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Comment by JohnFen | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 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?

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