Hacker News Reader

I'd love to see a store that sells buy-it-for-life style products that are probably more expensive up front but also built to last, all with robust warranties so you know the claims are backed up. A place you could go into and know everything in there was good. If you wanted the cheapest you'd go somewhere else but man, I'd shop there.

They could do appliances (stuff like SpeedQueen washers), hand and garden tools, kitchen stuff like pots and pans and knives... just anything that's solid and lasts and doesn't require ridiculous maintenance to make it so.

Sometimes now I'd be willing pay more but either I can't even find the stuff that isn't cheap junk, or I just can't tell what's going to break and what isn't.

Yes! I absolutely agree. The store could also offer repair services. (Gasp!) I wonder where a market for such a store would exist, though.

You're describing Sears, no? Sarcasm doesn't read so well on the internet but yeah my parents still have a washing machine from probably 1970 in their house. The matching dryer finally gave up on them about 5 years back... that thing was still to this day the best dryer I ever used. Run it 30 minutes, even the heaviest towels were crispy dry and almost too hot to handle when you took them out.

I think having high quality appliances is partially why Sears tanked... First they didn't sell as many (due to having to compete on price with lower quality / cheaper products), then when they found a way to compete (having Samsung make Kenmore appliances, for example), they lost the quality and the last reason anyone would opt to go there over Costco or Amazon or Home Depot.

I bought a matching Washer / Dryer set from Costco. Then the next year I bought a Fridge and Dishwasher from LG there too. For the first three years or so it was fine, but about 5 years in I think they all have issues. My house is about 20 years old, and the Dishwasher I replaced was the original... so it lasted 15 years. I can say that the new (and fairly top of the line) Dishwasher has more issues at 5 than the old builder-grade one had at 15. I really regret not getting a Bosch...

But even up into the 80s and 90s Sears / Maytag were known for selling top quality goods that didn't break. Here's a cute commercial.

* 1988 Maytag Repairman Commercial - YouTube || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZHsxPEAUOI

Heh, our house is 20 years old too but the appliances they put in are terrible! Got a cheap warped Westinghouse oven that we have to prop closed with a guitar stand.

Some of the blame for appliance quality rot (though certainly not all of it) can be laid at the feet of the government. With new efficiency and safety regulations it becomes impossible to legally sell a dryer that can get your towels crispy dry in 30 minutes.

Sears is a lost cause. The only thing keeping them afloat is the value tied up in their real estate holdings.

> With new efficiency and safety regulations it becomes impossible to legally sell a dryer that can get your towels crispy dry in 30 minutes.

I hadn't even thought about this.

Funny... my parents have a very low energy bill compared to mine... even using these "old" appliances. I think it has more to do with the fact that they have a smaller house, and still prefer to wash dishes by hand, and don't leave any computers on or have an air conditioning system. Makes me wonder how much "efficiency" at the appliance-level matters. No doubt the EPA isn't a bad investment, but I don't think they are regulating the things that really matter. Homes built in the 1950s were tiny... like 1,200 - 1,500 sqft. Average house today is 2,700 sqft. And there are a lot more bells and whistles going into it.

This is why in a lot of European countries you can only get condenser dryers now, rather than vented dryers. I guess there's a fire safety aspect too (i.e. vents blocked up with highly flammable lint, static electricity and heat), but I think it's mainly because of energy efficiency.

It's a bit ironic though, because there is a lot more stuff that can and will go wrong in a £600 heat-pump condenser dryer vs a £150 vented dryer. If they are both equally designed to be 'disposable' which is really better for the environment?

I thought washing dishes was often less efficient when done by hand? (Depends on the amount of dishes and a lot of other factors though, I suppose.)

My house is about 70 years old. When I bough it in 2008, there were several old appliances (probably on the order of 25-30 years old) and they worked like champs, until the washing machine failed. I replaced it with a used old washing machine.

Eventually the dryer stopped working and I started looking for replacements. I stopped at a local used appliance place and described the problem, the guy who worked there suggested that since it was one of the old sturdy types, it might be a simple repair. I had him come out and he took a looks. It was a bad fuse. $40 later, I was back in business.

I dread the day when I can no longer have them repaired and have to replace them with disposable appliances.

I'd pay a monthly payment for having a washer that I can always expect to work and get serviced if it doesn't, along with regular service.

I know I can lease washers, but the price makes is such that I might as well buy and replace every so often. 2 years amount to buying the machine, and most machines last longer than that. But pay to lease a commercial grade washer would be great.

Anytime I do anything around appliance shopping, the ability to get information about what is actually quality is near zero. It's SEO'd, spammed, paid-reviewed, and marketed into the ground.

Mattresses are similar, but fortunately, there is https://www.themattressunderground.com/ , which is a high quality site. I bought a Tuft and Needle mattress based on my learning there and it has been spectacular.

Similar needs to happen for appliances.

> appliance shopping, the ability to get information about what is actually quality is near zero

Do you know about Consumer Reports?[1]

It's a non-profit organization which puts out a magazine (and website) which does unbiased product testing, has zero advertising, pays for all the products they test, never takes sample products, buys all their products anonymously (so they can't be given better samples for testing purposes), and has extensive laboratories, procedures, scientist/technicians for testing (a private track for testing cars, for example).

I never heard of anyone saying that Consumer Reports was fraudulent or paid-reviewed. Appliances are things that they definitely review all the time.

The downsides of Consumer Reports are as follows:

- it's U.S. based, so it's focused on products available in the U.S.

- for appliances, say a washing machine, they are going to pick only 10-20 models to review, even though there may be hundreds of models on the market

- there are a million things they'll never review because they are not an ordinary, common, consumer purchases; you'll never see reviews of oscilloscopes :-)

[1] http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm

> The downsides of Consumer Reports are as follows:

Another downside, as the article pointed out, is the intentional smokescreen of multiple product names and slightly differing versions that make comparison shopping and meaningful reviews virtually impossible, and why I don't get as much value from my Consumer Reports subscription as I used to.

This is particularly prevalent in the mattress industry.

Part of it is brand reputation stripping. If a brand gets a good reputation, some big conglomerate buys it and starts using it to make trash, and it takes time for consumers to learn it through the grapevine. This happens far too often to be mere coincidence.

It's not a coincidence. But that doesn't mean it's a global conspiracy.

You stated the entire cause->effect very succinctly yourself: "If a brand gets a good reputation, some big conglomerate buys it and starts using it to make trash, and it takes time for consumers to learn it through the grapevine"

It is an extremely straightforward way for a company to make quick money.

When appliances are out of date in ten years because new electronics provide better features, why should customers or makers spend extra to get them to last longer?

Depends on the device. Both our fridge and washing machine are 20 years old, and still going strong. New models offer nothing that we value - I don't want to attach either of them to the internet.

Companies could offer a 20 year warranty to signal that their products are intended to last a long time.

quality will not determine what they buy

BS. It's my #1 criteria when buying something.

Along the same lines, probably the easiest way to get quality in almost every type of product is to buy the commercial version. The people using these products are very familiar with them, so nobody sells garbage.

Businesses are also generally more conservative in future projections and less price sensitive than consumers.

I personally started doing this a few years ago. I even have a throwaway LLC that sounds nebulously like a contractor so I can sign up for "industry only" marketplaces. Since I can usually get wholesale prices doing this, I pay only maybe 30% more than for crap consumer level throwaway stuff.

The major downside is the time it takes, but the upside is that none of my stuff ever breaks.

>more conservative in future projections and less price sensitive than consumers.

Which means that if you need some replacement part in the future it's going to cost even more.

Perhaps, but they'll be available at all, and the device will be repairable.

I don't even mind that modern appliances break so often; it's the fiddly plastic bits and lack of parts that are the problem. Give us something made of metal with some screws and the damn thing can probably be fixed.

(re: the article topic, this is another thing that's kept me away from automobiles for the past twenty years)

Neat idea.

What's a good one of these marketplaces?