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While in a rental between moves I bought a very cheap ($50), used Maytag. Made in the USA, just over 20 years ago. That thing was built like a tank. They lady who sold it had raised 8 kids. This was her first and only washer to date and it never needed a repair - or so I was told. She replaced it because her adult kids bought her a fancy new LG washer for her birthday. After hauling this tank to my apartment and trying it out - it worked great! Much better than our Bosch front load that we sold before moving. It worked so good I was tempted to take it on the next leg of our move. I give it 2 years before that lady would pay to get her old washer back. In about that long I'll wish I had brought it with me.

I'm sick of disposable products. I have a small collection of "broken" things that I don't have time to get to. If they were built with repair in mind I think they'd be fixed by now, but I'm not sure that laws will get us there. One can hope.

> There are numerous stories of hypoallergenic people who find that their new washing machine leaves significant detergent in clothing.

In 99.9% percent of those cases, the problem is that they're used to the quantities of detergent the old non-HE washers take and refuse to reduce the amount, or (in the case of horizontal axis washers) are confused by the lack of suds in modern detergents and overload the machine with detergent. The latter is an especially common problem in laundromats serving low-income areas. Sometimes the machines were so caked with old detergent that I could run a load with plain water and it would come our perfectly clean.

Maybe durable goods should be taxed inversely based on the length of the warranty.

That's an awesome idea - but the tax difference would have to be high enough to incentivize people to choose the products with long warranty, and hence to push the companies to provide long warranty.

However, there's too big chance that all the producers might have an unwritten deal to propose the same length of warranty anyway :(

I am only aware of one brand of washing machine that explicitly claims to be designed to be repairable by the end-user--Staber. I have never actually owned or used one before, so I'm not sure how fit for purpose it may be otherwise.

I have successfully repaired other brands of washing machine, dryer, and refrigerator, though. It isn't that difficult, but obtaining the replacement parts is absolutely ridiculous. The first-party site for ordering replacement parts often charges 50-80% of the MSRP of a complete new appliance for just one replacement part.

If any country wanted to encourage repair over replacement, tax incentives are probably not the best way to do it. Publish national standards for appliance form factors, such as case dimensions, screw hole placement, subassembly dimensions, connectors, drive belts, elastic ring sizes, etc. Then phase in requirements that all new appliances must conform to the standard by 20xx.

If all washing machines conform to standard WM-S, WM-M, WM-L, WM-I, or WM-X, and those standards only have three different sizes of drive motor and one kind of power connector and one control connector, then manufacturing third-party replacement motors becomes more economically possible than the current situation, where a Brand X replacement motor might not even fit correctly in two different Brand X models.

The chassis, outer panels, and drum of a washing machine just don't really need to be replaced, unless the paint chips and they rust out. Bearings, seals, motors, belts, control electronics, and knobs, on the other hand, those wear out.

Perhaps I have just been spoiled by ATX standards for computer parts, and connector standards for ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIe, ATA, SATA, SCSI, M.2, and USB. All those standards mean that third-party manufacturers don't have to maintain separate silos for Apple, Dell, HP, Compaq, Tandy, Amstrad, etc. The third-party motherboard manufacturers can just conform to Intel + ATX to sell a product, and maybe also micro-ATX and mini-ITX to cater to small-system builders. It is not difficult at all to assemble a working computer where the CPU + chipset, motherboard, case, power supply, system memory, SSD, hard drive, removable disk drive, graphics card, monitor(s), keyboard, mouse, speakers, wi-fi, and Bluetooth are all made by different companies.

But if you try to replace a single-phase AC 120V 60Hz 5A 0.5hp motor in an appliance with another of a different brand with exactly the same power rating, it probably won't work. The taxes are not the problem--it's getting the parts. As long as the only reliable source of usable replacement parts is the original manufacturer, of course repairing won't be viable. They would much rather sell you an entirely new product!

I think this is a bad idea. Standards are nice, but companies shouldn't be coerced into using them because there can be legitimate reasons to not use a standard. It prevents innovation not envisioned by the standard.

I really think the simplest way to make this sort of thing happen is to increase the minimum warranty period. If 8 year warranties become mandatory, companies will need to be able to stock replacement parts for much longer if they don't want to have to replace the machine outright with a newer model when it breaks. They may then find that standardising parts is in their interests, etc.

Standards can change when necessary, in a way that gives all participants in the market ample warning, so that no one goes bankrupt when the big companies suddenly change direction.

When PCI was introduced, motherboard manufacturers gradually increased the number of available PCI slots and reduced the number of ISA slots until the point where most of the market really didn't want that last ISA slot as much as they needed another PCI slot. ISA is still a standard. Nobody uses it because PCI was better. Likewise, AGP appeared, and then went away, because PCIe is better. Wi-fi standards have likewise evolved, from A, to B, to G, to N, to AC. Many devices are backward-compatible.

But an ATX motherboard manufactured last week will still fit in the ATX tower case I bought in 1999, with a power supply I bought in 2009. The original manufacturer of that case does not need to stock parts for it, or even still be in business, because if I want another 120mm case fan, 10 different companies can sell me a new one that will fit (and 20 more would be willing to buy a fan from one of the former 10, stencil a logo on it, and resell it to me at a markup).

Perhaps it would be better to enforce a mandatory standard for 10 years, to establish it in the market, then make it voluntary again, so that innovation could occur. Once a standard exists, there has to be a really good reason for deviating from it, otherwise the market quickly allows the non-standard thing to fail. If it succeeds, it becomes a new de facto standard, and the official standard is likely to either adopt it outright or make the next version compatible.

I think you absolutely do have to coerce a standard if one does not already exist. But after it exists, it is largely self-enforcing.

To buck off the standard entirely, you literally have to be the size of Apple. And even then, I know for certain that there is at least one person alive that refuses to buy Apple hardware in part because of their proprietary connector shenanigans in a world where USB is a standard.

Non-standards can lead to standards. AMD's Mantle graphics API, for example, was donated to the GLnext effort, which was then renamed Vulkan. If not for this kick start, GLnext would probably still be figuring out a decent API design. Companies need to have the prerogative to do their own thing for a while, because it can lead to better standards.

>I think you absolutely do have to coerce a standard if one does not already exist.

I think I actually had this idea recently, with regard to print cartridges. The idea is that the government would mandate inkjet printers to adopt an open standard for print cartridges, but the law would expire after a number of years. The idea is that once it's established, no company is going to be able to get out of it without damaging their position in the market, but genuine innovation is allowed to appeal to consumers on its own merits, weighed against the downside of divergence from an established standard.

The ATX standard is the reason why no one bothers buying desktop computers any more except extremists and gamers. These computers are way too large and inefficient and ridiculously noisy too, because they aren't properly engineered for sound and ventilation (because they're held back by the 90s-era ATX standard).

Everyone's just given up on it altogether and now they use laptops, or worse, tablets.

Even corporate desktops abandoned ATX ages ago and went to proprietary SFF cases.

I am moving from a laptop as my at-home computer to a quiet-build mini-ITX system literally this week, after the last parts arrive from Newegg.

I think the ongoing market fragmentation resulting from the incompatible proprietary laptop form factors is pushing the whole industry towards consolidation and mergers, and will result in less consumer choice in the long run. I have been privately railing against this crap ever since Dell started shipping not-ATX-but-looks-like-it-at-first-glance power supplies in late 1990s. And Apple has always almost gratuitously used proprietary connectors and form factors, even when a perfectly usable standard already existed. They can all go to a Hell where nothing can interoperate without at least two adapters, and you never have both.

I was driven to the custom build when the headphone jack on my laptop broke. I opened up the case and desoldered the broken one, and the microphone jack, and resoldered the unbroken jack into the headphone jack's place. That worked for a while. Then the laptop keyboard stopped responding to about 5 keys--all of them rather indispensable for typing words. So I replaced the keyboard, and the replacement is just a millimeter too small, so it constantly pops out of its recess whenever it shifts and the plastic clips disengage. Then the headphone-jack-formerly-microphone-jack broke like its predecessor. I already knew the component itself was impossible to find to replace it, so I looked to replace the motherboard. That would cost more than a newer, more capable laptop, if the part had even been in stock.

So I'm building a system such that if anything breaks, I can just replace that one part. I can't get decent repairability without building it myself, and I can't build it myself if there aren't any rassafrassin' standards! I would have built my own clamshell computer (not even necessarily a "laptop"), but no one mass-produces an empty clamshell case for consumer sales, because there is no laptop-standard form factor. Replacement parts for laptops are always expensive, and frequently out of stock.

I did something of the opposite: I used to have a big desktop. I got a laptop later so I could do stuff at coffee shops and elsewhere. But I eventually got tired of the size and noise of the desktop (even though it was loaded with big, slow 120mm fans), and of the syncing issues with the laptop. I had wanted to build a quiet miniITX system, but finally gave up on that idea because of everything I've seen with "standard" ATX and ITX cases: they just are not engineered for quietness. The best you can do is go to water cooling, and I find it ridiculous that I'd have to go to those lengths for some quiet.

So instead I've just gone the laptop route. I can buy a Dell enterprise-level Latitude laptop on Ebay for $150 easily, that's only a few years old, and it's portable and quiet and reliable. It even comes with a magnesium chassis. And if it breaks, I can buy a new one for $150 and resell the old broken one on Ebay to someone who wants the parts. These laptops are extremely ubiquitous (because they're used by so many businesses), so the parts are readily available if I want to just repair it, plus they're built to be fairly easily serviced (the older E6400 and E6410 had only one screw on the back panel). If you were buying consumer laptops, that was your problem: those things are crap and not made for easy servicing. You complain about "if the part had even been in stock": on my Dells, I can easily buy any part I want on Ebay: a new screen, a new motherboard, a new keyboard, a bare back panel, a speaker grill, anything. Everything is in stock.

You don't need to build a laptop yourself to get decent repairability; you just need to get a decent laptop and not a consumer-grade POS.

Then, so I can have a nice workstation, I got a docking station that supports dual DVI/DisplapyPort monitors, USB3, etc. These docking stations are standardized for Dell business laptops, so I can plug a huge range of them into it.

> Standards can change when necessary

When they are mandated by law, they can't. At least not easily and not without giving lawmaking powers to a group of private entities.

An alternative to mandating standard designs is to mandate open designs -- royalty-free licenses and documentation must be adequate for third parties to manufacture and improve all parts.

>Water efficiency regulations also appear to have forced modern washing machines to use inadequate water for rinsing. There are numerous stories of hypoallergenic people who find that their new washing machine leaves significant detergent in clothing.

This is because people always use way too much detergent. Stop it. You don't need that much detergent. Get the "he" detergent and follow the directions. You don't need a giant amount of detergent to get your clothes clean.

This is exactly like all the stupid people who always adjust the side mirrors on their car so they have a great view of the sides of their car, instead of trying to minimize their blind spots.

>There are numerous stories of hypoallergenic people who find that their new washing machine leaves significant detergent in clothing. Some people have even tracked down old (and for that matter better made) washing machines just to get one which will rinse properly.

They most likely need to just use less detergent. You actually need a very small fraction of the detergent most people use and over soaping is a big problem. It's a combo of more concentrated detergent mixed with machines that require less detergent.

Previous models were more tolerant of over soaping.

It still feels weird to me to use so little detergent.

Regarding rinsing of clothes. People tend to use WAY more detergent then they need. If you look at what consumers reports suggests and what detergent manufacturers suggest, there is a 4 to 1 ratio.

>just to get one which will rinse properly Much easier to do what I do - run the rinse cycle a 2nd time.

It might be better to run a wash cycle with an empty detergent drawer. Repeating the same rinse cycle with inadequate water won't necessarily help. (Though it wouldn't surprise me if the standalone 'rinse' programme used more water than rinsing as part of a wash programme...)

Supposedly the 'extra rinse' or 'rinse plus' buttons which you see on washing machines only started appearing at the same time they stopped rinsing properly, which is pretty telling.

Buy MIELE, those survive for decades.

Probably the least worst option unless you want to buy (very expensive) commercial/industrial models.

The main downside to Miele that I'm aware of is that unlike other manufacturers they monopolise repairs, i.e. only Miele repairmen can repair Miele machines, AFAIK.

Also while Miele machines are better built they still use short warranties. Here Miele claims to test their machines to 20 years equivalent use: http://www.miele.co.uk/domestic/washing-machines-1566.htm?ma...

Yet they still only offer 2 years warranty as standard. IIRC they occasionally offer free 10 year warranties for brief periods for promotional purposes. So they sometimes put their money where their mouth is, but only occasionally.

Actually, in Germany all better models come with 10 year warranties, and they allow most people to repair them.

(We got a Miele washing machine in 2006, and after good experiences with that, we also switched our dishwasher in 2009 to Miele)

Thanks for the clarification re: repairs.

But I checked the (UK) Miele website just now and it seems like warranties there are 2 years by default, with extended warranties of 10 years available. So maybe this varies by region. Maybe German consumers are savvier than UK consumers and demand longer warranties?