm not seeing several new technologies covered in the threads
|
| - inverter compressors versus scroll compressors
|
| - defrosting cycles
|
| - multi airflow technologies (there have been posts of Arduino
| controlled fans to circulate air in 90s)
|
| In the last decade we've gone from a poor airflow, static
| compressors to normal consumer features including door alarms,
| thermometers, dynamic compressors, and multi flow fans
| hollywood_court wrote:
| We have completely remodeled both the exterior and interior of
| our last 70's home. But we haven't replaced a single appliance. I
| have made far too much money repairing newer appliances for
| clients and friends.
| nabakin wrote:
| Looks like the website is down. Here.
|
| https://archive.ph/hOrqv
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=DpnnLQNgUiQ
|
| Maybe we can switch links? @dang
| supernova87a wrote:
| It's almost like some constant of retail appliances. You pay now,
| or you pay later. And you might pay both.
|
| The problem is that not only is the longevity hard to assess from
| reputation any more, it's that replacement parts and labor are so
| problematic as well.
|
| I (and others I know) have had a simple washing machine circuit
| panel burn out because of simple overloaded pumps, etc. (or you
| might experience this with a dishwasher, refrigerator, etc). Just
| to get the part is now several $100s, and another $150+ for any
| kind of labor visit.
|
| I am rapidly thinking that home warranties where they cover a
| certain set of your appliances is starting to be worth it.
| bluGill wrote:
| Home warranties are not worth it because they do their best to
| not pay. . Most home warranties are bought to sell the home, so
| the buyer just wants low cost and doesn't care about service at
| all.
|
| A home warranty with good service is possible, but it won't be
| cheap.
| pbuzbee wrote:
| We bought a house recently where the sellers left behind the
| fridge. The fridge had a handful of broken plastic shelves:
| things like broken clips and cracked frames. I thought it would
| be cheap to repair.
|
| Wrong. Fixing every broken item (~15 in all) would have cost
| over $400. Just for some plastic.
| adolph wrote:
| One bright spot is the supply of parts for older units is strong
| and YouTube tutorials are generally passable. I feel like we are
| in a DIY appliance repair renaissance.
| libpcap wrote:
| Could be due to the "chabuduo" mindset:
| https://www.sourcingallies.com/blog/cha-bu-duo
| rascul wrote:
| Might be kind of related. Some years back I worked delivery at
| Lowe's. We would sometimes replace appliances that had an issue
| and were under our warranty still. For Samsung and LG appliances
| if there was any issue at all the manufacturer would generally
| tell us to junk it. So we would load up perfectly good $4000
| fridges with a noisy ice maker into the junker trailer and they
| would be sold for scrap. I don't know if these things were so
| cheap to produce that it wasn't worth repairing or maybe the
| shipping was too high but I got the impression that they're
| selling way overpriced cheap junk that isn't meant to last.
| cwillu wrote:
| cgi-bin: haven't seen you in a long time.
| dark-star wrote:
| If you scroll down to the comments, there's a repair technician
| stating that they repair 2000 devices a year and don't come
| across more than maybe 1 or 2 broken compressors each year.
|
| So maybe it's not as bad as the post seems to make it.
| sega_sai wrote:
| I don't think this is surprising. If the utility function that is
| optimized by companies is profitability, the typical lifetime
| just above the warranty time is the result. In some sense that's
| expected from companies that have shareholders and so on.
|
| Whether one can do something about it ? I guess one can enforce
| warranty times to be longer for example. For sure that'll make
| things more expensive, but probably not by much. Maybe there are
| other solutions (like asking to collect statistics on life-times
| of appliances for easier comparisons), but the key is to put that
| factor in the company's calculations.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Washing machines are considerably lower quality than 20-30 years
| ago. New washing machines have issues with "scrud" and other
| weird moldy build ups. Not sure if this is because everything is
| designed for lower water usage leading to the soap not being
| filtered out enough or what but I know some of the issues I have
| seen with my modern appliances simply didn't ever happen with
| much older machines. It seems like the only thing that improved
| was looks and marketing.
| coffeeling wrote:
| I have a new washing machine and it just can't seem to get rid
| of soap in the gasket.
| _nalply wrote:
| This concerns the video linked from the website: I wonder why
| some Youtube videos have subtitles disabled? There are people
| needing subtitles!
|
| A few years ago I did an experiment: I downloaded the video and
| re-uploaded it to Youtube just to enable the subtitles, but I got
| a warning because of copyright violation, so I don't do that
| anymore.
| vendiddy wrote:
| Are there any websites out there that list what to buy and what
| to avoid based on durability?
| legitster wrote:
| For newer appliances, I've weirdly found that spending _less_
| money is key to achieving longevity.
|
| Smaller, fewer features, less moving parts. Avoid gimmicky
| features that your grandparents never needed.
|
| I'm a real cheapskate when it comes to appliances and have yet to
| have one crap out on me.
| peteradio wrote:
| Good point, our fridge came with an ice maker which we don't
| use and when something related to it started making a horrible
| whine I just unplugged the connector, problem solved.
| davemp wrote:
| The unix philosophy works with appliances as well as
| software!
| yojo wrote:
| PCBs, sensors, and switches seem to cover most failure modes of
| modern appliances. I try to minimize the number of each in
| every purchase.
|
| My favorite recent buy was a Victory range hood with mechanical
| switches and no PCB. More like this please.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's triply annoying as the computers in these devices
| absolutely pale in comparison to a Raspberry Pi - it would be
| nice if all appliances used one general purpose board that
| could be easily sourced; as it is nobody will pay $750 for a
| control board to fix a washer when a brand new one is less.
| juve1996 wrote:
| These problems exist because we no longer live in an
| economy with true competition. Look at the post about
| Whirlpool owning almost all major appliance brands I see at
| best buy.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The $750 price tag means that either someone is getting
| ridiculously rich and/or the prices are artificially
| inflated in order to discourage repair. There's no reason a
| board with a few relays or MOSFETs and the processing power
| of a pocket calculator should cost much more than a
| Raspberry Pi.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's probably because the new models have incompatible
| boards and there is a small stockpile of that model left.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's exactly this - once the line stops making the
| boards, they stockpile the remainder for warranty support
| and as that supply dwindles the price begins to
| skyrocket.
| axiolite wrote:
| > PCBs, sensors, and switches seem to cover most failure
| modes of modern appliances. I try to minimize the number of
| each in every purchase.
|
| Digital thermostats are far more reliable than mechanical
| ones, as well as more consistent. There are surely other
| cases where solid state electronics (which have PCBs)
| replacing mechanical systems have improved the reliability of
| appliances. So your rule of thumb is surely contrary to
| reality.
| yojo wrote:
| Anecdata, but most of my expensive appliance repairs have
| been from a board frying.
|
| Replacing a standard thermocouple is trivial. Replacing a
| PCB may not even be possible if the part isn't being
| produced. Doesn't mean you're wrong, but I'd still rather
| have the thermocouple in most cases.
| s0rce wrote:
| I hate all the electronics on ovens/stoves, my brother needed
| a new one and I found a Canadian company called Unique that
| makes them without electronics (and some models for propane
| use off grid).
| atoav wrote:
| > PCBs, sensors, and switches seem to cover most failure
| modes of modern appliances.
|
| Let's not forget about software in these IoT times. Yes there
| is a phone app. But will it be there in 10 years?
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Recently read "The Waste Makers" (published in 1960, I believe).
| Nothing too mind-blowing since the advertising tricks used in
| that era are quaint compared to today's, but it definitely opened
| my eyes to how long the decreased quality/planned obsolescence
| phenomenon has been going on.
| Axien wrote:
| I bought a house in 2011 and am currently on my third
| refrigerator. We originally bought a Samsung and it kept on
| breaking until the warranty expired. We learned our lesson and
| bough an extended warranty on an LG. That broke so many times,
| and as part of the extended warranty contract, they gave us our
| money back. We took the money and bought another LG and over the
| last two years have not had issues.
|
| I have a dorm refrigerator that was purchased in 1986. It
| survived numerous moves and ex-girlfriends but is still going
| strong. I currently have it sitting in my office as my drink
| fridge. Wife has been asking I throw it out. Hell no.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Yeah, I'd stay well away from Samsung for appliances. There was
| a big thing here about a big recall because of their washing
| machines catching fire here a little bit before I bought my
| house, and I'd heard about their fridges breaking. I bought an
| Electrolux fridge and a Bosch washing machine instead and
| they're still going strong after six years. The fridge was on
| the recommendation of my parents who had bought one five or so
| years before, and theirs is still running well, never having
| needed any repairs.
| lnauta wrote:
| My Bosch fridge from 2011 is still going strong. Cheapest model
| of the big fridges at 400EUR.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Samsung and LG make poor quality appliances with fancy techno
| junk features. GE, whirlpool, and other US brands are a much
| better value. I'm sure they don't last as long as the ones
| built prior to the 1990s, but they're worlds better than
| Samsung and LG.
| mc32 wrote:
| One thing I've noticed compared to childhood appliances is
| plastic mechanisms (gears, actuators, brackets, etc). These tend
| to become brittle or soft with age or exposure to chemicals and
| lead to early failure. Of course metal also suffered from fatigue
| and there are quite strong and durable thermoplastics but today I
| see cheap plastic used liberally.
| rubidium wrote:
| This is something I'm interested in. There are strong plastics,
| but a lot of stuff nowadays seems to be the cheapest plastic
| imaginable. Anyway to know if what you're getting?
| mc32 wrote:
| I don't think so. MFGs are likely to swap in new parts
| without notice --they may keep track through serial numbers,
| lots or similar, but not something they would expose to end
| users.
| s0rce wrote:
| Take it apart and see? If you have experience you can usually
| roughly tell what kinds of plastics are used, although some
| are nearly indistinguishable.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Walk in to an appliance store or website, or someone's
| house or a car park if secondhand, with your tool kit and
| expert knowledge and do a full teardown on anything your
| considering purchasing.
|
| Sounds time consuming.
| e40 wrote:
| This. The times I've fixed my appliances rather than replace
| them, the cause was most often a broken plastic part!
| prawn wrote:
| I was going to say the same thing. And it always seems to be
| some little thing for which having made it in metal would've
| had a negligible impact on price.
|
| I had it with a car door opening mechanism - something you
| interact with countless times during a day. Less than an inch
| long. Surprised it lasted as long as it did.
|
| There needs to be an equivalent of Choice/Consumer
| Reports/etc that dismantles products and calls out anything
| that should've been made from metal instead of plastic. It's
| frustrating dealing with unnecessarily broken parts.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _There needs to be an equivalent of Choice /Consumer
| Reports/etc that dismantles products and calls out anything
| that should've been made from metal instead of plastic.
| It's frustrating dealing with unnecessarily broken parts._
|
| I would pay a crazy amount of money to subscribe to a
| service provided by a professional reverse-engineering
| outfit that takes the Consumer Reports concept to the next
| level, with highly technical teardowns and critical
| analysis of a wide variety of products that covers
| everything from the BOM to the firmware.
|
| This kind of thing happens sporadically -- e.g., some of
| the Juicero postmortems offered a lot of engineering
| insight. And there is no shortage of passionate amateurs
| like AvE who don't have a consistent methodology and/or
| don't always have the domain expertise needed to give a
| given product design a fair assessment.
|
| What's needed is a consistent, professional, and above all
| _objective_ approach to informing the purchase decisions of
| technically-literate consumers.
| prawn wrote:
| I think beyond tear-downs, it needs to be influential
| enough to guilt companies into going the right thing.
| Consumers shouldn't need to browse a detailed tear-down
| of an object to guess whether something has been made to
| last or not.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| My thinking is that the people who watch it will do the
| influencing.
| rabuse wrote:
| Sounds like BMW. I can't believe how much plastic crap they put
| under the hood where the heat destroys everything.
| alliao wrote:
| i've got an 2000 bmw with coolant flange made of plastic,
| real ticking time bomb there, right against the firewall too,
| if it breaks I'll scrape the car coz it's in such a PITA
| area. They designed it that way.
| [deleted]
| dghughes wrote:
| I changed a fluorescent lamp ceiling fixture this evening at my
| parent's house. The light was probably made in 1970 or early 70s.
|
| It fell on my head when the last screw let go unexpectedly. And
| it was far heavier than I was expecting about 15 pounds for a 24
| inch by 12 inch light frame. I think it's made of steel I was
| expecting flimsy light tin.
|
| So yeah that was one durable light 52 years of operation.
| [deleted]
| jcadam wrote:
| House I bought recently came with samsung kitchen appliances
| (great /s). I shouldn't have had to crawl inside a 2-year old gas
| oven to replace a bad igniter, but... I did.
|
| I remember when a range could be expected to last a couple of
| decades at least. They aren't... complicated.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Generally agree for topic, but OP article isn't good. They should
| test efficiency of 50s compressor for refrigerator workload, and
| also consider auto defrosting that is evolutional feature. 50s is
| the decade that many inefficient cars run.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| If you like old consumer products, let me tell you about cars
| from the 1970s and 1980s. Not fun.
| switch007 wrote:
| I made yet another trip to the garbage dump the other day and it
| really highlighted how much we throw it out because of poor
| quality goods.
|
| I got pretty angry to be quite honest. All the damage to the
| environment! The labour wasted in installing, attempting repairs,
| throwing out etc. Even worse if you paid lots of $$ to have the
| thing installed by a professional.
|
| And don't get me started on new fan-dangled plumbing connections
| that involve large amounts of rubber adapters that shrink over
| time and causes untold damage.
|
| One thing I decided is to try to avoid plastic, favouring timber
| every time (e.g. seating, boxes)
| juanani wrote:
| basicplus2 wrote:
| Its a race to the bottom on cost
| clord wrote:
| I call this inflation by other means. Constant quality items are
| increasing in price.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| These studies never account for survivorship bias. There were
| plenty of crappy appliances decades ago, but they've all long
| since broken, so we only have the very best old appliances to
| compare against today.
|
| Also, the inflation adjusted cost of a fridge in the 50s was
| something like $10k. A $10k fridge today (e.g. Sub Zero) will
| easily last for many decades. A $1k Wal-Mart special will not.
| quartz wrote:
| The nice thing about Sub Zero is that the whole thing can be
| disassembled so when something does go wrong it can be
| repaired.
|
| I inherited a 12+ year old one one with my apartment and have
| been able to strip it down to its circuit boards to clean,
| maintain, and repair it when needed which I love.
|
| The bad thing is the company treats itself like a luxury car
| brand so OEM parts are a fortune ($400 for a shelf!) and if you
| aren't interested in doing the work yourself the certified
| repair guy is going to rake you over the coals like a luxury
| German auto dealer's service department for simple repairs.
|
| Luckily, like with luxury car brands, the resale value of all
| the parts is basically $0 so you can get used parts (or even
| entire used appliances) super cheap and there are lots of
| compatible parts out there on amazon for reasonable prices (I
| recently had to replace the compressor switch which took about
| 10 minutes and a $10 part but would have been $200+ to have a
| tech show up).
|
| Net-net it's the best fridge I've ever owned but even so I'm
| not sure I would have chosen to shell out the $12k for it if I
| had been the original buyer.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Every time this quality decline pops up there always someone to
| argue that this is all caused by survivorship bias, but this
| argument just doesn't hold water: if it was survivorship bias,
| you would see isolated old appliances scattered between homes,
| but nobody with many appliances from the 80s and earlier still
| working, yet it's the opposite that occurs. I'm extraordinarily
| happy to still have 3 of my grand parents (95/93 and 86) and
| most of their stuff is almost 40 years old :
|
| - fridge
|
| - oven
|
| - dishwasher
|
| - freezer
|
| - hairdryer
|
| - vacuum cleaner
|
| - mixer
|
| - coffee machine
|
| - and even a microwave oven that's been in use daily since
| 1984!
|
| The notable exception being the toaster (thrown away when we
| learned it had asbestos in it very close to the bread) and the
| washing machines.
|
| > A $10k fridge today (e.g. Sub Zero) will easily last for many
| decades.
|
| I wouldn't take a bet on it. Especially because luxury stuff
| are targeting a wealthy audience who often change their still
| fully functional appliance after a few year to buy "better"
| ones (bigger, additional feature, or even just a design that
| isn't out of fashion), they have very limited incentive in
| making things that last several decades, it just needs not to
| die during the typical ownership duration. Related trivia: the
| most expensive _Hermes_ handbags are really fragile because the
| crocodile skin is untreated, and if you carry them outside when
| it rains, every drop will leave a stain. That doesn 't seem to
| negatively affect their business in any way.
|
| That being said, it is true that household appliance used to
| cost much more back then, and people where willing to pay that
| much money. That's the tragedy of competitive markets for
| commodities: it's a race to the bottom.
| e40 wrote:
| Sub Zero fridges are terrible. The people I've known that had
| them rued the day they bought them.
|
| They are a status symbols, that's why they cost so much, not
| because they are top quality.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| That is not what I've heard from speaking to appliance repair
| techs, or builders/architects, or the Sub Zero owners I know
| with 15+ year old refrigerators that have never had any
| issues (except the ice maker, which is an inherently
| unreliable piece of technology).
|
| My guess is your friends aren't maintaining them properly
| (they know they have to clean the condenser coils every
| couple months, right?) Either that, or they have those
| "integrated" models with no visible vent for the condenser,
| which of course will overheat the compressors and
| electronics.
| AnonymousPlanet wrote:
| Ah, the fridge equivalent of "you're holding it wrong"
| liminalsunset wrote:
| I've worked on one from ~2008. The fridge has a decent build
| quality, and two (!) compressors inside of it. It uses more
| metal components, more structural supports, etc, compared to
| most other fridges I've seen. So it's "better".
|
| It also is designed such that you absolutely cannot clean the
| inner layers of the fan-cooled condenser coil without major
| disassembly of the fridge. The service panel on the front can
| be removed, but there is a metal fan shroud that is difficult
| to remove and turns what ought to be routine maintenance into
| an ordeal involving taking things apart and taking the built
| in fridge out of the wall. Whether this was deliberate or
| just an oversight, I don't know. There would have been many
| other simple and cost-neutral ways to implement this cover.
| unixbane wrote:
| but electronics are literally shit. perhaps they always were,
| but there are things that are new since the early 2000s that
| automatically make them shit, like those buttons on a
| microwave, digital controls, and having javascript inside the
| product. i cant think of a single piece of hardware i bought
| after 2005 that i was happy about. i buy a scale (the most
| expensive one in the store this time) and it automatically
| shuts off after a minute and i have to re-tare it. i buy a
| thermostat and it has a vuln that lets people remotely control
| it. i buy a keyboard and it has LEDs and when you turn them off
| (lucky it has the feature), you cant see the key labels because
| they are just holes for the LED. i buy another "gaming"
| keyboard and it has 2KRO (i.e, worse than $5 generic keyboard).
| the last decent product i can remember was a CRT in 2005. LCDs
| starting with HDMI or so take longer to turn on that a CRT,
| they are THAT bad. (LCDs did not compete with CRT until 2015 or
| so, btw).
|
| i cant even imagine why you would downvote this. are you the
| one agreeing with OP's "no evidence" claim, or are you just
| some frothing idiot consumer who is upset that your little
| purchases arent being extolled as they usually are?
| pfdietz wrote:
| I just watched an amusing video that compares Mr. Coffee's
| original machine to modern drip coffeemakers. Mr. Coffee would
| cost $300 today (adjusted for inflation). There's been great
| simplification of the design over the years.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp9H0MO-qS8
|
| Given a more than order of magnitude reduction in price, a
| shorter lifespan can be tolerated, and could even be a rational
| consumer choice.
| dundarious wrote:
| In this specific case, I think you're too quick to accept
| that trade-off. I don't remember the video drawing any such
| conclusion, and from memory, it seemed to slightly indicate
| that the older-and-more-expensive model was likely the less
| reliable of the pair in one or two ways (the flimsy and
| dangerous wire, and less importantly the dual heating
| elements). The new model is probably only less reliable in
| one way -- the outer shell is probably easier to break if you
| really smash it.
|
| In general, I think it's almost always the case that compared
| to historical offerings, you can get an order or so drop in
| price, without sacrificing core lifespan. Sacrificing
| lifespan can be done, but for such devices, such sacrifices
| lead to saving an additional $10-$20 rather than $100-$200 --
| those come from access to cheaper materials.
|
| It's like buying shoes for $20 that you'll have to replace
| every year, instead of an $80 pair that last 10 years. It's a
| trap, and the goal should be to lift people out of it, rather
| than make an even worse $15 shoe, and so on.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| The new one, using 2 heating elements, burns your coffee if
| you leave it because the heater needs to be warm enough to
| actually make the coffee two and it takes literally twice
| as long to make the exact same coffee.
|
| Maybe people wouldn't use Kurig if they could still make
| their cup of coffee in 5 minutes instead of 10.
| dundarious wrote:
| The old one is the one with 2 elements -- the new one has
| only 1. The bad taste from the hot plate is mostly a
| function of using the hot plate, rather than a specific
| temperature difference from old to new -- he recommends
| not using the hot plate at all in either version, and
| just letting it get cold, and microwaving your next cup
| on demand. I think you're mixing up his discussion of
| water temperature leaving the bubble pump.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The newer model is more subject to failure due to scale
| buildup inside the heating tube, causing the thermostat to
| trip.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| As Alec recounts you can run vinegar through it to
| descale it.
| pfdietz wrote:
| But that doesn't always work. I've wondered if coffee
| residues in the carafe contaminate the water (when the
| carafe is used to fill the water reservoir) and could get
| baked on to the surface of the heating tube.
| userbinator wrote:
| The point is that the curve of MTBF has a much narrower
| standard deviation than it used to --- there aren't as many
| early failures on newer models, but there also won't be as many
| old-age survivors.
|
| A 70 year old fridge that cost the equivalent of $10k today
| when new, and is likely to last over a century, is still a
| better value than replacing a $1k model a dozen times in the
| same timespan.
| kcexn wrote:
| Not necessarily, if you accommodate for inflation.
| BirAdam wrote:
| Yeah, the adjusted prices are a major factor. Today, that could
| get you a Miele that would be inherited by your children,
| nephews, or grandchildren.
|
| The other thing people forget is that older appliances and
| electronics were built to be easily serviced, and therefore the
| ones today that survive have been repaired at some point (most
| likely). Today, most of those dedicated repair shops are long
| gone and products are no longer designed to be serviceable.
| hotcoffeebear wrote:
| Usually repairing costs are incredibly high. So you usually
| end up buying new one and creating more waste.
| s0rce wrote:
| I had an inexpensive fridge in my apartment break and the
| cost of having the tech just come out to look at it was
| around 1/2 of a new unit and then who knows how much the
| parts and labor would have been to fix it. Sadly, it just
| went to the scrap yard and we got a new one.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Weird that we've been making a lot of the same appliances for
| so long but haven't really gotten any better at making them
| reliable. I mean, if I'd been making fridges for the last 60
| years I'd probably know how to make one last, right?
| t-3 wrote:
| They've gotten really good at making them break down on time
| to ensure more business for the fridge-making company.
| Planned obsolescence isn't a conspiracy theory.
| schiffern wrote:
| > These studies never account for survivorship bias.
|
| Then I'm sure you were relieved to discover that the author
| didn't!
|
| From the link:
|
| "The very early (30's and 40's) ones were less consistent in
| their life spans. I've seen a document on this somewhere and
| will share it if I run across it again. They didn't have the
| automated and consistent manufacturing processes like we have
| today. Some of them did go out early. The ones we still have
| today from the early days are the ones which were especially
| good, and are still in the long flat bottom of the failure
| bathtub curve.
|
| "What I foresee killing off many of the 2000's compressors are
| the lower engineering margins in the design. It takes less of
| an incident to go beyond that margin into the region of damage
| and failure; as compared to earlier compressors with a larger
| engineering margin.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| That does not account for survivorship bias. It makes no
| mention of compressors from the 30s and 40s that were
| universally terrible, so none existed for long enough to
| evaluate their MTBF.
|
| It also does not evaluate reliability of units from the 50s
| through the 2000s, which is apparently when everything became
| unreliable junk.
|
| In order to properly control for survivorship bias, you need
| to tabulate reliability figures for each year (and for each
| price point). The handwaving assertion about manufacturing
| consistency does not do that in the slightest.
| schiffern wrote:
| You're making an unnecessary distinction between intra-
| brand survivorship bias and inter-brand survivorship bias.
|
| Both effects are at play in the real world, obviously.
|
| Reply to edits:
|
| >It also does not evaluate reliability of units from the
| 50s through the 2000s
|
| "This isn't a massive cross-brand longitudinal study" is a
| pretty low-hanging critique.
|
| Who could afford such a study?
|
| >In order to properly control for survivorship bias, you
| need to tabulate reliability figures for each year (and for
| each price point).
|
| Does _any_ party have access to these data, realistically?
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| >You're making an unnecessary distinction between intra-
| brand survivorship bias and inter-brand survivorship
| bias.
|
| No, I am not. A $10k fridge from a premium manufacturer
| that makes no budget models will last decades. A $1k
| fridge from a budget manufacturer that produces no
| premium fridges will last a few years.
|
| There are very few manufacturers that make models
| spanning the entire reliability (and thus price) gamut.
|
| >Does any party have access to these data, realistically?
|
| Probably not. Which is why we cannot assert with any
| solid evidence that appliance reliability has declined
| over the years--we have no way of conclusively ruling out
| survivorship bias.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| schiffern wrote:
| >There are very few manufacturers that make models
| spanning the... gamut.
|
| How does that relate to survivorship bias?
|
| >Probably not. Which is why we cannot assert with any
| solid evidence...
|
| ...anything.
|
| If you crank the standards for "solid" high enough, you
| can make literally anything become unknowable.
|
| You can _always_ ask for better evidence, in any
| situation! Historically this has been exploited in denial
| campaigns (tobacco, climate change, etc), so there should
| be some wariness surrounding this rhetoric.
|
| That said, N=1 here. Let's not make more (or less) of it
| than there is.
|
| >we have no way of conclusively ruling out survivorship
| bias.
|
| Is the corollary that we have _no way of detecting_
| planned obsolescence?
|
| I hope I'm misunderstanding. If not, it's the fox
| guarding the henhouse.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| >How does that relate to survivorship bias?
|
| You said that inter vs. intra brand survivorship bias
| didn't matter. I think it does, since the former likely
| has a much bigger effect (models from premium brands
| generally last longer overall due to higher reliability,
| whereas random units from cheaper brands last longer due
| to pure chance).
|
| >...anything.
|
| >If you crank the standards for "solid" high enough, you
| can make literally anything become unknowable.
|
| This is arguing in bad faith. There is a high level of
| evidence required to support the extraordinary claim that
| modern appliances are generally less reliable than old
| appliances, after controlling for price point. I believe
| a reasonable amount of evidence to support this claim
| would require unbiased sampling of a statistically
| significant number of appliance service records over the
| years. Otherwise, we're just idly conjecturing.
|
| That said, I take back my claim that the requisite
| evidence is unobtainable. We unequivocally know that cars
| have gotten much more reliable over the years, based on
| purchase frequency and service records (remember, cars'
| odometers used to top out at 99999 miles because they
| weren't expected to last longer). There is no reason we
| couldn't do similar surveys with appliances.
|
| >Is the corollary that we have no way of detecting
| planned obsolescence?
|
| No, the corollary is that it would be equally difficult
| to infer if planned obsolescence has gotten more frequent
| over the years. That's very different from being unable
| to detect planned obsolescence _at all_. It's easy to
| inspect a particular appliance (or line of appliances)
| and find evidence of premature failure points, as the
| linked article nicely did.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Surely, the fact that all US manufacturing seems to be going to
| China must have nothing to do with it
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| The reply comment, where another repairmen shared convincing
| experience-based evidence of good reliability of modern
| compressors, eviscerates the argument.
|
| Also, the assertion that mid-1900s compressors were efficient is
| absent any facts to back it up. If the main power-consuming part
| of old refrigerators was so efficient, how can newer
| refrigerators be so much more efficient? Sure, better insulation
| can help, but I don't see how you get around that newer
| compressors need so much less power to get the job done.
| wilg wrote:
| An angle I rarely see in these sorts of discussions is how
| efficient is the _construction_ of newer devices - i.e. do they
| use significantly less material? Like do new toasters use half
| the material of old toasters, or something. This would make it
| cheaper, but also potentially more environmentally friendly.
| Also, perhaps newer items are more mass-producible and therefore
| allow more people to have them in the first place.
| baybal2 wrote:
| verisimi wrote:
| Why make a good product, when you can make a good advert or
| public relations campaign instead and gain repeat customers in a
| shorter timescale? (As your product will need replacing sooner.)
| If all the corporations collude in this way, everyone is a
| winner.
|
| But of course the customer is at fault for this environmental
| misuse of resources.... right? We should shoulder the expense of
| cleaning up the mess that corporations and governments create.
|
| ^ That is the corporate/governmental plan - spin the problem as
| an environmental issue that the consumer pays for! (Again.) And
| extract even more money from the customer in the process as they
| get rid of servicable products in favour of echo-friendly ones.
| Make laws to force them to do this too! It's a win win for the
| corporations!
| verisimi wrote:
| Mass production is only profitable if its rhythm can be
| maintained.. that is, if it can continue to sell its product in
| steady or increasing quantity. The result is that while, under
| the handicraft or small-unit system of production that was
| typical a century ago, demand created the supply, today supply
| must actively seek to create its corresponding demand.
|
| Edward Bernays, 1930
|
| I believe that competition in the future will not be only an
| advertising competition between individual products or between
| big associations, but that it will in addition be a competition
| of propaganda.
|
| Edward Bernays, 1930
| rglover wrote:
| What you're attributing to "evil corporations" is really just
| mimetic theory playing out. Most people want (in general, but
| specifically here, those working in corporations) to play it
| safe and in turn, end up copying "the other guy" in the form of
| product focus, strategy, and culture.
|
| The sad truth is most people in most companies are just
| lemmings which creates the illusion of collusion, when really,
| it's just a whole lot of unoriginality.
| verisimi wrote:
| I think it's a strategy, as per the 2 quotes I also provided
| by Edward Bernais from 1930 - it's not even a new strategy!
| Bernays is the father of public relations, he got women
| smoking, gave us egg and bacon for breakfast, initiated
| throwaway culture via advertising, etc - he helped shape the
| culture we find. This was by design, as he says.
|
| You should read some of his other quotes - it's all very
| conspiratorial before that was even a term:
| https://libquotes.com/edward-bernays/works/propaganda
|
| Here's a good one:
|
| > The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized
| habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in
| democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen
| mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which
| is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our
| minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested,
| largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical
| result of the way in which our democratic society is
| organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in
| this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly
| functioning society.
|
| Edward Bernays
|
| Obviously, it's not a strategy that will be much discussed,
| as its such an unappealing prospect. But the situation we
| find makes far greater sense as a conspiracy than companies
| merely stupid (which I agree is a part).
| rglover wrote:
| I absolutely agree with this (this basically spills the
| beans [1] starting on page 21), but I'd bet good money most
| of this thinking originates from a single source and the
| others are just copycats. The reason why is that usually
| you can find one company/product that's "closer to the
| stream" in terms of purity and quality, while the others
| are noticeable knockoffs.
|
| For example, a few years back there was a craze around
| workout wristbands (Jawbone Up, Fitbit, etc) and I'll never
| forget seeing Under Armour try to ship their own clone [2]
| and shouted (loud enough to startle the people I was with,
| not the rest of the store), in their store, "why the hell
| would you do that?!" The reason for the outburst was that I
| imagined the expenditure to _make_ the thing--in terms of
| salaries, consultants, logistics, etc--dwarfed the actual
| sales (which any self-respecting CEO not caught in a
| mimetic haze would realize immediately).
|
| [1] https://ia800100.us.archive.org/5/items/SilentWeaponsFo
| rQuie...
|
| [2] https://www.kohls.com/product/prd-2569108/under-armour-
| band-...
| akagusu wrote:
| In the past, one way of choosing a brand was to compare how
| durable were its product against the competition.
|
| Today, corporations sell products that will break just to force
| you to buy another one. And they do this while spending millions
| in marketing to tell people how environment friendly they are.
| downboots wrote:
| > in the past
|
| what changed? Hard to believe that can't be done today.
| xxs wrote:
| Almost all of them have to race to the bottom to survive.
| Most folks would just buy the cheapest/shiniest of them all.
| I mean there are fridges w/ a touch LCD on the front panel.
|
| Buying quality appliances and tools is a form of art and
| pretty much you have to tear them down to check about the
| said quality. It's quite disheartening. Then buying spare
| parts is another major issue.
| nycdatasci wrote:
| When expensive products fail early and companies are unhelpful, I
| file formal complaints through the state attorney general's
| consumer rights office. It's usually just a matter of filling out
| an online form and perhaps uploading a few supporting documents.
| Companies become much more helpful when their lawyers are
| providing customer support instead of a minimum wage employee.
| tsol wrote:
| Can I just say-- I'm fascinated that there is a community of
| "experts, collectors and fans" of automatic washing machines.
| Despite it's somewhat dated appearance of the website, it's no
| simple operation-- it contains an in depth database of manuals,
| photos, adverts, information, audio/video, and brochures. This is
| a true passion project. The best part, of course, is the forum. A
| surprisingly active community of men and women nakedly
| unashamedly delighted by automatic washing machines.
|
| I don't know why, but finding these little communities of people
| is amazing to me. That there are so many people who derive true
| enjoyment from this random thing I've never really bothered to
| think about much. To me it's just a means to an end, nothing more
| than another object in my life. It's amazing to think there are
| probably communities around all sorts of things I hardly notice
| nor think about. Like doors to worlds I've never seen, hidden all
| around me in plain sight.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| I'm sure the heavy lifting is by people who run/own/work at
| independent appliance repair shops. Those still exist.
|
| It's like the Terry Love forums, which are an outstanding
| resource for septic/well owners. But the forum regulars are all
| professional plumbers and well drillers.
|
| https://www.terrylove.com/forums/index.php
| londons_explore wrote:
| I suspect this fridge compressor has been misdiagnosed.
|
| Yes, the bearing has failed.
|
| But I suspect it was caused by a substantial DC electrical
| current running through the motor on top of the AC current it was
| designed for.
|
| A DC current in many motor designs causes a large sideways force,
| and that caused the bearing to wear.
|
| DC currents can be caused by improper wiring or another faulty
| device in the house (or even in a neighbour's house)
| atoav wrote:
| How could DC happen through faulty wiring? If the ground
| impedance of the null/PE is too high?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Typically there is some device that uses a lot of power but
| only from half the AC cycle - for example an 'inverter' air
| conditioner where one of the four rectification diodes on the
| input has failled open circuit.
|
| Normally this DC current will mostly be absorbed by the
| utility pole transformer, which has a very low impedance at
| DC. However, if some of your house/street wiring has a few
| ohms of impedance, then the current can end up doing through
| more local devices like fridge compressors.
|
| Normally this causes them to overheat pretty quick if the
| current is large. But a smaller current will eventually cause
| bearing failure.
| atoav wrote:
| Makes sense, thanks for the explaination.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| Some hardware stores offer tools for rent. However, there is zero
| overlap of between those and the tools they are selling. But it
| helps to decide what to buy elsewhere.
|
| Was trying to buy a table. Wasn't satisfied with what I could
| find in the shop. Went to the restaurant embedded within the
| shop. Nice sturdy tables there. Unfortunately, not for sale.
|
| The good stuff is out there.
| osigurdson wrote:
| You would think there would be room in the market for a brand
| that makes stuff last as long possible and/or easily repairable.
| tejohnso wrote:
| > an example of doing just enough to get by until it is someone
| else's problem
|
| Sounds like what I've been noticing in grade school education.
| Perfect grades for everybody! Just please move on and don't check
| for any actual knowledge acquisition.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| Without numbers it's really hard to say how good or bad these
| engineering choices were in regards to the consumer to come out
| on top or not.
|
| In my experience appliances are _a lot_ more efficient _and
| cheaper_ than they used to be. My new stainless steel fridge has
| much more capacity while using the same amount of power than the
| 20yo one it replaced (Which didn 't actually fail, but the white
| coating was rusting all over the place).
|
| My HE washer doesn't fill the entire tub compared to the old
| upright ones, so my water heater is used less, and spins at
| ~1,200rpm, greatly reducing dry times for my electric dryer. The
| recessed lighting in my house went from 90 watts _per bulb_ to 12
| watts for LED, and saves me $$ on cooling when needed. My
| tankless water heater heats up only the water being used, no
| more, no less.
|
| I'm paying roughly 32C//KW all-in (after taxes, fees etc.) for
| electricity in the Bay Area, so efficiency gains build up quickly
| over time.
|
| Anecdotally, the only issues I've had so far have been with
| poorly engineered Samsung refrigerators, where the fans would
| seize due to ice buildup, not mechanical wear.
| nabakin wrote:
| > In my experience appliances are a lot more efficient and
| cheaper than they used to be.
|
| turbokinetic agrees modern refrigerators are more energy
| efficient but at the expense of longevity and not worth it
|
| > I am saying that this compressor, and its application, show
| clear engineering choices made, which sacrificed its life span
| in the name of some modicum of energy savings.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| >turbokinetic agrees modern refrigerators are more energy
| efficient but at the expense of longevity and not worth it
|
| Without numbers to back up that claim, that's just their
| opinion, as is mine. I _my_ experience the energy savings
| have been significant enough for that to not be a big
| concern.
|
| There may be an environmental argument here of course, but
| that's a separate argument than what consumers feel in their
| pocketbook.
| juve1996 wrote:
| How much more energy efficient are they really? How much
| are you actually saving?
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| Well, in the case of my refrigerator, I didn't do a 1:1
| replacement. I got a much larger capacity one, about 30%
| more space, while not using any more energy (It actually
| uses less, but not really noticeable in my energy bill.)
|
| My energy company gave be a multi-hundred dollar rebate
| to upgrade to an HE washer, so it was objectively better
| for my wallet to upgrade. Now I'm using less water, gas,
| and electricity when doing laundry. About a few hundred a
| year less on top of the rebate I got upfront.
|
| The tankless water heater has no pilot light, so there's
| some savings there, but the real benefit was having
| unlimited hot water. Tankless water heaters are rated to
| last _longer_ than tanks, allegedly, but I haven 't had
| one long enough to know either way.
|
| Incandescent to LED was a no-brainer, each pair of LED
| lights was about $30 at costco and use 14% of the energy.
| They have already more than paid for themselves, not
| including the money saved by needing to run the AC less.
| nabakin wrote:
| If our goal is to minimize cost (ignoring the environmental
| side of things), longevity must be taken into account. If
| energy savings at the expense of longevity truly makes
| refrigerators cheaper in the longterm then that's awesome,
| but I worry planned obsolescence is ruining the appliance
| market and increasing consumer expense.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| >energy savings at the expense of longevity
|
| I think we're in agreement, however, I don't think an
| analysis has been made either way to be able to make this
| claim. The old appliances you see could just be due to
| survivor bias, while the broken ones were unceremoniously
| disposed of. Perhaps the old appliances were simpler and
| cheaper to repair, but perhaps new appliances need less
| repairs in the first place. Without an actual analysis
| this is just speculation.
|
| A related example would be laptops and cell phones, which
| have become more complicated, less upgradable, and harder
| to repair over time (soldered parts, glue etc.). However,
| cell phones are now commonly waterproof, which has
| eliminated a major reason for replacement. Laptops
| basically have no moving parts other than the keyboard
| and screen hinge now, and stay useful much longer due to
| chips being really fast in the last decade.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Yeah my stupid Hisense fridge that I bought only four years ago
| is already flaking out.
|
| I has Whirlpool washing machine that lasted more than 20 years.
| When it finally gave up the ghost I bought a Fisher and Paykel
| that literally within 2 months of the 2 year warranty expiring.
| To their credit, Fisher and Paykel replaced it but even so.....
| mianos wrote:
| A washing machine should last more than two years in home use.
| We have some laws here in Australia that makes them repair
| things even outside their warranty if their expected life is
| longer.
|
| The guide for fridges here is in between 6 and 13 years. Under
| 6 you should not have any issues arguing with them (they will),
| over 6 it might take some more effort.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| >> We have some laws here in Australia that makes them repair
| things even outside their warranty if their expected life is
| longer.
|
| I did not know that, and, living in Australia I should take
| advantage of that!
| fomine3 wrote:
| Who decide expected life? Isn't it fixed by product category?
| mianos wrote:
| Unfortunately it is not fixed. The national consumer
| watchdog, the ACCC, says 'it depends' on things, such as
| the initial price and brand. For example, if you bought a
| premium fridge, at 4X the price of an ALDI weekly special
| buy, you would expect it to last a little longer. Maybe not
| 4X but more than the minimum.
| replygirl wrote:
| re: fridge, hisense is a tv company
|
| re: laundry, did you ever consider getting a second whirlpool?
| either way, what about the paykel outweighed 20 years of
| reliability?
| happycube wrote:
| Whirlpool's top loaders are _nothing_ like the ones made 20
| years ago. They 've gone to fully electronic controls, and
| switched from direct drive to a belt drive (which means they
| can't really do an agitation cycle either)
| andrewstuart wrote:
| >> re: fridge, hisense is a tv company
|
| Damn that explains why it didn't keep food cold.
|
| >> e: laundry, did you ever consider getting a second
| whirlpool? either way, what about the paykel outweighed 20
| years of reliability?
|
| Can't recall why I didn't get another Whirlppol - maybe they
| are out of business now because their products lasted too
| long? Regardless, no doubt in the 20 years sense then they
| would have switched to the same cheap crap manufacturing as
| everyone else.
| cwillu wrote:
| https://www.hisense-usa.com/home-appliance/explore-home-
| appl...
| replygirl wrote:
| i'm not denying gps lived experience lol i'm saying why buy
| the cheap tv company's refrigerator
| andrewstuart wrote:
| >> why buy the cheap tv company's refrigerator
|
| I've now decided to buy the very cheapest possible fridge
| in the future.
|
| Expensive still seems to be shit, so it may as well be
| cheap and shit.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| I just had to pay $300 to repair a washer that was like 18 months
| old (I started trying to repair it myself but wife got impatient
| as we had tons of kids clothes to wash). Really frustrating.
|
| Contrast with the 40 year old crockpot we only retired because I
| cracked the pot while cleaning it.
| stevehawk wrote:
| not to be "that guy" but comparing something with moving parts
| to something without is not exactly a fair comparison.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| It wasn't intended to be a fair comparison, but you're right.
| I reasoned that they are both fairly simple machines and a
| washer shouldn't break after 18 months.
| cebert wrote:
| I think one of the challenges is changing the consumer mindset of
| always going with the least expensive item. This encourages a
| downward spiral of cheapened products. There are still some high
| quality appliance brands, but you have to pay more. For example,
| I purchased a SpeedQueen washer and dryer combo last November. My
| TR7 model had a premium compared to units available at Home Depot
| or Lowes, but I love it. SpeedQueen is still manufactured in the
| US, they offer long warranties, and their products are solid. You
| get what you pay for.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Unfortunately a lot of people don't have that luxury (see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory).
|
| Of course manufacturers often trade quality in favor of
| margins, but I wonder how much the decline in consumer products
| has to do with the proportion of people on the 'poor' end of
| "Boots Theory" for goods like refrigerators, blenders,
| dishwashers, etc.
|
| With income in the US practically stagnant for going on half a
| century and the sheer number of categories of "required" goods
| going up (e.g. phones, computers, TVs), everyone has a whole
| lot less to spend on a fridge and making a quality unit most
| people can't afford isn't a way to do business.
| havblue wrote:
| I had a washer horror story personally: my Samsung high
| efficiency turned out to be great at trapping mold under the
| agitator plate. I realized that the drum was also covered with
| mold and I'd never be able to clean it without aggressive
| disassembly and scrubbing with a toothbrush in winter. Some of
| the plastic components were basically guaranteed to have mold
| forever. No way to get a brush in.
|
| I replaced it with a Maytag commercial 2 years ago, the cousin
| to the speed queen, and have been very happy so far as there's
| no longer dozens of hidden compartments to trap mold, as far as
| I know...
| semerda wrote:
| I heard that one way to check quality is to look at the type of
| capacitors used on the board.
|
| Capped are cheap and don't last long (they have a vent on top)
| and when they blow they spread white residue on the board. The
| solid capacitors don't suffer from this, last much much longer
| but do cost a bit more.
|
| Ps. Maybe someone with more electrical knowledge than I can
| confirm or debunk this?
| leashless wrote:
| My company is working on changing the economic incentives for
| manufacturers, so that they will make high quality durable goods.
|
| Here's how it works:
|
| 1) Each item has a unique serial number, and a database for
| storing maintenance records about the item.
|
| 2) When the item is going to be resold, third parties _including
| the original manufacturer_ sell warranties on the item to protect
| the new owner. A manufacturer would inspect, refurb, and re-
| warranty on each iteration.
|
| 3) The new buyer pays more for the item, and the warranties on
| top of that, because they're getting goods closer to new goods in
| performance.
|
| 4) The manufacturers are profiting every time the goods are
| resold, possibly as much or more than selling a new one.
|
| We think this model of the circular economy is a lot more likely
| to succeed than the current model which involves ripping things
| down to their raw materials then reusing those materials to
| manufacture new things.
|
| https://mattereum.com/circular-economy/ <--- more here
| matrix_overload wrote:
| Yeah, sure, buying "physical asset NFTs" from you will suddenly
| convince major appliance manufacturers to change their ways and
| part with millions of dollars in profit.
|
| Sorry, the problem you mentioned is 100% valid, but the NFT-
| based solution you are offering is a pure grift.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Anyone know if Allstate (seems to be the primary warranty
| parter on eBay) or Asurion (Amazon) sell their add-on
| warranty data to third parties?
|
| Someone could beat Consumer Reports by just purchasing &
| publishing the raw data (warranties sold, claims made, claims
| paid).
| vermilingua wrote:
| If I'm understanding correctly, you're asking the manufacturers
| (and/or other warranty writers) to take on liability for
| unknown damage that may have been accrued over the lifetime of
| the item. The only way to make this damage known would be to
| return the item to the factory to be inspected, which would be
| considerably more expensive than "ripping things down to their
| raw materials".
|
| How do you solve this problem in a way that consumers aren't
| paying for all these externalities?
|
| EDIT: didn't even see the crypto connection, that answers that
| question.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Are appliance dealerships not a thing anymore now that Sears
| is gone?
| workingon wrote:
| why dont you just try to do something good instead of grifting
| schlipity wrote:
| It has been my experience for a very long time that most
| warranties aren't worth the paper they're printed on. They
| either take too long to replace the item so that you end up
| buying a new one, or simply do nothing at all. The warranty
| service that Amazon tries to add on to every "device" purchase
| is famous for this.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Why can't a new competitor come in, make non-shitty products, and
| make billions? Is there really a grand planned-obsolescence
| conspiracy, or is this a mixture of survivorship bias, recency
| bias, and a strong imagination?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Because how can you tell apart a brand that makes durable
| appliances from a brand that merely _claims_ to make durable
| appliances? Not to mention that any money you invest in making
| durable appliances will give you better _short-term_ results if
| you just dump it in some advertising & marketing, and short-
| term results are all that the current "system" rewards.
| bombcar wrote:
| Because it's hard to make non-shitty products _and_ be known
| for it.
|
| By the time you have a reputation for quality products, you're
| often acquired or out of business. There are actually cases of
| this in some specialty equipment.
| rubidium wrote:
| Because everyone buys your product once and never thinks about
| it again.
|
| Really: I've talked to commercial product managers who bemoan
| the fact that all their customers are perfectly happy with the
| 10-20 year old instrument they have. There's no revenue there.
| AngryData wrote:
| Established companies will use their massive advertising budget
| to shit all over your product and get exclusivity contracts
| which make it very difficult for you to spread because you
| spent your money on engineering. Your repeat customers will be
| decades away and surviving decades until that point is
| difficult. You could offer good repair and part replacement
| services to help but that has a lot of overhead and
| organizational costs itself.
| jope12 wrote:
| People get what they pay for. If you want industrial-strength
| stuff, you have to pay, a lot. People also forget or don't know
| how expensive things were back then.
| alkonaut wrote:
| We get a LOT more years per dollar now than we did in the past,
| simply because things are costing a fraction now. We can buy
| those ten compressors and still come out ahead.
|
| The thing is though, we don't WANT to do that. If we knew we
| could get better quality by paying more, I think many would. But
| I don't trust that, so I just accept that my new fridge will last
| not very long, and I get the one that's recommened.
|
| And the problem with this is of course that you can't win by
| making a fridge and claiming it lasts longer because _it would be
| decades before anyone trusts you_. A brand that bet on being the
| long life fridge brand selling expensive fridges would have a
| hard time building that reputation.
| [deleted]
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| From what I have observed, there seem to be three major driving
| forces in consumer and commercial appliances:
|
| 1: Energy regulations
|
| 2: Transition from high-cost luxuries to being more common
| (Similar to air travel)
|
| 3: Massive increase in global competition
|
| The first one is really easy to see in the commercial space
| especially. Do things like plastic fan blades and VFDs make units
| more efficient? Yes. Do they also make them more likely to
| fail/add new failure points? Yes.
|
| The energy regulation on consumer and commercial appliances is
| _very_ strong in the US. If you compare even things like washing
| machines, you can see energy usage dropping hundreds of watts in
| some cases.
|
| However, that has come at the cost of reliability.
|
| As for #2, airplanes are a great comparison. At one time they
| were a luxury and you expected a certain level of service. As
| they got more affordable, that dropped away and people get packed
| in like sardines. That's the price of making it available to
| everyone.
|
| Today isn't like the period when a washing machine was a luxury
| good. Now everyone has one - so the motivation is to produce them
| as cheaply as possible to undercut competition.
|
| Reliability and energy usage aren't mutually exclusive, but
| because of #2 a cheap, less reliable way of saving power will
| almost always be taken over a more robust yet still efficient
| design.
|
| These two explanations combined with a bit of Hanlon's razor
| explain almost all of modern appliance unreliability.
|
| There is no active attempt to make units less reliable - but
| there's no motivation to do otherwise for most manufacturers
| given the shear amount of cheap competition present.
| greyhair wrote:
| I think that most of the horror stories I hear on new appliances
| are control board failures, more than physical hardware failures.
|
| I have a washer and dryer from 1993 that are still going strong,
| but over the years I have had to replace belts, or idler pulleys.
| I have had to replace hot surface igniters, and the fan impeller
| in the dryer. But over all they have held up well. But neither
| one has any digital logic. They both use old school mechanical
| timers.
|
| Our washer acted up briefly about ten years ago. Was making a
| hammering noise during agitation, and we called an appliance
| repair guy to look at it. He told us to run it until it quit, and
| left us with recommendations for two manufacturers of
| washer/dryers that still build units with mechanical timers. He
| said those will run as long as our current units. The noise sort
| of went away after a few months, and the washer still runs.
|
| Flip side, I have helped two friends diagnose controller board
| failures on touch pad controlled ovens. One was the relay driver.
| The other was actually a failed membrane push button in the
| display, it was stuck active. In both cases, the ovens were less
| than five years old.
|
| And the guy the looked at our washer said basically the same
| thing. The vast majority of his service calls are for failed
| control modules.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I expect nothing less from a culture of people who buy a new
| cellphone every 2 years. Longevity in consumer products is not
| something we optimize for anymore.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Cell phones are new enough that they still change noticeably in
| a couple of years. Refrigerators are not.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| High quality, easily serviceable appliances still exist. They're
| usually made for commercial markets and are 3x the price. There's
| nothing stopping anyone from putting a commercial
| fridge/dishwasher in their house - they're just expensive. Am I
| missing something?
| switch007 wrote:
| I've read more than one warranty for such appliances that do
| not cover domestic use.
| jollybean wrote:
| They didn't necessarily think about lifetimes back then.
|
| LEGO bricks used to be made to withstand nuclear holocaust
| because, well, the Engineers though they should be 'durable'.
|
| It was hard to convince them to scale back a bit.
|
| They are still 'durable' as anyone walking with bare feet near
| children can attest, but just not quite as invulnerable as
| before.
|
| They saved a lot without compromise.
|
| Fridges may not need to last 30 years, it costs a lot to do so,
| so let consumers decide.
|
| What _should_ happen is something about 'lifetime and warranty'.
|
| Some people might want 'long lasting things' in which case we
| should be able to clearly differentiate.
| ggm wrote:
| Not all Lego bricks. Some early bricks were a weak plastic
| which deformed in the little "cups" underneath. Had 1960s lego,
| some was good, some wasn't. They definitely had a pre-stable
| window (and these were real Danish lego, not some 3rd nation
| knock off)
| ricardobeat wrote:
| "let consumers decide" is a dark joke. In practice, the market
| will race to the bottom, and the only quality items left will
| be at the other end of the spectrum, unaffordable for 99% of
| consumers.
|
| You see this everyday, it has become very hard to find great
| manufacturing quality on every kind of product, from appliances
| to phones, cars, even mundane stuff like a lemon juicer or a
| light fixture. Everything at market prices is not built to last
| more than a handful of years.
| jollybean wrote:
| I don't think it's a scam, 'lower price' is such a hugely
| powerful thing as a first order issue.
|
| Wallmart + China has changed the world, middle and lower
| class people now have material abundance that was unthinkable
| in the past.
|
| I mean 'too much stuff'.
|
| If we can get to the point of being able to recycle materials
| effectively, I'm fine with it becoming normative.
|
| "The Robot made me this really great cappuccino machine it
| breaks in 6 years but that's fine because I want the new one,
| with the newer features"
|
| Or "The Robot made me this 'metric' wrench system for really
| cheap, which won't last long, but that's fine, I use it
| literally not even once a year around the house, but I really
| do value having it around and available"
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| There aren't even good options anymore. An appliance repair guy I
| know says even venerable Bosch dishwashers are a shadow of their
| past reputation.
|
| Expensive appliances share most guts with cheaper
| models...spending more doesn't mean higher quality anymore
| AvocadoPanic wrote:
| So much of what you pay for is Perceived Value, rather than
| real value.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Things have definitely changed. These appliances used to last
| decades but not anymore. The reason brands like Bosch had a
| famous name in the first place was the quality, it wasn't
| just ads.
| techsin101 wrote:
| my grandma house has stuff STILL running, it's been running
| for 40 years. Fans, AC, Fridge, Sewing machine, Grinder,
| Juice Machine. Everything built like a tank and works non-
| stop. Heck even the light bulbs.
| niffydroid wrote:
| I don't think most manufacturers go out their way to make sure a
| part breaks down and it's cheaper to buy a new one. If I had
| something that broke after a year and can't be fixed, I certainly
| wouldn't buy that brand again for that item.
|
| I think it's purely a trade off with doing its job and be cheap
| as possible but having a spare part available for it.
|
| I remember reading somewhere about the cost of something in a VW
| engine bay, maybe an air intake box, they designed it to last X
| long,like the entire life span of the car, but it costs more to
| achieve, but it would have been cheaper to just design it for
| less life and if/when it did break you'd just replace the part
| and it's cheaper overall.
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