I disagree that consumers are to blame. Believe me, I would be willing to pay 50% more for my fridge if I could know for certain that it would last decades longer than another. It is incorrect to say that consumers have a choice between "high quality/long lasting" and "cheaper but dies sooner", and for multiple reasons!

1. An uneducated consumer cannot distinguish between the two. Both products will bear labels reading "Extremely high quality, we take pride in our work, energy efficient AND better quality than all our competitors!"

2. Brands and manufacturers are taking these shortcuts uniformly. So consumers can't simply rely on buying a machine of a certain brand.

3. These issues don't show up for (apparently) 13 years! Even IF a consumer identifies a brand with a strong evidence-based reputation for quality, that brand may have lowered standards sometime in the past 13 years and they would have no way of knowing.