Expensive fridges are dying, leading to fraud claims | Hacker News Reader

Expensive fridges are dying, leading to fraud claims

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112 pointsdns_snek182 comments

I recently bought a house with what I can only describe as some "zany" appliances. For example:

- An impeller-based washer that doesn't cover clothes in water, even with the "deep water" setting, and soil level all the way up. It frequently doesn't submerge half the stuff during the pre-soak. It's a $1,000 washer and I routinely pour water into it from the sink.

- A fridge with a giant ice maker in the refrigerator, not in the freezer. The compresser runs like 90% of the day on this thing. It's not really obvious how or where it's supposed to exchange heat. I expect it to break any day.

I spent some time on home appliance YouTube trying to figure out what was going on with appliances these days. Can recommend this guy's channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKJgYVhZ6-w. Long story short, it's a total mess out there. Sad times in the world of modern convenience.

I recommend Speed Queens for washing machine and dishwasher. We have them in our house and barn the prosumer versions not the coin ops. Have survived everything from nails-horse blankets and even a miswired 220 on the dryer.

Yeah that's what that YT channel above (Ben's Appliance) recommends https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmtLeB4ZplU. I've used them in laundromats. Must be fun having them in your house.

> and even a miswired 220 on the dryer

Wow!

We bought an older coin-op Speed Queen set from an apartment complex when they were replacing their fleet for app controlled new ones. Best decision we ever made. Just wired a switch in for the coin trigger. Extremely reliable and seems easy to repair - haven't had to in the 5 years we've had them.

We had that for awhile, until finally the motor gave out and it was "easier" for me to buy a new Speed Queen set than fix the old (and the wife wanted an upright anyway instead of the front-loader).

The whole fun was using the coins! I even bothered looking up how to reset the cost so it was only a dollar, too many coins was annoying.

I just sold an old Speed Queen dryer (20 years old!) for like $200, and the guy who bought it told me that he resells them and it's worth way more than that. I get why it will never break down; it's just a metal box with two resistive coils, a drum, a fan, and a single dial.

But while it will run forever, it also consumes 5,000 watts and pumps conditioned air out of my house the entire time it's running (when my vent isn't clogged, which is never). I replaced it with a heat pump dryer and love it. Yes, it's 1000 times more complicated, and yes, it may (will?) require repair at some point, but it plugs in to a 120-volt outlet, and requires no venting at all. Maybe I won't love it in a decade, but life is short. :D

I second the recommendation. We got rid of a Samsung washer for a Speed Queen. It does a better job cleaning the clothes for less of the time.

I also bought a house with an ice maker in the refrigerator. I can confirm that it gave us constant trouble until it gave up the ghost. I use ice cube trays in the freezer.

> I use ice cube trays in the freezer.

We'll probably go this route when this thing inevitably dies. This is the way to go unless you're a big ice consumer, which neither me nor my wife are.

If it’s acting weird, just shut it off and kill the water to it. Ours was doing the same thing and one day we came down to probably 10 gallons of water on our wood floor and the ice maker just spewing water. We bought a GE Opal instead and it’s great.

I will say this, too. Opal is amazing. It has completely eliminated any use of our freezer icemaker. The ice quality is superior and I believe that is because it is not as hard since the icebox keeps chilled by the ambient temperature of the ice. There is no going back to typical ice.

> A fridge with a giant ice maker in the refrigerator, not in the freezer.

We have one of these on our ancient fridge. In a way, it actually makes sense - a lot of the stresses of an ice maker are having all of the mechanics being forced to operate in freezing temperatures.

I'll ask the obvious question: isn't one of the main challenges of an ice maker getting the water to freeze? How does this happen in the refrigerator compartment, where the air temperature is above freezing?

You can have the "cold maker" part in the fridge above the ice maker, and blow freezing air across the water into the freezer.

Not saying it's done that way, but many fridges now keep the fridge part cold by venting freezer air into the fridge (if set wrong, you can freeze things in the right part of the fridge).

I am probably going to lean toward separate freezer and fridge next time.

While one might have existed, I've never seen a fridge that has cools for the fridge and freezer size. They all have one set of coils between the compartment and then some sort of baffle to control how much cold goes to each section. It is a small engineering problem have another baffle blowing cold are to the ice maker.

Ours has a little insulated compartment for making the ice. But most of the mechanics/circuitry/piping are outside of the compartment in the back of the fridge.

The ice maker compartment alone is responsible for a significant amount of cooling in the rest of the fridge, and it's very uneven as a result, but it works okay.

While the maker itself is super happy in these conditions, you will get problems if you do not regularly use ice. If you let the ice pile up it ironically is too good of an insulator and causes the stuff on the bottom to melt and refreeze. So you need to run that auger once in a while and make sure it doesn't dam up in there.

Does the fridge have a variable speed compressor? If so, that type is meant to run the compressor more than old-tech binary on/off compressors. Running 90% of the time might be normal if it's variable speed.

I can go into more detail if you want. But to be clear I'm not making any claims on how long it will last.

Don’t compressors generally dislike being cycled on-off (too frequently/quickly?)

I was under an impression that they should ideally run continuously if you want them to last long (and operate efficiently.) Meanwhile on-off cycling was just the only way they could maintain a temperature setpoint before somebody had a bright idea of combining them with an inverter.

Start and stop does the most wear per unit of time, but constant motion also does wear.

Start and stop tends to cost a lot of energy, and high speed also tend to need more power. High speed also does more wear. Overall though, a small compressor on high speed 100% of the time is better than a larger compressor on lower speeds most of the time - but that isn't a realistic option as there are too many variables to allow choosing the perfect compressor size. So a oversized compressor running at low speed most of the time is generally best.

The wash machine thing is because water-saving requirements, and the easiest way to do it is the "dumb" way. Speed Queens still have a "soak the damn stuff" feature, but it's almost hidden.

I think the fridge thing is because they discovered that a compressor that runs all the time lets them get a smaller one, and since it doesn't start/stop as much, it lasts longer, so it can be weaker. The ice maker is probably actually doing the work of keeping the fridge cold.

It's crap, in my experience, once it starts not working perfectly. As long as it's working, it's ok.

My Samsung lasted like 3 years before it started freezing up the ice maker and eventually it started failing during cooling. We dealt with throwing away food, defrosting it, replacing the evaporator fan, keeping a constant eye on it before we finally ditched it for a Bosch (haven’t had it long enough to say if that was a good move).

So much waste, it’s crazy how poor quality these fridges are.

My samsung refrigerator slowly fills with water under the vegetable tray. It keeps a schedule that is pretty mysterious, so I just check it periodically to make sure it doesn't flood out onto the floor. In the winter it becomes ice for some reason, which actually is a lot more easy to clean out.

Your drain tube is freezing up. This can be fixed permanently by using a small copper wire to connect the heating element to the drain, for better heat conduction.

This is a good point. I thought I had this problem but it ended up being the water filter.

What an awful fridge.

Yup, and this is what one of the class-action lawsuits is about. The problem is that on our model, that drain is behind glued-in molded styrofoam that also channels the air over the coils. It broke apart when removed. The plastic is also glued on and the fan is part of the styrofoam/plastic assembly. Samsung’s design uses just a thin Z-shaped finger of aluminum that sits in the drain, and it doesn’t do enough to prevent freezing. They made their fridges destined for landfills because they wanted to save $0.20 on thicker copper vs their lame little aluminum finger.

I didn't know there was a class action! I have the same or similar model as you. When fixing this I managed to get the Styrofoam out in two pieces and put it back well enough to cover it up again.

Terrible design. Won't be buying Samsung again.

This is likely the water filter. The system is notoriously fragile. If you don't follow the "proper procedure" then you inevitably end up with a leak. I have no idea why.

Try running through the process and double the duration of every step, and don't skip any steps, and it should stop leaking.

Alternatively throw the damn thing in the garbage.

Mine does that too. Took off the back, found the drain where the condensation is supposed to go to. It's made of rusted steel. It's supposed to lead to the compressor where the heat makes it evaporate back into the room. But since it's rusted, it clogs and then eventually ices up, so the water spills into the inside back and lands under the vegetable tray.

I cleared mine out, all happy, and 3 months later it clogged back again. I don't bother fixing it because I need to remove all the contents of the fridge, then dissassemble the inside rear of the fridge to get access to the right spot. It's just a bad design.

Clogged drain hole. I have this issue. For some reason they put the drain line near the freezer elements in my samsung fridge. The slightest hiccup and it freezes permanently shut. You can find "Refrigerator Drain Hole Blockage Remover" kits online that get the job done.

For mine I had to flush it with a syringe of warm water to thaw out the drain port. The hard part is getting to the drain hole. Also, the fix lasted 6 months or so before it iced over again. I'm out of warranty so I might just run a much larger line and call it a day.

If your lucky your issue might just be a blockage, which should clear easily.

I had the same problem and discovered that sticking a qtip into the drain hole solves it. Have to repeat every year or so

Got a Bosch fridge and it’s been good except for the door seal starting to rip

I love our Samsung fridge but it does have some issues. After trying to get it repaired Samsung eventually gave up and gave us a full refund.

Worked in an appliance warehouse. We had two types of fridges coming back as carry-outs for new purchases: ancient models that were probably as old as I was, and models from a few years before the pickup date. Very little middle ground.

Also, without being an engineer or technician, it did always seem to me that fridges were like cars in that you had "luxury" models that were standard frames with fancy (often less-than-useful) features, and then actual luxury with brand names most people had never heard of, which had normal features implemented to a high standard and with excellent support.

> Also, without being an engineer or technician, it did always seem to me that fridges were like cars in that you had "luxury" models that were standard frames with fancy (often less-than-useful) features, and then actual luxury with brand names most people had never heard of, which had normal features implemented to a high standard and with excellent support.

As a consumer, would there be a way to tell the difference between the two when buying?

If you’re paying a lot and there aren’t goofy touch screens or other pointless things to break, it’s a good chance it’s high quality. But always good to talk to someone who repairs them to know what’s actually good. Miele is one of these brands, maybe the most well known.

Avoid shiny plastic

It's like laptops: the commercial ones that come with onsite service vs the consumer ones that have the cheap price and all the bling. Maytag consumer model vs Maytag commercial. The ones you buy at the appliance store vs the ones you buy at the commercial restaurant supply store.

There is still a lot of value in reading reviews. People have grown cynical because there are a lot of fake reviews online these days, but that just means you have to think critically about what you are reading. Try to extract concrete facts from the text of the review, and as you identify each factual assertion that's being made, consider whether it seems like something that's believable and written by a real person, or something that's primarily an emotional appeal written by a bot or third world person employed by the manufacturer.

At some point, we're going to hit a tipping point where no authentic human being ever writes any online review, and then they'll become totally useless, pure noise. That doesn't seem to be the case yet, though.

Tell the vendor you are equipping a restaurant?

This works for some things, but not others.

For example, commercial laundry equipment comes from VERY FEW manufacturers, and you may never have heard of UniMac https://unimac.com/product/washer-extractors/uw-series-high-... but you probably have heard of their little brother, Speed Queen. Blendtec is another example.

But some things are vastly different between commercial and residential. Commercial ovens often have no heat shielding at all (because they're meant to be installed in a commercial kitchen and used all the time) and so the sides can get very hot. Not what you want in a home kitchen!

You can find some names, and check what they offer in residential versions.

But the surest way is to find people who work with them talking about them.

Absolutely LOVE our Blendtec blendeer. That thing can chop up almost anything! My only regret is not getting the variant that came with a heating coil for making soups.

> Don’t breathe that

The Blendtec is a beast; I'm just sad I'll probably never have a real excuse to move to the quiet https://www.blendtec.com/products/professional-800 because my existing one will never die.

That's what Consumer Reports exists for.

What are some of the brands that you’ve seen that have those implemented-to-a-higher-standard features? I’m in the market for a new set of everything and would appreciate the insight.

https://www.mieleusa.com/e/refrigerators-and-freezers-102212... has few bells and whistles but is a superpremium brand. I bought some of their stuff used and while expensive it has very high quality materials...

Note: Miele just rebrands Liebherr fridges. At least in Europe, guess the US is no different.

Liebherr fridges & freezers are known to be very good too, if only a slightly cheaper due to carrying a less fancy trademark.

This is another trick, find out the high quality brands and find who they're OEMing, and get those.

Parts websites for appliances can be good hints.

That’s not entirely true. They are manufactured by Liebherr but so heavily tweaked by Miele that „rebranding“ is not exactly the right word. That doesn’t mean they are better or inferior than regular Liebherr products though.

Seeing how my parents' SubZero is built and how it's performed, I'd put them high on my personal list, particularly if I was doing a custom built-in (as they did). In 24 years, they had one issue with it (was a door close switch that either failed or got misaligned). Parts and manuals were readily available and the repair was an easy DIY.

That said, I bought a Samsung mid-range french door fridge from BestBuy as we aren't doing a fancy built-in at this point in our lives.

I saw a more recent Sub Zero refrigerator at a rental last summer and it seemed pretty terrible. Plus I have a coworker with a Sub Zero who has been out of the office several times over the years to meet repair people, and frequently complains about her fridge.

Meanwhile I have a $1k Samsung refurb that has worked flawlessly for 8 years. We’re thinking about re-doing our high-end home kitchen and it’s hard to figure out what brand will be good - but Sub Zero is mostly off the list.

Engel, Miele, and any industrial brand.

Miele, it also is "expensive". On the long term is the cheaper option.

Our previous vacuum cleaner was a Miele. It died after 20 years of use. The near identical new model still works perfectly after 5+ years. Those things are amazing.

I'm still using the Miele vac that I bought new in 1989 (from the Whole Earth store in Oakland or Berkeley - that was a weird spin off). I brought it in for its first cleaning this year to the local vac repair store (I got a free cleaning in exchange for signing up for their discount vac bag plan a few years ago and finally found the time) and the young folks were puzzled by the made in West Germany tag on the bottom :)

At this point the only thing that doesn't work is the speed selector indicator as the rubber band that connects the indicator to the selector switch failed and parts are no longer available. Compatible bags and filters, however, are still produced. Definitely not much in the way of planned obsolescence in this one ...

Our Miele dishwasher has been spectacular over the last 3-4 years - one of my favorite appliance purchases ever.

I was less impressed with their standing vacuum, honestly. It held up OK but frequently jammed and had little issues. We eventually replaced it with a Dyson cordless that seems much much better.

I have a Miele canister vacuum. It’s great. I have a Miele HX1 cordless vacuum. It was outrageously expensive and never worked. Completely awful. Couldn’t suck up a cheerio off the floor. A cheap crappy Chinese Dyson clone worked many, many times better. Moral of the story, brands are BS.

their cheaper vacs are made in China. Still high quality, but not as much as their more expensive models.

Maybe on average.

Certainly isn't cheaper for my Miele dishwasher that is broken (online search suggests a fucked relay).

I am somewhat cynical about buying expensive "quality" brands after being burnt a few times.

> I am somewhat cynical about buying expensive "quality" brands after being burnt a few times.

You and me both. I am (was?) a big believer of "buy it for life" because I don't like producing waste and I like the peace of mind of owning high quality, reliable equipment that doesn't break (% regular maintenance and wear parts)

But these days it seems like the only options available are paying $10 for a $10-quality product, paying $100 for a $20 quality product, or paying $1000 for a $50 quality product, none of which are appealing. I dread buying anything that's expected to last more than a year.

This just sounds like an ordinary bathtub curve.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve

Honestly, this is exactly what I would expect to see always. There's some percentage of complex appliances that are going to fail early in their lifetime, and the ones that last longer than a few years will probably last for decades. The fridge that's been working for 12 years with zero problems is far less likely to fail than a 5-month old fridge or a 40-year old fridge.

So I'd be surprised the the pattern hasn't always been like this to some extent. The particular rates might vary over time, but the pattern of failing appliances being either relatively new or really old is probably very consistent.

The only thing worse than having to pay for premature appliance replacement is.. the process of actually replacing them.

Across different homes, different appliances, different brands, and different vendors it is always a disaster.

Dishwashers especially since they touch cabinetry, plumbing, and electrical.

I would pay an "A Team" premium to have an entire squad come deliver and do all work to accommodate installation.

I've had just about everything go wrong:

* fridge installer taking 3 tries to send enough guys to lift a giant fridge up stairs (2, then 2 again, then finally 4)

* Finding out my condo counters are ADA accessible special short height that is 3/8 of an inch too short to fit 90% of DWs without carpentry work

* DW installer leaving, wanting a plumber to replace water line before continuing

* DW installer leaving, wanting electrician to do hardwire/outlet work before continuing

* DW repair guy leaving, because he couldn't figure how to pull the dishwasher clear of a tile floor ridge

* DW repair guy disconnecting my kitchen sink water line, breaking a part making it unusable unless I made it to the hardware store across town closing in 10 minutes

* Plumber knocking DW door off the spring hinge mechanism so it just drops like a rock now

Basically theres 3-5 different specialists that all need each others work done in a particular order and possibly to do re-work after one of the others breaks something, every every time.

My favorite near disaster story was due to my 100 year old house having come with 50 year old electric cooktop that sat over the (slightly younger dishwasher). I destroyed the dishwasher right after moving in (by running it with the new water line turned off - I should have checked) and was happy to see that at least the dishwasher shaped hole was still standard sized. What I didn't realize until the new dishwasher arrived was that the old dishwasher was smaller (lower) inside the case - leaving a handy buffer space between the underside of the electric burners and the top of the dishwashers electronics.

The new dishwasher had only about and inch of space and even after sticking in a layer of nomex insulation test runs of the cooktop with a thermal probe sited on the top of the dishwasher's insides revealed that I couldn't use any settings beyond medium without hitting questionable levels. The cooktop's associated oven put the whole question to rest soon after by bursting into flames due to a wiring failure. (This apparently period appropriate setup for small kitchens placed the dishwasher at the bottom with with cooktop above it and then a small oven on top with a integrated exhaust system underneath and on top of the oven - actually pretty handy).

I hire my actual plumber/electrician to do appliance installs I won’t do myself. I’ve had nothing but problems with the contractors Home Depot and Best Buy have sent. It costs a bit, but is done right and I get to approve the work, not Best Buy.

For the last 5 years, I buy appliances from a small independent dealer rather than a big box store. I have a guys name, and it’s the same guy year after year. Their prices are as good or slightly better than you’d see at a big box retailer.

Didn't shop at any of the big 3 big box stores. You'd be surprised how bad even the local/regional family owned chain appliance specialists are.

And the repair guy was the Bosch official warranty service guy for apparently all of Long Island. I found this out when he announced he was going on vacation as he left and we wouldn't be able to get the DW compute board replaced until he returned.

That's funny. I had an LG fridge die one night after 1.5 years with a loud bang. It sounded like a gun had gone off in the house and at first I had no idea what it was, but I guess it was something bursting in the compressor.

Home Depot warranty paid for a replacement and we still loved the size and features so we got the same model. Ended up selling the house and only a few weeks later the new owner wanted me to rush over the warranty paperwork because the same thing had happened. This one lasted less than a year.

I will never buy another refrigerator without an extended warranty.

How onerous are the US energy efficiency regulations on refrigerators, and how does that interact with longevity? Modern washing machines and dishwashers are famously terrible because of stringent water- and power-usage requirements, often trying to save 5% on water usage but performing so terribly that people re-wash or wash by hand, thereby wasting much more water not to mention human time. (Some court push back: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4398456-biden-... )

Are there similar industry-wide issues with fridges, or is this just a matter of one crappy company?

There does seem to be the worst-of-both-worlds scenario: EPA & regulatory agencies push for stringent regulations that make the appliances frustrating enough that people stop using them, but then those same agencies start begging people to use appliances cause hand-washing uses so much more water.

Our 20 year old fridge gave up the ghost. First thing I did was get a month of Consumer Reports and read through their Fridge section. Something I noticed, same with Vacuums ... there is no clear winner. They gave top scores to LG fridges people vehemently disliked in the comments. Almost everything got low scores in owner satisfaction. Their #2 pick had an owner satisfaction of 1/5!

We decided to get a $700 Whirlpool, but that started making weird noises almost immediately (like a bad fan bearing).

I have tried recording the sounds from my phone but its too difficult. Does anyone recommend a consumer-level vibration-analysis product? Something you could stick to your fridge, etc, for days, weeks, and it detects and records outlier noises, etc?

I'm not sure what to make of Consumer Reports. The last time or to I used them, their conclusions seemed at odds with popular opinion.

Consumer Reports measures toilets by how they flush golf balls.

I will refer to Consumer Reports once I start shitting golf balls.

Otherwise they're a decent place to maybe start but they're definitely not the be all-end-all.

What I do is search until I find a forum of people who obsess over whatever it is. Here's my plumbing one: https://www.terrylove.com/crtoilet.htm

I have the same issue with NYT recommendations. The initial build quality of the product is good, but then just outside the warranty period it all falls apart all at once.

I think the products are optimized for the tests, not long-term ownership. Rigors of ownership are what you see reflected in the comments.

Like Bose QC45s. Feel nice. Sound great. Works well overall, for the first year. Then the firmware started acting up, mic stops working during Zoom calls, and getting secondary pairing to work correctly makes breeding pandas look easy.

It's always felt like a relic of the past to me. It feels oriented to someone of more advanced age who wants to spend a medium amount for a medium product and not think about it anymore. So they come up with golf ball tests for toilets or give points for random features like remote starting, not actual science or longevity testing.

Rtings is expanding pretty rapidly to things not screens, and they bring a much more scientific and modern approach to consumer device testing.

Honestly I trust hyper-specific subs on Reddit way more than I'll ever trust Consumer Reports.

It's not just fridges. Most appliances (most things in general?) I've seen at any price point are fairly awful.

I've taken to, when at all possible, buying machines that are older (20 years or more) because those tend to work well, can be reasonably repaired, and lack those crazy undesirable features that seem to be implemented instead of implementing quality.

I looked into dryers, and the consensus seemed that there is only 1 brand in the USA for homeowners made to a standard of quality: Speed Queen. Otherwise the approach is to buy old as you do or buy a commercial version. This is true of a lot of other stuff- the commercial version has to actually hold up under lots of usage. You are probably looking at spending 2x but you get something that will likely last more than 2x the consumer version.

I think the main issue holding back quality is that people move so often. If you buy a quality appliance and then sell your home early on in the life cycle the buyer probably won't value the quality appliance and is instead hoping to see new appliances.

Is it even realistic for a company to sell $1000 appliances that last 20 years? I know we can build such an appliance, because they did in the 80s, but can a public company survive selling them?

It's quite possible, because most appliances don't actually last that long, because the average appliance disposed/thrown away is likely still working (or could be with a minor fix).

The worst example of this is kitchen remodels; the average kitchen that is remodeled is not falling apart and absolutely unusable; it's usually a 7-10 year old kitchen that just doesn't "look right".

Cars are an appliance that is more expensive, but they last 20 years these days (average age of a car on the road today is 12 years).

It's actually informative to spend a day where everything you look at, you think about how old it is. This includes things like doors, windows, floors, etc. Most are much older than you might think.

That it used to be the standard strongly indicates that yes, that's a realistic expectation. However, it isn't a path toward extracting every last dime from customer pockets. The real problem, in my opinion, is that companies no longer prioritize making good products, but making good pickpocketing machines.

Eh, when something goes extinct I'd say that's evidence that it isn't viable. That's the paradox of capitalism: anything that can be ruined eventually will be. I'd pay 2x or 3x for 30yr appliances for environmental reasons, but I don't think the company that makes such a thing could raise the capital to build them in the first place.

> when something goes extinct I'd say that's evidence that it isn't viable.

It depends on the thing, but in general I don't think that assumption is terribly valid. The problem is that "viable" and "maximally profitable" are two different things. Companies have decided to chase the latter exclusively -- but that's a choice to satisfy short-term greed, it's not a reflection on what a viable business has to look like.

I think it's more reflective of how much the exercise of capitalism has degraded since those times.

I don't think choice is involved here, public and capital-financed companies that aren't maximally greedy get eaten by those that are. When your competitors raise enough capital to undercut you in the short term, you don't survive to the long term unless you raise more capital as well, and you can't both offer the highest returns, one of you is going to end up buying the other, and only after all the corners have been cut and every customer that can be screwed has been screwed. It's a race to the bottom that doesn't necessarily have a solution. Isn't this essentially how Maytag went tits up? To compete with the cheap foreign appliances they took on a bunch of debt, and then cut costs to service the debt, resulting in the "amanatags" that destroyed the reputation for quality they'd built over 3-4 generations?

It's distressing. 30 years ago if you bought cheap you got cheap and maybe you get lucky or not. If you paid extra you got solid. Now there isn't much correlation. You can pay dear and get junk. And cheap is worse than it used to be. And the middle seems gone where you can buy something low frills and solid.

I remember a guys essay about buying a new toaster. Turned out all the toasters he looked at had the exact same commodity mechanism. $15 toaster, $80 toaster they're the same inside.

If it were up to me any appliance that's under 10 years old that gets dropped off at the dump would be shipped to the manufacturer at their expense to dispose of. Bonus the dump charges them a handling fee.

In product sale terms, $15 once is also very close to $80 once. They are differentiating on "the main segment of toaster buyers".

It would be nice if someone had an incentive to differentiate for people willing to pay more.

I don't think I could bring myself to buy an expensive or "luxury" appliance. I've had the same white 2-door fridge for 5 years and it's probably 15 years old at this point. Never once had an issue with it, not even a burnt-out light bulb.

If you want reliability, buy appliances like you're a landlord.

Heh. Our house came with a fancy IoT piezoshit dishwasher that had three pumps in it; one died within a year, the second died a year later, and after $800 spent fixing it we were quoted another $800 to fix the control panel on top of the door once it got steamed to death.

I replaced it with the cheapest washer Lowe's had for $425 and it's been painless for years. It's what a landlord would have done.

Tech for domestic life hasn't advanced since the 1970s. We have self-driving cars, but you still have to fold your own laundry.

The only real advance I've personally seen (and it probably existed back then) is microwave reheat buttons that actually work and whatever black magic our fridge has that keeps vegetables fresh - some ethylene absorber.

> Tech for domestic life hasn't advanced since the 1970s.

I think tech for domestic life has clearly regressed since the 1970s.

Heh, true.

Samsung usually disappoints but their AirDresser (and the LG Studio) are innovative at least.

https://www.samsung.com/us/air-dresser/

There is a real problem with appliances and repair: many repair shops don't seem to want to take on any sort of extensive repair. And I don't blame them...

The issue I've seen is, especially for out of warranty equipment, they're in a pretty tough spot: if they diagnose it as a part swap, and put a couple hours in diagnostics and part swap, and it doesn't fix it, the customer is unlikely to be happy with throwing that money away, and may not want to continue that process. So is the shop going to eat it?

For example: I have a Samsung inductive range. Love it. But, a couple years ago 2 of the elements stopped working. Unlike an old resistive range, the entire rangetop is a "sealed" unit, cost of probably north of a grand. Inside that unit are some boards and other items that can be replaced, but now you're talking another hour to get into. There are 3-4 boards in there, running $200-300 for the likely candidates.

In researching this, I found field repair techs were strongly recommending just replacing the whole range. Because the cost of a tech doing the repair is a grand+ plus a couple hours, or 4 hours and rolling the dice on which board needs replacement, possibly having to do it twice with house calls between hardware orders.

Or, the third option is to get a tech in that can disassemble the range and diagnose the likely bad solder joint and reflow it... That's the option I selected, because me and my 13yo son were the techs. BUT, no repair shop is going to want to risk doing that.

So, just throw away the range and get a new one is what they recommand.

Seems like a design or manufacturing flaw to me though. Probably should be a much bigger contact area if it's getting that hot that it's blowing the solder I thought it might be a cold joint, but I reflowed it pretty good the first time and it happened again.

Increasing complexity to push novelty that has nothing to do with core functionality. Increasing more points of failure while incorporating second rate hardware with third rate software.

Resume Driven Design/Development in hardware is hard to hide compared to software.

I wonder if Resume Driven Development is a reaction rather than a cause. For instance, you see companies laying off everyone and pushing bad products, so you decide "I might as well use some cool new tools and make myself employable".

I think many folks would focus more on their job instead of cool new tooling if their job gave them meaning.

Are Miele and Sub-Zero/Wolf still reliable?

Not as reliable as 30 years ago, but better than most.

That's what I would buy yes. Sadly, "expensive" in the world of fridges is not 2-3k, but 8-10k. That's what you need to pay for long-term quality (to be sure, they still break, but in less dramatic ways).

Miele’s fridges have always been rebranded Liebherr IIRC. Hence why they’re reliable. Liebherr make industrial and aerospace refrigerators.

I own a 180kg french door Liebherr with no touchscreen or other bullshit, just a fridge, freezer with ice maker. I have only had it for a few years but it’s been very solid, fingers crossed.

It was a little under €6k if Iremember right.

The condenser unit on my Miele heat pump clothes dryer just went out after less than two and a half years. It's a $1500 out of warranty repair on a $2K dryer, and the part will take a month to arrive.

Could be bad luck, though I see a fair number of similar complaints online. I wouldn't buy again.

We had a kitchen redone with all "top-end" applicances. Sub-Zero fridge, wolf stove, Miele speed oven, etc. They are the most unreliable bunch of appliances I've ever owned, came out-of-the-box with defects.

The Miele oven failed _on_. I noticed it was hot when I walked by it one day, even thought the controls were all off. It took a call to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to get it fixed (and yes, they were very interested).

Sorry to hear about your kitchen, that sounds like a huge disappointment, ugh.

I'm very surprised to hear that a Miele appliance failed so spectacularly. What did customer support have to say when you first reached out?

I don't own any of their stuff but I've held them in very high regard based on what I've read & heard from others.

> I'm very surprised to hear that a Miele appliance failed so spectacularly. What did customer support have to say when you first reached out?

There are several circuit boards and a display/keypad board in the unit. The Miele factory repairman tried replacing each one (at a cost of about $1000 apiece) and it still didn't fix it! (The unit was out of warranty)

The actual culprit: The heating element behind the back (used for convection) is wired (in the US) to be between the two phases of the 220 volt line. One phase is always connected to one end of the element, the other side is switched. The element developed a fault somewhere in the middle and shorted to ground. (This line had no GFCI on it). So 110 volts was flowing through half the heating element at all times. We discovered this ourselves after the repairman left with the unit unfixed (they were "waiting for parts") and we looked at the circuit diagram he left behind.

The Milele repair technician didn't check for this--a $75 part that failed--and wanted to replace all the electronics inside.

We reported to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission because we thought this was a serious design defect and they did get involved. Miele conceded that they didn't need to replace thousands of dollars of circuit boards and display boards inside the product.

I bought a nice refrigerator in 2017. In early 2020, it began failing. It wouldn’t freeze, then after that was fixed, the icemaker stopped working.

Luckily, I had bought an extended warrant from the store! Actually, the store sold me an extended warranty from a third-party company. And the service people the warranty company sourced kept failing to fix it, and then leaving things worse, like breaking the freezer drawer.

At first I assumed it was issues with parts and labor due to COVID, but the problem proceeded well into 2021.

The warranty company (“New Leaf”) refused to pay for a new fridge, when I clearly had a lemon. They kept wanting to send technicians out, but it turned out fine print in the contract says they can deduct that cost from paying out for a new fridge. (I forget the exact details, but it basically meant they would never have to replace the fridge if they didn’t want to.)

In the end, the solution was leaving a negative Yelp review against the appliance retailer, along with a BBB complaint. The owner offered to eat the cost and just get me a new fridge. I’d have preferred the warranty company do it on principle, but I’ll take any happy ending.

Don't buy korean (LG and Samsung). Personally I only buy Bosch whenever I can.

Having grown up in Stuttgart and son of a former Bosch advisor it hurts me to say this: Bosch stuff is very mixed. We have a Bosch fridge and do not like it: too small, bad door hinges, weird interior (probably better suited for German city living). We swapped it with our old American basement fridge and that's a better fit although the cheap compressor is annoying. What I'd like is a big "empty-box" fridge with a good compressor.

The Bosch dishwasher is better, quiet but with the annoying habit of all the interior plastic parts falling apart.

Very mixed indeed. I love the dryer we got, but the washing machine sometimes stops washing mid cycle with a false-positive error which requires restart of the program and warranty ain’t fixing it. Very annoying. The dishwasher is alright if you ignore the fancy press-door-to-open function engaging sometimes when you close the door. The coffee maker has already gone to the other side of the styx twice due to an unscheduled rapid disassembly of internal components. The food processor although clearly the same kind of quality plastic as inside the coffee maker, has been holding up thankfully, but it doesn’t inspire much confidence when I see the whole thing straining and twisting around when mixing some pizza dough.

I’m hoping that by the time warranty ends on all of these things I manage to iron the major problems out. At the very least arranging for somebody to come in and take a look is a pretty painless experience...

I'm tempted to go with a commercial "install the compressor on the roof" style design someday, because then you have a perfectly silent device.

Of course, that would need to be in your "final home" because nobody would want to buy a house like that.

That's too bad, because the software and apps for them are far and above anything non-Korean. Not too important for a refrigerator, but it's important on ovens and microwaves.

One tiny example: my brand-new JennAir wall-oven has remote start through it's phone app. Guess what? You have to enable "remote start" on the oven itself before the app works. Every single time! You can't just enable remote start on the oven once and then use the app. You must enable it every single time -- in advance of using the app. And to enable it requires 20-30 seconds of "turn oven on, wait for animations to complete, click through this menu, that menu, and another menu". It makes remote start almost useless: I leave the house at 7:00 AM and have to remember to do this every single morning if I want to use remote start for the oven to be preheated when I arrive home.

Remote start on LG and Samsung? It's a breeze. These are companies whose have software as a core competency. JennAir? Not so much.

> Not too important for a refrigerator, but it's important on ovens and microwaves.

It's a huge red flag to me if a fridge, oven, microwave, etc., involves software/apps at all (at least, outside of some microcontroller programming that is never exposed). It's almost certainly a sign that the appliance is junk.

It's hard to cook when you're not in the kitchen, so it's not surprising that an excellent oven like JennAir skimps on what is at best a marginally useful marketing ploy.

There are two separate "remote start" philosophies - one is "put item in oven before leaving, remotely turn on at X time, done when home" which is pretty clearly what the JennAir is aiming towards. The other is "I want to preheat the oven" which is what the other leans towards.

Both honestly skeeve me out; I wouldn't want to use it unless I had remote cameras and could confirm the oven was empty/only had what I wanted in it.

> one is "put item in oven before leaving, remotely turn on at X time, done when home" which is pretty clearly what the JennAir is aiming towards.

Almost all ovens have been able to do that since at least the '60s. You don't turn on the oven remotely, you set a clock that tells the oven when to turn on.

That's what my 1960's JennAir does. It has two clocks you can set in addition to the one that tells time: one to turn on the oven at a prescribed time, and another to turn it off.

OP here. I specifically bought this oven with remote start for preheating only. Preheating to 400 degrees easily takes 15 minutes. I want to get home and toss the food into the oven right away, not wait another 15 minutes just to start cooking after I've arrived home.

> Both honestly skeeve me out;

I'd rather set remote start from the oven itself, but it's not an option. App only.

> at best a marginally useful marketing ploy

Remote start was my first or second criterion when purchasing a new oven 2 months ago. It's not marketing.

> It's hard to cook when you're not in the kitchen

It's for preheating. I can save 15 minutes if I can remote start the oven. That's a big deal when you only have 2-3 hours between getting home and kids in bed. It's ok if we have different lives, but don't discount features important to me because of that.

LG and Samsung are both notoriously awful for this. Even when they come with crazy long warranties, parts will never be available.

The irony is that cheaper models are still crazy durable - less circuitry, less moving parts, less "economy" features, more off-the-shelf components. If you actually want appliances that last forever, think like a landlord and buy yourself the boring products.

This raises a good point worth repeating: realities of maintenance.

Even for the 'best' refrigerators, it can be VERY painful to respond to a reasonable defect maintenance issue for certain manufacturers. And it may depend upon the locale you're in.

Tip: Ask questions about repair ETAs when buying new, for each model.

And find a local repairman and talk with him. They will always list the models they hate, the models that break but are super cheap to fix and keep running, and then, if you're lucky, what they'd buy their mom.

My LG fridge compressor lasted 3 years. Manufacturer warranty was 10 years, but only covered the cost of the part. Labor to replace it was $700 (called the different places). Needless to say, I went and bought a boring fridge for $1000, and it's already lasted longer than the LG did.

I have a new Fridgedair Fridge and new (4 yo) Maytag "Commercial Quality" washer and dryer. I have a warranty on the fridge and have spent almost 1000 dollars on repairs already. The repair guy told me never to buy a fridge without it. The door stopped working! I didn't get the warranty on the washer and dryer but I should have. In the 4 years of owning them I have DIY replaced the gearbox on the washer, 2 heating units, a tensioner pully, and all rollers in the dryer. One of them is starting to squeak again and the belt needs replaced. It's really been nonstop and the gearbox fix, if done by a professional, was more than the thing was worth.

A consequence of low/no information buyers who don't talk to repair people, don't read Consumer Reports, and don't consider the lifecycle TCO of a major appliance. My grandparents had a Thermador side-by-side built-in for 25 years until parts for it became too expensive or unavailable to replace. My parents had some cheap, ugly yellow GE early-80's refrigerator that lasted 40+ years.

If customers fail to realize some manufacturers adopted and went beyond intentional planned obsolescence, then they brought it on themselves throwing money away by expecting a different result. That's either stupidity or insanity.

Does anyone have solid recommendations of reliable household appliance brands? If all the consumer brands are shit, would it be worth going commercial?

Sub-Zero, Bosch

Look for commercial brands that have a small residential market.

If it's large, it can become shit on its own, so beware.

Commercial things are great but BE AWARE there may be things unexpected about them. Like noise is usually not an issue for a commercial item in an industrial kitchen.

Check used prices on commercial gear. Anything that maintains a used price after 5-10 years indicates a valuable brand. If you can't find any used ones being sold, it probably becomes crap. Auction sites (not eBay, but like physical "business is shutting down" auctions) can be good for this, if you can see the price they went for.

The only brand I'm really "all in" on is Speed Queen. Everything else so far I have been in the "I'll buy it scratch and dent cheap enough that I won't be sad if it explodes" - Best Buy clearance has been good to me here.

Having dealt with fridge issues for over 20 years, I have found that modern fridges have issues when you stress it, like going from an empty fridge to a ton of warm cans, or not running the A/C in a humid summer. Turning it off for a while, melted the frost buildup, and emptying the tray in the back would usually fix everything. Also keeping it full with cold liquids helps.

One other thing that could impact reliability is the type of refrigerant used. Cyclopentane, propane and others (e.g. HFO-1234yf) have a much higher operating pressure compared to prior generation refrigerants.

I just checked the label in my Frigidaire and it says 300 psi for high-side, 140 psi for low-side (R600a). An R12 system would be closer to 150psi on the high-side.

I had a Samsung fridge with an icemaker that needed to be replaced three times in 4 years. I just sold it after that. I bought a new LG fridge and the icemaker started spazing out. Turns out it was just hooked up wrong, but I would just go for a dedicated icemaker at this point. Icemakers are the weak point for fridge longevity.

Didn't even have to open the article to know that an LG or Samsung appliance was involved. It's well-known (at least amongst people that care about appliances) that these appliances use whiz-bang features to cover for the cheap internals they need to pack them with to move them at the prices they charge.

More concerning to me is that there isn't anything better out there to buy anyway.

Sample size of one. Whirlpool fridge and microwave. Kitchenaid dishwasher and stovetop (yes I know they are owned by whirlpool). Samsung washer and dryer. I have gotten years of service from them. Fingers crossed. If there is a better brand for appliances I would like to know.

After having 2 fridges go in the last month (one regular and one beverage fridge) I can't wait until more regulation comes in place so that appliances aren't so throwaway. The support person said average life expectancy is about 8 years which is ridiculously low.

The compressor is usually the part that fails first. Those refrigerators do not withstand a moving.

For moving, best keep it upright, and allow to settle for 24h before plugging it in.

Yes, but it still died.

Bought a quite expensive Liebherr three years ago. Had some trouble with the ice-maker, but they sent a technician who solved it. Works since then without problems. Does someone have bad experiences with Liebherr?

We have a Whirlpool and it seems to have started having issues within 3 years.

Me too. Whirlpool is a piece of shit.

However I bought LG appliances (Fridge/Washer/Dryer/Dishwasher) that have been in service since 2018 (6 yrs) even as a rental home.

I regret buying anything Whirlpool, they're ROYAL crap! All my appliances have failed to some extent within/before their upcoming 3 yrs mark (MAR/2024).

The fridge's noisy, heat-generating parts should be outside, like for a split A/C. That's the only way I'd spend a lot of money on a fridge.

Are there any residential refrigerators that offer that?

Seems that'd mainly be desirable in uncomfortably warm climates. In cooler spots, a refrigerator's waste heat may be a welcome addition to indoor heating.

Back it against your fireplace if indoor heat is a concern.

(I learned interior design from RimWorld.)

I love this idea, although I have to wonder if it would make replacing a refrigerator a bigger chore because (IIUC) you'd need hoses filled with a refrigerant liquid and no air bubbles.

It's done all the time with commercial units - just look for things that are "magic cold" at the grocery store without noise or vents above or below them.

Stuff bought from a restaurant supply outfit usually lasts well.

Another thing I do is call up an appliance repair shop and ask them which one they'd buy for themselves.

The second can be great with a caveat - I got recommended a stove that is wonderful long term, but the ignitor goes out eventually. Cheap part, easy to replace if you can turn a screw. Repairman recommended it because it was very easy to fix the main thing that would go wrong, everything else was bog simple. Called it "a landlord's stove".

Don't get me started on toasters.

Nobody seems to make a good toaster at all anymore.

After going through a bunch of toasters, I bought a Dualit and so far it been holding up. Hated to pay so much for a toaster though.

Partially because the "home toaster" is simply not used in commercial settings; they use a toaster over or one of those things that looks like a miniature pizza oven: https://www.webstaurantstore.com/14603/commercial-conveyor-t... - the only place is at a buffet or similar in a hotel. But I bet that $500 toaster would last awhile. Would it last long enough to justify the price compared to whatever Walmart has?

Yes, the only good toasters I've been able to find are those commercial kitchen ones with the belt that moves the bread through.

The thing is, though, that just a few decades ago even inexpensive consumer toasters were able to make decent toast. That no longer being the case is just weird and sad to me, and emblematic of a larger systemic problem.

Get a convection toaster oven and it handles toasting, baking, and air frying. A bespoke toaster is a waste of space.

All of our Samsung appliances, including the fridge, have needed multiple expensive assemblies that have molded-in non-replaceable components, turning repairs that should have cost ~$20 for a part into >$200 multi-hour DIY jobs.

Our $1500 Samsung fridge, which ended up in the landfill after less than 5 years, was one of the lucky ones involved in the class-action lawsuit because it doesn’t properly de-ice the coils. The actual de-icing consists of a tiny heater connected to a 1-inch-wide aluminum Z-shaped “finger” that sits in the middle of the drain below the coils at the back of the fridge, inside. What happens is this finger can’t keep up with the ice buildup and it goes into a runaway state where more and more ice builds up since the near-freezing water can’t drain away. You’re left with a giant brick of ice at the back of the fridge, inside GLUED-DOWN STYROFOAM inside of a thin plastic cover which is also secured solely with adhesive. The styrofoam breaks apart when you try to remove it. We ran it for a couple of months with a few 120mm PC fans circulating air through the coils (as the fan assembly is also integrated into the formed styrofoam as air channels to route air around the fins of the foils, and one of the characteristic signs of this situation is the stock fan grinding on the ice buildup). Samsung advises to NOT use a blow dryer to attempt to de-ice, as this also deforms the styrofoam; they say that in order to remedy this, one must completely empty the fridge and freeze and leave it unplugged with the doors open for about a week to allow 100% of the ice to melt. The problem with that, of course, is that since this is a design flaw, the same thing will inevitably happen again after another week or two. I suppose you could buy two Samsung fridges, and move everything back and forth depending on even/odd weeks so the unused fridge can thaw.

We had to pay a junk company to come haul it away to the landfill and now we have a GE Profile which has never had this problem.

Tiny, 1-2mm bits of hard water mineral buildup clogging the non-serviceable water sensor impeller of the dishwasher and the quarter-turn water assembly that falls off with the lightest bump from a large pot / pan etc in the left side of the dishwasher causing a flood of water under it is a story for another time.

Samsung makes badly-designed products that the uninitiated public believe are well-designed because they look cool. They’re priced as premium products with the build quality of budget junk. The only Samsung things I’ll touch these days are their SD cards and SSDs, which I only have good things to say about.

If all that isn’t enough, read up on how corrupt the Samsung family is and how they basically control a big part of politics in South Korea.

I swear by GE Appliances. Yes, they got bought out by Haier, but their stuff is still crazy reliable, or at least it has been in our experience. We bought a GE fridge for our old rental (whole house; didn't come with appliances). That fridge was AWESOME. I still think about it, especially since the Whirlpool fridge that came with our current rental (whole house) is fine, but definitely showing its age (16yo).

That said, I'm a huge fan of Samsung and LG displays. We bought the Samsung S95B based on it having the highest rating for TVs on RTINGs. It was a great TV (though it blows out colors with its default calibration) that breaks incredibly easily because of how thin the casing is at the top of the screen.

I’ve had multiple GE appliances fail early on. And you can find plenty of people online saying the same.

YMMV.

Has anyone noticed how appliances and even consumer electronics tend to lend themselves to having too many models?

I mean that it seems if I bought an LG 30" Range Model ABC in NYC and you bought one in LA, your model is ABC-D.

Manufacturers seem to be constantly changing parts, models, BOMs.

Is this because of just in time production? Different parts at difficult times means different variations?

It makes it IMPOSSIBLE to know which you'll get and which one is being reviewed online.

I've noticed this too. I always assumed it was meant to make price comparison more difficult for consumers.

A recent FTC lawsuit [1] made me realize it could also be meant to prevent the seller's platform from doing price comparison ("if Amazon discovers that a seller is offering lower-priced goods elsewhere, Amazon can bury discounting sellers so far down in Amazon’s search results that they become effectively invisible")

We're currently living through a race to the bottom in everything: technology (degradation of platforms like Google and FaceBook — Google has become practically unusable; proliferation of bots, SEO junk, AI junk; also the degradation and over-complication of hardware, e.g. these fridges: overly-complicated smart appliances that don't last long; "they don't build things like they used to"), society (social media, polarization, siloing, echo chambers), politics (Trump, fake news, the death of a well-educated electorate), media (the death of editorial and journalistic responsibility, the death of the institution of the brick-and-mortar press), products and markets (all of the utterly cheap and crappy products on Amazon), the environment (pollution, climate change, mass extinction)... I could probably go on and on. We're about to lose our ability to know what is true and what is real as AI becomes more powerful. The race to the bottom is happening everywhere, all at once. Which means there's a set of root causes behind all of these seemingly-disparate effects: globalization + erosion of barriers to entry in all industries + externalization of costs + technological amplification of capabilities + Moloch + tragedy of the commons + Lord of the Flies (i.e. no adults in the room, no one to step in and stop us from destroying ourselves) + who knows how many other factors.

Centralization and reliance on 3rd parties will do that. Next they will deanonymize, and it'll be over. Build your websites, resurrect the cool internet of the 1990s!

May I politely suggest you step away from the computer and go read something optimistic? "Factfulness" perhaps? Or https://futurecrunch.com/ if you must continue to surf.

I’m actually generally optimistic. I’ve spent my whole life singing the tune of tech optimism. But it’s starting to seem like we’re passing an inflection point specifically with respect to being able to maintain a grip on the real. Most of the things I put in my rant have to do with losing our grip on the real: the platforms are degrading because search results are now mostly created by people who are in the business of gaming search engines, as opposed to people who are in the business of sharing real information. The social media sites are overrun by bots, and even the real profiles are sharing curated if not fake snapshots of their lives. They’re not sharing their realities. The erosion of the barrier to entry in publishing has made it possible for anyone to “publish” anything, so it’s very hard to figure out what is real reporting on real things happening in reality. AI is going to enable the deepfaking of basically anything. You won’t be able to tell what is real from what is fake in basically any digital media. These days you can’t trust product reviews to be from real people. You can’t trust the people making the products. You can’t even trust branded products you see on the internet because Amazon doesn’t care to gatekeeping truth. You can’t trust ads you see on YouTube because Google doesn’t care to filter out fraud. FaceBook outright shoves completely unreal sponsored crap into everyone’s news feeds because few people post real updates anymore… FaceBook has to create an illusion of activity to fill the feeds.

Everything is becoming like this. If you want to buy a reliable product, good luck! It’s not easy to do that anymore because incentives are so misaligned: you can’t trust the quality of the products, you can’t trust reviews — trust is breaking down so widely that to bypass that fact is foolish. It needs to be considered. Trust is everything.

The blackpill is once you realize this all stems from democracy catering to the lowest common denominator in everything.

I wouldn't call it democracy; the stuff this person is complaining about is neither caused by, nor even particularly related to, the government. I would call these trends in popular culture.

Democracy of the markets maybe? People are voting with their wallets and these are our results.

I honestly can't tell if this is satire/trolling. Moloch? If it's trolling, bravo, well done!

If not: you're not wrong about any one individual thing but you have a completely distorted sense of proportions.

I would say it’s recreational pessimism because I’m usually an optimist except I can’t help but feel that lately everything is starting to seem increasingly unreal. The Moloch dynamic is a serious thing — it’s a name used in some circles to describe any dynamic where people have to behave in ways that go against collective interest because of the game conditions they find themselves in, for example a nuclear arm’s race.

Recreation pessimism sounds reasonable enough. With any ominous looking trend in society, it's probably a good idea to spend a bit of time thinking/worrying about it. It's just important to maintain an overall level head and not get too caught up in negativity and cynicism.

Irrational optimism and irrational pessimism both lead to similar sorts of faulty decision making and wind up being equally detrimental to well-being.

The free market economy promised to deliver better quality products with lower prices, but it seems to result in low quality products for low prices. Buyers vote with their wallets, and pricing seems to be more important than quality. I see this also in B2B where high quality products have a hard time competing with lower priced products. Whenever Microsoft decides to include even a half functioning product into their office suite, competition is hurting.

our LG fridge died within two years

they replaced the compressor (only due to a class action suit compelling them to), but I expect it will die prematurely again anyway

I keep thermometers in the fridges and check them all the time

an independent appliance repair guy told me changing brands won't help much, they are all junk now and he mostly does installations instead of repairs

I responded..."even Bosch dishwashers?" to which he replied that I was probably thinking of Bosch from the 90s

> an independent appliance repair guy told me changing brands won't help much

Take this with a grain of salt. Repairmen only see the failures and are very skewed by survivorship fallacy.

> Repairmen only see the failures

Sure, that's the value of their advice. You want the appliances that they rarely see.

I've heard this same remark from now 3 appliance installation/repair folk. The advise I was given was do NOT upgrade i.e. our refrigerator because it will keep working while the new models are made to die.

This really shouldn't shock anyone, it's a bit of the status quo for appliances, printers, toys, you name it. Planned obsolescence is real and going strong.

A guy I worked with spent a long time trying to source parts for his Bosch dishwasher that was leaking from underneath.

He got a couple years out of it.

He did end up finding one. Allegedly the part was redesigned, but what they meant by that was thicker foam tape.

The person who invents a refrigerator compressor that isn't a sealed unit that requires special training and equipment to replace when the motor starts sticking is going to get a horse's head in their bed.

There are a lot of brands but only a few actual manufacturers for large appliances, so yeah, they don't typically vary a whole lot in terms of what's inside them. high-end, expensive kit isn't necessarily much better. A Sub-Zero, for instance, can be a maintenance nightmare.

We just replaced a 30-year-old GE with a Whirlpool, so far so good, but we don't expect another 30 years out of it.

I have a sub-zero and it performs better than any refrigerator I have had in the past. It’s only 3 years old but have had 0 issues with it and everything is easily accessible to clean, vacuum, repair. The warranty on the core components is 12 years, unheard of these days. It has very few bells and whistles but the thing is built like a tank. Definitely paid an arm and a leg for it though.

>they replaced the [parts] ... but I expect it will die prematurely again anyway

This was like when Apple replaced the defectively soldered GPUs on just-out-of-warranty MacBookPros... with the same defective GPUs. In my case, it gave me almost one year to transfer to another model.

----

As for refrigerators, my kitchen design has two refrigerators, in case one is down for repairs/spills/CostCo. The one that's about to die is the newer model.

MBAs did it again! Your refrigerator was too reliable, so it had to be MBAed so you can keep buying new ones each year.

Make MBAs illegal.

> MBAs did it again! Your refrigerator was too reliable, so it had to be MBAed so you can keep buying new ones each year.

Should we blame individual MBAs, or the governments that create the market / regulatory environments that make such choices rational (or even necessary for survival)?

E.g., governments could alter consumer-protection laws to make it financially unwise for a manufacturer to sell devices likely to fail in the first 10 years.

Every company that uses the MBA reductionist framework inevitably ends up scamming the customers, the employees, society, taxpayers, the environment, politics, and everything that exists.

It is a virus that eats reality and turns it into money.

If humanity is to survive, MBAs have to be outlawed and banished from any form of administration.

Draining everyone, that is what they exist for. Tax evasion, rampant corruption, loss of privacy, mass surveillance, ecocide, regular mass layoffs, low wages, perpetual war, greedflation, etc. Behind every problem, a MBA.

Without MBAs, we would be living on Mars. Instead, MBAs are marsforming earth.

I don't think your comment addresses my main point though.

Even if we outlawed MBAs, we'd still have a business environment in which companies that maximize their profitability potentially outcompete more customer-centric companies.

A profit-maximizing strategy potentially gives them more money, which in turn lets them lower their prices, ramp up faster in newer markets, etc.

I don't think it matters much whether or not people have MBAs. Market dynamics will exist regardless of whether we teach people about them.

I think your real complaint lies elsewhere in the system.

Let's start by outlawing MBAs as a good first step. We can figure out the rest as we go.

Got a nice blue Bosch in 1997 - works flawlessly since then (got a little louder this year - hope that‘s not a bad sign).

Well the plural of anecdote may not be data, but I've really liked my Bosch dishwasher that I've had for the last 5 years or so. Cleans really well, reasonably quiet, and the UI works fine. I'm redoing the kitchen and considering getting a Bosch induction range and maybe a fridge.

Reviews on their 600 CFM range exhaust hoods, though, are all over the map. Smaller bits like that seem even harder to get a good read on.

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