Do things seem to break all at the same time?

[Lamb]

Our garage door opener wouldn't work this morning and we had to manually lift the door to get the car out. The dehumidifier was leaking so we'll need a new one. What else is going to go wrong?

Do things break in multiples for you too?

 

[psalms 91]

It seems that way many times

 

[tango]

Our garage door opener wouldn't work this morning and we had to manually lift the door to get the car out. The dehumidifier was leaking so we'll need a new one. What else is going to go wrong?

Do things break in multiples for you too?

Sometimes it seems that way when trying to break and rebuild my house while still living in at least some of it.

 

[Mozzie]

It happens all the time around here, usually expensive things

 

[Josiah]

Our garage door opener wouldn't work this morning and we had to manually lift the door to get the car out. The dehumidifier was leaking so we'll need a new one. What else is going to go wrong?

Do things break in multiples for you too?

PERSONALLY, my only experience is with vacuum cleaners, that FOR ME seem to self-destruct after about 4-5 years. My parents have the SAME vacuum t hey got when I was a baby....still works perfectly.

But both my parents and my wife's parents have had a LOT of problems with "modern" new appliances (refrigerators in particular) and have been told by repair persons that they are all "junk" these days.... full of techie features and full of problems. My parents had the same GE refrigerator for over 20 years (the only one when I wast growing up).... it was still working (but making weird noises) when they retired it to the garage and got a nice Samsung one. It needed repairs after 3 months and died within 3 years. When they replaced it recently, they were told there are no reliable, durable refrigerators made anymore.... they are all junk ... and the more expensive it is, the faster it will fail.... but even the most simple refrig will not last as the old ones did. My in-laws have had similar problems with their washing machine.



.

 

[tango]

It's all about built-in obsolescence. If you make something to last forever you don't get repeat customers. Of course the same companies that spout endless twaddle about their environmental concerns seem to be the worst offenders when it comes to the idea that everything is disposable and appliances end up in landfill when for the sake of a better design they could be repaired.

The rate at which skills like repairing appliances seem to be vanishing leaves me wondering whether our civilisation will collapse completely if we ever do reach a place where you can't just go to the local store and buy a new fridge. Even if you can find someone who knows how to repair them it often isn't easy finding parts and isn't necessarily trivial to figure out which part you need.

 

[Wilhemena]

I simply cannot buy in confidence that any product will outlast the previous one because a company manufactures the products to have a limited lifetime or parts therein to fail so that they will remain in business. It is part of business success to have their products or parts fail and by doing so they will have a constant flow of income when new parts or replacement becomes a necessity and most businesses rely on this practice nowadays.

 

[tango]

I simply cannot buy in confidence that any product will outlast the previous one because a company manufactures the products to have a limited lifetime or parts therein to fail so that they will remain in business. It is part of business success to have their products or parts fail and by doing so they will have a constant flow of income when new parts or replacement becomes a necessity and most businesses rely on this practice nowadays.

You'd be forgiven for thinking they are designed to last for the warranty period and fail as soon as possible afterwards. Then of course you can't get parts or the cost of repairing it is three times the cost of a new one, so the company that cares so much for the environment gleefully sends its product to the landfill when it sells another one.

I wonder how well a company that actually did things properly would do. You wouldn't get the kind of explosive growth the market seems to demand these days but I'm sure word of mouth would spread that these products last forever and can be repaired, and even if you didn't get a steady stream of repeat business you'd probably do just fine selling one single fridge to every household in the country every 25 years or so.

 

[Josiah]

You'd be forgiven for thinking they are designed to last for the warranty period and fail as soon as possible afterwards. Then of course you can't get parts or the cost of repairing it is three times the cost of a new one, so the company that cares so much for the environment gleefully sends its product to the landfill when it sells another one.

I wonder how well a company that actually did things properly would do. You wouldn't get the kind of explosive growth the market seems to demand these days but I'm sure word of mouth would spread that these products last forever and can be repaired, and even if you didn't get a steady stream of repeat business you'd probably do just fine selling one single fridge to every household in the country every 25 years or so.

When we remodeled our kitchen in 2017, we replaced all the appliance with new ones. We went with Kenmore (Sears brand) because they had an amazing sale (40% off plus other perks). Only regret, I didn't appreciate that Sears was dying.... fast.....


We did lots of research, including with Consumer's Report, and that included reliability (knowing our parent's issues). But here's the deal: ALL brands have a lot of reliability issues. And generally, the more you pay, the WORSE the applicance is. And the big names (Bosch, Wolf, Thermador) are WORSE often in terms of reliability and tend to be very expensive to repair. Problem too, there's no competition anymore: there are only like 4-5 applicance companies in the entire world these days and they all produce the same things. Generally, the more you pay.... the more features and techie things are included... and the more stuff can and does go wrong. But even the lowest priced, most simple appliances fail much more than they did 20-30 years ago. We GLADLY would have paid 30, 40% more to get something well-made but that option doesn't exists. I don't know why.


We can put a man on the moon but can't seem to make an ice dispenser that works or a refrigerator compressor that lasts.... well, "can't" probably isn't the right word.


Our Kenmore stuff was mostly made by Whirlpool except the refrig which was made by LG. SO FAR, so good....




.

 

[Lamb]

Sears always had great products! I was sad when they closed our stores and now I have no idea if they'll honor the warranty on our lawn tractor. It's almost up anyway so I won't stress about it.

 

[tango]

Sears always had great products! I was sad when they closed our stores and now I have no idea if they'll honor the warranty on our lawn tractor. It's almost up anyway so I won't stress about it.

My wife's aunt paid an extended warranty on her chest freezer from Sears, every year, religiously, for something like 23 years. She was entitled to an annual inspection of it but never took them up on it because apparently she didn't want to be a nuisance. When the lid didn't close properly she used a gallon of water to weight it down rather than claiming under the warranty she had been paying for. When I realised what was going on I called to arrange a checkup for it while we were staying with her, and before the engineer could come and check on it the thing died. So she got a brand new chest freezer under warranty, although even after paying the warranty for over two decades (i.e. more than enough to pay for the new unit at least twice over) I still had to lean hard on them to do that rather than send a guy round to tinker with it. My wife's aunt would probably have just accepted whatever they said, bought a new freezer and most likely ended up still paying the warranty on the dead one.

It is sad when companies don't seem to want to make anything sustainable any more. The bit that annoys me the most is the way they gush on about caring for the environment, all the while churning out disposable trash that will end up in landfill because they can't be bothered to do things properly.

 

[Andrew]

A wise man once said "when it rains it pours", I find this statement true since I feel I have the worst luck lol my ex boss once told me that I should try playing the lottery one day because with my bad luck I might actually win not sure exactly how he said but it made sense at the time, still haven't tried tho