And it will use as much energy as everything else in the house combined.
I wonder how true that is. Does it come down to effective insulation? I also thought the old refrigerants were more efficient but really bad for the environment. The only other factor is motor/pump.
Compressors are variable and much more efficient. More efficient and variable speed fan motors along with more efficient blade design. Insulation now is drastically better than glass wool of the past. Electronics are able to be integrated in order to provide more fine grain control and overall design has been improved just due to efficiency standards being placed on a bright yellow sticker. In the past design and component choices never really considered efficiency, while efficiency doesn’t always win out it’s a weighted factor and influences the overall engineering and design in ways that just didn’t happen before efficiency regulations came about.
Insulation tech is better, yes, but also the insulation of a 40 year old fridge is by now totally fucked.
Please explain how fridge insulation degrades with age.
I would assume it’s made of something chemically stable and protected from the environment by the fridge casing.
The doors, rubbers, etc definitely degrade very fast. The walls probably not so fast, but the casing also gets beaten up.
Rubber seals wear out yes, but how does painted steel, unless the fridge is at the bottom of a lake?
Nice, it's super interesting how far we've progressed.
Here's a good article. From 1970-s to 2014 power use of refrigerators decreased by 4 times. My modern European fridge only uses 270kWh per year, which is even further decrease.
You really do not want to still use a fridge from 1970-s.
Edit: changed Wh to kWh.
I think you meant 270kWH instead of 270WH.
Yes, my bad.
Nooo, thats a couple of mW, no way. Maybe its a typo and you neant daily with a bit more than 10W power, even that is fairly low. The last time I measured ours it was about 30W average... (also europe, about 10yo)
That's a typo, my bad. Fixed my comment.
Remember, friends don't let friends buy Samsung or LG appliances!
(Also, long lasting appliances still exist, you just have to be ready to pay the price, otherwise get something from the Maytag family)
Anything from BSH group is good from what I've heard online from other netisens
Which is
Bosch
Siemens
Neff
Gaggernau
Miel are also good especially for vacuum cleaners
All of this information I remember from reddits buy it for life subreddit which really should have a lemmy version
*Miele ;)
And yeah, mid level is very good too!
We've got one of their pull around vacuums. Superior product, best vacuum I've ever had in reliability and features.
I second this motion.
Buy it for life is on lemmy! Idk how to link it, but search for it and it should pop up
and for linking you can do \[Name of the link](https://nameoftheinstance.net/c/nameofthecommunity) or you can just do
!buyitforlife@slrpnk.net so you can visit using you own home instance
have a nice day! :-)
Thanks
For people interested an extensive report by French appliance store after sale service. It gives the reliability of each brand. There is a note for the reliability, ease and cost of repair.
Honestly I don't get why Rossman cry so much about "he expected that his $2000> LG TV would not track him or at least have the option turned off by default."
Why shouldn't they? Why would anyone expect in the first place that by buying a more expensive product they are going to care about your data? Obviously it benefits them to sell everyone's data, from Rossman's point of view it sounds like people who buy cheap products deserve to have their data sold because the company is making a loss by selling them the product.
I usually agree with Rossman's points, but this one in particular sounds ridiculous to me.
Yeah he's really upset about LG, but it seems like everything tracks you these days. Seems a bit shortsighted to just shit on LG and no one else.
He shits on everyone all the time. It's not exclusive to LG or even Apple. It's just whatever happens to come to his attention. Which is basically pick a company and they're doing something horrible.
Which is basically pick a company and they're doing something horrible.
Except Framework. But they provide schematics.
If you open his channel, you will see how he shits on all anti-repair crapufacturers.
No idea who that is
My bad, I was answering another user in this thread.
from Rossman's point of view it sounds like people who buy cheap products deserve to have their data sold
I watched him and it is obvious he is against "You bought from X? Lol, screw you!" mentality.
citing Rossmann?
There's some appliance breakdown vids (idk if Rossman is one of them) but the gist is Samsung and LG like to put cheap plastic parts in high wear locations which inevitably fail.
Fridges are dead simple appliances. A compressor and evaporator coils with a temperature sensor. There's absolutely no reason they shouldn't outlast you and everyone you love.
It's insane these "premium" brands are built to fall like they do.
Real premium brands do last, but not everyone wants to pay 10k for a fridge
I mean, having to replace a fridge every few years because it constantly breaks in a way that’s uneconomical to repair will cost you a lot more in the long run.
That’s the thing, it’s more expensive being poor.
You’d be better off getting a 2nd hand quality brand from a wealthy suburb when they remodel their kitchen every 5ish years or so.
Sure it costs more in the long run, but the majority of people live paycheck to paycheck, do you think they want to go and pay 25k for a full set of appliances just so they'll save money over 30 years when they can barely afford to pay for their basic needs?
Even second hand, they're still way more expensive than the basic shit from economical brands...
Bit of a straw-man argument there: firstly you don’t need to spend that all in one hit; the break even point is a lot sooner than 30 years; and lastly, paying to replace cheap shot that breaks quickly with more shit that breaks quickly is one of the traps that keeps prone living paycheck to paycheck.
My two examples below:
Samsung dryer died after 3yrs, out of warranty, broke in our 20s, couldn’t afford to replace it. Lucked out finding an ANCIENT Miele condenser dryer on Marketplace for $50. Not only did that thing last us another 3 years before it started tripping the circuit breaker, it was cheaper to run than the old unit and ended up saving us enough money that we were then able to invest in a brand new Bosch unit that’s still going today (7+ years).
LG refrigerator died in a little over 3 years, due to a known compressor fault; uneconomical repair even though it was still under warranty, so we got a full manufacturer’s refund. We bit the bullet, did our research and went with a Made in Japan Hitachi model. It’s always outlasted the LG, and is again more energy efficient that we’re saving a few bucks a month on electricity.
I will reiterate; it’s expensive being poor. Buying a better quality second-hand unit rather than a new ‘commodity brand’ appliance is just one of the small ways to make things a little less expensive.
So "You live paycheck to paycheck? Just find cheap stuff until you decide to bite the bullet and get a loan to buy something that will last!"
78% of people in the USA live like that.
Getting loans for things is part of the reason why it’s expensive being poor.
The average US credit card charges ~22% interest and there are a crap-tonne of sub-prime loans that prey on desperate people that charge a hell of a lot more than that! A ‘cheap’ $500 dryer will end up costing close to double that by the time the loan ends up paid off.
This isn’t a ‘have you tried just not being poor?’ comment; I’ve been in a similar position for the entirety of my 20s and a good chunk of my 30s, before I learned that there was nothing wrong with going against consumer culture and buying an older, quality second hand product.
Becoming financially mature is probably the most painful part of becoming an adult, in multiple senses of the word.
Checking what a fridge cost you in 1980 in an old Sears catalog, you'd be paying $4000 today accounting for inflation.
But people compare their reliability to 1000$ fridges today
America's stagnation issue
An insulated box with a decent compressor does not cost 10k. Making a compressor that fails after 2 years is actually hard to do, something both LG and Samsung spent time and money to achieve.
Consider, for example, that nearly every car manufactured with an AC. Which is exactly the same tech as a fridge. Yet you rarely end up needing to replace the compressor on your car. You might need to recharge it or clean it, but not replace the compressor. 10k of your car price isn't the HVAC.
Just saying, that's the price for premium brands like Sub Zero or Thermador, but they have their reputation and it's very very good
There are premium brands that do well, but there are also non premium brands that do pretty well. GE, for example, tends to make fairly reliable product (even today) for roughly the same price point of samsung/lg.
Premium brands are not industrial brands. Goal of premium brands is to be as expensive as possible.
Sub Zero, Thermador... Looks industrial to you?
That's the problem. A lot of those high-end, expensive appliances are built just as shitty as the low-end, basic models. The difference is just some bells and whistles and a higher price tag.
I have no problem paying extra for a higher quality, better built appliance. But the challenge is differentiating those from the low quality, built as cheaply as possible appliances that have just been marked up with a premium price tag.
At least when I buy the cheap, shitty model, I get what I paid for.
I often repeat to my parents and grand parents, that "expensive doesn't mean good quality". Well, mostly to mom and granny.
The difference is just some bells and whistles and a higher price tag.
Bells and whistles that sell your personal data.
He's predominately Apple product repair guy, but he's also right to repair advocate.
And he likes to rant about brands that are generally against consumer rights (and common sense).
I've got no idea who that is so no, I wasn't knowingly quoting them
he's involved in right to repair and has youtube channel where hem mostly talks about how brands try to avoid questions on repairability and sustainability
I like our used Samsung dryer. For basic drying. It has all those other bells and whistles that I don't care about, but it's done well for years. That damn finished drying tune though...with the option to turn it off or...not turn it off. omg
I like the washer and not the dryer. Had the set for 4 years. No issues with the washer but the dryer literally leaks lint. The trap doesn’t catch it and it gums up my vents in 2 months.
Good to know. I regularly pull it out and clean the vent with a vent extension brush anyway, once I got a house with a long vent where all sorts of things can settle. Huge fire hazard that most home owners don't even think about. It seems to be catching the lint it ought to be, but perhaps this goes back to the idea that even in a line of product you can have good and bad machines made.
I wish I had friends. It would’ve prevented me from buying the shitty dishwasher that last less than 3 years.
7 years ago I bought a brand new Samsung washer and dryer. After I hooked up everything for the washer (correctly), when I set it to hot water, cold would come out, and vice versa. Had it taken aware and Lowe's replaced it with another brand new one. This time, the two guys who dollied in the firstly one, I had them hook everything up. Exact same thing happened. Hot for cold, cold for hot. These two guys were flabbergasted. They couldn't believe two brand new washers were having the same defect. Same two guys brought another one the next day. Finally, the third one worked correctly.
I haven't had any problems since. But still, ridiculous it took three tries to get a functioning washer.
Moreso, the fridge will stop working in two years cause that is when their subscription cloud service to access your fridge will be updated with firmware that is no longer compatible.
My fridge doesn't have a TPM chip and won't upgrade to FridgeOS 11.
Also the required app will no longer be supported
Sure it will work forever, but it also never really worked right in the first place. Those are definitely the fridges where one section freezes and other areas are almost room temp
People also have survivorship bias with these things. Sure your refrigerator might have lasted forever but quite a few others did not. There is a reason why appliance repair places existed and were much more common than today.
While that is true, items are purposely made unrepairable now. You don’t have right to repair movements because John Deere and Apple devices are so much more complex to repair for common failure points. You have those movements emerging because companies make it extremely difficult in the name of profit or style. With equally skilled (and due to the internet more informed) and capable repair personnel not being able to even partake in the process.
They've also gotten more complex over time, increasing difficulty of repair.
That's to increase perceived obsolescence, where it still works okay but the bells and whistles broke. Also why they put pretty colorful thread on fancy truck seats. Your ass wears it off and makes an $80k truck look ratty.
Right but often unnecessarily so. Nobody asked for "smart" fridges or washing machines.
Exactly this!! The function of appliances hasn't changed hardly at all since their inception: washers wash, dryers dry, refrigerators cool, ovens/stoves heat. No "smart" capabilities necessary, or at least nothing that simple mechanical controls and switches couldn't handle.
Plus they're cheaper, relative to repair professionals' labor.
If a new refrigerator costs the same as 100 hours of skilled labor, then a 10 hour repair job (plus parts that cost the same as 1/10 of a refrigerator) will be economically feasible.
But if a new fridge costs the same as 20 hours of skilled labor, and the more complex parts come in more expensive assemblies, then there's gonna be more jobs don't pass a cost benefit threshold. As a category, refrigerator repair becomes unfeasible, and then nobody gets skilled in that field.
yeah thats because they are made intentionally uneconomical and difficult to repair now
people underestimate how useful and frequently necessary icepicks used to be.
I bet there is a Technology Connections video on this.
There is no problem in sticking second compressor wirhout greatly reducing fridge lifespan.
Survivorship bias
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.
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.
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.
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.
For real, we bought a fridge in November and it is already breaking
Back when my dad bought a new whirlpool fridge, it didn't take long for the LEDs inside to start failing.
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.
Samsung fridge had the ice maker stop working 5 times in a span of 2 years. The tray mechanism inside would break so often. I actually started buying replacements from AliExpress and treated it as a consumable product.
Samsung appliances are garbage
I just replaced a Samsung fridge after about 6 years when I bought it new.
Never again will I but Samsung appliances.
This is what they expected you to do
Shout out to our 30 year old Miele washing machine
That will cost you a shit load of energy does it?
I wouldn't say it uses an unreasonable amount of power to run. I may be wrong, but a water heater and some pumps can't be more efficient other than insulation so it wouldn't waste power to heat the surrounding air.
Modern washing machines auto-balance the load, which negates the need for the massive weights you get inside older washing machines for stability. The motors in older ones also have to work harder because of this since it is trying to spin an unbalanced drum. I also assume modern ones have more efficient brushless motors etc.
The load balancing thing definitely applies to the front loading washing machines we have here, no idea about top-loading.
Ours is front loading, and I'm sometimes scared to take a dump in the same room when the thing is spinning full speed, as the dryer on top of it bounces and shakes aggressively, most likely due to the lack of auto balancing. I guess I didn't think of the inefficiencies there
Your washing machine is heating the water? It's not hooked up to the hot water supply? Maybe that's a Europe thing or something
I'm pretty sure it's a Europe thing too, as the washing machine and dishwasher heat their own water. Didn't know the US did it differently
Funny coincidence, I've recently watched a video by TechnologyConnections on dishwashers and thought about the hot water connection thing. Here in Europe our dishwashers are usually connected to hot water, whereas the washing machine is only connected to cold... wondered about that difference, too.
That's super interesting! I currently live in Norway, but I used to live in Lithuania, and for both countries I can say that it's common for dishwashers and washing machines to heat their own water. It's interesting to see how different countries have solved the "get hot water" problem for appliances.
not energy, but def water. modern wash machines are extremely water efficient. That may result in energy savings if you're using hot water. Modern detergent doesn't really need hot water though.
Interesting, never thougth that would be the issue.
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.
I used to rent this tiny little house from an elderly couple a little over a decade ago. It was their first house when they got married in the late 40s and they'd been renting it out since they moved to a bigger house in the 50s. In all that time the refrigerator has been replaced ONCE in like 1968 and that fridge still worked perfectly when I moved out lol
You probably forgot to pay the monthly subscription of your refrigerator.
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".
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).
damn, can't argue with that, OK it is
Zero kelvin? That sensor is broken...
It's not really a temperature sensor, it always says that regardless of how cold you set the fridge (and no, absolute zero is not possible, sorry for ruining the fun).
But, depending on how cold the fridge is, it turns blue, but the bit that says OK stays white.
Don't buy the overly fancy fridges: Buy a basic one from a decent company and it will probably last for years.
Decent company = not Samsung or LG
Maytag and its subbrands can actually be fixed and parts are available long term
There's two sides of the spectrum really. Buy cheap but durable or really fork out and buy commercial-grade. Both will require maintenance and yes one costs more to maintain and requires a contractor to install but if done correctly it'll last 20+ years and be consistent. Same applies to other kitchen hardware.
Brands: Sub-Zero, Wolf, Viking, Coldline
These aren't like the overpriced Samsung/LG whatever. They don't have any special wifi/tech. Just rugged industrial motors, lines, and insulation designed to be operated at high use daily.
I bought a fridge only (no freezer) 20 years ago and it's still chugging along. 🤜🌳 Made in Canada even.
No freezer? Do you have a separate reach in freezer? Can't imagine life without a freezer
Yes we have a normal sized fridge that's only a fridge, and a large chest freezer.
Just bought a brand new shitty fridge, can't wait for it to die next year
I had one that lasted 15 years. In that time it had to be repaired twice, and the rail for the drawers broke out so I had no crispers. It was remarkably expensive.
Last one I got was free so I can't really complain lol but I also have no idea how old it was
Enshittification, also known as the overall tendency of profit to decline.
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.
Yeah, growing up we had a harvest gold Frigidaire from the 1970s. It didn't leave us, we left it.
(Don't miss the gallons of ice water in the freezer that had to be defrosted every few months.)
I guess one could make the claim that an automatic defrost system is a luxury, lol
I moved into a dated house that came with dated kitchen appliances 70/80s. I've updated the floors under, the water line and gas line to them. Mostly everything around them. I've still kept the appliances. Still work great.
I'll keep my money and the fridge that still does what new fridge does, keeps shit cold. And the stove that does what a new stove dies, make shit hot.
But why? Like what is failing so often in new fridges?
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
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.
Thanks, that's really interesting
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.
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.
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.
All of those systems can be maintained and serve for long. Electronics is not the culprit - it can serve for decades easily. Also, most people don't need their fridge or whatever to be extra fancy.
But the producer really wants for their product to die - this forces you to buy another unit, which increases their revenue.
Not only do they want the product to die, they also make it really hard to repair. Not offering spare parts, except through official repair centers which charge so much you might as well buy a new unit. Not providing any kind of documentation or schematics. Using chips with custom firmware you can't download anywhere, so even if you were to replace the hardware, without the software it's useless. Locking off communication/programming ports behind passwords and custom programming software.
This is why right to repair is so important. It isn't just phones, it's all consumer electronics. With proper care, maintenance and repair, a lot of devices could easily double their lifespan. This reduces e-waste and saves consumers money, it's like a win for everyone except for the people trying to sell you new shit.
Exactly!
Right to repair is essential, and it's crazy we allowed the situation to get where it currently is in the first place
Time to protect what was taken away.
Also a dash of survivorship bias
Fair!
This is only partially true. Yes we do engineer things to fail at a certain point, but that's only because back in the day we naively assumed that we could engineer things not to fail at all.
Yes a stator of an electric engine will probably not fail for 100 years, but the seals will - yes the statically stressed metal part will hold until it crumbles to rust, but the dynamically stressed plastic part won't - yes the silicon in an IC-Chip is protected from corrosion, but the connector pins aren't.
The point I'm trying to make is that there's always a part that will fail before another, there's no way to economicaly engineer around that, today we simply have the data to statistically define a failure point.
A fridge usually has a 10 year warranty. This isn't even the end of life point. After 10 years it's most likely that 80-90% of devices will still work. This means that if your device survived 10 years it will most likely work for another 5-10 years.
And then 10 years in you should be able to change the part that's broken and keep the fridge operational.
People say that like the replacement parts are just a mystical thing that spawns out of thin air once they need them.
Most parts that break are injection molded plastic. Injection molding is what differentiates manufacturing and home made garbage. Something home made will never look and function as good as something injection molded by a manufacturer. And the reason for that is cost. To say injection molding is expensive is an understatement. The machines, the tools, the expertise and the material is something that a private individual could never afford and has barely any profit margin for manufacturers. On top of that there's storage and distribution.
So if a manufacturer has to produce extra pieces of each part that might break, store and keep track of them for 10+ years for models that are no longer produced, then the customer better be ready to cover those costs with their initial purchase or have the replacement part be ridiculously priced.
We accuse companies to want their cake and eat it too, but the we do the same thing. We want products to be cheap but also reliable or look good but be repairable. We can't have all.\
There are plenty of devices that are cheap AND repairable - looking at a ~15-year old Brother HL-2140 printer by my right hand that still has all key parts readily available (not that I ever needed to change anything other than drum and toner, but parts are there)
The secret to cheap repairability is actually quite simple - make a good, no-fuss model and sell it for long. This will remove the necessity to print specific parts in small batches for older models, and by the time the model actually gets retired, there's so much spare parts you barely need to produce anything at all.
Granted, this doesn't work that well with ever-evolving stuff like computers (although it does to a certain extent), but most other tech is just fine a decade or more in.
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.
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.
Those things have worser energy efficency and probably contain worser refrigerants
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 see your refrigerator and raise you a freestanding oven. The one with coils.
“And I will eat your children”
Only available in harvest yellow, burnt sienna, olive, and white. Upgrade yours with some simulated wood grain accents to match your station wagon for a reasonable price. Don't leave it outside in your vacant lot where kids might play inside. Be nice to the Sears appliance department salesperson. They really want a promotion to the vacuum cleaner department so they can buy their kid a high-fidelity 8-track cassette this Christmas.
I'd keep waxing nostalgic but it will never buff to a nice sheen these days. My parents got a toaster as a wedding gift and it was still in daily use when I went off to college. Appliances nowadays are junk.
How much of that is also survivorship bias. Why is it that if appliances were better back then people ended up buying new ones? Most people tend to only buy new appliances and furniture if the old one breaks regardless if there's a new model. At least that has been my experience with the vast majority of people I've known at more than an acquaintance level. Most people aren't privileged enough to be able to afford new stuff just cause.
And it will use as much energy as everything else in the house combined.
I wonder how true that is. Does it come down to effective insulation? I also thought the old refrigerants were more efficient but really bad for the environment. The only other factor is motor/pump.
Compressors are variable and much more efficient. More efficient and variable speed fan motors along with more efficient blade design. Insulation now is drastically better than glass wool of the past. Electronics are able to be integrated in order to provide more fine grain control and overall design has been improved just due to efficiency standards being placed on a bright yellow sticker. In the past design and component choices never really considered efficiency, while efficiency doesn’t always win out it’s a weighted factor and influences the overall engineering and design in ways that just didn’t happen before efficiency regulations came about.
Insulation tech is better, yes, but also the insulation of a 40 year old fridge is by now totally fucked.
Please explain how fridge insulation degrades with age.
I would assume it’s made of something chemically stable and protected from the environment by the fridge casing.
The doors, rubbers, etc definitely degrade very fast. The walls probably not so fast, but the casing also gets beaten up.
Rubber seals wear out yes, but how does painted steel, unless the fridge is at the bottom of a lake?
Nice, it's super interesting how far we've progressed.
https://appliance-standards.org/blog/how-your-refrigerator-has-kept-its-cool-over-40-years-efficiency-improvements
Here's a good article. From 1970-s to 2014 power use of refrigerators decreased by 4 times. My modern European fridge only uses 270kWh per year, which is even further decrease.
You really do not want to still use a fridge from 1970-s.
Edit: changed Wh to kWh.
I think you meant 270kWH instead of 270WH.
Yes, my bad.
Nooo, thats a couple of mW, no way. Maybe its a typo and you neant daily with a bit more than 10W power, even that is fairly low. The last time I measured ours it was about 30W average... (also europe, about 10yo)
That's a typo, my bad. Fixed my comment.
Remember, friends don't let friends buy Samsung or LG appliances!
(Also, long lasting appliances still exist, you just have to be ready to pay the price, otherwise get something from the Maytag family)
Anything from BSH group is good from what I've heard online from other netisens
Which is
Miel are also good especially for vacuum cleaners
All of this information I remember from reddits buy it for life subreddit which really should have a lemmy version
*Miele ;)
And yeah, mid level is very good too!
We've got one of their pull around vacuums. Superior product, best vacuum I've ever had in reliability and features.
I second this motion.
Buy it for life is on lemmy! Idk how to link it, but search for it and it should pop up
@x4740N@lemm.ee @FrowingFostek@lemmy.world @@Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
The Community on slrpnk.net seems to be the biggest and most active, the second biggest is on sh.itjust.works.
and for linking you can do
\[Name of the link](https://nameoftheinstance.net/c/nameofthecommunity)or you can just do !buyitforlife@slrpnk.net so you can visit using you own home instancehave a nice day! :-)
Thanks
For people interested an extensive report by French appliance store after sale service. It gives the reliability of each brand. There is a note for the reliability, ease and cost of repair.
It's only in French unfortunately : https://www.darty.com/achat/services/barometre-sav/barometre.html
Honestly I don't get why Rossman cry so much about "he expected that his $2000> LG TV would not track him or at least have the option turned off by default."
Why shouldn't they? Why would anyone expect in the first place that by buying a more expensive product they are going to care about your data? Obviously it benefits them to sell everyone's data, from Rossman's point of view it sounds like people who buy cheap products deserve to have their data sold because the company is making a loss by selling them the product.
I usually agree with Rossman's points, but this one in particular sounds ridiculous to me.
Yeah he's really upset about LG, but it seems like everything tracks you these days. Seems a bit shortsighted to just shit on LG and no one else.
He shits on everyone all the time. It's not exclusive to LG or even Apple. It's just whatever happens to come to his attention. Which is basically pick a company and they're doing something horrible.
Except Framework. But they provide schematics.
If you open his channel, you will see how he shits on all anti-repair crapufacturers.
No idea who that is
My bad, I was answering another user in this thread.
I watched him and it is obvious he is against "You bought from X? Lol, screw you!" mentality.
citing Rossmann?
There's some appliance breakdown vids (idk if Rossman is one of them) but the gist is Samsung and LG like to put cheap plastic parts in high wear locations which inevitably fail.
Fridges are dead simple appliances. A compressor and evaporator coils with a temperature sensor. There's absolutely no reason they shouldn't outlast you and everyone you love.
It's insane these "premium" brands are built to fall like they do.
Real premium brands do last, but not everyone wants to pay 10k for a fridge
I mean, having to replace a fridge every few years because it constantly breaks in a way that’s uneconomical to repair will cost you a lot more in the long run.
That’s the thing, it’s more expensive being poor.
You’d be better off getting a 2nd hand quality brand from a wealthy suburb when they remodel their kitchen every 5ish years or so.
Sure it costs more in the long run, but the majority of people live paycheck to paycheck, do you think they want to go and pay 25k for a full set of appliances just so they'll save money over 30 years when they can barely afford to pay for their basic needs?
Even second hand, they're still way more expensive than the basic shit from economical brands...
Bit of a straw-man argument there: firstly you don’t need to spend that all in one hit; the break even point is a lot sooner than 30 years; and lastly, paying to replace cheap shot that breaks quickly with more shit that breaks quickly is one of the traps that keeps prone living paycheck to paycheck.
My two examples below:
Samsung dryer died after 3yrs, out of warranty, broke in our 20s, couldn’t afford to replace it. Lucked out finding an ANCIENT Miele condenser dryer on Marketplace for $50. Not only did that thing last us another 3 years before it started tripping the circuit breaker, it was cheaper to run than the old unit and ended up saving us enough money that we were then able to invest in a brand new Bosch unit that’s still going today (7+ years).
LG refrigerator died in a little over 3 years, due to a known compressor fault; uneconomical repair even though it was still under warranty, so we got a full manufacturer’s refund. We bit the bullet, did our research and went with a Made in Japan Hitachi model. It’s always outlasted the LG, and is again more energy efficient that we’re saving a few bucks a month on electricity.
I will reiterate; it’s expensive being poor. Buying a better quality second-hand unit rather than a new ‘commodity brand’ appliance is just one of the small ways to make things a little less expensive.
So "You live paycheck to paycheck? Just find cheap stuff until you decide to bite the bullet and get a loan to buy something that will last!"
78% of people in the USA live like that.
Getting loans for things is part of the reason why it’s expensive being poor.
The average US credit card charges ~22% interest and there are a crap-tonne of sub-prime loans that prey on desperate people that charge a hell of a lot more than that! A ‘cheap’ $500 dryer will end up costing close to double that by the time the loan ends up paid off.
This isn’t a ‘have you tried just not being poor?’ comment; I’ve been in a similar position for the entirety of my 20s and a good chunk of my 30s, before I learned that there was nothing wrong with going against consumer culture and buying an older, quality second hand product.
Becoming financially mature is probably the most painful part of becoming an adult, in multiple senses of the word.
Checking what a fridge cost you in 1980 in an old Sears catalog, you'd be paying $4000 today accounting for inflation.
But people compare their reliability to 1000$ fridges today
America's stagnation issue
An insulated box with a decent compressor does not cost 10k. Making a compressor that fails after 2 years is actually hard to do, something both LG and Samsung spent time and money to achieve.
Consider, for example, that nearly every car manufactured with an AC. Which is exactly the same tech as a fridge. Yet you rarely end up needing to replace the compressor on your car. You might need to recharge it or clean it, but not replace the compressor. 10k of your car price isn't the HVAC.
Just saying, that's the price for premium brands like Sub Zero or Thermador, but they have their reputation and it's very very good
There are premium brands that do well, but there are also non premium brands that do pretty well. GE, for example, tends to make fairly reliable product (even today) for roughly the same price point of samsung/lg.
Premium brands are not industrial brands. Goal of premium brands is to be as expensive as possible.
Sub Zero, Thermador... Looks industrial to you?
That's the problem. A lot of those high-end, expensive appliances are built just as shitty as the low-end, basic models. The difference is just some bells and whistles and a higher price tag.
I have no problem paying extra for a higher quality, better built appliance. But the challenge is differentiating those from the low quality, built as cheaply as possible appliances that have just been marked up with a premium price tag.
At least when I buy the cheap, shitty model, I get what I paid for.
I often repeat to my parents and grand parents, that "expensive doesn't mean good quality". Well, mostly to mom and granny.
Bells and whistles that sell your personal data.
He's predominately Apple product repair guy, but he's also right to repair advocate.
And he likes to rant about brands that are generally against consumer rights (and common sense).
I've got no idea who that is so no, I wasn't knowingly quoting them
he's involved in right to repair and has youtube channel where hem mostly talks about how brands try to avoid questions on repairability and sustainability
I like our used Samsung dryer. For basic drying. It has all those other bells and whistles that I don't care about, but it's done well for years. That damn finished drying tune though...with the option to turn it off or...not turn it off. omg
I like the washer and not the dryer. Had the set for 4 years. No issues with the washer but the dryer literally leaks lint. The trap doesn’t catch it and it gums up my vents in 2 months.
Good to know. I regularly pull it out and clean the vent with a vent extension brush anyway, once I got a house with a long vent where all sorts of things can settle. Huge fire hazard that most home owners don't even think about. It seems to be catching the lint it ought to be, but perhaps this goes back to the idea that even in a line of product you can have good and bad machines made.
I wish I had friends. It would’ve prevented me from buying the shitty dishwasher that last less than 3 years.
7 years ago I bought a brand new Samsung washer and dryer. After I hooked up everything for the washer (correctly), when I set it to hot water, cold would come out, and vice versa. Had it taken aware and Lowe's replaced it with another brand new one. This time, the two guys who dollied in the firstly one, I had them hook everything up. Exact same thing happened. Hot for cold, cold for hot. These two guys were flabbergasted. They couldn't believe two brand new washers were having the same defect. Same two guys brought another one the next day. Finally, the third one worked correctly.
I haven't had any problems since. But still, ridiculous it took three tries to get a functioning washer.
Moreso, the fridge will stop working in two years cause that is when their subscription cloud service to access your fridge will be updated with firmware that is no longer compatible.
My fridge doesn't have a TPM chip and won't upgrade to FridgeOS 11.
Also the required app will no longer be supported
Sure it will work forever, but it also never really worked right in the first place. Those are definitely the fridges where one section freezes and other areas are almost room temp
People also have survivorship bias with these things. Sure your refrigerator might have lasted forever but quite a few others did not. There is a reason why appliance repair places existed and were much more common than today.
While that is true, items are purposely made unrepairable now. You don’t have right to repair movements because John Deere and Apple devices are so much more complex to repair for common failure points. You have those movements emerging because companies make it extremely difficult in the name of profit or style. With equally skilled (and due to the internet more informed) and capable repair personnel not being able to even partake in the process.
They've also gotten more complex over time, increasing difficulty of repair.
That's to increase perceived obsolescence, where it still works okay but the bells and whistles broke. Also why they put pretty colorful thread on fancy truck seats. Your ass wears it off and makes an $80k truck look ratty.
Right but often unnecessarily so. Nobody asked for "smart" fridges or washing machines.
Exactly this!! The function of appliances hasn't changed hardly at all since their inception: washers wash, dryers dry, refrigerators cool, ovens/stoves heat. No "smart" capabilities necessary, or at least nothing that simple mechanical controls and switches couldn't handle.
Plus they're cheaper, relative to repair professionals' labor.
If a new refrigerator costs the same as 100 hours of skilled labor, then a 10 hour repair job (plus parts that cost the same as 1/10 of a refrigerator) will be economically feasible.
But if a new fridge costs the same as 20 hours of skilled labor, and the more complex parts come in more expensive assemblies, then there's gonna be more jobs don't pass a cost benefit threshold. As a category, refrigerator repair becomes unfeasible, and then nobody gets skilled in that field.
yeah thats because they are made intentionally uneconomical and difficult to repair now
people underestimate how useful and frequently necessary icepicks used to be.
I bet there is a Technology Connections video on this.
If I remember correctly there is.
Edit: https://youtu.be/8PTjPzw9VhY?si=lZBGgrdze8s2NXfN
There is no problem in sticking second compressor wirhout greatly reducing fridge lifespan.
Survivorship bias
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.
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.
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.
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.
For real, we bought a fridge in November and it is already breaking
Back when my dad bought a new whirlpool fridge, it didn't take long for the LEDs inside to start failing.
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.
Samsung fridge had the ice maker stop working 5 times in a span of 2 years. The tray mechanism inside would break so often. I actually started buying replacements from AliExpress and treated it as a consumable product.
Samsung appliances are garbage
I just replaced a Samsung fridge after about 6 years when I bought it new.
Never again will I but Samsung appliances.
This is what they expected you to do
Shout out to our 30 year old Miele washing machine
That will cost you a shit load of energy does it?
I wouldn't say it uses an unreasonable amount of power to run. I may be wrong, but a water heater and some pumps can't be more efficient other than insulation so it wouldn't waste power to heat the surrounding air.
Modern washing machines auto-balance the load, which negates the need for the massive weights you get inside older washing machines for stability. The motors in older ones also have to work harder because of this since it is trying to spin an unbalanced drum. I also assume modern ones have more efficient brushless motors etc.
The load balancing thing definitely applies to the front loading washing machines we have here, no idea about top-loading.
Ours is front loading, and I'm sometimes scared to take a dump in the same room when the thing is spinning full speed, as the dryer on top of it bounces and shakes aggressively, most likely due to the lack of auto balancing. I guess I didn't think of the inefficiencies there
Your washing machine is heating the water? It's not hooked up to the hot water supply? Maybe that's a Europe thing or something
I'm pretty sure it's a Europe thing too, as the washing machine and dishwasher heat their own water. Didn't know the US did it differently
Funny coincidence, I've recently watched a video by TechnologyConnections on dishwashers and thought about the hot water connection thing. Here in Europe our dishwashers are usually connected to hot water, whereas the washing machine is only connected to cold... wondered about that difference, too.
That's super interesting! I currently live in Norway, but I used to live in Lithuania, and for both countries I can say that it's common for dishwashers and washing machines to heat their own water. It's interesting to see how different countries have solved the "get hot water" problem for appliances.
not energy, but def water. modern wash machines are extremely water efficient. That may result in energy savings if you're using hot water. Modern detergent doesn't really need hot water though.
Interesting, never thougth that would be the issue.
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.
I used to rent this tiny little house from an elderly couple a little over a decade ago. It was their first house when they got married in the late 40s and they'd been renting it out since they moved to a bigger house in the 50s. In all that time the refrigerator has been replaced ONCE in like 1968 and that fridge still worked perfectly when I moved out lol
You probably forgot to pay the monthly subscription of your refrigerator.
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".
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).
damn, can't argue with that, OK it is
Zero kelvin? That sensor is broken...
It's not really a temperature sensor, it always says that regardless of how cold you set the fridge (and no, absolute zero is not possible, sorry for ruining the fun).
But, depending on how cold the fridge is, it turns blue, but the bit that says OK stays white.
Don't buy the overly fancy fridges: Buy a basic one from a decent company and it will probably last for years.
Decent company = not Samsung or LG
Maytag and its subbrands can actually be fixed and parts are available long term
There's two sides of the spectrum really. Buy cheap but durable or really fork out and buy commercial-grade. Both will require maintenance and yes one costs more to maintain and requires a contractor to install but if done correctly it'll last 20+ years and be consistent. Same applies to other kitchen hardware.
Brands: Sub-Zero, Wolf, Viking, Coldline
These aren't like the overpriced Samsung/LG whatever. They don't have any special wifi/tech. Just rugged industrial motors, lines, and insulation designed to be operated at high use daily.
I bought a fridge only (no freezer) 20 years ago and it's still chugging along. 🤜🌳 Made in Canada even.
No freezer? Do you have a separate reach in freezer? Can't imagine life without a freezer
Yes we have a normal sized fridge that's only a fridge, and a large chest freezer.
“…I am also the size of a dorm fridge”
I'll rip you a new ozone hole
But is it AI?
Just bought a brand new shitty fridge, can't wait for it to die next year
I had one that lasted 15 years. In that time it had to be repaired twice, and the rail for the drawers broke out so I had no crispers. It was remarkably expensive.
Last one I got was free so I can't really complain lol but I also have no idea how old it was
Enshittification, also known as the overall tendency of profit to decline.
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.
Yeah, growing up we had a harvest gold Frigidaire from the 1970s. It didn't leave us, we left it.
(Don't miss the gallons of ice water in the freezer that had to be defrosted every few months.)
I guess one could make the claim that an automatic defrost system is a luxury, lol
I moved into a dated house that came with dated kitchen appliances 70/80s. I've updated the floors under, the water line and gas line to them. Mostly everything around them. I've still kept the appliances. Still work great.
I'll keep my money and the fridge that still does what new fridge does, keeps shit cold. And the stove that does what a new stove dies, make shit hot.
But why? Like what is failing so often in new fridges?
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
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:
Thanks, that's really interesting
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.
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.
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.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2024/07/02/why-refrigerator-oven-dishwasher-break/
Real answer is planned obsolescence.
All of those systems can be maintained and serve for long. Electronics is not the culprit - it can serve for decades easily. Also, most people don't need their fridge or whatever to be extra fancy.
But the producer really wants for their product to die - this forces you to buy another unit, which increases their revenue.
Not only do they want the product to die, they also make it really hard to repair. Not offering spare parts, except through official repair centers which charge so much you might as well buy a new unit. Not providing any kind of documentation or schematics. Using chips with custom firmware you can't download anywhere, so even if you were to replace the hardware, without the software it's useless. Locking off communication/programming ports behind passwords and custom programming software.
This is why right to repair is so important. It isn't just phones, it's all consumer electronics. With proper care, maintenance and repair, a lot of devices could easily double their lifespan. This reduces e-waste and saves consumers money, it's like a win for everyone except for the people trying to sell you new shit.
Exactly!
Right to repair is essential, and it's crazy we allowed the situation to get where it currently is in the first place
Time to protect what was taken away.
Also a dash of survivorship bias
Fair!
This is only partially true. Yes we do engineer things to fail at a certain point, but that's only because back in the day we naively assumed that we could engineer things not to fail at all.
Yes a stator of an electric engine will probably not fail for 100 years, but the seals will - yes the statically stressed metal part will hold until it crumbles to rust, but the dynamically stressed plastic part won't - yes the silicon in an IC-Chip is protected from corrosion, but the connector pins aren't.
The point I'm trying to make is that there's always a part that will fail before another, there's no way to economicaly engineer around that, today we simply have the data to statistically define a failure point.
A fridge usually has a 10 year warranty. This isn't even the end of life point. After 10 years it's most likely that 80-90% of devices will still work. This means that if your device survived 10 years it will most likely work for another 5-10 years.
And then 10 years in you should be able to change the part that's broken and keep the fridge operational.
People say that like the replacement parts are just a mystical thing that spawns out of thin air once they need them.
Most parts that break are injection molded plastic. Injection molding is what differentiates manufacturing and home made garbage. Something home made will never look and function as good as something injection molded by a manufacturer. And the reason for that is cost. To say injection molding is expensive is an understatement. The machines, the tools, the expertise and the material is something that a private individual could never afford and has barely any profit margin for manufacturers. On top of that there's storage and distribution.
So if a manufacturer has to produce extra pieces of each part that might break, store and keep track of them for 10+ years for models that are no longer produced, then the customer better be ready to cover those costs with their initial purchase or have the replacement part be ridiculously priced.
We accuse companies to want their cake and eat it too, but the we do the same thing. We want products to be cheap but also reliable or look good but be repairable. We can't have all.\
There are plenty of devices that are cheap AND repairable - looking at a ~15-year old Brother HL-2140 printer by my right hand that still has all key parts readily available (not that I ever needed to change anything other than drum and toner, but parts are there)
The secret to cheap repairability is actually quite simple - make a good, no-fuss model and sell it for long. This will remove the necessity to print specific parts in small batches for older models, and by the time the model actually gets retired, there's so much spare parts you barely need to produce anything at all.
Granted, this doesn't work that well with ever-evolving stuff like computers (although it does to a certain extent), but most other tech is just fine a decade or more in.
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.
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.
https://www.amazon.com/GE-16-6-White-Top-Freezer-Refrigerator/dp/B07X6N4Y5X/ref=sr_1_39?crid=IAU5IJE3MQNB&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7A36GOsFTD0qVFIoLkz3F8wlrWo8FO7xlIypczHMKJgv1VMIp3tBlRi_bTV8_8jYSPL6FYxwlOwiLv6Q-vvdtamFNNvhQk0-VSONuiwbD1vRjilwEtRCDpq6uY6qDaWDUrlbqurr-pQjwP4ABucj-WkmIWQVehuM2EgqYVDp3LXbp9tV74t-gM1pHuO-yJD6Ie2ygW0EI9d4yQ7c5QeP47Nf4U1jvcgUucPe7Kj9K0Pt_OKf1uIhNDR_WT-IjdkY6ugtF2-mMUTpSOt0GTPm0nFyJ2mgISMB0wQxRg05GaY.SX-DBs0wx7Ej_MrCF1WO1OxnimsCnQim24ONGjvQUT8&dib_tag=se&sprefix=ge+basic+fridge%2Caps%2C101
Those things have worser energy efficency and probably contain worser refrigerants
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 see your refrigerator and raise you a freestanding oven. The one with coils.
“And I will eat your children”
Only available in harvest yellow, burnt sienna, olive, and white. Upgrade yours with some simulated wood grain accents to match your station wagon for a reasonable price. Don't leave it outside in your vacant lot where kids might play inside. Be nice to the Sears appliance department salesperson. They really want a promotion to the vacuum cleaner department so they can buy their kid a high-fidelity 8-track cassette this Christmas.
I'd keep waxing nostalgic but it will never buff to a nice sheen these days. My parents got a toaster as a wedding gift and it was still in daily use when I went off to college. Appliances nowadays are junk.
How much of that is also survivorship bias. Why is it that if appliances were better back then people ended up buying new ones? Most people tend to only buy new appliances and furniture if the old one breaks regardless if there's a new model. At least that has been my experience with the vast majority of people I've known at more than an acquaintance level. Most people aren't privileged enough to be able to afford new stuff just cause.
Have had mine for going on 10 years now