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Survivorship bias. All the ones that broke aren’t around anymore.
Not necessarily. Less parts, less complex mechanisms = lower probability of something breaking down.
Also there was a time where companies actually cared. They would send the engineers for the next model out with service techs servicing current models to help them find the common failure points and help make things more servicable.
Also there was a time where companies actually cared.
:-/
Planned Obselence was pioneered nearly a century ago. You might have individual service reps or salesman with a soul. But no company has ever carried about more than profits.
Longevity was supposedly a goal for manufacturers in the GDR.
in the GDR
Yes, but that’s Evil Communism. Didn’t you see the movie “The Dryers of Others”?
They were way more repairable though. We had a gas dryer that lasted 40 years and was only replaced because we moved somewhere without gas.
It was basically a big egg timer with an electric motor and a gas burner. You could fix anything on it with a crescent wrench, screwdriver, and off-the-shelf components from the hardware store for about 9 bucks.
The replacement dryer has had to have $1000+ circuit boards replaced more than once.
The WTF here is not necessarily that some component on the circuit board failed, but that the manufacturer charges $400-$1000 for it with a straight face and gets away with it when they undoubtedly have that board made in China for about $4 per unit.
The big thing you and a lot of posters are missing is what happens when those parts aren’t made anymore. With a standard motor that uses a start capacitor, you can get that cap or motor as a generic part or from another manufacturer, if your modern appliance eats its vfd board now, you can replace it for $$$. If it dies in 8 years, its probably already been discontinued and you are sol even if you wanted to pay for it.
Also imprecise engineering tended to overbuild things.
Thanks to better manufacturing techniques, engineering analysis, and the fine humans in management, we have gotten really good at barely building a machine that lasts just long enough to be out of warranty.
Increase in precision (materially and economically) then leads to rebound effects; higher precision should lead to lower material flows, but the opposite happens because the technological progress broadens the market when possible
But there’s WAY more surviving devices from 1960 in 2020 than there will be from 2020 in 2080.
Yeah also forever means from when you were 8 until you moved out, only 12 years… Appliances can still do that today.
Look at Mr Moneybags over here, with enough money to move out
Samsung has left the chat…
The ‘modern’ stuff breaks down faster due to 1) the fact that engineering has improved so much that obsolescence can be planned without compromising functionality. 2) ‘Modern’ stuff tries to cram in multiple features which are not necessary for its basic function. For this I blame the lack of diligence from buyers. The increased complexity means more parts that can fail. I bring up the example of SystemD (no offense to anyone, user’s choice).
Right but none of the ones made these days last. Some > none.
Which is fine. You’d think they’d just refine those further. Today we’d have ultra efficient tanks that take little water, little energy, and never break.
Everything breaks eventually. Entropy always increases.
I’m assuming CFC might have been a better coolant, that’s why those old fridges are so good
Ah, the good old days when your “dumb” refrigerator would kill children playing hide and seek because the latch wouldn’t open from the inside. When it was lined with asbestos because that’s literally the best insulation that exists excepting aerogel. When the mercury thermostat would fail—leaking mercury on to your food (and aerosolizing some which would be breathed in as soon as you opened it)—and it would freeze everything inside, complete with an interior wall of snow that could take days to defrost. It used old school freon, destroying the ozone layer. Or before then, fun highly toxic gasses like methyl chloride!
Those were the days! When a breeze through the house on a day with wonderful weather could blow out the pilot light in your oven, slowly leaking gas into your house, exploding and destroying the entire home late at night while everyone is asleep.
Then the wonders of electricity came along to produce ovens that were hooked up to 220V lines without a grounding wire, and wiring that would slowly fail over time, eventually making contact with the metal frame, electrocuting anyone who touched the device—or anyone that touched the person touching it.
Ovens were built different “back in the day”! They didn’t have anti-tip brackets, resulting in loads of children sitting on the oven door, spilling boiling liquids down upon them.
The best were those old washing machines, though! You could lift up the lid and look inside to see your laundry spinning at high speeds! Just don’t reach your hand in, or you could find out what the term “degloving” means.
Ah yes, the good old days of appliances.
But they had more fun colours for appliances
Well, you obviously speak for the USA. And despite things like thermal cutoffs or automatic shutoffs, things were pretty safe here (Germany) in the 60-90s.
Also, there is a difference between general advancements in safety regulations and putting tons of unnecessary features in a device that will break soon. No Tesla of today will probably still be going in 50yrs or after 500.000km.
The higher the complexity, the higher the chance of failure.
And on top of it, there was no “planned obsolescence” or even suicides switches built in. Bad for capitalism, good for people.
if you design an appliance that kills someone you should be sentenced to death by the same appliance
- Hammurabi
MAGA!
/s
Golden age revisionism is a comforting illusion that edits out the past’s flaws and distorts reality; it becomes dangerous when it shapes decisions based on nostalgia instead of truth.
Those 1980s fridges for ex lacked ice makers and water filtration, used far more energy due to inefficient design, struggled with consistent temperatures that spoiled food faster, often required manual defrosting, and had poor seals that let cold air escape and raised costs.
Golden age revisionism is the chief tactic of blow hard Republicans. Ever hear, make America great…again?
I’ve never used a fridge that has an ice maker or water filtration. They are still premium options, or some people just don’t have any use for the features.
Yeah, these must be American things. Never encountered them in Europe in a non-professional setting.
My wife just got a ~20k hospital bill but hey at least our fridge filters the drinking water automatically
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I hypothesize that youve been out of the consumer fridge market for at least 10 years. Water filter and ice maker ia the basic bitch options these days.
Premiums option today are things like climate zones, adjustable shelving, ai, inventory tracking and digital screen/computer that you can write notes on or ask ur fridge what meals you can make from the fridge contents.
But don’t take my word for it, google it yo.
They are really trying to invent new needs to sell you more stuff. I wouldn’t use any of this if I had it.
The market dictates what sells and 80% of consumer decisions in the usa are made by women.
I too can be content with less, but we aren’t driving the market. We’re likely adult men.
Except in this case its true. They have over stuffed modern appliances with useless features that shorten the life of the appliance. As to how they didn’t comes with ice makers. Of course they did. Most had a place where it could be added if you didn’t buy one with that feature. Water filtration wasn’t there true enough but no one thought of that then. Only older early 70’s fridges came without defrosting. As to the poor seals you get that from damage which applies to modern fridges as well. The fridge I have is from the early 90’s and it rocks. No problems with ice buildup No leaks and a consistent temperature. I dread having to buy some modern POS built to fail so you can get sold another one.
Not everything is a republican plot to get you to purchase a forty year appliance.
I have a mini fridge purchased new early 00s that I recently left unplugged for a day or so to melt the ice buildup on the freezer.
Not that I’m happy with the overall state of appliances these days, but the reality is that technology is still improving, but some of those “improvements” aren’t for the buyer’s benefit (while others are). And there’s plenty of plain old cheap shit in a nice brushed stainless steel package to make it look high end.
Like induction stoves and convection ovens weren’t really a thing in the 80s but imo are way better than what came before. But, despite being a convection oven, the cheap one the developers picked for my place is the worst oven I’ve ever used. And I’m hesitant to “upgrade” because, despite knowing they can be better, there’s a good chance whatever I end up getting won’t, or make will be at first but will start degrading rapidly from day 1 such that it’s shitty by the time the warranty runs out.
That is the big difference between modern and older appliances. The older ones were made in good faith, the newer ones are a gamble because we have an economic system based on greed and it has progressed a lot since the 50s.
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” — Henri Bergson
misquoting someone doesn’t work with me. I mean I see just fine. I see that people are buying appliances and they last just past the warranty. I don’t care if they are super efficient. You lose that money saved when you have to keep buying another one.
You forgot about the locking doors so children had to be taught not to play inside of them if you saw one outside because you would suffocate and die.
I remember watching an episode of Punky Brewster on TV about that.
Now that is a name I haven’t hear in a long time…pb.
I mean you ain’t wrong or nothing, but I’m pretty sure they’re mostly focusing on enshitification.
I’m 40 and the only memory I have of an old appliance that stands out was the time I took soaked clothes and put them in the dryer and ran it. I broke that sum-bitch gud
I will share your pain bro, give it here.
^as said by somebody who never had to replace the motor on their washer, or the burned on their range, or the belt on their dryer, or the elements in the water heater…
The reason they always worked forever was because your dad bought replacement parts from the appliance repair store and didn’t complain to you about it.
This is literally one of the top 3 good things about YouTube
have repaired my oven twice (15 years) and dryer three times (16 years). it’s amazing how many appliances can be repaired if people just take the time to dig into it.
unless it has a screen. fuck everything about that shit.
We tried to repair our washing machine but the fuckers designed it in such a way that the drum and bearing or something of the sort are inseparabale and thus you cannot just replace rhe bearing which was fucked in ours but you have to get the whole assembly. So instead of a probably 50-100€ worth of parts the repair would be in the 200-300€ range and at that point it made no sense spending that much money on a 6 year old machine.
ooof
When my parents were kids, their home-ec class consisted of repeatedly hammering into their heads to cook meat at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or else they’d get sick because the refrigeration was so unreliable
That’s why my grandmother made such overdone roasts. I just thought I didn’t like roast beef much until I tried it medium rare instead of charred to a grey cube of leather.
Same, I used to wonder why the looney tunes characters always treated steak as this big delicious thing when my experience with it was disgusting dried shoe leather that required 3 cans of coke to get down.
Where do you live that your parents are old enough to have unreliable ice boxes, but modern enough that both the man and women took home-ec?
Canada
Are we that old now?
You can buy appliances without smart features still?
Best Buy has dozens, if not hundreds, of fridges without smart features. I can buy a 18cu top freezer fridge for $450 right now.
That same type of fridge back in the 1970s cost $300-$400. Adjusted for inflation that’s $2,000
So I don’t get this post. You can buy cheap fridges still and it’ll probably last a long time if you take care of it. Read repair reports or Google random problems for a fridge you’re looking to buy to see the most common failure points and see what the repair cost would be to factor in future costs.
Stupid post.
Sadly the old disc world Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness boot theory applies.
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.”
Buying in bulk, investing in yourself, buying durable, better-quality stuff. It’s costly to be poor.
They weren’t smart enough to maximize shareholder value :P
Yep. Have four of those type. Occasionally, once a decade or so, I have to maintain em. But otherwise I milk em. Like cows.
If you are thinking of how you milk a washing machine, Imma ask if you been thinkin hard enough
We also aren’t paying the same prices. The fridge from the 60s in your grandmas basement? She probably had a 10 year payment plan for it.
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Yes, you might get credit from a local shop if they’d known you or your family, but people generally lived within their means. Layaway was also a thing. I just don’t recall if we ever used that with appliances.
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Admittedly, the timer of my old microwave isn’t reliable anymore, since it’s spring got weak. But it would be easy to fix, if i get to it sometime. Staring at a screen has higher priority.
Edit: typo
They really didn’t last forever. Survivors bias is all. They broke, just more permanently then others.
Yep, when I was a kid I remember people grousing about how stuff used to last forever and now it doesn’t. 20 years later, I got to hear people talk about how stuff made when I was a kid used to last forever but now it doesn’t. Now I get to hear how stuff made 20 years ago used to last forever but now it doesn’t.
Every time something breaks, someone points to something 20 years old that didn’t break and forget all the stuff that did break.
They also could be fixed, sometimes trivially.
Now if the plastic over a button isn’t the right one, things stop working.
Yeah this is a huge thing with vehicles. I like my Japanese cars and typically have had either Toyota or Honda. Neither was problem-free by any stretch, but at the same time the ENGINES tended to be very reliable with routine maintenance (belt/oil/etc changes) and the other stuff parts were always available and generally not too expensive.
My car’s did spend a decent amount of time in the shop, but at 360,000km the engine in my old Camry was still running like a champ even if it burned a little bit of oil and certain parts of the body were becoming more bondo than metal. When small things failed, I’d grab a new one from the hardware store or in some cases the wrecker. I was - with assistance - able to do basic general repairs like belts, brakes, and a clutch in my relatives’ garage. We did fuck up the timing slightly once but the engine just stalled out without any permanent damage (whew). I’ll also add that a lot of people who drove the more “efficient” foreign cars tended to treat them nicely whereas versus domestics or sporty vehicles. The mindset of the owner matters too.
These days… fuck. I can’t even easily change the stereo out on my current car - and that’s now over a decade old - because it’s tied into the side/rear camera system, front display, and a bunch of other shit. I think there’s like one head unit that will still handle that stuff but it’s hard to get and even then there’s no guarantee. Domestic stuff is even worse, with certain trucks unable to source key parts within months of the warranty ending. There’s one model where the ECU failed regularly and the supply of replacements dried up, others in shortages due to “supply chain” issues etc, and a whole run of GMC vehicles from between '21 and '24 with connecting rod issues (6.2L v8) that have a major backlog in parts even for in-warranty repairs.
My wife’s car… well it’s an EV which - while it’s great not to be buying gas at these prices, the company absolutely is not building these to be convenient to service, and we’re lucky if the local dealer could do the more complex stuff it battery work much less a 3rd party mechanic (or me). I’m actually looking at some of the Chinese models which can have safer batteries that are built to be more easily swapped out, and China being what it is somebody will probably be able to make replacement parts for decades.
Of course, the practice of repair was different when the appliance costed relatively a lot more.
E.g. a TV was more likely to be repaired, but also costed about 10x as much relatively speaking.
So if it would have cost you 25% of the price of a TV to get it repaired, you would have got it repaired. If it’s just as easy to repair now, then the repair would still be over twice the price of just buying new.
To me its not about the cost and more about the waste generated. If it keeps it out of a landfill, I’ll repair it.
New ones can be fixed as well. Most people don’t take the time to do it. They aren’t that hard to repair.
i have a new dumb washer and dryer set bought this year, and my previous dumb set bought in 2011 still working, the ex took them 😂
Well, they worked forever because you could get them fixed. They will break down but you could repair them yourself or get it repaired. Unsure about whitegoods, but small appliances these days are expected to end up in landfill; no exposed screws and everything is glued in.
I wish companies understood that no, I don’t need my washing machine to be connected to WiFi
Yeah, but they want their washing machine in your home to have wifi.
