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Comment by adhesive_wombat | Hacker News Reader

I wish companies would be forced to do that same for everything, and at a reasonable cost.

It's infuriating how if I buy, say, a dishwasher, and the heater pump goes, it's around £100 for a new one, but the whole machine costs maybe £400. Are you telling me that all that steel and plastic and motors and controllers and labor and profit and shipping and everything is actually 75% of the cost, and 25% of the entire value of my dishwasher is tied up in the value of that one part, the one that happened to need replacement?

And don't get me started on cars!

If we as species cared about sustainability (we don't), companies would have to sell their parts for little enough that you could buy all the parts for a whole new machine for no more than the cost of the new machine. That would focus their minds on using interchangeable, standard, COTS parts to avoid having to maintain SKUs and also avoid having the parts fail in the first place. Rather, now, it's highly profitable to make parts fail: you either get to ding the customer for a replacement part at 500% markup, or they give in and buy a whole new machine, and the old one goes to scrap.

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While I'm not defending the fact that many companies do rip people off in their spare parts prices,

> Are you telling me that all that steel and plastic and motors and controllers and labor and profit and shipping and everything is actually 75% of the cost, and 25% of the entire value of my dishwasher is tied up in the value of that one part, the one that happened to need replacement?

You're forgetting that the spare part also needs similar logistics, shipping, support, etc. around it, so you would expect ordering one of every part separately to cost far more than ordering a single machine even before they put any further markup on it.

Right, and those aspects are expensive because they don't have economies of scale because they either don't really want people to use them too much, and if people do want to use them they'll squeeze them. They'd rather people scrap machines and get new ones. And even if I then swear off "unreliable" Hotpoint machines and go for Siemens, some Siemens customer will make the reverse trip, so they all profit together.

If they all had to provide all the parts at a reasonable cost, they'd figure out a way to get it done. I'm sure Siemens, say, can figure out a way to ship a part by part number efficiently, considering its already on a shelf somewhere.

And if you a company don't want to pay for that? Use a standard part. Now it's not your problem.

It'll never happen, but it's nice to think about as the world drowns in piles of ruined single-use equipment, while the money spent on replacing them flows endlessly corporate pockets.

That’s the thing: they’re already selling the service parts at a reasonable cost.

What’s “too cheap” in your situation is the highly automated, continuous conveyance, mass production line that can take in parts by the container load and pump out fully-functioning dishwashers for less than a week’s wages.

> That’s the thing: they’re already selling the service parts at a reasonable cost

What is the basis for this assetion? What data or information have you used to come to this conclusion?

That there are a variety of OEM and third-party parts suppliers to choose from and when I buy appliance parts, I frequently find them to be “pretty what I expect them to cost as compared to automobile service parts”. This is not a monopolized supply chain.

The last appliance part I bought was the motor for my gas dryer. Several parts places had it. Amazon had the best price by a small amount and I got an exact fit OE motor in 2 days for $114. A year later, that price has soared to $109 and is now available for next-day delivery.

How much less do you think it should possibly cost to be able to order an exact fit ~10 pound, ~1/3 HP dryer motor on a Sunday for Monday delivery? $109 seems like an incredible bargain to me, even if Amazon and Frigidaire pocketed $20 each of pure, obscene profit.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053Y3A8M/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_...

They can just put every tenth one in the box unassembled.

Problem solved.

Bosch/Siemens actually have really good website for buying spare parts and they sell them at reasonable prices even to consumers, and even for things that cost <50€.

There are a ton of third-party parts companies--which do tend to be somewhat cheaper, albeit of probably more variable quality. So unless you assume there's some global conspiracy of spare parts pricing, you're probably seeing a reflection of a bunch of piece parts actually costing more than the assembled appliance/car/etc.

> You're forgetting that the spare part also needs similar logistics, shipping, support, etc. around it, so you would expect ordering one of every part separately to cost far more than ordering a single machine even before they put any further markup on it.

This seems like a problem that could be solved by standardizing the parts among multiple models (possibly between different brands), so if legally mandating availability of replacement parts encourages that, it might not be a bad thing.

Why even have multiple brands? Why not just have the government enforce a single manufacturer for each type of item and standardize everything? They could plan if all centrally and… oh wait.

Why have any rules about what the manufacturers must do at all?

Let them sell us autonomous cars for $1,000 which need a $5,000 subscribtion to drive. Oh, you want to put child i a car, the car won't start unless you add a child add-on.

Oh, you need to go to the hospital, because your wife is giving birth, that will be extra $5,000 one-time fee.

I can hear Amazon's self driving car division furiously taking notes.

The point is, if you don't want to support spares for your device, you have the option of using standard parts.

If you want your own part, you have to either make it available, or you have to make it reliable enough that you don't need to.

That would remind the incentive to have parts that fail be profitable. Making unreliable and unserviceable devices should cost you more.

Just mandate reasonably long warranty to force things to be reliable.

Ask any Detroit auto design shop and they’ll tell you an auto maker’s parts bin (parts they can throw into every new vehicle to avoid needing to set up more logistics pipelines) often hurts more than it helps in terms of improving on pain points in building and using cars; Tesla’s octovalve is the testament to what can be improved when you don’t have to use existing parts to fulfill a function with headroom for improvement in terms of weight and efficiency.

This makes total sense. Rewriting code is often easier than reuse. The purpose written code doesn't have to fulfill use cases that don't apply to it, it can make optimizations because of that. The old code doesn't have to start supporting use cases it was never designed for too, so it can stay simpler. Don't repeat yourself, but its ok to speak in original sentences rather than use somewhat applicable quotes for everything you want to convey. For physical parts the number of ways an old part might fail to meet new use cases seems vastly larger than in software, so I'd guess its even more applicable.

Tesla doesn’t buy the octovalve from other suppliers but it uses the same module in every model they make.

If you search appliance parts you’ll discover that’s already being done - the part for your dishwasher will fit fifty other dishwashers from a very surprising cross section of brands.

At this point, "brands" are just the multiple marketing face of conglomerates.

3 years ago I was tasked with buying a cheap TV for an older relative. After spending an afternoon checking what's available, I realized virtually all low end models look the same and have the exact same menus.

Not terribly surprising but I didn't expect everything to be exactly the same across that many know and unknown brands

TVs are down to three panel manufacturers if I recall correctly - so it’s literally the chrome and maybe the bundled apps that differ.

This can be an advantage as sometimes you can flash default firmware to turn a cheap yumcha monitor into a better one.

Not entirely true. Some manufacturers / more expensive product lines have access to higher quality panels. Furthermore anti-reflective coatings, backlights, and wide angle view coatings can all vary widely.

This is one of the reasons I still buy dumb appliances. I recently just more or less rebuilt my cloths dryer for less than $75, New element, new belts, new sensors, etc...

Of course the sheet metal frame, motor, and controls are the same but on a dumb appliance those rarely fail. on a "Smart" appliance those the replacement "smart" controls can be more costly than the entire replacement unit

The seeming ridiculousness of the price difference is another way of looking at how hyper-efficient modern mass manufacturing is.

Their original cost for that part is miniscule. BUT! That's the cost of that part, being delivered to the assembly line, in bulk quantities, at a regular, predictable order cadence from the upstream supplier, over an unchanging delivery route, with minimal inventory kept on hand. Essentially, everything they can do to reduce the cost.

None of those things are true for a replacement part you order. It's an entirely different logistics chain, with entirely different costs.

> The seeming ridiculousness of the price difference is another way of looking at how hyper-efficient modern mass manufacturing is.

Reminds me of the Planet Money multipart story where they made a tshirt, from scratch. Bought cotton from a farmer, shipped it to a textile industry, contacted a tshirt making company, shipped it to the US.

The bulk of the cost in the end came from transporting the tshirt from the harbor to the store where it was sold.

> That's the cost of that part, being delivered to the assembly line, in bulk quantities, at a regular, predictable order cadence from the upstream supplier

I am not buting this reasoning - the assebly line costs money to run, worker's time and salaries need to be paid, quality control and warranty to be done. A part sold by itself needs none of those things.

While you are taling to me about how difficult logistics of a $200 part justifies a 500% markup, i can buy a $3 led from China with free shipping. This doesnt add up

This is generally because USPS effectively subsidizes international shipment. The same $2 LED shipment might be $10 DHL (and free shipping isn’t free, the seller is making their margins with shipping costs included).

So you allow the manufacturer to charge for delivery (based, on, say, some average delivery cost for the weight, rather then allowing inflated S&H costs to be a new profit centre rewarding unreliable items).

Or, if you really want to stamp down about it, you do not allow them to recoup delivery costs and that's their punishment for making an unreliable machine in the first place.

Yes, and in your perfect world - manufacturers know full in advance about part life? There are hundreds of parts that make up the build of material of an appliance.

This means simply that parts won't ship and service is only done at approved manufacturer facilities. OH wait...

Not anymore, Trump modified the EMS packet from china to USA thing to remove subsidies. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/trump...

This was 2018.

That assembly line's costs are amortized over the rate of production (high): that's the essence of mass manufacturing.

> A part sold by itself needs none of those things.

A part sold by itself needs so many more things!

Where do you store it? How do you organize it there? How do you keep track of your inventory? How do you re-order new inventory? How much do you re-order? How long do you typically have to store? How do you source substitute suppliers when your original goes out of business? How do you QC stock? Etc. Etc.

All of that for multiples of the part count that goes into a single model, because you sell more than one model.

You can buy a $3 LED from China (see sibling comment for economics on free shipping) because you're buying the current model / whatever version they feel like giving you.

"Part specs may be subject to variation" doesn't work so well with more complex systems.

Wow, no one says you have to get a spare part to a customer tomorrow morning. Just grab one before it goes to assembly line, ship it with the actual completed machines to a distribution center where it will go to the customer from there. There's nothing "new," except at the beginning/end of the chain, just add a few more of those parts to the next order of them. If it will impact operations to take a few from the beginning, some of those spares will have to be delayed. That's ok, tell the customer 6-8 weeks to deliver a spare part. That was pretty standard shipping times when I was younger.

> Just grab one before it goes to assembly line, ship it with the actual completed machines to a distribution center

So customers can only order replacement parts while assembly lines are currently doing production runs?

What if it's no longer being manufactured or on assembly line? HOw do you grab it before assembly line?

And comingling parts with completed machines? Heh. You have no idea of the distribution chain of b2b retail goods vs b2c service repair and such.

6-8 weeks repair time is still common, especially nowadays.

This is sort of liking saying “how hard could it really be to do a special software build for one customer?”

I guess it depends on how you CI and build process is setup. Caddy does an excellent job of doing per-customer custom builds.

If you just "grab one before it goes to assembly line" this will likely have a huge impact on the assembly line. Factories put a lot of effort into managing inventory of material. Lead times on parts can often be in the months if not years. If there are unexpected shortages of parts and subassemblies, the hourly or daily costs of a line down can be enormous. Shipping one of something to an end consumer is usually a completely different supply chain than shipping containers full of finished goods to distribution centers which then go to retail. Taxes, tariffs, shipping methods, etc are all completely different. You can't just commingle things like this easily.

We once had to drive special parts for one car by taxi cab to the factory, in single figure quantities, to not let the line stop and pay the fine... "just in time" production can be hell...

"Where do you store it? How do you organize it there? How do you keep track of your inventory?"

I am sorry but these questions come across as extremely silly - this is not rocket science, even manufacturers of beer have to figure out these things, if you can't manage a warehouse, you would not be able to be any kind of serious manufacturer in the first place.

They're not difficult, but they are expensive. Which is what ends up in prices.

Check warehouse rates or spot freight shipping.

It is not as silly as it sounds. I am working for a big manufacturer (of products that don't require any spare parts) and the warehouse space is minimal, sometimes raw materials from the suppliers are unpacked and weighted directly on the production line, not going through any warehouse; the finished products are wrapped at the end of the line and loaded directly in the trucks, not going in a local warehouse.

That means if a new requirement appears to add something in the warehouse, space needs to be added. In some cases space does not exist around the plant, so you need to get some space in a warehouse somewhere else, most probably managed by a third party with higher costs, then integrate an inventory management software with that third party warehouse. This is already very complex for a manufacturing plant with zero budget for IT projects and the cheapest IT people needed to keep the lights on.

> i can buy a $3 led from China with free shipping

International shipping is not even close to being a level playing field:

"Arcane rules established by the 144-year-old Universal Postal Union make it possible for a Chinese e-retailer to send a package across the Pacific to a customer in the U.S. at a cost lower than what an American competitor would spend to ship the same item to a neighboring state"[0]

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-18/trump-...

Interestingly, the same is valid for Europe - I got tons of shipping from Shenzen for free, and the item costed like 1$ (ie USB cables).

That’s a 2018 article and EMS rules have materially changed since then.

I am not in US

You’re probably in a country in the UPU.

We have many industries of examples where this solved also by market forces as well

Cars as an example, the key here is to allow the market to MAKE replacement parts, and compete to selling them. Stop vendor lock-in

If I want to buy replacement part for my car I often have a selection of 3-5 different vendors making the replacement in addition to the OEM.

You can not tell me that appliances, electronics, etc are that much different from cars that similar solutions can not be found. Especially given that most of these things are just off the shelf parts that the OEM combines into a product anyway

There are many third-party appliance/electronics parts companies.

Yeah - and the problem here is that there are many parts.

Getting a plastic wheel for my dishwasher's lower roller shelf is $12 from a third-party source (it's $16 from the manufacturer). It's like four grams of plastic. But the rarity of demand just doesn't make it make sense to keep in stock.

(That sort of thing has me halfway convinced to buy a 3D printer. I just don't have anywhere to put it yet.)

Make sure to check for generic wheels too! I think 90% of dishwashers have the same wheels but with different parts numbers.

Good shout! The wheels are largely interchangeable but the wheel mounts on the basket aren't (and one of them popped free and melted on the heating element just this week!).

true, however the current trend is to lock down the parts and prevent companies from making replacement parts via the use of DRM, serialization, and other controls that have nothing to do with security, usability, or anything other than preventing repair

Hell even Paper has DRM now, see the Latest Dymo label printers

How do these parts get recertification ie how do we know the anti skid brakes still work after using third party wheel speed sensor on just one wheel?

If the third party parts went through the same certification process, they would be more expensive than genuine parts.

It is based on specifications and standards. In this case the original part has some specifications that aftermarket parts can meet.

Why can aftermarket suppliers make the same part much cheaper?

Sampling error. Aftermarket suppliers only get involved when they can make and sell a replacement part at a compelling price point.

As was just pointed out, making the part isn’t a large fraction of the cost of a replacement part. So, they need to both make the part and handle the full logistics chain to undercut prices.

Aftermarket suppliers have even more of a logistical burden than the OEM. They cater to a smaller market, and need to set up manufacturing for the part (which the OEM already has). Yet they still can sell the parts for substantially less.

I don't buy that as a factor. Given that the OEMs overprice the parts that they have to compete with aftermarket suppliers for, why would they NOT overprice the parts for which they have no such competition?

Note that being unable to profitably replicate the part does not necessarily mean that the part is naturally expensive, or that the OEM already sells it at a reasonable price. The part could just as well be hard to reverse engineer and QA for a third party, or the effort to do that might not be worth it given unknown level of demand, etc. OEM can actually have a natural price advantage over third parties in such complex parts.

This is called survivorship bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias.

This works when a part is widely used, creating a decent market for the part.

If the part is only used say in a single model of dishwasher, there will never be enough demand to justify the creation of an aftermarket one.

The heating element of my Miele washing machine broke after about 4 years, and a genuine spare part would have cost 100€. I got a 3rd party replacement part that looks completely identical for 20€. I'm pretty sure there's still a healthy profit margin on that, since they cost half of that on Ali Express. And if the original part breaks after 4 years, the aftermarket part can't be much worse.

The only reason that Miele spare parts are so fucking expensive is because they make a lot of money with service. They don't want people fixing their own machines for 20€, they want to have a Miele service person come and swap the part for 250€.

EDIT: And don't tell me that logistics for a heating element are hard. All Miele washers have been using the same heating element for 15 years or so, it's a drop in replacement for the previous version of the part, and it's probably also the single part that breaks most often. That part should be easy to stock and the cost to do so should be trivial.

Looks identical and is identical are two different concerns though. I bought a (used) dryer from a small appliance vendor that looked identical to the new one right next to it for half as much. It was only a year later when it stopped working and I opened it up that I discovered where a thermal fuse should be there was just a straight piece of non high temp wire that had melted and thankfully not burned my house down when it failed. Which isn't to say that first party parts may not be marked up for profit, just that external looks of things don't tell you anything about the actual internal construction.

I agree with your point in general. I have bought spare parts from sketchy websites in the past and sometimes they are not as good as the original. You can usually tell the difference if you look at them closely.

But heating elements are very simple parts, and I bought it from a reputable local store, so I don't really worry that I'm getting an unsafe part. It's probably going to fail in a few years due to corrosion just like the original part (we have very hard water), and then I'll swap it again.

Heating Element sounds just the trick to start a fire

It's typical to have a markup goal of at least 10x going from place of origin to destination market. It is a scam. Source: involved in electronic design and manufacture.

It's not a scam - they just don't particularly want to be in the business of supplying parts, so they charge a premium. You can buy an alternative if you like.

Not markup on the parts. The whole product you are initially sold.

The conversation is about the disparity in pricing between parts as spares and parts assembled into the original product.

Differences beyond 2x are still a clear indication that official replacement parts are a scam.

Also, the costs were not so absurdly high 20, 40 or 60 years ago!

Making a profit, even a large one, is not in and of itself a scam.

Nice strawman there.

> Differences beyond 2x are still a clear indication that official replacement parts are a scam.

How are you not saying that they're making too much money and it's therefore "a clear indication" that it's a scam?

I'd love to be told why I'm wrong rather than just "hurr durr strawman"

Read my message again and read your reply again then.

Selling replacement parts with an unreasonable markup is a form of bait and switch: the customer buys the product thinking that it will have a given TCO over its lifetime. Only after some time the customer learns that the TCO is much higher when a replacement is needed.

You twisted my words by claiming that making a profit is not a scam.

AFAICS making a profit without providing an equitably commensurate value in return, as consideration for the payment the profit comes from, is the very definition of a scam.

Trying to make the math easy, if official parts cost $80 to produce due to licensing or whatever, and are sold for $100, is it necessarily a scam if you can produce functionally similar parts without the licensing concerns for, say, $10, but charge $90 for them?

Huge profit margin, but you're able to produce much more cheaply than a competitor. Some would say you earned that margin, and in a fair and open market if someone else can also produce them for $10 you'll see prices start falling quickly. If they can't, I don't see how it's a "scam" for you to make money in that scenario.

> fair and open market

Again the same strawman. There is nothing "fair and open" in price gauging replacement parts in a market where buyers cannot compare quality, reliability, durability and TCO across products, replacement parts, repair services and guarantees.

> straight piece of non high temp wire that had melted

I am not sure if that is what you mean, but to me it sounds like they might have purposefully put there so that it works like a thermal fuse.

This was responding to a comment saying that the cost was justified by logistics issues even if the part itself was dirt cheap. The fact that you can in fact find way cheaper parts shows that the logistic argument is BS.

> The only reason that Miele spare parts are so fucking expensive is because they make a lot of money with service. They don't want people fixing their own machines for 20€, they want to have a Miele service person come and swap the part for 250€.

Just get a household appliances insurance policy.

I have some Miele kit, and I have an insurance policy.

If something breaks, I call the insurance company, get a code. Then I call Miele and book a service appointment using the code. As a result, I have never paid a thing to Miele, not parts, not labour. But I still get official Miele engineer and official Miele parts.

And for some of my older Miele kit (10+ years), they've been out a lot, because the insurance company still deems it more economical to repair than to get Miele to ship me a new one.

> Just get a household appliances insurance policy.

If the goal is convenience, then definitely. Home insurance policies are quite a lot more expensive than actual repair costs are likely to be. Which of course is expected, the product being sold is peace of mind and convenience -- both of which people happily pay a premium for.

> Home insurance policies are quite a lot more expensive than actual repair costs are likely to be.

Hahaha that's a good one... especially as we're talking about Miele here. ;-)

And you're factually wrong anyway.

I didn't say "home insurance", I said "household appliance insurance". Different thing, unless your home insurance happens to cover appliances.

My household appliances insurance is not expensive. It covers 5 appliances, unlimited call-outs, and you don't get screwed at renewal time if you've claimed on the insurance.

As I said, I've had Miele out A LOT over the years and I've never paid them a penny, and trust me on some of my older large appliances they've pretty much replaced 100% of the internal parts.

In sum, insurance companies are not selling their product at a loss, and if they are operating efficiently, they aren't selling their product to you at a loss either.

In fairness, I wouldn't be surprised if many of the people who have these insurance policies fail to claim on them or decide to replace their item when it breaks regardless of the insurance policy. A bit like the gym membership model, 90% of people don't use it at all.

Also like warranties.

e.g. I have a Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD drive that has just failed, and lost some of my important data. Its got a 5 year warranty and is only a year old. I doubt I will bother to go through the warranty claims hassle, because the end result is not worth it.

I would have to send it back to Samsung, with my commercially important data on it locked in the chips, and get back another drive which it seems is not particularly trustworthy to rely on again. I've had 2/5 Samsung SSD drives fail and won't be using them for anything important again, I've just ordered a Hynix to replace it.

Another case, I have had a washing machine fail under warranty recently, again about 1 year into a 5 year warranty. It took 7 weeks and many frustrating phone calls before someone came around to actually fix it. Next time I won't bother to get a new washing machine, I will get a second hand one, and when it breaks I will get another second hand one immediately so I don't have the problem of not having a washing machine for sooo long.

If you're at all handy with tools, fixing appliances is normally pretty simple. The parts are readily available and often you don't need more than a few screwdrivers and wrenches to do the job. I've saved thousands of dollars fixing appliances myself vs. discarding them and buying new.

The door hinge on our refrigerator started cracking after about 1.5 years. It was covered by the credit card warranty, so I tried working with a repair company. They charged $150 to show up and say they couldn't do anything, then quoted $900 to replace the whole door. It was a $1200 refrigerator. I spent an hour and fixed it myself with some aluminum extrusion and a few rivets, then got reimbursed $700 by the credit card company.

My sister in law's oven failed with the self cleaning lock activated. It's an in-wall unit so the repair tech could only think to start cutting apart the wall. Instead, I took a hacksaw blade and painstakingly sawed off the lock. Since I was already committed, we then pulled out the unit and bypassed the failed thermal switch long enough to "unlock" the mechanism. That probably saved at least $1200...

Yeah my father is a handyman and I did lots of house and other maintenance for quite a few year, in balance to the very mental aspects of software! However for now I'm focusing my creative energy on higher value economic activities and spending spare time on the beach yoga or music instead. Someone else can fix that stuff for now :)

The insurance company may have a deal with the repairers, so they're able to get repairs done cheaper than you can. If that's the case, it may be cheaper (on average) to have insurance than not to.

To the extent that they get special pricing, the insurance company will be pocketing the difference as extra profit, not passing it on to you.

As always the adage "if you can afford to self-insure, you should" applies. There are two reasons you should buy insurance: because you are required to by law, or because the cost of covering replacement or repair would be problematic (either financially or logistically).

The other issue with appliance insurance or extended warranty and the like, it dilutes the obligation of companies to honour consumer guarantees. Certainly in Australia companies have been fined and otherwise penalised for promoting paid extended warranties when they should have been instead offering to make sure they meet the "fit for purpose" obligations

There is one additional reason: if your circumstances make it likely that you will claim more than others, due to a cause that is not accounted for in the fee calculation.

Insurance companies operate at about 17% over premiums. Which means, for every dollar someone spends on insurance the company pays $0.83 in claims. This happens at a population level. Maybe you individually have a statistically above average amount of claims and collected more money than you spent. In which case congratulations. Maybe you are in a subpopulation (5x Miele owners) that the company is not accurately accounting for in their actuary tables. In which case the more this subpopulation signs up for insurance the higher premiums will increase, and perhaps if large enough the actuaries will catch on and raise your premiums as a subgroup.

Either way, the insurance company will turn a profit from premiums. I'm glad this policy has paid off for you, but "reducing costs" is not a good reason to purchase insurance. Insurance reduces risk and makes expenses more predictable.

The math isn’t as simple as you make it out to be. See insurance companies have volume and can negotiate better rates and policies. For example they can get 30-50%labor rate discounts or negotiate lower costs for recurring visits and discounted parts costs. As such is perfectly possible for insurance to be cheaper than uninsured services.

In which case it is less about being insurance and more about being an appliance servicing company - even if the work is outsourced.

Put the two together - insurance and appliance servicing company = your described scenario.

Exactly a lot of These companies are like hmos of appliances. Health insurance in the us isn’t really insurance either. If it was pure insurance most people would only by catastrophic

>Just get a household appliances insurance policy.

Any insurance is a conflict of interest. The entity responsible for paying out is the same entity responsible for if/how much you get paid out. Any for-profit insurance company is incentivized to pay out as little as possible, if any. Any litigation is likely to cost way more than the payout.

> Any insurance is a conflict of interest. The entity responsible for paying out is the same entity responsible for if/how much you get paid out.

What are you on about ?

Let me spell out how my appliances insurance policy works:

      1. I call $insurance_company and say "my appliance is broken"
      2. $insurance_company says "Ok, here's a code, call Miele, give them the code"
      3. Miele sends out engineer with parts who fixes the appliance
      4. I sign engineer's job sheet.
      5. The end.

To reiterate:

     - At no point have I given Miele my credit card. 
     - At no point have I given the Miele engineer my credit card.
     - At no point have I received a bill from Miele.
     - At no point have I paid Miele in any way shape or form
     - $insurance_company has taken care of everything, 100% of everything, every single time.

You must not live in the US. I see it's a German company, they have much stronger laws governing how they operate. In the US, there are laws, but they are scantly enforced. "Buyer beware." Corruption is gonna crash the insurance industry before too long.

But how much does the insurance cost? Are you positive this insurance, over the years, is cheaper than what you would have paid Miele directly?

> But how much does the insurance cost?

Mine is about 350 a year, but they work out a rate per-appliance and then give a discount on the total, so you can pay more (or less) depending on how many appliances you cover.

> Are you positive this insurance, over the years, is cheaper than what you would have paid Miele directly?

Absolutely.

A Miele call-out will set you back 150 call-out + 100/hour, plus parts on top.

Or (if Miele agree) you can pay a "fixed-price" 300 which covers parts and labour (but again, this is subject to Miele's agreement and that agreement is given on a per call-out evaluation).

And as I said, one of my Miele appliances is 10+ years old, they've been back a good few times replacing increasingly major parts each time, so now the only thing 10+ years old about it is the external casing !

Even if I bought the "official" Miele parts myself, I value my time at greater than zero ! So its still cheaper than me buying the parts and spending a half a day pulling out appliances and fitting parts.

And given the price of new Miele appliances, its not exactly like after 5 years I could afford to replace everything with brand new appliances, since that would cost A LOT more than 350x5.

Begs the question of why you keep buying Miele.

I've had exactly one home appliance failure in the last 10 years - an old fridge that finally died.

And yet, on average, the insurance company must be making a profit on their Miele policies otherwise they would not sell them or would not stay in business.

It sounds like you have a lemon appliance and were fortunate that you had the insurance.

> Any insurance is a conflict of interest. *

* Except group catastrophic

Ultimately, it's a math problem that must have a positive answer for the insurance company. If 100% of policyholders make claims, you generally pay that profit yourself.

However, in group catastrophic policy, the numbers add up. Substantially <100% of people file claims, so premiums can be set much lower, effectively giving you protection against an unlikely scenario at reasonable cost.

My grandfather was an actuary, and constantly griped that low-deductible policies shouldn't even be called "insurance."

If you want to create something like a national health benefit, do so. But don't confuse people by mislabeling it.

Group catastrophic, like all other insurance, is negative expected value in first-order effects, but improves predictability.

This is not fundamentally different from low-deductible policies. (Which may do more, proportionately to cost, to improve predictability if most variance is the number of frequency of low-cost events)

For those who use them. I avoid doctors as much as possible, so if I see one it is likely closer to a catastrophic situation than routine. I would much rather have cheap catastrophic insurance than more expensive low-deductible, because I am unlikely to use the latter.

>Ultimately, it's a math problem that must have a positive answer for the insurance company. If 100% of policyholders make claims, you generally pay that profit yourself.

Not necessarily. Simply holding onto large piles of other people's money can he profitable - eg banks.

That's part of the math problem.

Why not call it a buying club? You basically use volume to force negotiation of lower price

It seems to me insurance companies must break into two categories. The first are honest agents operating on a house-always-wins model. Meaning, over a sufficiently large time and sufficiently large customer base they pay out less than they receive, but only a normal cost + profit margin amount less. Pay out more than that and they go out of business.

The second category would be dishonest agents, which try to avoid payout and have windfall profits and basically skirt the line where lawsuits and reputational damage make that kind of profit impossible. Long term operation as such a business is challenging due to word of mouth, so they must often rebrand or change business names, or just make their products too confusing to understand.

Aliexpress vendors operate on very low margin. Compared to Miele, considering Washing Machines are such low volume products, and their brand commands premium, selling it at 80% margin gross doesn't sound too ridiculous.

To make it clear, I didn't buy the spare part from Ali Express. The spare part would have cost around 10€ on Ali Express.

I bought it for 20€ from a reputable local electronics parts dealer. The part I got for 20€ was a high quality 3rd party heating element compatible with Miele washers.

Miele came to my house and replaced my heating element for free on an 8 year old machine !

If it was out of the very generous warranty, I expect it would cost loads.

Replying to myself to add another data point:

Other manufacturers manage to sell spare parts at more reasonable prices. I just checked a random washing machine from Siemens, and they sell the heating element for 28€. Not quite as affordable as the aftermarket part I got, and they'll probably charge 5-10€ for shipping, but it's a lot more reasonable than the Miele part.

The $20 part outsourced its engineering to the $100 part organization. That’s not to say understanding that means you shouldn’t save yourself money.

If that's true, the weight of a spare part should correlate closely with its price, yet spark plugs are an order of magnitude cheaper than oxygen sensors.

There are a lot of factors in supply chain costs aside from weight. Order volume is a huge factor. If two parts have identical component costs and weights, but one is ordered in the UK say in the thousands per year, the end purchaser cost will be a lot lower than for a part where only a few people order one each year. In fact for the latter, it might not be possible to order it directly in the UK at all.

Oxygen sensors use platinum which makes them expensive.

And it also pretty much sums up how most people in Tech have minimal understanding of Supply Chains and logistics works. Even distribution alone, within a single country ( ignoring the cross border logistics ) is complex enough.

We're used to every "part' being downloadable at zero real cost.

It's hard to think about physical reality when that's how most of your life is.

Just my 2 cents, but worth noting I do run a retail business and about 20% of our revenue comes from old electronics we refurb in-house.

The reason that spare parts are so expensive has nothing to do with the cost of logistics or the scale of mass-production. The warehouse can simply order an extra pallet of parts and leave it on a rack as spares. Hell, this is probably what all of these businesses do.

The real reason the pump costs 100 pounds is because the customer has no reasonable alternative, so they will (begrudgingly) accept that before spending 400 pounds on a brand new machine.

If they found out the specific part number of the pump and ordered something compatible from an alternative supplier (I used to go to this effort when younger), it generally ends up costing around 1/5 of the price of an official one.

A spare part does not need similar logistics or shipping - in the case of a dishwasher for instance the delivery of a dishwasher requires a 2-person delivery which likely costs c£60-£70 in the UK, while a motor would be sent through a parcel carrier for c£3.50-£5.

Sure, ordering and delivering all the parts separately and individually would be more expensive, but let’s also not pretend that selling and shipping spare parts is prohibitively difficult and costly.

Why would a dishwasher need two people to deliver it in UK? Just one dude and a couple wheels is all I’ve seen needed in US.

It doesn't, my last dishwasher, washing machine and dryer all came with a single bloke and his trolley in the UK.

In the UK from most retailers this would be a 2 person delivery (and typically white goods form a large part of the volume of 2-man delivery networks).

> Why would a dishwasher need two people to deliver it in UK? Just one dude and a couple wheels is all I’ve seen needed in US.

Usually retailers will offer "room of choice" delivery in the UK for these sort of appliances, which means that the dishwasher will be delivered into the house which often requires a 2-person delivery. If you required an item such as a dishwasher to be delivered to a flat for instance, rather than just dropped off curbside outside a block of flats, that would typically require a 2-person delivery in the UK (See services such as DX 2-Man as an example of this type of operation).

Secondly, there is often a requirement for light assembly (i.e. simple installation, removal of packaging, plug in the appliance) which is usually a paid addition by the customer. As soon as you do this, it's often more effective to have all deliveries be 2-person rather than split up the delivery territories (although if you are going through a pallet network, depending on the item and service required, you may be able to split these).

If you don't need this and just want it dropping off outside the customers home (curbside delivery), the cost would usually be c£40 via a pallet network.

A man with a van is £90 for a half a day. Loading up a hackney with 15 dishwashers from a warehou seee on the outskirts of a city is also probably £90.

To clarify, my costs are from a central distribution center to home (not some sort of local washing machine shop delivering to your house).

The prices I've given are pretty normal commercial prices for a large item delivery to anywhere in the UK (excl. some parts of Scotland).

I gave a 2-person price because I was assuming some sort of 'white glove' service would be required for this, i.e. not just a curbside delivery but there would be an expectation to deliver the item to the kitchen, including if the person lives in a flat for instance. If a 2 person delivery wasn't required, the price would be closer to £40 for a curbside palletised delivery these days.

You might be able to get 15 dishwashers in a van, but delivering to 15 customers in 4 hours is way beyond what is realistic for this type of delivery (you simply won't get the delivery density required). A typical van delivery cost from a regional hub would be c£25-£30, but then you also have to consider the trunking cost from the NDC.

(Logistics is my day job, which is why I have a good idea on the costs of pallet networks, van networks and 2-person delivery networks, all of which I have received recent quotations for or calculated the costs of)

There are also perverse subsidies at play. My dad is in manufacturing, and realized that he could buy a complete, assembled part from his Chinese competitor for less than he could get the raw steel involved in manufacturing it. I imagine similar skewing is part of the story for the dishwasher.

Sears had a parts department where you could buy replacement appliance parts on appliance brands they sold. This is not a totally radical concept.

True, Sears had a great traditional operation with full pricing, well trained and paid employees, good service and sensible follow up support. However most people seem to want cheap appliances they can throw out and replace which is why Sears went bankrupt.

It works fine for cars, there is a massive third party market.

Yes, and we all could understand say a 200 percent markup plus international shipping. And even more for a cheap part.

But they make it really hard to get the parts.

In 2010 my Fisher-Paykel dishwasher broke. I called the repair service. They charged a little over $100 to tell me that it would cost DKK 6500 ($950) to replace the two broken water softener modules. I spent a long time time searching for a place to buy those modules. Eventually I found a place called Leeds Applicances (closed now) that would sell it to me for £68 + VAT + £20 shipping. I took me maybe 30 minutes to replace the modules, just a lot of connectors and tubes that had to be connected the same way.

Before that I had a dryer that started to make a horrible rattling sound. I refused to just replace the dryer and took it apart. I was some nylon wheel on the belt drive that was worn out. But no one was selling a replacement. I spent about a month complaining to the importer and in the end I went on my bicycle to the Zanussi importer in an industrial area outside Copenhagen and after waiting in their office for a long time I was allowed to buy this piece of nylon for $50. It probably cost less than $1 to produce and they had newer sold one to a consumer before.

Yes, but the company that assembles the (eg., in my case) an oven is 30minutes away from my home, and the company that makes the railings for the trays is 5 minutes away, but the railing mechanism still costs 100eur.

Lets be real here, the companies want you to buy a new product, and expensive parts are just one of the parts of planned obsolescence.

I have a two year old Bauknecht machine. Sadly realized too late the brand had been bought by the consumer-hating Whirlpool group. 600€ for a machine, that breaks exactly 25 months after we started using it. Lots of small plastic parts already broke in this time period as well, e.g. the basket.

It would be 180€ to get it repaired, spare parts are not available even aftermarket/Ali baba/... But then I know I'm going to need to call them once a year or so - so instead we buy a miele which is a higher initial price but longer lifetime in every test a d at least decent reparability.

Worse logistics, I would think.

With spare parts, you have to keep the machinery and the knowledge to produce spare parts around for a X years, or make sure your parts won’t degrade for X years, predict how many you’ll need, produce them up-front, and pay for storage.

That worked reasonably well when machines had fairly standard replacement parts. If your part doesn’t change for years, keeping manufacturing knowledge is almost free, and predicting the number of parts needed easier because of the law of large numbers (if you sell ten variants of a design, you may know you’ll need 100,000 ± 10,000 replacement widgets, but for each part that may mean 10,000 ± 5,000, so you’d have to stock 10 × 15,000, knowing you likely won’t need 40,000 of them)

However, current hardware production is very flexible. Making a part slightly different to slightly improve a design is doable (examples in electronics: ASICS, custom battery sizes, custom LCD panels). Do that ten times in a single design, and the resulting device is significantly better.

I think this kind of regulation will trigger a lot of innovation in hardware manufacturing, and may still lead to products that are (slightly) worse if you ignore repairability.

> Do that ten times in a single design, and the resulting device is significantly better.

Honestly, I would be very tempted by appliances/cars that said "we've been using these parts for 20 years, and expect to do so forever so replacement parts won't be an issue". I believe some European car makers did that very thing.

Yes, it won't have certain definitions of "better", but repairability is a feature.

New cars are bigger, uglier, use more fuel (due to size and excessive power), and are more expensive. New appliances do nothing other than have more cumbersome interfaces and spy on you. There's argument for heat pumps in things, but just have a standard chassis or 3 variants with enough space.

Give me a datsun sunny with standardized injerctors and a catalytic converter, then keep making the same thing with the same frame with a drop in standard 100hp electric motor and however many 12V 200Ah drop in lithium batteries I want to carry. If it's unsafe, add a roll cage, and a 5 point harness. If it's still unsafe lower speed limits, design better roads, and only let people who are highly trained drive.

Or a 250cc twin motorbike with 15 hp that weighs 110kg

Or a raileigh pusbike with a 3 speed sun gearbox, drum brakes and a brazed chromolly frame that will still be working after a carbon frame has turned to shards from UV or an alu or hi ten frame is cracked due to corrosion and work hardening and on its 10th drivetrain.

Or the same kettle or toaster or microwave that's been made for decades with simple dials and switches but without changing the shape for no reason or a byzantine menu to reverse engineer back to power and time (the only things that mattere and the interface often used in the 50s).

Make TVs a simple display with a standard mounting point for a standard power supply and a general purpose computer.

Gather the pars for one as normal, but leave out all the glue and leave the plastic clips undone

Put it in the same container as all the others.

Send it to the same retailer.

If one part fails a lot, shove a crate full of those in the same container.

Maximum cost: Add the fraction of your products that need repairs over wholesale.

If lots of machines need repairs you've fucked up and should he paying more or figuring out better logistics.

If you bought a dishwasher one part at a time, how much more is it reasonable to expect for it to cost?

I think a $500 dishwasher costing $2500 if ordered one part at a time is reasonable. Your car is likely well over $100K if you ordered it one part at a time.

If you want to insist that the sum of the parts costs no more than the MSRP of the dishwasher, you won’t find the parts falling to 1/5 their current cost, but rather the dishwasher now listing for $2500 (and likely having frequent deep-discount sales).

And yet if you buy a computer one part at a time, through the magic of standardization you may end up even cheaper than the fully build OEM option.

You won't see too many industries attempting this kind of standardization anytime soon.

That was maybe once true. If you're literally starting from zero today and buying new parts? I sort of doubt it.

(Though I don't really disagree that it's generally easier to swap out parts on a (home-built) tower computer than it is with most things because of standards.)

It's perfectly true today if you ignore the recent price hikes which happen under different forces (silicon shortage, crypto stuff). An OEM might be cheaper because they will put in lower quality stuff you'd never buy yourself (the absolute cheapest part that fits the bill, the cheapest motherboard, the worst thermal paste), and they have to cover extra services, warranty, building and distributing the systems, etc. I think you can still get cheaper and/or better systems by yourself.

Comparisons are a bit hard because (perhaps outside of some specialty--and more expensive--gaming systems) what you build yourself is arguably "better"/more optimized than a random HP or Dell box. At the same time, the percentage of people who care about optimization at that level is pretty small. I built/upgraded PCs for years and now I pretty much have zero interest.

But again to the basic point, it's certainly close to a wash which wouldn't be true with most things.

It's definitely true for PCs. At best you can get the same price for pre-assembled but usually it's more expensive.

Not sure about laptops though.

I bought a Chromebook for $92 delivered to my door this winter. It’s definitely not the case there.

Realistically, you can't even really build your own laptop from scratch in the sense of buying a case, motherboard, etc. OK--maybe someone offers this--but it's hardly mainstream. And you can buy a Dell desktop for ~$800 and I'm sure I could find cheaper deals elsewhere. No, it's not an optimized gaming machine but most people don't have any use for that.

Admittedly it’s been a while, but the last I checked crypto-driven GPU scarcity made it much harder and more expensive to build a gaming PC than to buy premade.

There is value in building with a combination of new and used parts. Why do you need a new case each time you build a new PC. There may be cosmetic benefits, but an old case will rarely affect anything else. Likewise, I have a couple if bike frames laying around. I could pretty much build a bike to my spec and not bother with the expense of a frame.

Though bikes are another good example of something with a lot of standardization/interchangeability of parts. Most mechanical/electronic things around the house aren't like that to the same degree.

ADDED: I suspect people who say that it's cheaper to build your own PC are mostly thinking in terms of it can certainly be cheaper to upgrade a DIY system than to buy a new one off the shelf.

There are a couple of scenarios where you can possibly build cheaper. Consider when the purchaser is looking for certain components or to meet a particular specification. In those situations they would have to pay someone to build a custom system or pay the vendor to customize the system (in those cases the vendor frequently charges a premium).

Of course the big question is, why aren't household devices/appliances using standardized and interchangeable components? In many cases, it could probably be done. I suspect the main differentiator is consumer expectation. A significant number of consumers of bikes and desktop computers will repair, upgrade, and accessorize their purchase. Very few people will expect to do the same with their blender or television.

It's still completely true, except for the GPU shortage.

>Your car is likely well over $100K if you ordered it one part at a time.

I guess I agree, but when I read it I couldn't help but think that Johnny Cash built his Cadillac one part at a time and it didn't cost him a thing!

didn't cost him a DIME

Many years ago, I believe late eighties, a documentary was made in Italy, sponsored by FIAT (basically to show how good was their new automated warehouse) when a group of people, members of an automobile club, built a Fiat 131 completely from the body buying everything through the "normal" spare parts channels, ordering parts as the rebuilding went on.

It came out that the built car costed more than 500% without counting any of the man work/hours.

And FIAT (at least here in Italy) was famous for having rather cheap spare parts (when compared to - say - Volkswagen).

Most probably the 500% is nowadays not enough, at least for cars.

A lot of people discover this when they try to build a custom bicycle from the frame up with off-the-shelf components.

Similarly, if you want to build your own furniture, you'll find that Ikea furniture shipped overseas is cheaper even than wood bought locally!

You could probably build a decent chair with a saw and an axe and a tree if you had to. It may not be very comfortable or sturdy and if you didn't allow the wood to dry first it would probably break in a matter of months just from the wood shrinking as it dried, but if you had to you could do it.

My father built a large sturdy shelf unit from reclaimed planks he sourced from left over ammo crates after the war. It can be done cheaply if you are concerned about functionality more than looks. Get some lumber and wood paint. First, you don't care about weight, easy assembly process and shipping costs, so you can use heavier materials, proper metal screws, profiles, brackets, etc. But you do need some tools, like a drill, jigsaw/circular, etc.

That's just bad accounting. "Reclaimed planks" aren't free materials any more than something I bought last week for $100 is free today. There's something called "opportunity cost." Someone who uses up $100 worth of reclaimed planks is spending $100.

I wouldn't need to build furniture with an axe because I have a decent woodworking shop in my garage.

However, what I'm saying is that your cost for just the tree (for the raw material) is greater than the cost of pre-made manufactured and even imported-from-Europe furniture. So you can't save money with DIY furniture building.

Under the Iron Curtain it was quite popular to build whole car out of spare parts in the seventies up to early eighties due to rationing. It was significantly cheaper too.

I disagree with using "what sokoloff thinks is reasonable" as a standard.

> I think a $500 dishwasher costing $2500 if ordered one part at a time is reasonable.

So the cost of assembly line, robots, power and salaries of workers is -400%?

Why do you feel the need to come with excuses for whats is ibviously a cash-cow?

Maybe you should go into business to undercut this obvious cash-cow? I bet if you start with $10M and undercut the current suppliers, you could become a millionaire.

Probably shouldn't be quite so snarky when you're wrong. There's a huge industry of non-oem parts that do undercut the OEM and presumably make money.

Do you think you can start a dishwasher business for $10M?

My preferred modus would be to buy a current manufacturer, then strip out the high paid execs and minimise the profits in the form of very cheap repairs.

No, but you can start a business that manufactures the parts that HN experts have identified as "cash cows" for less than $10M.

Your whole attitude indicates that you are largely unaware of the shenanigans manufacturers have been pulling to cutoff supply of repair parts.

our taxes pay for customs to seize components of iPhones and file charges on behalf of apple for counterfeit goods. If you take your iphone, travel to china, take it apart there, and send to to the US by post, the customs will seize it as counterfeit.

Honest people are going to jail to preserve Apple's profits.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3yadk/apple-sued-an-indepen...

You also probably don't know about part serialisation and other efforts that mean that even if you product a compatiable part, the device will reject it.

This is the case with tractors and phones. I am not 100% up to date with dishwashers.

Your attitude indicates that you think dishwasher parts manufacturers are making excessive profits on repair parts somehow, since at least this post of yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30662019

Why not go disrupt them and put some of those cash cows into your barn instead?

On phones, last weekend I replaced my wife's iPhone X battery with one from Amazon for $18.99 + $1.19 in tax and 45 minutes of very straightforward work. If that $20.18 repair to get an extra 2 years out of the phone is the result of excessive profiteering or protectionism on the part of Apple, I'm pretty sure I'm OK with it and don't need/want government intervention to "fix" it.

I could have sent taken it to Apple and gotten it replaced for $70, which also seems totally reasonable to me for a parts-and-labor repair to get 2 more years of service.

You didn't buy the $20 battery from Apple, did you though?

How can it be a cash cow when everyone comes to the conclusion that it's not worth buying?

In any case, you've neglected logistics, which is at least complicated enough that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been stalling out on multiple fronts against a much smaller force (this not to denigrate the bravery or capabilities of the Ukranians.)

Offering low cost parts cannibalises new sales. Over-charging on parts is a cash cow as you now sell more full price machines, the only cost is the decimation of the environment and waste of limited planetary resources .. but shareholders make even more money, so who cares /s.

I'm actually open to this argument for larger things that last longer and are less internalize-able, because the friction in the market starts to overwhelm its efficiency.

But dishwashers are not that expensive that you're stuck with them. Buying new, cost is less than most new appliances and similar to a phone, less than a laptop. The used market is so soft that, even in my LCOL area (with consequently tighter Craigslist market), I bought my 3 year old stainless steel dishwasher for $150. All this to say, you can bail on your dishwasher if someone starts selling one that is extraordinarily better than everything on the market.

As another thought exercise, you have apartment complexes or apartment buildings (working in hand with national or regional builders). These parties have the time horizon, large sample sizes, accounting capacity, and concern for costs to know the absolute best option for appliances in terms of how often maintenance is required and how much it costs. They're a large enough buyer, at least collectively, to constitute a market. Despite all this, the dishwashers in apartments where I've lived or visited seem exactly the same as the ones in friends homes. Why don't apartment complexes use low maintenance dishwashers? My suspicion is that they're complex machines with heaters (highest wear), pumps (high wear), and pressurized water in close proximity to electronics, built to a standard so they can be affordable in every US home.

But please, make it better. I like paying extra money for things built with engineer driven design.

It seems like your thesis is we can make them cheap, let's just throw them out?

What is it about sustainability that is wrong to you, why is pollution and resource wasting better?

Dishwashers to me seem quite simple (compared to say washing machines; just based on having repaired all my home appliances). No reason a dishwasher can't last a lifetime.

My mother's first microwave is still going, about 40 years old, meanwhile newer appliances last the mandated 2y warranty period then break very soon after.

We've been seduced by shiny new things and it's pathological for our species. Companies have played to it because those interested in only money have taken them over.

We're in for a World of hurt this Century as energy and resources shortages hit, I wonder if we'll learn.

> you've neglected logistics, which is at least complicated enough that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been stalling out

I am honestly amazed at this segway.

I'm coming to appreciate how far the devastation and misery of Ukraine are from most Americans' minds. It's probably the first news story I've followed closely since last year's attack on the Colonial Pipeline, but I've been completely absorbed by it since December. I don't understand how the story of the global American military presence can be obtained coherently through the national embarrassment that is leaving Ukraine to stand up, alone, for Western civilization. But it is hardly the first empire to be shown as hollow, and the collapse is all the cleaner (for the US) because the foreign military presence doesn't accompany foreign territories that will need to be shed.

The benefit of the assembly line, robots, consolidation into a factory, and salaries of people dedicated to the assembly process is obviously easily enough to account for this difference. That's why factories exist.

If you don't believe that mass production has benefits, you have to come up with some alternative explanation for the 20th century.

> a $500 dishwasher costing $2500 if ordered one part at a time is reasonable

A 5x multiplier is in no way reasonable unless the replacement parts are being shipped to the moon.

Yeah motors are expensive, but I have saved so many large appliances needing a minor component from the trash with a little basic troubleshooting and a site like appliancepartspros. So often, it's a sensor, a pawl, heating element, belt, or roller that's 1% of the machine's price. This is in reach of anyone with a few hand tools and the internet.

A repair company (always 3rd party now) will charge %50 of the machine's price for a trip charge, marked up parts, and labor.

Oooh yes, don't get me started on inaccessible little plastic sacrificial parts. Yes, having one part be sacrificial to protect the others is good engineering, but only if it's also easily replaced and inexpensive. If you can't get replacements or they're 3 hours of disassembly away, that's just planned obsolesce in a dress.

And the number of times I've broken a little plastic tab! How much can it cost to put a extra 0.5mm of plastic in the mould just there? What fraction of a penny was saved and now requires a whole new part, comprising probably at least thousands of times more material plus shipping energy?

Re: sacrificial parts, I recently had to rebuild a two-car wood (read: heavy) torsion spring garage door system.

The cleverest part was the plastic coupler [0] between the door-connected shaft and motor.

When the system originally locked up, the coupler broke. Consequently after restoring the system, I needed a $9 piece of plastic, rather than a $xxx new motor.

Made me sad that more modern things aren't designed with such value-protective degradation modes.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/LiftMaster-Coupler-Chamberlain-Crafts...

FYI motor couplings are not typically designed to fail as a method of protecting the motor. Overload protection is usually handled electrically, with fuses/circuit breaker which will remove power when too much load is applied to the motor (stuck door) or via controller board and load sensing.

https://www.prairielectric.com/blog/how-do-circuit-breakers-...

There is no cost savings associated with the size of tabs, for example. It's an assembly thing. Usually you want the easiest to assemble as labor and QA is expensive. Ease of disassembly has by comparison very little upfront value.

Even better - just ship with a few extra parts slipped in. I’ve actually seen this - extra screws and clips right inside the cover just like extra buttons sewed into the corner of a shirt.

A lot of those plastic tabs work just fine when something is just made because the plasticizer is still present abundantly, then later, when it has evaporated the parts become brittle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasticizer

I had a motor go out on my dishwasher. When looking online it seemed common - apparently a shaft or ball bearing somewhere in it wears out in 2-3 years which makes it so it can't spin anymore. There were full instructions on how to replace this piece of the motor that costs a few cents.

That said, I noticed LG offered a 10 year warranty on the same motor, so I decided to buy a new dishwasher instead.

My friend bought a smart fridge from Samsung with 2 years warranty. After 26 months of usage thermostat failed. This fridge is purely electronic, without old-type thermostat that "clicks". Seller shop refused fixing it, Samsung quoted fix for more than the fridge cost 2 years ago. There it goes £1800 "worth" of more electronic waste.

My coworker damaged dishwasher seal, no way to buy new seal at all, could only be acquired from another dishwasher of this model. Had to give it for recycling and buy another one.

I just hope this doesn't happen to me, so I always do days of research online before buying a hairdryer...

It happens at all levels. Try buying a pair of kitchen scissors that don't have overmoulded plastic handles that break at the end of the handle tangs.

There are about 2 models of all-metal scissors.

Stop shopping on Amazon or Consumer store. Go to a Kitchen Supply store, or for scissors look outside kitchen branded ones, nothing about scissors need to be "kitchen"

a Kitchen supply shop will have more than 2 models, some will have plastic but they will be over molded full-tang metal under them, then you can just get scissors designed for something other than kitchen use, lots are out there

Kitchen/carving scissors are a specific design with features (curved notch, semi-serrated, steep blade angle) for cutting up ie. a chicken not found on other scissors.

That said, plenty of all metal ones exist

"Why didn't I just?" so glad you asked.

Funnily enough, choice was so limited specifically because I didn't want any plastic and I refused to consider the ones on Amazon on general principle, which ruled out the Newness ones and I didn't like the Grunwerg ones because I suspect those over-handles are sintered crap that's barely better than plastic.

So now it's a choice between the ones on Sinplastico, a Chinese brand and a handful of artisan "best of British" brands that were very expensive (and also generally have ostentatiously old-fashioned styling).

Well,... "Samsung". There's the problem, right there.

I wanted to buy a new fridge a couple of years ago, my emphasis/overriding criterion being energy efficiency. I could get actual energy use stats (not mere "A*" or other bullshit "ratings", based on standard models of use) from every manufacturer I looked at, except Samsung. Noooo, Mr Customer, the best we can tell you is "A*". Well fuck that. Guess what make of fridge I didn't buy...

Samsung is trying really hard to be more anti-consumer than Apple. That takes real effort

At least in Europe, all manufacturers have to produce a standardised format document specifying things like energy usage. This is how I worked out that a particular Neff model washing machine is the same as a Bosch one, just with a different fascia. Pricing difference at local stores was about 100 EUR between the two, but identical specs and identical "responsible company".

What is a bit of a pain is the standard changed in the last few years, so trying to compare an old energy efficiency label that specifies kwh/year and litres/year against one that's per-cycle is .. hard. They also changed the rating system, so what used to be an A-rated TV is now about a D or E rated one.

>They also changed the rating system, so what used to be an A-rated TV is now about a D or E rated one.

And what is also introducing confusion is that they are allowed to sell old models under the old energy label but new models have to apply the new label. So you can have a 2020 model fridge labelled "A+++" but the more energy efficient model 2022 model that replaced it is labeled "D".

I do think the change was necessary because with every device being A++ at minimum, the rating system was largely worthless. Though since the label also includes power usage per year, that is a good guiding line for comparing across the rating change.

You could probably mod the fridge with a traditional mechanical thermostat. There are plenty of cheap ones available on the aftermarket. Ranco is a common brand, at least in the US..

That's what I said and did, put BLE temperature monitor inside with silica gels packed. Power fridge from TPLINK HS110 (smart power switch) and automate it using HASS.

I've seen an even more brutal approach at a friend - he shorted the thermostat and put a mechanical socket timer set to approximately 25% duty cycle - works good enough for a fridge, no one cares if it is 2 degrees off.

>Are you telling me that all that steel and plastic and motors and controllers and labor and profit and shipping and everything is actually 75% of the cost, and 25% of the entire value of my dishwasher is tied up in the value of that one part, the one that happened to need replacement?

Obviously not, but that's how economies of scale, combined with planned obsolescence and rent seeking works.

That's how Apple who makes disposable earphones that last two years is worth trillions and Sennheiser who makes headphones lasting 20+ years is going bust.

It's not profitable making fair priced products that last forever or are cheap and easy to repair.

Which is why it should be required (if sustainable manufacture was deemed a bugger social benefit to profit).

If Apple had to make headphones that were either robust or repairable (or both, can you imagine), they'd find a way, if only to avoid losing money on replacing broken ones.

Yes, because if it wasn’t required, companies like Apple could make products that people wanted beyond the robustness and repairable aspects. By keeping all companies hobbled by the same regulatory requirements, Apple can no longer cheat with better functionality and aesthetics.

Of course, there is obviously a trade off.

I think that back in the day before Sennheiser become the last man standing to produce robust and repairable headphones, they competed with other manufacturers of robust and repairable headphones on factors like functionality and aesthetics.

TL;DR: Nice strawman ya got there. Would be a shame if it burned down.

Is Sennheiser going bust? Can't the pro market sustain them?

I've had multiple Sennheisers crap out on me after way less than 20 years.

That’s why Apple gets to be worth $3T, but that’s not why people buy AirPods over Sennheiser. If they can make longer lasting fully wireless ANC headphones for not much more on the price, they’d be good competition for AirPods customers.

Could we at least make this comparison in good faith?

Apple is not a company that "makes disposable earphones". AirPods are a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of its business. The vast majority of its products can easily last a decade or more and are recyclable after that.

Saying that Apple is worth trillions because of a side product like AirPods is ludicrous. Make your argument without this sloppy, inaccurate Apple-blaming.

You can look at the figures. Their most recent earnings statement[1] has “wearables, home and accessories” at 11.9% of their revenue. We don’t know how much of that is AirPods but I’d be surprised if it’s less that 50% given Watch and HomePod sales.

[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY22_Q1_Consolidated_Fin...

> "and are recyclable after that."

Ohh come on... Apple requires them to be shredded, after which some of the base metals can be recovered but there is still a ton of waste in that.

> products can easily last a decade

As long as you are fine with them reducing your battery life to get you to upgrade.

Apple, and the carriers have lots of incentive programs design to get people to "upgrade" the phones and when using those programs those phones go strait to recycle (i.e shredder)

Recycle is the LAST RESORT for sustainability, remember the triad is "REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE" Apple only even plays lip service to the Recycle part, and want to prevent the Reduce and Reuse part by preventing / disincentivizing repair and resell.

In my mind, if everything was open source or there were no IP restrictions, a lot of this stuff would happen automatically. Companies would tend to standardize on parts after a while as everyone would clone the good parts of everyone else. Open source 3D printers always have cheap replacement parts widely available.

These regulations are trying to use the state to correct for problems that in some cases occur because the state granted them monopoly protections for their IP. The state could simply not offer those protections to prevent a lot of these issues.

See also a recent comment I wrote on this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30512363

As well as this on the ground report of a culture without IP restrictions:

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284

Wouldn't the manufacturers just take over, and only survive in the lowest cost place for manufacturing? The inventors/designers would get nothing and no one would want to do that anymore. What would be the incentive to share your open sourced designs?

Like it'd be pretty easy for one state-supported giant manufacturer to just build every single open sourced product, and sell it direct. The whole world would buy from this cheapest producer. No one else would get anything, and supply chains would become even more brittle.

Another way to think about it is if knockoffs were guaranteed identical to the originals, but at a lower price. Everyone would just buy the knockoffs. No one would want to make anything new anymore.

> As well as this on the ground report of a culture without IP restrictions:

The Chitubox people are the counterexample.

Because they exist in a situation without IP restrictions, they are trying to tie everything to subscription and add encryption to the harwdare in order to extract money.

And, I'm not entirely unsympathetic. My personal opinion is that you should be able to get paid for developing good software. However, without IP protections, people can just scarf up your work.

I see this from both the perspective of machine tools and electronic test equipment. Anything under $5K has shit customer support--deal with it. Anything above $25K generally has ok customer support. Anything in between gets crushed out of the market.

> It's infuriating how if I buy, say, a dishwasher, and the heater pump goes, it's around £100 for a new one, but the whole machine costs maybe £400.

The heater pump when originally manufacturer costs £20 because it is done in lots of (tens of?) thousands and assembled in bulk by cheap labour, and shipped in a large container that costs not-a-lot of to move over an ocean.

The replacement part is stored by (potentially) a third-party company that ordered it for £30, by an employee who is paid £40,000 per year, in a warehouse that costs >£100 per square metre to rent (potentially for years), and when requested then has to be delivered by someone paid £20/hour, to be installed by someone paid >£50/hour (with a three hour minimum). And don't forget the VAT.

> to be installed by someone paid >£50/hour (with a three hour minimum).

That one shouldn’t factor into the part price. It’s your choice to hire someone to install the part and at what price vs doing it yourself.

> companies would have to sell their parts for little enough that you could buy all the parts for a whole new machine

Something like that could be a law. We could allow them a little markup to cover distribution cost, but one could argue it could be that simple.

Perhaps some rental model could work, where appliances are not owned but rented. Although the renter would probably still be on the hook for breakdown due to mis-use and once mis-use is an excuse, there is no incentive to make things last.

this same idea was suggested in another thread, i think for cars, few days ago, and still yes, there's no real incentive. There are excuses all over.

I just paid $475 to fix the door latch on a $1000 washing machine. It’s obnoxious.

I do think cars are much better than most items. Maybe not some of the electronics which are all tightly integrated, but certainly the mechanics.

And don't get me started on cars!

The cost of replacing a key for my wife's car ($1,200) is more than the value of the car.

If she loses her key again, it's cheaper to just buy a new car.

What a strange world we've made.

Can you buy a new car, especially in today's market, for $1200?

Parent probably means "new to me".

What this could be saying is that it’s very inefficient to buy the parts in units. If you were to buy a thousand of these parts, as a manufacturer might, I doubt they’d each cost £100.

Sustainability-wise, parts need to have a significant mark-up. Otherwise:

1. People will either themselves bodge devices together, or get someone else to do so. 2. Companies will find it hard to sell new products if they can all be fixed easily. If the parts have a mark-up, they can be a good revenue stream.

Unfortunately, companies are greedy and still make stuff hard/impossible to repair while charging high mark-ups for what can be.

Sustainable in the "humanity gets to live above ground in 2100" sense, not "CEO yachts-per-year must never fall" sense.

Funnily enough the second sense does eventually require the first, but not in this accounting period.

It's expensive because they have to manufacture that part specifically as a replacement and then store it for x years sitting in a box until someone needs it.

I can understand that some businesses overcharge for replacement parts, but otherwise it's also just as understandable that the price is a little bit higher for a part in a model they no longer actively manufacture for sale.

> It's expensive because they have to manufacture that part specifically as a replacement

Eh, what? No, they're manufacturing a lot of them to put in the machines already. They only have to manufacture a few more of them, not set up anything specifically at all.

> and then store it for x years sitting in a box until someone needs it.

That can't be all that expensive, considering the Ali Baba guys can sell a corresponding part for ten bucks.

You forget that car models change over time. People don't buy new cars every year. My car is from 2009, I doubt that all the parts on it are the same in a brand new model today.

I wouldn't trust an Alibaba/Aliexpress part when it comes to the mechanical bits of the car, myself. Not sure if you're American and without WoF/MoT but I'd only go with that stuff for unimportant stuff like trim.

Why would they do that when they could sell you the dishwasher AND the razor blades? Unreliability is service profit.

The parts in a product should be available anywhere it's sold for at least 5 years and sum to less than the lowest price it has sold for.

You are free to open a company that operates to your standards and serve customers with similar demands. But why do you need to force your ideals on other customers?! There is only one answer to that: You think you know better what they want than they themselves which is a very sad world view imo.

> But why do you need to force your ideals on other customers?!

Because we all share the same limited ecosystem.

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