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In 2016 my parents bought a new microwave oven and gave their old one to me. That new microwave is broken now and the one I got is still operating the same as it did in the 90s.
That fridge, in that color occupied a similarly wood paneled kitchen for me growing up. I got a little sweaty when I saw the picture, wondered who’s been in my old house.
I’ll rip you a new ozone hole
Survivorship bias
Contemporary appliances actually do fail more often, and earlier, than their predecessors. They have added a bunch of extraneous things to what was a very simple, stalwart, design. These additions have drastically increased the complexity of their designs and created many fold more points of failure than there used to be. It isn’t so much that the manufacturing is sloppier, or that the materials aren’t as good, though in some ways that is a contributor, just not the main one.
If you by a recently manufactured fridge like the following, you will get a fridge that will last decades if you do the minimum to keep it in good condition. However if you buy one that has an in door ice machine, lcd touch screen, complex lay out that requires the basic mechanical devices, to keep the fridge cool, to have a bunch of extra tubing, wiring, connections, etc. it is much more likely to fail because of all the extra points of failure you added.
A fridge is a fridge, the basic mechanical working principle of it didn’t change over the past 40 years. But people have a lot more expectations put into what a fridge should be able to do nowadays, and electronics or complex mechanism such as the ice maker is generally the first to break on a modern fridge.
The moral of the story is, don’t buy a fridge with an icemaker or have a tablet attached to it, and you should be fine.
Its not fully the fault of tech companies, yeah there is some planned obselecence. But there won’t be anymore “I will outlive you” appliances cause the more mechanical it gets the more cheaper and easier it is to repair and they also tends to have less individual components.
I don’t think any of those new smartish watches even from the best of Swizz makers could last like it did 100years ago.
Enshittification, also known as the overall tendency of profit to decline.
Remember in Australia, if you’re persistent enough, you could get this replaced under Australian Consumer Law, if something breaks in an unreasonable amount of time (outside of warranty, even). Considering fridges can easily last for 10 years, anything well within that should be fairly easy (but require many, many emails and threatening to taken them to your local small claims) to get replaced.
That is if you can do without a fridge in the meantime 😅
This is not legal advice.
While consumer laws in the US generally suck, there are a few stores that have amazing return policies and go out of their way to please customers, Costco being one of them.
I know a guy who brought back his 10-year-old broken plasma flatscreen TV without a receipt. They replaced it with a new model, no questions asked.
My TV came with a five year warranty - two year manufacturer, two years Costco, and one year from my Costco credit card.
My washer and dryer got seven. Same deal, but Costco was offering an extra extended warranty plan for free.
The best part is that they design their warranties to run consecutively instead of concurrently. Unfortunately, Citi got rid of the extended warranty with the Costco credit cards about a year and a half ago.
Costco no longer has those return policies on electronics specifically because people abused them.
Yeah. That’s why we can’t have nice things. The US should consider extended warranty rules similar to the EU. But that’s probably too “socialist” or whatever.
Cuts in to the bottom line profits. Can’t have that. The shareholders are more important than your 91 day old bricked TV.
But why? Like what is failing so often in new fridges?
All the control boards are always a popular thing to fail. They always cheap out on the components and out the board where it’s done get moisture damage.
Compressors fail way too often nowadays. The higher priced old ones were built sturdier and if they didn’t fail in a year because of a defect they run almost indefinitely.
The idea that they never fail comes from survivorship bias.
Shitty solder in wiring. Plastic for things that used to be aluminium, aluminium for things that used to be steel.
Just cost cutting by value engineers. I remember reading that the 3rd year of a cars model was probably the best, as they’d worked out the kinks in the design and hadn’t watered everything down much… I couldn’t back that up if you wanted a source, however
We bought our current car used years ago with a similar philosophy - it was the first year of a new change, and they hadn’t changed or recalled anything in the few following years. Combine that with a one car owner locally, and it obviously was a good buy at 17 years old running strong.
But I will say even the best car makes, models, and years have their lemons. You have to look hard at each car’s history and evidence to really win. We got pretty lucky.
Source: I work in/with electronics manufacturers
Tl; dr - a mix of value engineering and consumer preference. You wanna buy a $3k TV, or a $700 TV? How rock solid does your automatic sprinkler really need to be, compared to a satellite radio in the Sahel?
Per IPC industry standards, there’s three classes of electronic workmanship/quality control used:
- Class 1: It works, just about. Shoddy soldering is okay as long as connectivity is maintained. Passing a QA test may be as simple as “it runs when powered”. This is where most consumer grade stuff lives: calculators, watches, flashlights, etc.
- Class 2: Better built with generally more QA. Testing usually involves actually checking for function and different modes. Generally used only on commercial/civil government stuff like traffic lights, power controllers, heavy machinery - anywhere where reliability and longevity is worth paying more for.
- Class 3: Complete process control and 100% coverage function (and almost always) burn-in/stress test cycles. Top quality and cost, typically only used for military, aerospace, or medical - where stuff failing means people die.
Survivorship bias
You probably forgot to pay the monthly subscription of your refrigerator.
Yeah, but can you survive a hydrogen bomb blast in a 1980s fridge? No, you need a 1950s fridge for that.
Thnx Indiana
We called the dog Indiana.
It’s the lead lining.
Today’s products are built to just barely cross some finish line and not a day longer. It’s bad for you, and bad for the environment.
My refrigerator fridge machine that fridges and refrigerates is from the early 2000s. Still works like a charm.
It even has a square on it that says “OK”.
damn, can’t argue with that, OK it is
Zero kelvin? That sensor is broken…
I still have my $120 fridge from like 2010-2011ish back when Sears was a thing and it’s still going without any issues. Zero maintenance ever needed thus far.
No ice maker in it, and the freezer part is on top like in the pic. Apparently if the freezer is on the side instead of on top, those break down way more often.
I have a freezer on the top too. It did collect some ants for whatever reason (my house is a literal ant colony at this point) but it still works OK, just like the bottom part (where it says OK).
