Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Too_Many_Tools
I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
Your thoughts?
TMT
Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 9, 2007
Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
Service shop in Silver Spring.
"You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
business."
Mr. Jones recently sold his home in Laurel and is in the process of
moving to Bluffton, S.C., with his wife, Jeannette.
Mr. Jones is one of the many Washington-area repairmen who have
struggled to stay afloat as residents replace, not repair, old
appliances.
"It's a dying trade," said Scott Brown, Webmaster of
www.fixitnow.com and self-proclaimed "Samurai Appliance Repairman."
The reason for this is twofold, Mr. Brown said: The cost of
appliances is coming down because of cheap overseas labor and improved
manufacturing techniques, and repairmen are literally dying off.
The average age of appliance technicians is 42, and there are few
young repairmen to take their place, said Mr. Brown, 47. He has been
repairing appliances in New Hampshire for the past 13 years.
In the next seven years, the number of veteran appliance repairmen
will decrease nationwide as current workers retire or transfer to other
occupations, the Department of Labor said in its 2007 Occupational
Outlook Handbook.
The federal agency said many prospective repairmen prefer work that
is less strenuous and want more comfortable working conditions.
Local repairmen said it is simply a question of economics.
"Nowadays appliances are cheap, so people are just getting new
ones," said Paul Singh, a manager at the Appliance Service Depot, a
repair shop in Northwest. "As a result, business has slowed down a
lot."
"The average repair cost for a household appliance is $50 to $350,"
said Shahid Rana, a service technician at Rana Refrigeration, a repair
shop in Capitol Heights. "If the repair is going to cost more than
that, we usually tell the customer to go out and buy a new one."
It's not uncommon for today's repairmen to condemn an appliance
instead of fixing it for the sake of their customers' wallets.
If they decide to repair an appliance that is likely to break down
again, repairmen are criticized by their customers and often lose
business because of a damaged reputation.
Mr. Jones said he based his repair decisions on the 50 percent
rule: "If the cost of service costs more than 50 percent of the price
of a new machine, I'll tell my customers to get a new one."
"A lot of customers want me to be honest with them, so I'll tell
them my opinion and leave the decision making up to them," he said.
In recent years, consumers have tended to buy new appliances when
existing warranties expire rather than repair old appliances, the
Department of Labor said.
Mr. Brown acknowledged this trend. "Lower-end appliances which you
can buy for $200 to $300 are basically throwaway appliances," he said.
"They are so inexpensive that you shouldn't pay to get them repaired."
"The quality of the materials that are being made aren't lasting,"
Mr. Jones said. "Nowadays you're seeing more plastic and more circuit
boards, and they aren't holding up."
Many home appliances sold in the United States are made in Taiwan,
Singapore, China and Mexico.
"Nothing is made [in the United States] anymore," Mr. Jones said.
"But then again, American parts are only better to a point, a lot of
U.S. companies are all about the dollar."
Fortunately for the next generation of repairmen, some of today's
high-end appliances make service repairs the most cost-effective
option.
The Department of Labor concurred. "Over the next decade, as more
consumers purchase higher-priced appliances designed to have much
longer lives, they will be more likely to use repair services than to
purchase new appliances," said the 2007 Occupational Outlook Handbook.
Modern, energy-efficient refrigerators can cost as much as $5,000
to $10,000, and with such a hefty price tag, throwing one away is not
an option.
In some cases, repairmen can help consumers reduce the amount of
aggravation that a broken appliance will cause.
Consider the time and effort it takes to shop for a new appliance,
wait for its delivery, remove the old one and get the new one
installed.
In addition, certain appliances such as ovens and washing machines
can be a bigger hassle to replace because they are connected to gas and
water lines.
"It takes your time, it takes your effort, and if you don't install
the new appliance, you'll have to hire a service technician to install
it anyways," Mr. Brown said.
Some consumers bond with their appliances like old pets, and for
loyalty or sentimental reasons, refuse to let them go.
Mr. Rana said some of his clients have appliances that are more
than 30 years old. It makes sense, he said. "A lot of old refrigerators
are worth fixing because they give people good service. They just don't
make things like they used to."
Rick Brandt
> In my opinon...no.
>
> I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
> lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
>
> Your thoughts?
>
> TMT
>
> Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
> THE WASHINGTON TIMES
> January 9, 2007
> Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
> Service shop in Silver Spring.
> "You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
> ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
> washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
> business."
This raises an apparent contradiction. Most people believe that appliances were
built much better in the past than they are now and yet in the past a whole
industry survived on doing appliance repairs. Perhaps they only seemed to be
built better in the past because we kept them longer and the only reason we kept
them longer is because we repaired them instead of replacing them. The flipside
of that same coin is that perhaps today's appliances only seem to be inferior
because we replace them more often and the only reason we replace them more
often is because we don't repair them.
F. George McDuffee
<too_man...@yahoo.com> wrote:
<snip>
>I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
>lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
>
>Your thoughts?
While I like this approach, it is getting harder all the time.
Maintainability and lowest initial cost are not generally
compatible design objectives for products with significant
volume.
Products are increasingly non-reparable in that the components
are permanently attached/sealed, and replacement items, other
than the most basic standard hardware such as screws, are not
readily available. Most people are unwilling or unable to have
an appliance such as a stove or refrigerator down for repair for
an extended period waiting on parts.
The increasing complexity of many new products also presents
problems, particularly those with "computer" control.
Unka' George [George McDuffee]
...............................
On Theory: Delight at having understood
a very abstract and obscure system
leads most people to believe
in the truth of what it demonstrates.
G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-99),
German physicist, philosopher.
Aphorisms "Notebook J," aph. 77
(written 1765-99; tr. by R. J. Hollingdale, 1990).
Ecnerwal
"Rick Brandt" <rickb...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> This raises an apparent contradiction.
Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances to see
that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".
The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable. "This
part always breaks eventually, we'll isolate it and make it easy to
replace".
The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated to render them
effectively non-economic to repair. "This part will (by design) break
about 1 year after the warranty runs out - let's put in in a monolithic
module containing all the most expensive parts of the machine." The
appliance industry would much rather sell you a new one than have you
fix the old one, and they have taken steps to ensure that only the
maddest of mad hatters will stubbornly stick to repair; and when they
do, the industry will still profit mightily due to inflated pricing. But
not making the parts at all will knock even the mad hatters into line
soon enough, so long as they keep all the parts adequately non-standard
that it's not economic for anyone to second-source them.
The same logic is driving the production of hybrid cars that are less
fuel efficient than some non-hybrid cars. When the battery pack dies in
8-10 years, the car will be junk (non-economic to repair), clearing the
way for more new car sales.
--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Pete C.
Yes.
William Noble
impossible to repair because it uses custom electronics and special assembly
techniques but that doesn't mean it's planned to quit working in 3 years.
If you buy a new good quality stove, you could expect decades of service
from it - I am still using a stove dated 1947, I'm sure others have older
ones, but the only improvements in stoves since the introduction of natural
gas are the electric igniters (reduces gas usage and heat load in teh
summer) and improved insulation. I am still using an Amana microwave bought
in 1972 - again, newer products have no advantages (and personally I prefer
an analog timer). But, I buy a new computer occasionally as technology
changes, and I just replaced a perfectly good 17" high end monitor with a
flat panel LCD monitor because it's larger and uses less desk space - that's
an upgrade, not really obsolescense (by the way, anyone need a really nice
monitor?). Planned obsolescense might be something designed to actually
wear out and be dead in an amount of time - like the printer ink cartriges
that, even if full, cannot be used more than XXX days after you open them.
my two cents
bill (www.wbnoble.com)
"Too_Many_Tools" <too_man...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1168795859.4...@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> In my opinon...no.
>
> I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
> lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
>
> Your thoughts?
>
>snip________________
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Michael Black
> This raises an apparent contradiction. Most people believe that appliances were
> built much better in the past than they are now and yet in the past a whole
> industry survived on doing appliance repairs. Perhaps they only seemed to be
> built better in the past because we kept them longer and the only reason we kept
> them longer is because we repaired them instead of replacing them. The flipside
> of that same coin is that perhaps today's appliances only seem to be inferior
> because we replace them more often and the only reason we replace them more
> often is because we don't repair them.
>
But what you had was a relative handful of items, that people took great
care in deciding about before purchasing, and cost quite a bit, and of
course when they needed repair the parts were generally generic, because
the items were generic.
No, the whole household is loaded with things. INstead of buying a few
things that you expected to last pretty much forever, and you'd want
to get the most out of, you buy something cheap because it might
be nice to have that sandwich maker or that $15 rotary tool. The things
have become cheap in part because demand has lowered costs (design costs
and profit can be spread over far more units), but also by cutting out
the expensive stuff.
So a tv set forty years ago was handwired (I have no clue whether that
was a good or bad thing, but it was costly) on a heavy metal chassis, and
was a significant purchase for most households. But when something
broke, the cost of repair was low compare to the cost of replacement, to
that tv set would be taken to the local repair shop. But, pretty much
all the parts in that tv set were generic, so that repair shop did not
have to be in some relationship with the manufacturer, and the parts could
be had at the local electronics store (and since those stores were selling
to all kinds of people, the same general parts to repair that tv set were
also used by they hobbyist and even the professional, the stores could
survive with a relatively small stock that was bought by many), so the
repair shop often didn't need to keep a lot of stock, especially not
a lot of specialized stock.
But in order to increase the market, manufacturers had to lower prices
so those who couldn't afford before could now. So they shifted to printed
circuit boards, and when ICs came along they started using them, which
allowed for higher integration (ie fewer overall parts). The smaller
parts meant no heavy chassis, which would have gone anyway because
that cost money, not just to buy the metal but you had to ship it
to the store near the consumer.
The price goes down. But the cost of repair stays the same, or goes
up, because tracking down the problem is labor intensive. Manufacturers
often switch to replacing boards, which keeps labor costs down but
means you aren't paying for a fifty cent part but the whole board.
So if you paid a thousand dollars for that color tv set in 1966 (just
a figure I pulled out of the air), the repair cost was a small percentage
of the cost of buying a new one. Plus, it was easier to pay out a little
here and a little there than to come up with another thousand to buy a new
tv set.
But if you paid a hundred dollars for that tv set today, you'd be
paying a good percentage of that cost in having a repairman try to
find the problem. That tips things in favor of buying new. Plus,
in order to get that tv set price so low, the parts aren't generic,
and the repairman has to deal with the manufacturer to get the replacement
parts. That ends up being problematic, or requires some sort of
contract with the manufactuer (and added cost). The tv sets are
no longer as generic as they were forty years ago, so the repairman
finds it harder to figure out what is wrong, often requiring service
material from the manufacturer, again an extra cost.
The cheaper something is to manufacture, the less sturdy it will be
mechanically, since that is one way to cut cost. Hence things are
less likely to last as long, even if people were willing to spend
the money to repair them rather than buy new.
And I want to add something about "planned obsolescence" because it
is often misused. If people are choosing to buy cheap, it's hardly
that the manufacturers are making things so they will break. The
consumer often wants that cheaper tv set or VCR.
And there is the issue of just plain obsolescence. Forty years
ago, there'd hardly be any electronic items around the house. A
tv set or two, some radios, maybe a stereo. But look around now,
and everything is electronic. It's either been invented in the past forty
years (not even that long in many cases), or at the very least could not
have been a consumer item until recently. Once you have consumers buying
the latest thing, things are bound to go obsolete. Buy early, and things
still have to develop, which means the things really may become obsolete
in a few years. It's not the manufacturer doing this to "screw the
consumer", it's a combination of new developments and consumer demand.
If my computer from 1979 had been intended to last forever, it would
have been way out of range in terms of price. Because they'd have to
anticipate how much things would change, and build in enough so upgrading
would be doable. So you'd spend money on potential, rather than spending
money later on a new computer that would beat out what they could
imagine in 1979. And in recent years, it is the consumer who is deciding
to buy a new computer every few years (whether a deliberate decision or
they simply let the manufacturer lead, must vary from person to person.)
Michael
Rick Brandt
> In article <B%tqh.1176$O02...@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net>,
> "Rick Brandt" <rickb...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > This raises an apparent contradiction.
>
> Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances to
> see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".
>
> The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable. "This
> part always breaks eventually, we'll isolate it and make it easy to
> replace".
>
> The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
> and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated to render them
What you say speaks to the issue of why did we repair in the past and why don't
we repair now, but it says nothing about the comparable reliability. If
appliances in the past were "built to be repaired" that can be interpretted to
mean that failures were expected. If failures were expected and people could
make a living performing those repairs then that suggests that the appliances
were not that reliable.
terry
Ecnerwal wrote: In part ..................
>
> The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
> and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated to render them
> effectively non-economic to repair. "This part will (by design) break
> about 1 year after the warranty runs out - let's put in in a monolithic
> module containing all the most expensive parts of the machine."
Maybe that's stating it rather strongly?
Although recent discussion/discovery that IPods will exhaust their
batteries in approximately one to two years do clearly raise the
question? "Designed to fail?".
But it's the same reason that I continue to accept and use old
appliances that I can repair myself.
For example I refuse to buy a stove that incorporates a digital
timer/clock; they are virtually unrepairable! Eventually can see
myself, however, ending up with one of those and deliberately
disconnecting the digital timer clock or modifying the stove to use one
my older (saved) clock/timers or just dong away with the timer
altogether.
hal...@aol.com
isnt designed to be easily repaired. ever wonder why nearly every
copier has white covers?
so the look shabby in a couple years to encourage you to buy a new
one.....
some manufactuers intentially make their products expensive and hard to
repair........
turned service parts into a profit department since theres low margins
on new machine sales
Rick Brandt
> Maybe that's stating it rather strongly?
>
> Although recent discussion/discovery that IPods will exhaust their
> batteries in approximately one to two years do clearly raise the
> question? "Designed to fail?".
>
> But it's the same reason that I continue to accept and use old
> appliances that I can repair myself.
> For example I refuse to buy a stove that incorporates a digital
> timer/clock; they are virtually unrepairable! Eventually can see
> myself, however, ending up with one of those and deliberately
> disconnecting the digital timer clock or modifying the stove to use
> one my older (saved) clock/timers or just dong away with the timer
> altogether.
I think another big factor is the ratio of cost on parts versus labor. In the
"old days" you might have a repair that was 70% parts and 30% labor cost-wise.
Nowdays those percentages would be reversed and that just irks people who just
don't see the value of anyone's labor (other than their own of course).
You see posts about this all the time. "Called a guy to come out and do foo and
couldn't believe what he wanted to charge me!" Labor really induces a lot of
sticker shock these days.
M Berger
cost. At one time you changed a thermostat in your car
twice a year (if you lived in the midwestern U.S.) and
had the carbon cleaned out at 50,000 miles. You got a
tune-up and spark plugs every 15,000 miles.
The spark plugs on new vehicles are rated for $ 50,000
and up. A computer takes care of the tune-up for you,
and the regular maintenance involves basically adding or
changing fluids.
On your old clothes dryer you were supposed to oil the
drum bearings and motor every so often. That's no longer
considered necessary.
Amazingly, these "cheaply built" appliances and vehicles
are awfully reliable considering how little maintenance
and attention they get. Most refrigerators actually still
cool when they're scrapped. It's the inside door trim,
or door gasket, or a clogged vent that causes people to throw
them away.
Rod Speed
> In my opinon...no.
I dont believe it happens in the sense that its actually possible
to design something to fail early and still have a viable product.
And there is plenty of stuff that clearly aint anything to do
with planned obsolescence at all. Most obviously with stuff
as basic as bread knives which are all metal. Those wont
even need to be replaced when the handle gives out.
And heaps of kitchen stuff is now stainless steel, which
will last forever compared with the older tinplate crap.
> I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
> lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
> Your thoughts?
Works fine with some things, but can bite. I just replaced
the switch in the vaccuum cleaner which is about 40 years
old. Cost peanuts and was very easy to find a new one.
The big 9ź" hand held circular saw that I built the house with
35 years ago has just seen the power switch fail and that is
no longer available from the manufacturer. Fortunately its
failed on so the saw is still usable tho more dangerous.
It uses blades with a 1?" hole. The current blades have
1" holes with washers which allow smaller shafts but no
easy way to use them on my old saw. There doesnt appear
to be any readily available source of different collets for that.
Just had the chain adjuster failed on a dirt cheap relatively
new electric chainsaw. I assumed that they wouldnt bother
to supply parts like that, but I was wrong, readily available
and in fact free. Clearly no planned obsolescence there.
And power tools are now so cheap that they are very viable
to buy even for just one job. I had to cut a copper pipe thats
buried in the ground and it costs peanuts to buy a very decent
jigsaw to cut it, just to avoid having to dig a bigger hole around
where I needed to cut it. Its been fine for other stuff since,
no evidence that its going to die any time soon. Could well get
40 years out of that too like I did with most of the power tools
that I used to build the house.
Cars in spades. I've just replaced my 35 year old car that I was
too stupid to fix the windscreen leak with which eventually produced
rust holes in the floor which wont pass our registration check.
While its possible to plate the holes, I cant be bothered, I intended
to drive that car into the ground and decided that that had happened.
No evidence that the replacement new car wont last as long. Its
certainly got more plastic, most obviously with the bumper bars that
the new one doesnt have, but that mostly due to modern crumple
zones, not due to planned obsolescence and might save my life etc.
People were raving on about planned obsolescence when
I built the house and I've had very little that has ever needed
replacement apart from basic stuff like light bulbs and the
occassional failure of stuff like elements in the oven etc.
More below.
> Irreparable damage
> By Bryce Baschuk
> THE WASHINGTON TIMES
> January 9, 2007
> Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the
> Procter Appliance Service shop in Silver Spring.
That isnt planned obsolescence, thats the fact that its a
lot cheaper to pay a very low wage asian to make you
a new one than it ever is to pay a first world monkey to
repair your existing one with all but quite trivial faults.
> "You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you
> could years ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven,
> refrigerator and washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything
> has changed in the appliance business."
It has indeed, but not because of planned obsolescence.
> Mr. Jones recently sold his home in Laurel and is in the
> process of moving to Bluffton, S.C., with his wife, Jeannette.
Sob sob.
> Mr. Jones is one of the many Washington-area repairmen who have
> struggled to stay afloat as residents replace, not repair, old appliances.
Because its generally better value to replace.
> "It's a dying trade," said Scott Brown, Webmaster of www.fixitnow.com
> and self-proclaimed "Samurai Appliance Repairman."
Wota fucking wanker. Bet he doesnt disembowel himself when he fucks up.
> The reason for this is twofold, Mr. Brown said: The cost
> of appliances is coming down because of cheap overseas
> labor and improved manufacturing techniques,
So much for your silly line about planned obsolescence.
> and repairmen are literally dying off.
They arent in other industrys that are still viable,
most obviously with cars and trucks and houses.
> The average age of appliance technicians is 42, and there are few
> young repairmen to take their place, said Mr. Brown, 47. He has
> been repairing appliances in New Hampshire for the past 13 years.
He should have had a clue 13 years ago.
The writing was on the wall long before that.
> In the next seven years, the number of veteran appliance
> repairmen will decrease nationwide as current workers retire
> or transfer to other occupations, the Department of Labor
> said in its 2007 Occupational Outlook Handbook.
Must be rocket scientist shinybums.
> The federal agency said many prospective repairmen prefer work
> that is less strenuous and want more comfortable working conditions.
They actually prefer a decent income.
That claimed 'prefer work that is less strenuous and want more
comfortable working conditions' clearly hasnt affect car, truck or
house repair and the construction industry etc. Tho there will
always be some of that with a 5% unemployment rate.
> Local repairmen said it is simply a question of economics.
> "Nowadays appliances are cheap, so people are just getting new ones,"
Yep, only a fool wouldnt if the new one costs about
the same as the cost of repairing the old one.
> said Paul Singh, a manager at the Appliance Service Depot, a repair
> shop in Northwest. "As a result, business has slowed down a lot."
> "The average repair cost for a household appliance is $50 to $350,"
> said Shahid Rana, a service technician at Rana Refrigeration, a repair
> shop in Capitol Heights. "If the repair is going to cost more than
> that, we usually tell the customer to go out and buy a new one."
Must be rocket scientist apes.
> It's not uncommon for today's repairmen to condemn an appliance
> instead of fixing it for the sake of their customers' wallets.
> If they decide to repair an appliance that is likely to break
> down again, repairmen are criticized by their customers
> and often lose business because of a damaged reputation.
> Mr. Jones said he based his repair decisions on the 50 percent
> rule: "If the cost of service costs more than 50 percent of the price
> of a new machine, I'll tell my customers to get a new one."
What makes a lot more sense is to factor in the failure rate of that appliance.
> "A lot of customers want me to be honest with them, so I'll tell them
> my opinion and leave the decision making up to them," he said.
> In recent years, consumers have tended to buy new
> appliances when existing warranties expire rather than
> repair old appliances, the Department of Labor said.
Hardly surprising given that they are now so cheap.
> Mr. Brown acknowledged this trend. "Lower-end appliances which you
> can buy for $200 to $300 are basically throwaway appliances," he said.
> "They are so inexpensive that you shouldn't pay to get them repaired."
> "The quality of the materials that are being made aren't lasting,"
Pig ignorant silly stuff.
> Mr. Jones said. "Nowadays you're seeing more plastic
I had some reservations about my 35 year old
dishwasher that does have a plastic liner. Its lasted fine.
> and more circuit boards, and they aren't holding up."
Bullshit.
> Many home appliances sold in the United States
> are made in Taiwan, Singapore, China and Mexico.
And now china.
> "Nothing is made [in the United States] anymore," Mr. Jones said.
> "But then again, American parts are only better to a point,
> a lot of U.S. companies are all about the dollar."
> Fortunately for the next generation of repairmen, some of today's
> high-end appliances make service repairs the most cost-effective option.
> The Department of Labor concurred. "Over the next decade, as more
> consumers purchase higher-priced appliances designed to have much
> longer lives, they will be more likely to use repair services than to
> purchase new appliances," said the 2007 Occupational Outlook Handbook.
Bet that will have fuck all effect on the employment prospects.
> Modern, energy-efficient refrigerators
> can cost as much as $5,000 to $10,000,
Pig ignorant drivel. You can buy plenty of modern energy efficient
fridges for a hell of a lot less than that. I've done just that a month ago.
> and with such a hefty price tag, throwing one away is not an option.
Bet the fools stupid enough to buy those will anyway.
> In some cases, repairmen can help consumers reduce the
> amount of aggravation that a broken appliance will cause.
> Consider the time and effort it takes to shop for a new appliance, wait
> for its delivery, remove the old one and get the new one installed.
I did mine in 30 mins total, literally.
> In addition, certain appliances such as ovens and
> washing machines can be a bigger hassle to replace
> because they are connected to gas and water lines.
Just changed washing machines over too, with a free
one I inherited. Changing the water over took minutes too.
> "It takes your time, it takes your effort, and if you don't
> install the new appliance, you'll have to hire a service
> technician to install it anyways," Mr. Brown said.
Only the incompetant fools that cant change the washing machine over.
> Some consumers bond with their appliances like old pets,
> and for loyalty or sentimental reasons, refuse to let them go.
> Mr. Rana said some of his clients have appliances that are
> more than 30 years old. It makes sense, he said. "A lot of old
> refrigerators are worth fixing because they give people good service.
Wrong, those are normally lousy energy efficiency.
> They just don't make things like they used to."
Yeah, they make them much better today energy efficiency wise.
And much better design wise too with the shelves and bins etc too.
Rick Brandt
> Things are built differently now for reasons other than
> cost. At one time you changed a thermostat in your car
> twice a year (if you lived in the midwestern U.S.) and
> had the carbon cleaned out at 50,000 miles. You got a
> tune-up and spark plugs every 15,000 miles.
>
> The spark plugs on new vehicles are rated for $ 50,000
> and up. A computer takes care of the tune-up for you,
> and the regular maintenance involves basically adding or
> changing fluids.
>
> On your old clothes dryer you were supposed to oil the
> drum bearings and motor every so often. That's no longer
> considered necessary.
>
> Amazingly, these "cheaply built" appliances and vehicles
> are awfully reliable considering how little maintenance
> and attention they get. Most refrigerators actually still
> cool when they're scrapped. It's the inside door trim,
> or door gasket, or a clogged vent that causes people to throw
> them away.
The planned obselescence theory has one huge flaw. If I intentionally design my
product so you will have to replace it rather than repair it and (even more
deviously) intentionally design it so it will not have a long life (just past
the warranty period) I have no reason to believe that the replacement you
purchase will be my product. In fact it is way more likely that you will
purchase the other guy's product next time.
A far more plausible theory is that building the most reliable "whatevers" at
the lowest cost just happens to result in manufacturing methods that produce
goods that are not as repairable as they were in the past. No need to introduce
any big conspiracies.
hal...@aol.com
Rod Speed wrote:
> Too_Many_Tools <too_man...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > In my opinon...no.
>
> I dont believe it happens in the sense that its actually possible
> to design something to fail early and still have a viable product.
>
> And there is plenty of stuff that clearly aint anything to do
> with planned obsolescence at all. Most obviously with stuff
> as basic as bread knives which are all metal. Those wont
> even need to be replaced when the handle gives out.
>
> And heaps of kitchen stuff is now stainless steel, which
> will last forever compared with the older tinplate crap.
>
> > I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
> > lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
>
> > Your thoughts?
>
> Works fine with some things, but can bite. I just replaced
> the switch in the vaccuum cleaner which is about 40 years
> old. Cost peanuts and was very easy to find a new one.
>
did you know theres all qualitys of stainless, some will last literaLLY
FOREVER not so for kitchen stainless, try a magnet on stainless the
better quality is non magnetic
JR North
behind.
For instance: my Kenmore washer/dryer set is 16 years old. Still going
strong. No repairs. Lots of posts in S.E.R (and here) on current W/D
models puking after 2 or so years.
My JC Penney (Eureka) canister vac is 22 years old. Only thing replaced
was power head belt a couple years ago. New vacs are garbage.
I could go on and on....
JR
Dweller in the cellar
Too_Many_Tools wrote:
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Home Page: http://www.seanet.com/~jasonrnorth
If you're not the lead dog, the view never changes
Doubt yourself, and the real world will eat you alive
The world doesn't revolve around you, it revolves around me
No skeletons in the closet; just decomposing corpses
--------------------------------------------------------------
Dependence is Vulnerability:
--------------------------------------------------------------
"Open the Pod Bay Doors please, Hal"
"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.."
Too_Many_Tools
Companies are setting up the situation that you are forced to buy new
versus repair the used applicance, car, electronics, computers, cell
phones....because they make a larger profit.
The MBAs that are crafting the company policy are behind this.
And the consumer is being left holding the bill...including paying for
the cost of disposal.
TMT
Rick Brandt
> In my opinon, it is a symptom of a larger problem....
>
> Companies are setting up the situation that you are forced to buy new
> versus repair the used applicance, car, electronics, computers, cell
> phones....because they make a larger profit.
Only if the same company sells me the replacement. For the theory to work
entire industries would need to collude on this. I don't buy it.
> The MBAs that are crafting the company policy are behind this.
Nah, cooking the books maybe, but not making design decisions.
> And the consumer is being left holding the bill...including paying for
> the cost of disposal.
Actually newer laws are holding manufacturers accountable for any "special"
disposal costs required of their products. That could put a whole new spin on
this topic.
Rod Speed
> Rick Brandt <rickb...@hotmail.com> wrote
>> This raises an apparent contradiction.
> Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances
> to see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".
Or perhaps you havent.
> The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable.
Yes. And so are the current ones too with the exception of plug packs etc.
> "This part always breaks eventually, we'll
> isolate it and make it easy to replace".
That is just plain silly with domestic appliances. There is bugger
all except light bulbs that cant be designed to last indefinitely.
And even that has changed just recently too.
> The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
Oh bullshit.
> and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated
> to render them effectively non-economic to repair.
More bullshit. I've done just that fine with a modern electric chainsaw.
> "This part will (by design) break about 1 year after the warranty runs out -
Not even possible.
> let's put in in a monolithic module containing
> all the most expensive parts of the machine."
That in spades.
> The appliance industry would much rather
> sell you a new one than have you fix the old one,
Sure, but what they would rather and what is possible
design wise are two entirely different animals.
> and they have taken steps to ensure that only the
> maddest of mad hatters will stubbornly stick to repair;
Utterly mindless conspiracy theory.
> and when they do, the industry will still
> profit mightily due to inflated pricing.
Completely off with the fairys now.
> But not making the parts at all will knock even the mad hatters
> into line soon enough, so long as they keep all the parts adequately
> non-standard that it's not economic for anyone to second-source them.
Thats always been the case with domestic appliances.
> The same logic is driving the production of hybrid cars
> that are less fuel efficient than some non-hybrid cars.
Nope, that isnt due to any conspiracy, thats just the usual design stupidity.
> When the battery pack dies in 8-10 years,
> the car will be junk (non-economic to repair),
Another fantasy.
> clearing the way for more new car sales.
That happens even when the cars are economic to repair.
Just because new cars are cheap enough to allow that.
Domestic appliances in spades.
Rod Speed
> Ecnerwal wrote:
>> The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
>> and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated to render them
>> effectively non-economic to repair. "This part will (by design) break
>> about 1 year after the warranty runs out - let's put in in a monolithic
>> module containing all the most expensive parts of the machine."
> Maybe that's stating it rather strongly?
> Although recent discussion/discovery that IPods will
> exhaust their batteries in approximately one to two
> years do clearly raise the question? "Designed to fail?".
Doesnt explain stuff like cordless phones that use standard batterys.
> But it's the same reason that I continue to accept
> and use old appliances that I can repair myself.
That can mean that you have to do without
some of the most elegantly usable appliances tho.
> For example I refuse to buy a stove that incorporates
> a digital timer/clock; they are virtually unrepairable!
Mindlessly silly. My microwave is still going fine 30 years later.
> Eventually can see myself, however, ending up with one of those and
> deliberately disconnecting the digital timer clock or modifying the stove to use
> one my older (saved) clock/timers or just dong away with the timer altogether.
Or get a clue and only bother with that if it actually does fail.
And get the benefit of a decent modern design when it doesnt.
I've never actually had a single digital clock in any system
ever fail and I've got heaps of them, plenty 30+ years old.
Rod Speed
Yep, and thats inevitable when first world wages are involved with
repair and the alternative is some microwage monkey in an asian
factory minimally involved in stamping out a new one hours wise.
Even just the travel time for the repair is vastly more
than any asian ever puts into making you a new one.
Michael A. Terrell
Yes, my mother used her first clothes dryer for over 30 years. We
replaced the belt three times. A new dryer might last five years,
total. The washer lasted 18 years before the hard water ruined it, and
it had a timer replaced when it was 12 years Old. You think that the
new designs are an improvement? :(
--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.
Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
Rod Speed
> Rick Brandt (rickb...@hotmail.com) wrote
>> This raises an apparent contradiction. Most people believe that
>> appliances were built much better in the past than they are now and
>> yet in the past a whole industry survived on doing appliance
>> repairs. Perhaps they only seemed to be built better in the past
>> because we kept them longer and the only reason we kept them longer
>> is because we repaired them instead of replacing them. The flipside
>> of that same coin is that perhaps today's appliances only seem to be
>> inferior because we replace them more often and the only reason we
>> replace them more often is because we don't repair them.
> But what you had was a relative handful of items, that
> people took great care in deciding about before purchasing,
Most didnt.
> and cost quite a bit,
Readily affordable.
> and of course when they needed repair the parts were generally generic,
You clearly aint ever been involved in the repair industry.
> because the items were generic.
No they werent.
> No, the whole household is loaded with things. INstead of
> buying a few things that you expected to last pretty much
> forever, and you'd want to get the most out of, you buy
> something cheap because it might be nice to have that
> sandwich maker or that $15 rotary tool. The things have
> become cheap in part because demand has lowered costs
> (design costs and profit can be spread over far more units),
Nope, because they are churned out in low labor cost countrys.
> but also by cutting out the expensive stuff.
Nope, in fact they have more expensive stuff than they used to, most
obviously with digital timers and clocks etc that are almost universal now.
> So a tv set forty years ago was handwired
No it wasnt, that had stopped well before that.
> (I have no clue whether that was a good or bad thing,
The use of tubes was the bad thing with those designs.
> but it was costly) on a heavy metal chassis, and was a significant
> purchase for most households. But when something broke, the
> cost of repair was low compare to the cost of replacement, to
> that tv set would be taken to the local repair shop.
Yes.
> But, pretty much all the parts in that tv set were generic, so
> that repair shop did not have to be in some relationship with the
> manufacturer, and the parts could be had at the local electronics
> store (and since those stores were selling to all kinds of people,
> the same general parts to repair that tv set were also used by they
> hobbyist and even the professional, the stores could survive with a
> relatively small stock that was bought by many), so the repair shop often
> didn't need to keep a lot of stock, especially not a lot of specialized stock.
> But in order to increase the market, manufacturers had
> to lower prices so those who couldn't afford before
> could now. So they shifted to printed circuit boards,
That had happened well before that.
And the shift wasnt due to cost, it was due to the move to semiconductors.
> and when ICs came along they started using them,
> which allowed for higher integration (ie fewer overall parts).
> The smaller parts meant no heavy chassis, which would have
> gone anyway because that cost money, not just to buy the
> metal but you had to ship it to the store near the consumer.
The shipping cost was a tiny part of the total retail price.
> The price goes down. But the cost of repair stays the same,
> or goes up, because tracking down the problem is labor intensive.
Wrong. The repair cost dropped dramatically because the fault rate
dropped dramatically with the change to semiconductors. ICs in spades.
> Manufacturers often switch to replacing boards,
> which keeps labor costs down but means you aren't
> paying for a fifty cent part but the whole board.
You can always change the fifty cent part on the board.
The real reason for the change is because it was much
cheaper to stamp out a new board than to diagnose a
fault using expensive first world skilled labor.
Much cheaper to pay a much cheaper board stuffing monkey
even when that was still not automated and done in the first world.
> So if you paid a thousand dollars for that color tv set in
> 1966 (just a figure I pulled out of the air), the repair cost
> was a small percentage of the cost of buying a new one.
In fact by then they didnt need much repair.
> Plus, it was easier to pay out a little here and a little there
> than to come up with another thousand to buy a new tv set.
> But if you paid a hundred dollars for that tv set
> today, you'd be paying a good percentage of that
> cost in having a repairman try to find the problem.
Yep, because it costs a lot less to pay a low wage asian
to make you a new one than to pay a skilled first world
tech to find what would mostly be a hard to find fault with
an adequately designed modern TV which hardly ever fails.
> That tips things in favor of buying new. Plus, in order
> to get that tv set price so low, the parts aren't generic,
The bulk of them still are.
> and the repairman has to deal with the
> manufacturer to get the replacement parts.
Hardly ever.
> That ends up being problematic, or requires some
> sort of contract with the manufactuer (and added cost).
Nope.
> The tv sets are no longer as generic as they were forty years ago,
They also fail at a vastly lower rate too.
> so the repairman finds it harder to figure out what is wrong,
Because a properly design modern TV doesnt fail due to routine faults anymore.
> often requiring service material from the manufacturer,
That was always the case.
> again an extra cost.
> The cheaper something is to manufacture, the less sturdy
> it will be mechanically, since that is one way to cut cost.
Wrong again, most obviously with modern
plug packs and molded power cords.
In spades with modern switch mode plug packs.
> Hence things are less likely to last as long, even if people were
> willing to spend the money to repair them rather than buy new.
Thats just plain wrong, most obviously with TVs.
> And I want to add something about "planned obsolescence" because
> it is often misused. If people are choosing to buy cheap, it's hardly
> that the manufacturers are making things so they will break. The
> consumer often wants that cheaper tv set or VCR.
Sure, but thats not planned obsolescence which isnt even possible.
> And there is the issue of just plain obsolescence. Forty years
> ago, there'd hardly be any electronic items around the house.
Thats overstating it.
> A tv set or two, some radios, maybe a stereo.
Hardly maybe on the stereo.
> But look around now, and everything is electronic.
Not quite everything. And when the electronic stuff is much
more reliable than the mechanical stuff ever was, there
clearly aint any planned obsolescence involved.
While there is certainly some stuff that is guaranteed to fail first,
most obviously with rechargable batterys, those are used for the
convenience of those, not for any 'planned obsolescence' reason.
> It's either been invented in the past forty years (not even that long in many
> cases), or at the very least could not have been a consumer item until recently.
> Once you have consumers buying the latest thing, things are bound to go obsolete.
> Buy early, and things still have to develop, which means the things really may
> become obsolete in a few years. It's not the manufacturer doing this to "screw
> the consumer", it's a combination of new developments and consumer demand.
> If my computer from 1979 had been intended to last forever,
> it would have been way out of range in terms of price.
In practice most of them still work fine.
> Because they'd have to anticipate how much things would
> change, and build in enough so upgrading would be doable.
Upgrade was doable, just not sensible.
> So you'd spend money on potential, rather than
> spending money later on a new computer that
> would beat out what they could imagine in 1979.
And they did that anyway, most obviously with socketed
cpus that hardly ever got changed. They're still doing that.
> And in recent years, it is the consumer who is deciding to buy a new
> computer every few years (whether a deliberate decision or they
> simply let the manufacturer lead, must vary from person to person.)
And they're so cheap that is a perfectly sensible thing to do. In spades with laptops.
Rod Speed
Yep, and all of my kitchen stainless will do that fine.
> not so for kitchen stainless,
Wrong.
> try a magnet on stainless the better quality is non magnetic
The magnetic stuff will last fine too with that use.
Rod Speed
> Unfortunately, you have to plan for Planned Obsolescence several years
> behind.
> For instance: my Kenmore washer/dryer set is 16 years old. Still going
> strong. No repairs. Lots of posts in S.E.R (and here) on current W/D
> models puking after 2 or so years.
> My JC Penney (Eureka) canister vac is 22 years old. Only thing
> replaced was power head belt a couple years ago. New vacs are garbage.
> I could go on and on....
Lousy design is nothing like planned obsolescence.
Most obviously with the modern approach of beltless direct drive
systems which dont even have a belt that will ever need replacing.
Rick Brandt
> Yes, my mother used her first clothes dryer for over 30 years. We
> replaced the belt three times. A new dryer might last five years,
> total.
On what do you base this statement? To claim that (on average) a new dryer will
only last five years is absurd. What, you once knew "a guy" who replaced a five
year old dryer? The dryer has to be one of the simplest and most reliable
things in the home. There just isn't that much to go wrong.
> The washer lasted 18 years before the hard water ruined it,
> and it had a timer replaced when it was 12 years Old. You think that
> the new designs are an improvement? :(
How can anyone make a claim either way based on personal experience? He would
have to have personal experience on *multiple* old appliances that lasted a long
time (a mathematical impossibilty) and *multiple* newer ones that did not.
Anything else boils down to "I once knew a guy... or Joe down at the appliance
store once told me...".
It is an absolute certainty that all of appliances that lasted a long time were
manufactured a long time ago. That does not equate to "All of the appliances
made a long time ago lasted a long time". Nobody knows how long the appliance
they bought last month is going to last so how can a valid comparison be made?
Rod Speed
> In my opinon, it is a symptom of a larger problem....
Nope.
> Companies are setting up the situation that you are forced to
> buy new versus repair the used applicance, car, electronics,
> computers, cell phones....because they make a larger profit.
Mindless conspiracy theory.
> The MBAs that are crafting the company policy are behind this.
Mindless conspiracy theory.
> And the consumer is being left holding the bill...
> including paying for the cost of disposal.
The modern consumer pays a lot less for the dirt cheap modern appliances too.
Ignoramus4939
> Too_Many_Tools wrote:
>> In my opinon...no.
>>
>> I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
>> lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
>>
>> Your thoughts?
>>
>> TMT
>>
>> Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
>> THE WASHINGTON TIMES
>> January 9, 2007
>> Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
>> Service shop in Silver Spring.
>> "You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
>> ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
>> washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
>> business."
>
> built much better in the past than they are now and yet in the past a whole
> industry survived on doing appliance repairs. Perhaps they only seemed to be
> built better in the past because we kept them longer and the only reason we kept
> because we replace them more often and the only reason we replace them more
> often is because we don't repair them.
>
>
>
>
At least things were more repairable in the past.
I routinely buy and repair various expensive industrial things, which
usually can be repaired by doing very simple things. (like my recent
experience with Cummins diesels). That stuff was designed to be
modular and easy to repair. At the same time, most consumer equipment
is absolutely not repairable.
i
Michael A. Terrell
>
> Michael A. Terrell wrote:
> > Yes, my mother used her first clothes dryer for over 30 years. We
> > replaced the belt three times. A new dryer might last five years,
> > total.
>
> On what do you base this statement? To claim that (on average) a new dryer will
> only last five years is absurd. What, you once knew "a guy" who replaced a five
> year old dryer? The dryer has to be one of the simplest and most reliable
> things in the home. There just isn't that much to go wrong.
From dozens of relatives and friends who had major problems from 4 to 6
years. My stepmother replaced a GE washer and dryer pair that was less
than two years old because they were crap. Not much to go wrong? cheap
parts, poor designs and sloppy assembly work. Something is making noise
and you find a broken weld, sheared off bolt or bad bearing that SHOULD
NOT HAVE HAPPENED.
> > The washer lasted 18 years before the hard water ruined it,
> > and it had a timer replaced when it was 12 years Old. You think that
> > the new designs are an improvement? :(
>
> How can anyone make a claim either way based on personal experience? He would
> have to have personal experience on *multiple* old appliances that lasted a long
> time (a mathematical impossibilty) and *multiple* newer ones that did not.
> Anything else boils down to "I once knew a guy... or Joe down at the appliance
> store once told me...".
I didn't talk to the appliance repair guys any longer than it took to
know they were either lying, or a thief. I bought parts I needed from
the manufacturer, a distributor, or on line. Sears has a decent
assortment of [parts for lots of brands, and the UPS truck or mailman
drops them at your door.
How many dryers have you repaired, or scrapped? I've repaired
everything I can, for over 40 years. It didn't matter if it was an
appliance, a car, a house, a broadcast transmitter, or even a radio for
the space station, I fixed it. As you can see from my sig file, I live
in Florida, and a LOT of poorly designed crap dies from nearby lightning
strikes.
> It is an absolute certainty that all of appliances that lasted a long time were
> manufactured a long time ago. That does not equate to "All of the appliances
> made a long time ago lasted a long time". Nobody knows how long the appliance
> they bought last month is going to last so how can a valid comparison be made?
A friend bought a brand new Neptune washer that didn't last a month.
The dealer had to replace it TWICE before he had one that lasted over a
month.
Don K
> So a tv set forty years ago was handwired (I have no clue whether that
> was a good or bad thing, but it was costly) on a heavy metal chassis, and
> was a significant purchase for most households. But when something
> broke, the cost of repair was low compare to the cost of replacement, to
> that tv set would be taken to the local repair shop. But, pretty much
> all the parts in that tv set were generic, so that repair shop did not
> have to be in some relationship with the manufacturer, and the parts could
> be had at the local electronics store (and since those stores were selling
> to all kinds of people, the same general parts to repair that tv set were
> also used by they hobbyist and even the professional, the stores could
> survive with a relatively small stock that was bought by many), so the
> repair shop often didn't need to keep a lot of stock, especially not
> a lot of specialized stock.
Also because the failure rate was so high, most failures would be
simply a burnt-out vacuum tube. These repairs were relatively easy
to fix and a TV repairman could make a living charging for simple
quick house calls. Most corner drugstores had a tube-tester for the
DIY repairman and a stock of common tubes 12AU7, etc.
Eventually and after replacing a lot of tubes the TV would need
realignment.
Modern TV's hardly ever need to be realigned. This is not the
result of planned obselescence. It is the result of phasing-in
new improvements in technology as it develops. For instance,
it is just-as-easy to manufacture a chip with 100,000 transistors
as with one or two. This means circuitry can be made extra-stable,
and to some extent, self-healing, and self-aligning.
Don
Spehro Pefhany
You sure it wasn't a Uranus washer?
Don Phillipson
news:50vccbF...@mid.individual.net...
> Just had the chain adjuster failed on a dirt cheap relatively
> new electric chainsaw. I assumed that they wouldnt bother
> to supply parts like that, but I was wrong, readily available
> and in fact free. Clearly no planned obsolescence there.
Contrast my Sears Craftsman chainsaw (42 cc engine,
18" blade) regularly $C 250 discounted to $C 200. This
required repair during the warranted one year (unexplained
jingle, source not found when I took off various covers: Sears
replaced the ignition module free.) After total 20 months
intermittent use the saw would not start. Sears diagnosed
that it needed a new cylinder and piston i.e. parts costing $180
plus $100 service time. This unit is marked "assembled in the
USA" i.e. from imported components.
This was my second, the first being a Husqvarna 325 in 1990.
That too required warranty repairs early, and was kept running
by a small family motor repair shop. When it finally stopped I did
not want to pay for further repairs since the repairman had told
me the Husqv 325 was a notoriously dud design, not manufactured
for more than a year or two. I bought Sears since Consumer
Reports flagged several models as a Best Buy. I guess the CR
test system could not include length of service.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Michael A. Terrell
If they hadn't fixed the thing Randy would have told the dealer to put
it there.
Michael A. Terrell
That doesn't stop you from having bad SAW filters, though.
b
Too_Many_Tools ha escrito:
> In my opinon, it is a symptom of a larger problem....
>
> Companies are setting up the situation that you are forced to buy new
> versus repair the used applicance, car, electronics, computers, cell
> phones....because they make a larger profit.
> The MBAs that are crafting the company policy are behind this.
> And the consumer is being left holding the bill...including paying for
> the cost of disposal.
I dont think it is planned obsolescence per se,( as in a sort of
conspiracy to deliberately make things to expire at a given moment.)
it's more to do with capitalist economics. It saves companies money to
cut back on service and parts support, and with the constant search for
cheaper production we see a decline in build standards. This enables
the final retail price to be lowered, more volume of sales etc.
This has created a consumer culture of the 'throwaway product' .
Longevity is not high on the average consumer's list of priorities when
shopping. It's more to do with how cool a thing looks, and how it
complements their lifestyle. rather moronic in my opinion, but that
seems to be what many people believe, probably because they know no
better.
People pay less and value the product less. For all but the very high
end gear,( a minority niche in the market), the idea of repair for
things like TVs doesn't come into it for the majority of those sort of
products sold. All well and good, but it's ultimately the environment
which pays, and this unsustainable lifestyle of consumerism means we
have to start wars to get oil to keep on supporting this system (after
all where does all that plastic come from?) Not to mention
envirtonmental side effects from the millions of tons of waste
generated by this process which defy contemplation. And let's not
forget costly solutions to attempt to solve this problem. So I reckon
we should be asking about the *real* cost of these 'cheap' throwaway
items - consider the excessive use of raw materials, treatment of waste
etc etc. - and they're suddenly not so cheap after all!
Incidentally, there are some great pics of this phenomenon here:
http://www.chrisjordan.com/
regards, -B.
JR North
lightweight air turbine design. Poor torque to the brushes and the loss
of suction due to energy absorbed by the turbine make these inefficient
and, of course, failure prone due to cheap plastic components. The
replacement belt for my power head was $2.35 retail at the local vac
shop. 10 for $12.00 including shipping on Ebay. Try and find replacement
air turbine parts for that new vac-anywhere. The original belt lasted 20
years and only failed because my GF sucked a sash cord up and stalled
the head.
JR
Dweller in te cellar
Logan Shaw
> In my opinon...no.
>
> I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
> lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
>
> Your thoughts?
I don't think planned obsolescence is a good thing or a bad thing,
because in most cases it's fictional. Appliances and other items
you buy aren't designed to fail. They are designed to be cheap to
manufacture.
The article you mentioned quoted a repairman saying that lots of
new devices are made with circuit boards (rather than discrete
components). There's a reason for that. Circuits built with
circuit boards and integrated circuits cost much, much less to
produce than ones made of discrete components. Probably half
as much, maybe even less than that.
I'm not sure people understand how streamlined and optimized modern
manufacturing techniques are. The reason we get all these appliances
and electronics items for so cheap is the way they are made. To me,
it is truly remarkable that you can go to the store and buy a DVD
player for $30. It might only last 2 or 3 years, but 10 years ago,
it would have cost $10,000 to build an equivalent machine (just
because of the processing power).
So the question, to me, is this: do you want to buy a new item
for $100 and have it last 5 or 10 years, or do you want to spend
$200 for it and have it last 10 or 20? My answer would be that
I'd rather have the item that costs half as much and lasts half
as long. Why? Because I can take the $100 I saved and put it
in the bank. In 5 or 10 years when the item breaks, I can take
the $100 out of the bank, and it will have grown with interest
that has outpaced inflation, so it will be worth more than $100
in inflation-adjusted dollars, and at that time, the price of the
device may have gone down to less than $100 in inflation-adjusted
dollars, and it will certainly be more up to date (more energy
efficient, better support for new media formats, smaller, whatever).
To put it a slightly different way, for that $30 DVD player, it
costs something like $10 labor and $10 materials to put that thing
together in the first place (because there are packaging and shipping
costs and profit). So how efficient is it to spend $30 labor fixing
it? It isn't efficient. Repairing mass-produced items isn't
efficient because one person working on one item and doing everything
by hand simply doesn't have the same economies of scale that a
highly-optimized manufacturing environment has.
- Logan
Anthony
Dude,
I hate to be the one to break this news to you, but *everything*
manufactured has a pre-determined design life. Be it 30 nanoseconds or
300 years, it _does_ have a design life. This design life is set in the
initial concept phase of design work, it is one of the parameters that
_must_ be determined before any actual design work takes place. Without
that parameter, you cannot design. So, yes, appliances have a design
life, and that life is, due to economics, going to be the warranty period
plus some safety factor (to help ensure that the product doesn't cause
expensive warranty claims).
Appliances are a commodity product, just like about every other mass
produced product on the market. The population is not expanding enough
to for it to be economically feasable for a company to produce a product
that will last 30 years with minimal upkeep, except in special
circumstances. The product has to 'wear out' or fail within some time
period so as to generate repeat sales for the market.
--
Anthony
You can't 'idiot proof' anything....every time you try, they just make
better idiots.
Remove sp to reply via email
Rod Speed
> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote
>> Just had the chain adjuster failed on a dirt cheap relatively
>> new electric chainsaw. I assumed that they wouldnt bother
>> to supply parts like that, but I was wrong, readily available
>> and in fact free. Clearly no planned obsolescence there.
> Contrast my Sears Craftsman chainsaw (42 cc engine,
> 18" blade) regularly $C 250 discounted to $C 200. This
> required repair during the warranted one year (unexplained
> jingle, source not found when I took off various covers: Sears
> replaced the ignition module free.) After total 20 months
> intermittent use the saw would not start. Sears diagnosed
> that it needed a new cylinder and piston i.e. parts costing $180
Sounds very implausible unless you abused it very
badly by not providing adequate lubrication etc.
> plus $100 service time. This unit is marked
> "assembled in the USA" i.e. from imported components.
> This was my second, the first being a Husqvarna 325 in 1990.
> That too required warranty repairs early, and was kept running
> by a small family motor repair shop.
Thats the main reason I went electric. I dont need the
away from home capability for cutting firewood etc and
dont like very small gasoline engines reliability wise.
> When it finally stopped I did not want to pay for further repairs
> since the repairman had told me the Husqv 325 was a notoriously
> dud design, not manufactured for more than a year or two.
Clearly was enough of an arsehole to not tell
you that when you first brought it in for repair.
> I bought Sears since Consumer Reports flagged several models as a Best Buy.
Trouble with those is that they cant really get a handle
on reliability, let alone flagrant abuse by the owner.
> I guess the CR test system could not include length of service.
Yep, they dont even do that well on that with cars, let alone appliances.
It just isnt feasible and even if it was, by the time they have decent stats,
that model is long gone. I usually find that its damned hard to actually
find the products that come out on top of the list even if you are buying
the product just after the test has come out. In spades down the track.
I just lucked out there recently when buying a satnav, they had just
done the test a month before I wanted to get one, all the products
were still current, and I could borrow the two candidates that did
well in the test from mates and could see how I liked them myself.
Went for the TomTom because its pure touch screen, did the
destination selection much better than the Navman, and the test
claimed that the TomTom does a lot better in tunnels and the
CBD than the alts. I havent had a chance to test that claim yet.
clareatsnyder.on.ca
<rickb...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Michael A. Terrell wrote:
>> Yes, my mother used her first clothes dryer for over 30 years. We
>> replaced the belt three times. A new dryer might last five years,
>> total.
>
>On what do you base this statement? To claim that (on average) a new dryer will
>only last five years is absurd. What, you once knew "a guy" who replaced a five
>year old dryer? The dryer has to be one of the simplest and most reliable
>things in the home. There just isn't that much to go wrong.
>
Well, the local thrift shopa and Habitat for Humanity won't accept
major appliances over 3 years old. The reason? Too many are not
functional and not economically repairable and it costs them too much
to dispose of them.
>> The washer lasted 18 years before the hard water ruined it,
>> and it had a timer replaced when it was 12 years Old. You think that
>> the new designs are an improvement? :(
>
>How can anyone make a claim either way based on personal experience? He would
>have to have personal experience on *multiple* old appliances that lasted a long
>time (a mathematical impossibilty) and *multiple* newer ones that did not.
>Anything else boils down to "I once knew a guy... or Joe down at the appliance
>store once told me...".
>
>It is an absolute certainty that all of appliances that lasted a long time were
>manufactured a long time ago. That does not equate to "All of the appliances
>made a long time ago lasted a long time". Nobody knows how long the appliance
>they bought last month is going to last so how can a valid comparison be made?
Well, I've seen the results of the "cheaepening of america" The
suspension springs on several washers I've recently worked on had worn
through.On our own, After replacing the springs, it was only a short
time till the metal "eye" the spring goes into wore through. The
"ballance spring" wore right through the metal of the chassis. I ended
up drilling new holes for the springs to try to get another couple
years out of my wife's 3 year old drier. The one it replaced was 27
years old and still had all the original springs. We replaced it when
the pump started to leak because the transmission was also leaking oil
and I figured it wasn't worth spending more money on - would likely
have been farther ahead rebuilding the old one, but the timer and
several other critical parts were obsolete.
The 36 year old dryer is still running. I replace drum rollers about
every 18 months or so now and it's on it's third belt. The original
rollers lasted about 20 years. The element let go last year and I
patched it up, so it's likely good for another 2 sets of rollers????
>
>
>
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Rod Speed
> The Direct Drive vac power heads I have seen are cheap plasicky
> lightweight air turbine design. Poor torque to the brushes and the
> loss of suction due to energy absorbed by the turbine make these
> inefficient and, of course, failure prone due to cheap plastic
> components. The replacement belt for my power head was $2.35 retail
> at the local vac shop. 10 for $12.00 including shipping on Ebay. Try
> and find replacement air turbine parts for that new vac-anywhere. The
> original belt lasted 20 years and only failed because my GF sucked a
> sash cord up and stalled the head.
My 40 year old vac has no belts at all, and I never bother with power heads
etc. Its as good as it ever was except for the switch replacement. Even they
they had sealed the contacts at the back of the switch with silastic etc, it still
ended up sucking enough dust into the switch that it wasnt reliable anymore.
While the switch was trivially dismountable by pushing the axle out, a quick
clean didnt see it very reliable and a new one cost peanuts so I replaced it.
Pity about all the washing machines, driers, dishwashers, VCRs etc etc
etc that have binned belts now and are much better because they have.
The only belts I have anymore are in the car.
clareatsnyder.on.ca
<rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>terry <tsan...@nf.sympatico.ca> wrote
>> Ecnerwal wrote:
>
>>> The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
>>> and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated to render them
>>> effectively non-economic to repair. "This part will (by design) break
>>> about 1 year after the warranty runs out - let's put in in a monolithic
>>> module containing all the most expensive parts of the machine."
>
>> Maybe that's stating it rather strongly?
>
>> Although recent discussion/discovery that IPods will
>> exhaust their batteries in approximately one to two
>> years do clearly raise the question? "Designed to fail?".
>
>Doesnt explain stuff like cordless phones that use standard batterys.
Except you can buy much better batteries than the crap that comes with
the chinese built phone from the factory. Likely cost as much as the
phone, but often worth it.
>
>> But it's the same reason that I continue to accept
>> and use old appliances that I can repair myself.
I repair all my own stuff too, but accept that sometimes I need to buy
parts.
>
>That can mean that you have to do without
>some of the most elegantly usable appliances tho.
>
>> For example I refuse to buy a stove that incorporates
>> a digital timer/clock; they are virtually unrepairable!
If a digital timer makes it through the first 90 days, and then
through warranty, it may very well outlive YOU. Infant mortality is
the biggest issue with electronis. Mechanical timers simply wear out
or burn out, and although SOMETIMES repairable, they ARE more likely
to fail after the first year or so than electronics. Particularly as
the mechanics were cheapened and electronics become more integrated
and solid.
>
>Mindlessly silly. My microwave is still going fine 30 years later.
>
>> Eventually can see myself, however, ending up with one of those and
>> deliberately disconnecting the digital timer clock or modifying the stove to use
>> one my older (saved) clock/timers or just dong away with the timer altogether.
>
>Or get a clue and only bother with that if it actually does fail.
>And get the benefit of a decent modern design when it doesnt.
>
>I've never actually had a single digital clock in any system
>ever fail and I've got heaps of them, plenty 30+ years old.
My experience as well. Electromechanical timers have failed on just
about everything I've ever owned with them except for the old
Frigidaire range (50 years old and still working fine when the oven
element let go and "plasma cut" a big hole in the bottom of the oven)
Several wires had burned off 30 years ago - I repaired them 26 or 27
years ago - otherwise it worked fine. Not so the timer on the water
softener that pumped several hundred gallons of water and350 lbs of
salt all over the basement floor when the timer died--------.
BobR
usability. The appliance of a few years ago was harvest gold and
avacado green but those are no longer in fashion so we replace with the
black or stainless steel that is today's fashion. They don't need to
build with planned obselescence any more, we do that for them. I
should know, my wife insisted that we replace all the appliances in the
home we just bought for just that reason. All of the old ones worked
just fine but....they were not the right color.
Rick Brandt wrote:
> Too_Many_Tools wrote:
> > In my opinon...no.
> >
> > I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
> > lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
> >
> > Your thoughts?
> >
> > TMT
> >
> > Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
> > THE WASHINGTON TIMES
> > January 9, 2007
> > Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
> > Service shop in Silver Spring.
> > "You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
> > ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
> > washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
> > business."
>
Karl S
>They just don't make things like they used to."
THANK GOD!!!!
Karl S
> In my opinon, it is a symptom of a larger problem....
>
> Companies are setting up the situation that you are forced to buy new
> versus repair the used applicance, car, electronics, computers, cell
> phones....because they make a larger profit.
>
> The MBAs that are crafting the company policy are behind this.
>
You must be the guy who draws the "Dilbert" comic strip.
clareatsnyder.on.ca
<rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Ecnerwal <Lawren...@SOuthernVERmont.NyET> wrote
>> Rick Brandt <rickb...@hotmail.com> wrote
>
>>> This raises an apparent contradiction.
>
>> Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances
>> to see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".
>
>Or perhaps you havent.
>
>> The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable.
>
>Yes. And so are the current ones too with the exception of plug packs etc.
>
>> "This part always breaks eventually, we'll
>> isolate it and make it easy to replace".
>
>That is just plain silly with domestic appliances. There is bugger
>all except light bulbs that cant be designed to last indefinitely.
>
>And even that has changed just recently too.
>
>> The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
>
>Oh bullshit.
>
>> and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated
>> to render them effectively non-economic to repair.
>
>More bullshit. I've done just that fine with a modern electric chainsaw.
>
>> "This part will (by design) break about 1 year after the warranty runs out -
>
>Not even possible.
It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost. The engineers
then have to decide where to cut costs. Sometimes they win, sometimes
you loose.
Cost to assemble dictates design more than sevicability. If they can
save a dollar in total per machine by making assembly easier (or by
cutting out a procedure, like de-burring drilled or stamped holes)
without increasing their warranty exposure, they do it.
This could all change OVERNIGHT if all the cheap B@$7@rds in North
America wouldn't insist on buying the cheapest whatever possible. If
there was a market for quality products at a price that companys could
afford to build them and sell them for, quality goods would still be
available. That market just does not exist any more. If it did,
Wallmarts would be closing all over North America, instead of
continuing to displace the established specialty shops that used to
sell the "good stuff".
clareatsnyder.on.ca
wrote:
>
>did you know theres all qualitys of stainless, some will last literaLLY
>FOREVER not so for kitchen stainless, try a magnet on stainless the
>better quality is non magnetic
The better quality for what? For some applications a magnetic
stainless may well be the better choice, while for other applications
a non-magnetic. Depends what qualities the application requires.
Don K
news:1168818342.7...@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Out tendancy now is to replace appliances now based on fashion and not
> usability. The appliance of a few years ago was harvest gold and
> avacado green but those are no longer in fashion so we replace with the
> black or stainless steel that is today's fashion. They don't need to
> build with planned obselescence any more, we do that for them. I
> should know, my wife insisted that we replace all the appliances in the
> home we just bought for just that reason. All of the old ones worked
> just fine but....they were not the right color.
When there are no qualitative differences between products,
marketers do tend to invent imaginary discriminators such as style
and fashion to convince people to replace perfectly good stuff
for no good reason.
Don
Homer J Simpson
"Too_Many_Tools" <too_man...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1168795859.4...@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> In my opinon...no.
>
> I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
> lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
>
> Your thoughts?
I used to charge 75c for a house call, when appliances were in the $100 -
$200 price range. Couldn't do it now.
--
Tracey
"Too_Many_Tools" <too_man...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1168795859.4...@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> In my opinon...no.
>
> I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
> lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
>
> Your thoughts?
One thing that you might not have considered is Energy Efficiency. Sure,
your refrigerator from 1950 might appear to be working fabulously. However,
it probably costs an awful lot more in electricity to operate it than a
newer model would cost. Likewise with your hot water heater, oven,
diswasher, washing machine, etc.
Its just something else to keep in mind...
Nate Nagel
You are indeed correct, but at least when it comes to motor vehicles, it
still makes sense to keep an older car on the road even from an
ecological standpoint as the energy required to make a new car is so great.
I'm not sure how it works out for appliances, but I tend to agree with
the OP that a lot of times older machinery seems to be better built and
easier to service. I have lots of tools that are older than I and I am
more protective of them than of ones that I bought a month ago.
nate
--
replace "fly" with "com" to reply.
http://home.comcast.net/~njnagel
big...@backpacker.com
after shopping all over. Today I can get a good DVD player for $30 and
a cd player for $15. I like how things get cheaper.
tim
news:45aabcb4$0$8973$4c36...@roadrunner.com:
> To put it a slightly different way, for that $30 DVD player, it
> costs something like $10 labor and $10 materials to put that
> thing together in the first place (because there are packaging
> and shipping costs and profit). So how efficient is it to spend
> $30 labor fixing it? It isn't efficient. Repairing
> mass-produced items isn't efficient because one person working
> on one item and doing everything by hand simply doesn't have the
> same economies of scale that a highly-optimized manufacturing
> environment has.
>
> - Logan
>
To give a better example, look at the HP higher-end credit card sized
calculators like the HP-35 and -45. They are designed to not be
repairable. All they are are a circuit card, a keypad and a display.
They did the analysis, and it was cheaper to design the unit with an
assemble-only push-together design and handle warrenty work by just
replacing the unit, then designing it with screws so that the failed
part could be replaced. Needless to say, they also went through the
entire product and tightened up on everything they could so that they
could cut down on the incidence of repair at the same time.
betrtimes@green acres.farm
> Yes, my mother used her first clothes dryer for over 30 years. We
> replaced the belt three times. A new dryer might last five years,
> and it had a timer replaced when it was 12 years Old. You think that
> the new designs are an improvement? :(
My mom is using the following:
gas range, Magic Chef 1977- coppertone
refrigerator, Kennmore 1984- almond
washer Maytag 1986- white
dryer (electric) Whirlpool 1981- white
microwave Panasonic 1998 ( city blew out the 1987 microwave with a power
surge)
the dryer has had belts, drum rollers, and heating elements replaced.
washer... broken pushbutton (18 cents), and the timer
refrigerator- arm that dispenses ice through the door broke
thats all the repairs
Mark Lloyd
>On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:46:09 GMT, "Rick Brandt"
><rickb...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Too_Many_Tools wrote:
>>> In my opinon...no.
>>>
>>> I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
>>> lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
>>>
>>> Your thoughts?
>>>
>>> TMT
>>>
>>> Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
>>> THE WASHINGTON TIMES
>>> January 9, 2007
>>> Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
>>> Service shop in Silver Spring.
>>> "You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
>>> ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
>>> washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
>>> business."
>>
>>This raises an apparent contradiction. Most people believe that appliances were
>>built much better in the past than they are now and yet in the past a whole
>>industry survived on doing appliance repairs. Perhaps they only seemed to be
>>built better in the past because we kept them longer and the only reason we kept
>>them longer is because we repaired them instead of replacing them. The flipside
>>of that same coin is that perhaps today's appliances only seem to be inferior
>>because we replace them more often and the only reason we replace them more
>>often is because we don't repair them.
>>
>>
>>
>I think the main problem with today's appliances is that
>they are NOT made so that they can be repaired.
>
>Modules are stamped together, molded together, whatever and
>the little part that wears out can't be replaced without
>replacing the whole module, which probably isn't available,
>anyway, so the appliance gets tossed.
>
>I have an old toaster from the '40s or '50s. It is a
>mechanical thing, not electronic, and is made of individual
>parts that can be cleaned, oiled, and if you could get them,
>replaced as needed. When something like this stops working,
>less than an hour's work will set it up to run for another
>25 years!
>
>
>
>Alan
>
When I bought this house, there was a problem with the built-in oven
(an older Frigidaire). The (mechanical) clock (that I didn't need)
wouldn't keep time but made a loud UHH-UHH-UHH noise all the time. I
disconnected the wire to it, something I would never have been able to
do with a modern oven.
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.laughingsquid.com
"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent
force for atheism ever conceived." -- Isaac Asimov
Rod Speed
>>>> The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
>>>> and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated to render them
>>>> effectively non-economic to repair. "This part will (by design) break
>>>> about 1 year after the warranty runs out - let's put in in a monolithic
>>>> module containing all the most expensive parts of the machine."
>>> Maybe that's stating it rather strongly?
>>> Although recent discussion/discovery that IPods will
>>> exhaust their batteries in approximately one to two
>>> years do clearly raise the question? "Designed to fail?".
>> Doesnt explain stuff like cordless phones that use standard batterys.
> Except you can buy much better batteries than the crap
> that comes with the chinese built phone from the factory.
Not true of the chinese built Panasonics I bought.
I deliberately chose cordless phones that take standard AA NiMH batterys.
> Likely cost as much as the phone,
No they dont with standard AA or AAA batterys.
> but often worth it.
I doubt it. It may be truer with digital cameras tho.
>>> But it's the same reason that I continue to accept
>>> and use old appliances that I can repair myself.
> I repair all my own stuff too, but accept
> that sometimes I need to buy parts.
>> That can mean that you have to do without
>> some of the most elegantly usable appliances tho.
>>> For example I refuse to buy a stove that incorporates
>>> a digital timer/clock; they are virtually unrepairable!
> If a digital timer makes it through the first 90 days,
> and then through warranty, it may very well outlive
> YOU. Infant mortality is the biggest issue with electronis.
And is really just a nuisance given that its covered by the warranty.
> Mechanical timers simply wear out or burn out, and although
> SOMETIMES repairable, they ARE more likely to fail after the
> first year or so than electronics. Particularly as the mechanics
> were cheapened and electronics become more integrated and solid.
Yeah, in spades with mics where the antique phone mics were
steaming turds reliability wise before all phones became electronic.
>> Mindlessly silly. My microwave is still going fine 30 years later.
>>> Eventually can see myself, however, ending up with one
>>> of those and deliberately disconnecting the digital timer
>>> clock or modifying the stove to use one my older (saved)
>>> clock/timers or just dong away with the timer altogether.
>> Or get a clue and only bother with that if it actually does fail.
>> And get the benefit of a decent modern design when it doesnt.
>> I've never actually had a single digital clock in any system
>> ever fail and I've got heaps of them, plenty 30+ years old.
> My experience as well. Electromechanical timers have failed on
> just about everything I've ever owned with them except for the old
> Frigidaire range (50 years old and still working fine when the oven
> element let go and "plasma cut" a big hole in the bottom of the oven)
> Several wires had burned off 30 years ago - I repaired them 26 or 27
> years ago - otherwise it worked fine. Not so the timer on the water
> softener that pumped several hundred gallons of water and350 lbs of
> salt all over the basement floor when the timer died--------.
The main thing I detest with modern products is keyboards. I used
to be able to buy proper double injection moulded keyboards in the
pre PC days but they arent even buyable now even with the branded
produces like Microsoft and Logitech and the stupid cheap stuck on
lettering never lasts very long at all.
But I wouldnt go back to corded mice and keyboards again.
In spades with non optical mice either.
Rod Speed
> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote
>> Ecnerwal <Lawren...@SOuthernVERmont.NyET> wrote
>>> Rick Brandt <rickb...@hotmail.com> wrote
>>>> This raises an apparent contradiction.
>>> Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances
>>> to see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".
>> Or perhaps you havent.
>>> The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable.
>> Yes. And so are the current ones too with the exception of plug packs etc.
>>> "This part always breaks eventually, we'll
>>> isolate it and make it easy to replace".
>> That is just plain silly with domestic appliances. There is bugger
>> all except light bulbs that cant be designed to last indefinitely.
>> And even that has changed just recently too.
>>> The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
>> Oh bullshit.
>>> and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated
>>> to render them effectively non-economic to repair.
>> More bullshit. I've done just that fine with a modern electric chainsaw.
>>> "This part will (by design) break about 1 year after the warranty runs out -
>> Not even possible.
> It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
> engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost.
Separate matter entirely to the mindlessly silly claim that
its even possible to design an appliance to break about a
year after the warranty runs out, with most appliances.
And even the stuff which can be designed to do that like
the stuff with microprocessor control that can certainly
be programmed to do that, no one is actually THAT stupid.
Or even stupid enough to try it with a random component added either.
> The engineers then have to decide where to cut costs.
> Sometimes they win, sometimes you loose.
And with much of the chinese manufactured product now, they dont even bother.
> Cost to assemble dictates design more than sevicability.
Yes, but that can produce much better reliability too,
most obviously with modern molded appliance cords.
> If they can save a dollar in total per machine by making assembly
> easier (or by cutting out a procedure, like de-burring drilled or
> stamped holes) without increasing their warranty exposure, they do it.
Yes, but that has nothing to do with what is being discussed,
the mindlessly silly claim about PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE.
> This could all change OVERNIGHT if all the cheap B@$7@rds in North
> America wouldn't insist on buying the cheapest whatever possible.
Nope, because so few of them have a clue about even
the most basic stuff that determines what will last longer.
> If there was a market for quality products at a price that companys could
> afford to build them and sell them for, quality goods would still be available.
There still is with tradesman's tools.
> That market just does not exist any more.
Yes it does.
> If it did, Wallmarts would be closing all over North America,
Nope, they'd just sell those products if thats what the customers wanted.
> instead of continuing to displace the established
> specialty shops that used to sell the "good stuff".
They have got displaced for other reasons,
essentially the cost of making the individual sales.
For the same reason the old style grocery stores where you
asked for the items you wanted and an individual got them
off the shelves behind him for you except with fresh food now.
Carl McIver
"Rick Brandt" <rickb...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:UGwqh.1264$O02...@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net...
> Michael A. Terrell wrote:
>> Yes, my mother used her first clothes dryer for over 30 years. We
>> replaced the belt three times. A new dryer might last five years,
>> total.
>
> dryer will only last five years is absurd. What, you once knew "a guy"
> who replaced a five year old dryer? The dryer has to be one of the
> simplest and most reliable things in the home. There just isn't that much
> to go wrong.
When you don't compare appliances to the rest of the
machinery/equipment/vehicles that an average household owns nowadays, it's
easy to think that appliances aren't meant to be repaired anymore. Compared
to everything else in your life, reliability and repairability is pretty
much the same, because the consumer has raised their expectations, so the
market adjusted.
I used to get into the points/electronic ignition argument all the time.
The opposing thinking was that points could be adjusted, and that you knew
when it was time to replace them, and mine was that you never had to do
either, and the reliability of electronic ignition was so much higher than
points that you had enough time worrying about other things that you could
afford to think that, instead of spending all your time maintaining things.
Model T's used to come with tools and a manual that guided you through a
complete engine overhaul, because every few thousand miles they knew you
were gonna have to!
Yup, electronic circuit boards aren't as structurally durable as the
spaghetti mess behind most older machines, but I can pretty much assure you
that you won't be messing with it near as often. If you have to repair a
particular brand machine, you will think less of that brand. When there was
only five or so brands, that were all made in the US, the makers didn't mind
trapping the consumer, but now that machines are built all over the world,
competition says that the customer is now highly concerned about
reliability, and won't even bother try to find the most reliable one out of
a selection of crap, but will buy what they don't have to hassle with.
Which one would you pick?
I'm not sold completely on that commentary as it relates to _all_
machinery, however. I won't buy a Toyota Corolla or Honda Accord, or any of
the million clones, simply because everyone else has one, and I can't find
mine in a parking lot. I'm confident that I've acquired a less reliable
automobile that reflects my personal taste in transportation, and when the
mass produced muck has passed on its appeal to much newer cars I'll still be
driving my own car, which retains its own appeal and uniqueness much longer.
It wasn't uncommon to get comments like: "Cool car, what is it?" on my much
older rides, from folks of all ages.
John Husvar
"Rick Brandt" <rickb...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think another big factor is the ratio of cost on parts versus labor. In
> the
> "old days" you might have a repair that was 70% parts and 30% labor
> cost-wise.
> Nowdays those percentages would be reversed and that just irks people who
> just
> don't see the value of anyone's labor (other than their own of course).
>
> You see posts about this all the time. "Called a guy to come out and do foo
> and
> couldn't believe what he wanted to charge me!" Labor really induces a lot of
> sticker shock these days.
Except in my game, power wheelchair repair, and maybe a rare few others,
where parts cost far more than labor, that is probably true.
A new joystick for a programmable wheelchair controller can cost ~$800 -
$1000 and take less than an hour to swap.
A wheelchair controller is basically a 24 Volt, two-channel, variable DC
Motor Control.
A new motor/gearbox runs ~$1000. (and you couldn't until recently buy
only one or the other, but it's an aftermarket company specializing in
old chairs and they're higher than new) It takes about an hour to two
for R&R.
A main power/control module may cost upwards of $2000. The simplest
programmable, integrated joystick control/power module is routinely
~$1200.
Oh, about that motor/gearbox ass'y: Power wheelchairs have two.
Scooters mostly have just one motor/transaxle. Replacement is only ~$900
+ labor
Our shop charges $40/hour labor with one hour minimum and we're by far
the cheapest in the area. Average is ~$75.
When there's a captive market and nearly guaranteed funding of a
purchase, (Medicare, Medicaid, Insurance, Charity) prices can do some
craaaaazy things.
--
Bring back, Oh bring back
Oh, bring back that old continuity.
Bring back, oh, bring back
Oh, bring back Clerk Maxwell to me.
Michael Black
> Planned obsolescence has been a tenet of the automobile
> industry since the '30s. General Motors, in particular
> used styling to make a 2 or 3 year-old-car look "old" and in
> need of replacement with a newly styled model.
>
> A bigger engine, prettier colors, new styles, all those
> things are at the heart of 'planned obsolescence.'
>
> "Improving" the features on your cell phone every year is
> the result of planned obsolescence.
>
No, that's fashion. If the old still works, then it's not
obsolete.
People who follow fashion trends are in the same boat. Their
clothes aren't obsolete, they simply don't want to wear them
anymore because they want the latest.
"Fashion" allows companies to sell the same thing to the same
people.
But the notion of "planned obsolescence" is that it's designed
from the beginner to not last long.
I'm not arguing that fashion causes people to buy new things.
Michael
Too_Many_Tools
> It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
> engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost. The engineers
> then have to decide where to cut costs.
>
The engineers are TOLD by the MBA accountants where to cut costs.
Good designs are allowed to turn to bad designs to cut a fraction of a
penny.
The sooner the product dies after warranty, the sooner the customer
will be buying another NEW item.
As has been pointed out, the repair inventory is considered a "profit
center" which is code for gouge the customer if he wants to repair the
item.
And yes it IS a conspiracy....to get more of the public's money.
TMT
Martin H. Eastburn
I have some had electric tools that are of professional grade. Those I
will fix my self as long as I can. Most are 25 years old and have served
me for that long. One needs a thin shim sheet. Easy to replace. Not available...
I paid high dollars for my wife to have a quality mixer. We started getting better
flavor and mixed foods / cakes / whatnot. I got the options for it - most -
and they will hold up to the years needed. But so many that I could have gotten
won't last. Glad I did the right thing in the first place.
When buying machine tools, I couldn't order the highest quality of machine, but
the tools and cutters... were as good as I could - as they last longer and
might retrofit onto better machine in the future.
Martin
Martin H. Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
TSRA, Life; NRA LOH & Endowment Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot"s Medal.
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.
http://lufkinced.com/
Rick Brandt wrote:
> Too_Many_Tools wrote:
>
>>In my opinon...no.
>>
>>I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
>>lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
>>
>>Your thoughts?
>>
>>TMT
>>
>>Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
>>THE WASHINGTON TIMES
>>January 9, 2007
>>Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
>>Service shop in Silver Spring.
>> "You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
>>ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
>>washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
>>business."
>
>
> This raises an apparent contradiction. Most people believe that appliances were
> built much better in the past than they are now and yet in the past a whole
> industry survived on doing appliance repairs. Perhaps they only seemed to be
> built better in the past because we kept them longer and the only reason we kept
> them longer is because we repaired them instead of replacing them. The flipside
> of that same coin is that perhaps today's appliances only seem to be inferior
> because we replace them more often and the only reason we replace them more
> often is because we don't repair them.
>
>
>
>
----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----
Too_Many_Tools
> usability. The appliance of a few years ago was harvest gold and
> avacado green but those are no longer in fashion so we replace with the
> black or stainless steel that is today's fashion. They don't need to
> build with planned obselescence any more, we do that for them. I
> should know, my wife insisted that we replace all the appliances in the
> home we just bought for just that reason. All of the old ones worked
> just fine but....they were not the right color.
Time for an education...unless you have a bottomless bank account.
Take a walk through Sears, Home Depot, Lowes...any of the home supply
companies and note how much space is dedicated to "fashion driven" home
upgrades....which offer significant profit margins for those who sell
them.
TMT
Rick Brandt
> > It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants
> > over-ruling engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost.
> > The engineers then have to decide where to cut costs.
> >
>
> The engineers are TOLD by the MBA accountants where to cut costs.
You've never worked for a company that manufactures stuff have you?
Marketing (NOT accounting) might provide a price-point that their research
indicates a product needs to be at to be competitive and the
design/engineering/manufacuring departments might be given a mandate to meet
that price point by top level management, but there are no "accountants" telling
anyone where to cut costs.
Ignoramus4939
> Or the plastic and pot metal unit isn't worth fixing.
>
> I have some had electric tools that are of professional grade.
> Those I will fix my self as long as I can. Most are 25 years old
> and have served me for that long. One needs a thin shim sheet.
> Easy to replace. Not available...
>
> I paid high dollars for my wife to have a quality mixer. We started
> getting better flavor and mixed foods / cakes / whatnot. I got the
> options for it - most - and they will hold up to the years needed.
> But so many that I could have gotten won't last. Glad I did the
> right thing in the first place.
Have you looked inside that expensive mixer.
The reason why I am asking is that I had one experience with such a
mixer, I found one on the curb (high end kitchenaid), and found cheap
plastic gears stripped inside. Fortunately, replacement parts were
available, and after a simple part swapping the mixer was working
again, and I sold it.
The plus here is that it is a repairable unit, the minus is that the
cheap gears fail by design and are very expensive in relation to their
cost (like $20 for some shit plastic gear).
I hope that you have a better mixer.
i
Andrew VK3BFA
William Noble wrote:
> nonrepairable is not the same as planned obsolescense. A new product may be
> impossible to repair because it uses custom electronics and special assembly
> techniques but that doesn't mean it's planned to quit working in 3 years.
>
> --
Yes it is - your wrong. Theres actually an engineering discipline
devoted to this subject - its called "Stress Engineering" ie how many
cycles can the door open and close before ir breaks - or, how many
hours will the just adequate component get stinking hot before it
desolders itself from the circuit board.....all things that most
technicians are intimately familiar with - (their called "bread and
butter" faults..).we used to make a living from them....the technically
difficult repairs that took EONS you did for self satisfaction and lost
money on - that was ok when there was enough of the other stuff to make
a living.
The whole societal mindset has changed - most of my customers now are
"mature aged" and have the life long expectation that when thing
breaks, it gets fixed. The younger ones - don't even bother, they
EXPECT it to break soon after the warranty ends (thats BONUS time!) and
will not even think about getting it repaired....
Modern manufacturing methods - them too - snap together plastic
assemblies designed for easy assembly with no thought for subsequent
servicing (hey, nuts and bolts cost MONEY) - done by unskilled, low
wage workers to whom a screwdriver is probably a complex machine tool.
Modern circuit boards - SMD components, machine assembled, wave
soldered - give VERY high reliability due lack of "operator error" but
again, virtually impossible to repair without specialist equipment -
fine if your in aerospace, or medical, or industrial where you have the
margins, but not domestic stuff. (and thats assuming the complex in
house LSI IC is even available - it usually isnt...)
And the manufacturers too - theres no money in servicing, 10,000 TV
sets can be ordered, delivered to the customers distribution centre
straight off the boat all from one person sitting in front of a PC - no
warehouses, spare parts stock, skilled staff to manage the spare parts,
service data to manage, field service staff to control, cost of running
a service centre....
Same for service data - costs too much. Its easier to replace something
under warranty irrespective of the fault, crush it, and claim it as a
tax loss than maintain a service centre with skilled techs,,,,
Sooo - this leaves people like us - slightly demented, do it
yourselfers, who machine bits out of aluminum to replace a broken
plastic bracket (thats why I got into this bizarre metalworking world)
- people who will spend DAYS chasing a generic replacement, who, when
they see something of a similar model in the dumpster, will rescue it
to take home for spares.....
Do I complain - yeh, fer sure. Would I do anything else - no way, I
enjoy the challenge. Learning new skills, being rat cunning and
devious, figuring out how to beat the obsolescence game....its fun
(mostly) Pity it barely pays the bills - fortunately the house is paid
for, the kids are off our hands (mostly) and I dont lust after a turbo
Porsche...(now, more tools - thats different...) And when my generation
goes - thats it, cant see anyone choosing to do this to make a living.
Sitting at a service station console taking money for gasoline pays
better.
The only industries where you CAN make good money servicing are:-
1.Where the machine itself costs LOTS of money, so the repair is a
small part of the cost
2.Where people are standing idle because the machine is down
3 There is some sort of "voodoo mystique" about it (medical is a good
example)
Ah, that feels SO much better ..........
Andrew VK3BFA.
ATP*
"Martin H. Eastburn" <lion...@consolidated.net> wrote in message
news:1168830...@sp6iad.superfeed.net...
> Or the plastic and pot metal unit isn't worth fixing.
>
> I have some had electric tools that are of professional grade. Those I
> will fix my self as long as I can. Most are 25 years old and have served
> me for that long. One needs a thin shim sheet. Easy to replace. Not
> available...
>
> I paid high dollars for my wife to have a quality mixer. We started
> getting better
> flavor and mixed foods / cakes / whatnot. I got the options for it -
> most -
> and they will hold up to the years needed. But so many that I could have
> gotten
> won't last. Glad I did the right thing in the first place.
>
http://www.willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe
Rod Speed
I fixed that by getting a bright yellow mass
market car with the best warranty around.
If you dont like that approach it would cost peanuts to
have a remotely controllable flashing light mounted on it.
> I'm confident that I've acquired a less reliable automobile that reflects my personal taste in
> transportation, and when the mass produced muck has passed on its appeal to much newer cars I'll
> still be driving my own car, which retains its own appeal and uniqueness much longer.
You can have both, with decent reliability as well.
My previous car lasted 35 years with very little maintenance
at all, and only got binned because I was stupid enough to not
fix the leaking windscreen because it was only a trivial nuisance.
> It wasn't uncommon to get comments like: "Cool car, what is it?" on my much older rides, from
> folks of all ages.
I never got any of those, but thats likely because I only ever washed it
before the rego check because it was more likely to pass without quibble.
Too_Many_Tools
> You must be the guy who draws the "Dilbert" comic strip.
>
No but ask any engineer....Dilbert is fact, not fiction.
TMT
Karl S wrote:
> On 14 Jan 2007 11:40:18 -0800, Too_Many_Tools wrote:
>
> > In my opinon, it is a symptom of a larger problem....
> >
> > Companies are setting up the situation that you are forced to buy new
> > versus repair the used applicance, car, electronics, computers, cell
> > phones....because they make a larger profit.
> >
> > The MBAs that are crafting the company policy are behind this.
> >
> You must be the guy who draws the "Dilbert" comic strip.
Rod Speed
>> It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
>> engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost. The engineers
>> then have to decide where to cut costs.
>>
>
> The engineers are TOLD by the MBA accountants where to cut costs.
>
> Good designs are allowed to turn to bad designs to cut a fraction of a
> penny.
>
> The sooner the product dies after warranty, the sooner the customer
> will be buying another NEW item.
>
> As has been pointed out, the repair inventory is considered a "profit
> center" which is code for gouge the customer if he wants to repair the
> item.
>
> And yes it IS a conspiracy....to get more of the public's money.
Doesnt happen like that with the chinese products.
Just another reason why bugger all is made in
the US anymore except for stuff like aircraft etc.
Edwin Pawlowski
<Alan Moo...@visi.com> wrote in message
> I think the main problem with today's appliances is that
> they are NOT made so that they can be repaired.
>
> mechanical thing, not electronic, and is made of individual
> parts that can be cleaned, oiled, and if you could get them,
> replaced as needed. When something like this stops working,
> less than an hour's work will set it up to run for another
> 25 years!
That old toaster probably cost about 3+ hours pay for a worker back then.
Today, I can buy one for 15 minutes pay. Really, Wal Mart has them for $8.
They can't make them that cheap and have them easily repairable too. I
doubt you can buy any war parts in there for that price anyway. Aside from
landfill problems, the new toaster is a pretty good deal.
Rod Speed
> William Noble wrote
>> nonrepairable is not the same as planned obsolescense.
>> A new product may be impossible to repair because it
>> uses custom electronics and special assembly techniques
>> but that doesn't mean it's planned to quit working in 3 years.
> Yes it is - your wrong.
Nope.
> Theres actually an engineering discipline devoted to this
> subject - its called "Stress Engineering" ie how many
> cycles can the door open and close before ir breaks
The reality is that that isnt done with domestic appliances.
> - or, how many hours will the just adequate component get
> stinking hot before it desolders itself from the circuit board.....
That aint designing it to fail just outside the warranty.
> all things that most technicians are intimately familiar
> with - (their called "bread and butter" faults..).
> we used to make a living from them....
They werent deliberately designed in. Just lousy design.
> the technically difficult repairs that took EONS you did
> for self satisfaction and lost money on - that was ok
> when there was enough of the other stuff to make a living.
> The whole societal mindset has changed - most of my customers now
> are "mature aged" and have the life long expectation that when thing
> breaks, it gets fixed. The younger ones - don't even bother, they
> EXPECT it to break soon after the warranty ends (thats BONUS time!)
> and will not even think about getting it repaired....
Because it makes not sense to spend a high percentage of the cost of
a new VCR repairing an existing one. The new one gets a new warranty.
> Modern manufacturing methods - them too - snap together plastic
> assemblies designed for easy assembly with no thought for subsequent
> servicing (hey, nuts and bolts cost MONEY) - done by unskilled, low
> wage workers to whom a screwdriver is probably a complex machine tool.
And most of that stuff just doesnt fail, most obviously
with plug packs and molded power cords.
> Modern circuit boards - SMD components, machine assembled,
> wave soldered - give VERY high reliability due lack of "operator error"
Nope, due to the technology.
> but again, virtually impossible to repair without specialist equipment -
> fine if your in aerospace, or medical, or industrial where you have
> the margins, but not domestic stuff. (and thats assuming the
> complex in house LSI IC is even available - it usually isnt...)
And they hardly ever need to be repaired too.
> And the manufacturers too - theres no money in servicing, 10,000 TV
> sets can be ordered, delivered to the customers distribution centre
> straight off the boat all from one person sitting in front of a PC -
> no warehouses, spare parts stock, skilled staff to manage the
> spare parts, service data to manage, field service staff to
> control, cost of running a service centre....
And those arent designed to fail just outside the warranty.
> Same for service data - costs too much. Its easier to replace
> something under warranty irrespective of the fault, crush it, and
> claim it as a tax loss than maintain a service centre with skilled techs,,,,
The reality is that costs a lot less to stamp out another in the
asian factory than it can ever cost to have a first world tech fix it.
> Sooo - this leaves people like us - slightly demented, do it
> yourselfers, who machine bits out of aluminum to replace a broken
> plastic bracket (thats why I got into this bizarre metalworking world)
> - people who will spend DAYS chasing a generic replacement, who,
> when they see something of a similar model in the dumpster, will
> rescue it to take home for spares.....
> Do I complain - yeh, fer sure. Would I do anything else - no way,
> I enjoy the challenge. Learning new skills, being rat cunning and
> devious, figuring out how to beat the obsolescence game....its fun
> (mostly) Pity it barely pays the bills - fortunately the house is paid
> for, the kids are off our hands (mostly) and I dont lust after a turbo
> Porsche...(now, more tools - thats different...)
And they are dirt cheap now.
> And when my generation goes - thats it, cant
> see anyone choosing to do this to make a living.
Corse they wont.
> Sitting at a service station console taking money for gasoline pays better.
And so do almost everything else too.
> The only industries where you CAN make good money servicing are:-
> 1.Where the machine itself costs LOTS of money,
> so the repair is a small part of the cost
> 2.Where people are standing idle because the machine is down
Even that is arguable, an operation like that should have decent redundancy.
Edwin Pawlowski
> In my opinon, it is a symptom of a larger problem....
>
> Companies are setting up the situation that you are forced to buy new
> versus repair the used applicance, car, electronics, computers, cell
> phones....because they make a larger profit.
Only partly true. Do you want to keep your computer forever? Do you think
you'd be on line here if you still had that 286 processor? We lived for
centuries with no computer but having one is a choice we make. I bought a
new refrigerator with the money saved on the electric bill by getting rid of
the old one. Sometimes, new really is better.
JR North
my pizza wheel. I'm not terribly upset....
JR
Dweller in the cellar
hal...@aol.com wrote:
> Rod Speed wrote:
>
>>Too_Many_Tools <too_man...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>In my opinon...no.
>>
>>I dont believe it happens in the sense that its actually possible
>>to design something to fail early and still have a viable product.
>>
>>And there is plenty of stuff that clearly aint anything to do
>>with planned obsolescence at all. Most obviously with stuff
>>as basic as bread knives which are all metal. Those wont
>>even need to be replaced when the handle gives out.
>>
>>And heaps of kitchen stuff is now stainless steel, which
>>will last forever compared with the older tinplate crap.
>>
>>
>>>I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
>>>lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.
>>
>>>Your thoughts?
>>
>>Works fine with some things, but can bite. I just replaced
>>the switch in the vaccuum cleaner which is about 40 years
>>old. Cost peanuts and was very easy to find a new one.
>>
>>The big 9¼" hand held circular saw that I built the house with
>>35 years ago has just seen the power switch fail and that is
>>no longer available from the manufacturer. Fortunately its
>>failed on so the saw is still usable tho more dangerous.
>>It uses blades with a 1?" hole. The current blades have
>>1" holes with washers which allow smaller shafts but no
>>easy way to use them on my old saw. There doesnt appear
>>to be any readily available source of different collets for that.
>>
>>Just had the chain adjuster failed on a dirt cheap relatively
>>new electric chainsaw. I assumed that they wouldnt bother
>>to supply parts like that, but I was wrong, readily available
>>and in fact free. Clearly no planned obsolescence there.
>>
>>And power tools are now so cheap that they are very viable
>>to buy even for just one job. I had to cut a copper pipe thats
>>buried in the ground and it costs peanuts to buy a very decent
>>jigsaw to cut it, just to avoid having to dig a bigger hole around
>>where I needed to cut it. Its been fine for other stuff since,
>>no evidence that its going to die any time soon. Could well get
>>40 years out of that too like I did with most of the power tools
>>that I used to build the house.
>>
>>Cars in spades. I've just replaced my 35 year old car that I was
>>too stupid to fix the windscreen leak with which eventually produced
>>rust holes in the floor which wont pass our registration check.
>>While its possible to plate the holes, I cant be bothered, I intended
>>to drive that car into the ground and decided that that had happened.
>>No evidence that the replacement new car wont last as long. Its
>>certainly got more plastic, most obviously with the bumper bars that
>>the new one doesnt have, but that mostly due to modern crumple
>>zones, not due to planned obsolescence and might save my life etc.
>>
>>People were raving on about planned obsolescence when
>>I built the house and I've had very little that has ever needed
>>replacement apart from basic stuff like light bulbs and the
>>occassional failure of stuff like elements in the oven etc.
>>
>>More below.
>>
>>
>>>Irreparable damage
>>>By Bryce Baschuk
>>>THE WASHINGTON TIMES
>>>January 9, 2007
>>
>>>Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the
>>>Procter Appliance Service shop in Silver Spring.
>>
>>That isnt planned obsolescence, thats the fact that its a
>>lot cheaper to pay a very low wage asian to make you
>>a new one than it ever is to pay a first world monkey to
>>repair your existing one with all but quite trivial faults.
>>
>>
>>>"You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you
>>>could years ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven,
>>>refrigerator and washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything
>>>has changed in the appliance business."
>>
>>It has indeed, but not because of planned obsolescence.
>>
>>
>>>Mr. Jones recently sold his home in Laurel and is in the
>>>process of moving to Bluffton, S.C., with his wife, Jeannette.
>>
>>Sob sob.
>>
>>
>>>Mr. Jones is one of the many Washington-area repairmen who have
>>>struggled to stay afloat as residents replace, not repair, old appliances.
>>
>>Because its generally better value to replace.
>>
>>
>>>"It's a dying trade," said Scott Brown, Webmaster of www.fixitnow.com
>>>and self-proclaimed "Samurai Appliance Repairman."
>>
>>Wota fucking wanker. Bet he doesnt disembowel himself when he fucks up.
>>
>>
>>>The reason for this is twofold, Mr. Brown said: The cost
>>>of appliances is coming down because of cheap overseas
>>>labor and improved manufacturing techniques,
>>
>>So much for your silly line about planned obsolescence.
>>
>>
>>>and repairmen are literally dying off.
>>
>>They arent in other industrys that are still viable,
>>most obviously with cars and trucks and houses.
>>
>>
>>>The average age of appliance technicians is 42, and there are few
>>>young repairmen to take their place, said Mr. Brown, 47. He has
>>>been repairing appliances in New Hampshire for the past 13 years.
>>
>>He should have had a clue 13 years ago.
>>The writing was on the wall long before that.
>>
>>
>>> In the next seven years, the number of veteran appliance
>>>repairmen will decrease nationwide as current workers retire
>>>or transfer to other occupations, the Department of Labor
>>>said in its 2007 Occupational Outlook Handbook.
>>
>>Must be rocket scientist shinybums.
>>
>>
>>>The federal agency said many prospective repairmen prefer work
>>>that is less strenuous and want more comfortable working conditions.
>>
>>They actually prefer a decent income.
>>
>>That claimed 'prefer work that is less strenuous and want more
>>comfortable working conditions' clearly hasnt affect car, truck or
>>house repair and the construction industry etc. Tho there will
>>always be some of that with a 5% unemployment rate.
>>
>>
>>>Local repairmen said it is simply a question of economics.
>>>"Nowadays appliances are cheap, so people are just getting new ones,"
>>
>>Yep, only a fool wouldnt if the new one costs about
>>the same as the cost of repairing the old one.
>>
>>
>>>said Paul Singh, a manager at the Appliance Service Depot, a repair
>>>shop in Northwest. "As a result, business has slowed down a lot."
>>
>>> "The average repair cost for a household appliance is $50 to $350,"
>>>said Shahid Rana, a service technician at Rana Refrigeration, a repair
>>>shop in Capitol Heights. "If the repair is going to cost more than
>>>that, we usually tell the customer to go out and buy a new one."
>>
>>Must be rocket scientist apes.
>>
>>
>>>It's not uncommon for today's repairmen to condemn an appliance
>>>instead of fixing it for the sake of their customers' wallets.
>>
>>>If they decide to repair an appliance that is likely to break
>>>down again, repairmen are criticized by their customers
>>>and often lose business because of a damaged reputation.
>>
>>> Mr. Jones said he based his repair decisions on the 50 percent
>>>rule: "If the cost of service costs more than 50 percent of the price
>>>of a new machine, I'll tell my customers to get a new one."
>>
>>What makes a lot more sense is to factor in the failure rate of that appliance.
>>
>>
>>>"A lot of customers want me to be honest with them, so I'll tell them
>>>my opinion and leave the decision making up to them," he said.
>>
>>>In recent years, consumers have tended to buy new
>>>appliances when existing warranties expire rather than
>>>repair old appliances, the Department of Labor said.
>>
>>Hardly surprising given that they are now so cheap.
>>
>>
>>>Mr. Brown acknowledged this trend. "Lower-end appliances which you
>>>can buy for $200 to $300 are basically throwaway appliances," he said.
>>>"They are so inexpensive that you shouldn't pay to get them repaired."
>>> "The quality of the materials that are being made aren't lasting,"
>>
>>Pig ignorant silly stuff.
>>
>>
>>>Mr. Jones said. "Nowadays you're seeing more plastic
>>
>>I had some reservations about my 35 year old
>>dishwasher that does have a plastic liner. Its lasted fine.
>>
>>
>>>and more circuit boards, and they aren't holding up."
>>
>>Bullshit.
>>
>>
>>>Many home appliances sold in the United States
>>>are made in Taiwan, Singapore, China and Mexico.
>>
>>And now china.
>>
>>
>>>"Nothing is made [in the United States] anymore," Mr. Jones said.
>>>"But then again, American parts are only better to a point,
>>>a lot of U.S. companies are all about the dollar."
>>
>>>Fortunately for the next generation of repairmen, some of today's
>>>high-end appliances make service repairs the most cost-effective option.
>>
>>>The Department of Labor concurred. "Over the next decade, as more
>>>consumers purchase higher-priced appliances designed to have much
>>>longer lives, they will be more likely to use repair services than to
>>>purchase new appliances," said the 2007 Occupational Outlook Handbook.
>>
>>Bet that will have fuck all effect on the employment prospects.
>>
>>
>>>Modern, energy-efficient refrigerators
>>>can cost as much as $5,000 to $10,000,
>>
>>Pig ignorant drivel. You can buy plenty of modern energy efficient
>>fridges for a hell of a lot less than that. I've done just that a month ago.
>>
>>
>>>and with such a hefty price tag, throwing one away is not an option.
>>
>>Bet the fools stupid enough to buy those will anyway.
>>
>>
>>>In some cases, repairmen can help consumers reduce the
>>>amount of aggravation that a broken appliance will cause.
>>
>>>Consider the time and effort it takes to shop for a new appliance, wait
>>>for its delivery, remove the old one and get the new one installed.
>>
>>I did mine in 30 mins total, literally.
>>
>>
>>>In addition, certain appliances such as ovens and
>>>washing machines can be a bigger hassle to replace
>>>because they are connected to gas and water lines.
>>
>>Just changed washing machines over too, with a free
>>one I inherited. Changing the water over took minutes too.
>>
>>
>>>"It takes your time, it takes your effort, and if you don't
>>>install the new appliance, you'll have to hire a service
>>>technician to install it anyways," Mr. Brown said.
>>
>>Only the incompetant fools that cant change the washing machine over.
>>
>>
>>>Some consumers bond with their appliances like old pets,
>>>and for loyalty or sentimental reasons, refuse to let them go.
>>
>>>Mr. Rana said some of his clients have appliances that are
>>>more than 30 years old. It makes sense, he said. "A lot of old
>>>refrigerators are worth fixing because they give people good service.
>>
>>Wrong, those are normally lousy energy efficiency.
>>
>>
>>>They just don't make things like they used to."
>>
>>Yeah, they make them much better today energy efficiency wise.
>>
>>And much better design wise too with the shelves and bins etc too.
>
>
> did you know theres all qualitys of stainless, some will last literaLLY
> FOREVER not so for kitchen stainless, try a magnet on stainless the
> better quality is non magnetic
>
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Home Page: http://www.seanet.com/~jasonrnorth
If you're not the lead dog, the view never changes
Doubt yourself, and the real world will eat you alive
The world doesn't revolve around you, it revolves around me
No skeletons in the closet; just decomposing corpses
--------------------------------------------------------------
Dependence is Vulnerability:
--------------------------------------------------------------
"Open the Pod Bay Doors please, Hal"
"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.."
Carl McIver
> >
>> It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
>> engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost. The engineers
>> then have to decide where to cut costs.
>>
>
> The engineers are TOLD by the MBA accountants where to cut costs.
>
> Good designs are allowed to turn to bad designs to cut a fraction of a
> penny.
>
> The sooner the product dies after warranty, the sooner the customer
> will be buying another NEW item.
From their competitor? What manufacturer wants to take that chance?
>
> As has been pointed out, the repair inventory is considered a "profit
> center" which is code for gouge the customer if he wants to repair the
> item.
If you have to stock, for thirty years, a part that exists only on a
small handful of machines out there, how much would that part _really_ cost
after overhead for that _entire_ period gets figured in? And since machines
change design every few years, there are simply thousands and thousands of
parts all in the same situation. It's for that reason I quit bitching about
the prices of replacement parts at car dealers. I may pay more, but I'm
assured that it will be there more so than any other source. That assurance
costs money.
> And yes it IS a conspiracy....to get more of the public's money.
I'm calling you out on that one. Perhaps if all the brands and
manufacturers of appliances were consolidated so much that they _had_ to be
in cahoots, I'd be more inclined to believe you, but your appliances are
built all over the world now, by a variety of companies competing hard for
your business, not just once, but again and again, and that means that one
company with a good product will never say a word to a competitor about how
they do a better job. I certainly wouldn't, and the way to make money in
appliances is to build a better product that gives the customer the value
for the dollar they are willing to pay. Folks that want a top of the line
appliance will pay extra for the appearance of better quality, and if it can
be proved they're getting their money's worth, they'll spend even more.
What it costs me when a product fails, wastes my time, and the hassle and
frustration of resolving the situation, means far more to me than the
initial cost of a product. I've paid that price too many times, as I'm sure
we all have at one time or another, so back to the point of the most bang
for my buck is why companies competing for my precious dollar will not
conspire with each other. All it takes is for one of them to refuse to
conspire and the conspirators lose, leaving that one to earn my money.
>
> TMT
Ross Herbert
<rickb...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Ecnerwal wrote:
>> In article <B%tqh.1176$O02...@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net>,
>> "Rick Brandt" <rickb...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > This raises an apparent contradiction.
>>
>> Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances to
>> see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".
>>
>> The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable. "This
>> part always breaks eventually, we'll isolate it and make it easy to
>> replace".
>>
>> The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
>> and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated to render them
>> effectively non-economic to repair. [snip]
>
>What you say speaks to the issue of why did we repair in the past and why don't
>we repair now, but it says nothing about the comparable reliability. If
>appliances in the past were "built to be repaired" that can be interpretted to
>mean that failures were expected. If failures were expected and people could
>make a living performing those repairs then that suggests that the appliances
>were not that reliable.
>
The main reason we don't repair modern electronic appliances is that
the cost of parts and labour to carry out the repairs is often nearly
as much (or more) than the appliance cost new. Why would anyone pay
for a repair on an item, which may be as good as new when repaired,
when a brand new item may only cost a little more. The new item also
comes with a new warranty.
This will only change when the standard of living in countries
producing the majority of appliances goes up considerably thus making
the cost of producing items more expensive.
However, along with that, in order to make them economical to repair,
they must also be designed for accessibility to components such that
they can physically be repaired. Designing in repairability also adds
a bit to the cost of production.
Personally, I am all in favour of repairability if for no other reason
than it saves energy and resources across the board.
Bob Urz
Alan Moo...@visi.com wrote:
> On 14 Jan 2007 18:19:35 GMT, et...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA
> (Michael Black) wrote:
>
> snip
>
>>And I want to add something about "planned obsolescence" because it
>>is often misused. If people are choosing to buy cheap, it's hardly
>>that the manufacturers are making things so they will break. The
>>consumer often wants that cheaper tv set or VCR.
>>
>>And there is the issue of just plain obsolescence. Forty years
>>ago, there'd hardly be any electronic items around the house. A
>>tv set or two, some radios, maybe a stereo. But look around now,
>>and everything is electronic. It's either been invented in the past forty
>>years (not even that long in many cases), or at the very least could not
>>have been a consumer item until recently. Once you have consumers buying
>>the latest thing, things are bound to go obsolete. Buy early, and things
>>still have to develop, which means the things really may become obsolete
>>in a few years. It's not the manufacturer doing this to "screw the
>>consumer", it's a combination of new developments and consumer demand.
>>
>>If my computer from 1979 had been intended to last forever, it would
>>have been way out of range in terms of price. Because they'd have to
>>anticipate how much things would change, and build in enough so upgrading
>>would be doable. So you'd spend money on potential, rather than spending
>>money later on a new computer that would beat out what they could
>>imagine in 1979. And in recent years, it is the consumer who is deciding
>>to buy a new computer every few years (whether a deliberate decision or
>>they simply let the manufacturer lead, must vary from person to person.)
>>
>> Michael
>
>
> Planned obsolescence has been a tenet of the automobile
> industry since the '30s. General Motors, in particular
> used styling to make a 2 or 3 year-old-car look "old" and in
> need of replacement with a newly styled model.
>
> A bigger engine, prettier colors, new styles, all those
> things are at the heart of 'planned obsolescence.'
>
>
Well, when i was growing up having a car at 100K miles meant it was shot
and junk. Cars routinely go 150/200K miles if there properly maintained
and not some boner motor or tranny combo (always exceptions to the rule).
Electronics, while in some respects is miles ahead do to large scale
integration has its own issues. Heat build up has caused many devices to
fail from bad solder joints or component failure. Electronic CRT chassis
are so flimsy that if you take the chassis out the plastic wont support
the CRT. So progress is both good and bad. CD players have lasers that
get dirty and get tossed long before the actual laser diode is gone.
Bob
Rod Speed
It wont change even then, the manufacture
will just move on to new low cost countrys.
That has already happened a number of times now.
> However, along with that, in order to make them economical
> to repair, they must also be designed for accessibility to
> components such that they can physically be repaired.
Not necessarily. You can replace components, like
you do with cell phone batterys most obviously.
> Designing in repairability also adds a bit to the cost of production.
Not much tho, again most obviously with cellphones.
> Personally, I am all in favour of repairability if for no other
> reason than it saves energy and resources across the board.
Its a tiny part of world energy consumption.
Rod Speed
The trouble is that there is no easy to way get a real handle on what
products on offer will last significantly longer with most appliances.
And its arguable how many really care that much about that sort of
thing now with the appliances so cheap and so trivially affordable.
Rod Speed
>> Planned obsolescence has been a tenet of the automobile
>> industry since the '30s. General Motors, in particular
>> used styling to make a 2 or 3 year-old-car look "old" and in need of replacement with a newly
>> styled model.
>> A bigger engine, prettier colors, new styles, all those
>> things are at the heart of 'planned obsolescence.'
> Well, when i was growing up having a car at 100K miles meant it was
> shot and junk. Cars routinely go 150/200K miles if there properly maintained
And they dont need much maintenance either,
most obviously with suspension lubrication etc.
> and not some boner motor or tranny combo (always exceptions to the rule).
> Electronics, while in some respects is miles ahead do to large scale integration has its own
> issues.
Not really.
> Heat build up has caused many devices to fail from bad solder joints or component failure.
That doesnt happen much anymore and it isnt mostly
the large scale integration where that happens anyway.
> Electronic CRT chassis are so flimsy that if you take the chassis out the plastic wont support the
> CRT.
Doesnt need to, the CRT is the guts of the system everything is attached to.
> So progress is both good and bad.
Not much bad with electronics.
> CD players have lasers that get dirty and get tossed long before the actual laser diode is gone.
And even DVD burners are now so cheap that its just a yawn.
Homer J Simpson
"Rod Speed" <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:510h6hF...@mid.individual.net...
>> CD players have lasers that get dirty and get tossed long before the
>> actual laser diode is gone.
>
> And even DVD burners are now so cheap that its just a yawn.
We've gone from an 80K floppy drive that cost $800 to a DVD burner that can
store 9 Gb and costs $35.
From an 8 Mb hard drive that cost $7,000 to a 320 Gb drive that costs $100.
Ignoramus4939
them throw various equipment away, take it home and take it apart. See
if you see signs of intentionally poor design, trying to save pennies
at the huge expense of the customer, etc. See how many interchangeable
parts you see, how well made is the mechanism etc. If anything, doing
so is fun and educational.
i
Jeff Jonas
>to be able to buy proper double injection moulded keyboards in the
>pre PC days but they arent even buyable now even with the branded
>produces like Microsoft and Logitech and the stupid cheap stuck on
>lettering never lasts very long at all.
I'm pleased to agree with that comment since it's on topic
and something that's near and dear to my heart.
I use my computer keyboard every day so it's not just an appliance,
it's a tool. It ought to fit my hand and operate reliably.
You'll have to pry my original IBM PS/2 space-saving keyboard
from my cold dead hands - I ain't giving' this up for anything!
The keys FEEL RIGHT and really click, not fake springs here!
It's survived a lot of pounding and frustration
and NONE of the keycap legends are smudged.
Only recently I noticed that the matte finish has rubbed off
the left shift key and the "A" key, making the surface smooth.
The keyboard has been in daily use for perhaps 10 years.
>But I wouldnt go back to corded mice and keyboards again.
>In spades with non optical mice either.
I favor trackballs and I lament how the award-winning ergonomic ones
are not available anymore.
That's not planned obsolescence or feature-itis
so much as the "race to the bottom":
whoever sells the parts with the lowest price or highest markup wins
by slowly deleting or removing options until they're no longer available.
My Itac trackball's buttons are fully reprogrammable so they work without
any specialized drivers. Nobody else does that in hardware,
it's always part of their drivers (which are a nightmare to configure & update).
Similarly:
- VCRs have been stripped of all their buttons so there's no way
to use them without the remote control. If the remote is lost or broken,
then most of the features are "lost" because the universal remotes
don't give all the original buttons.
- home camcorders keep losing features such as aux mic input,
which several friends require for their taping.
They can't afford the $xx,000 "professional" cameras just to get
features that are no longer included in the $x00 home versions.
- high end audio equipment is hard to get: some is no longer made
AT ANY PRICE due to Chinese products flooding the market
with lower prices and lowered expectations.
- similarly, the Yamaha CD burners were top rated for reliability of
mechanism and firmware. They're no longer available thanks to market erosion
to Chinese CD burners. For the home-professional,
I don't care if I can buy a new CD burner every week or every day,
I need RELIABLE OPERATION that these new disposible ones cannot provide.
I need CDs that are burned precisely to read well a week, a year or 10 years later.
It's unsure if the cheapie CD burners can really achieve that :-(
And similarly, the CD blanks are sometimes crap-tastic
despite all the advances in manufacturing tech that makes it possible
to create high-reliability media, if anyone's willing to pay the extra pennies.
--
-- mejeep deMeep ferret!
Andrew VK3BFA
Rod Speed wrote:
> Andrew VK3BFA <abl...@alphalink.com.au> wrote
> > William Noble wrote
>
> >> nonrepairable is not the same as planned obsolescense.
> >> A new product may be impossible to repair because it
> >> uses custom electronics and special assembly techniques
> >> but that doesn't mean it's planned to quit working in 3 years.
>
> > Yes it is - your wrong.
>
> Nope.
>
> > Theres actually an engineering discipline devoted to this
> > subject - its called "Stress Engineering" ie how many
> > cycles can the door open and close before ir breaks
>
> The reality is that that isnt done with domestic appliances.
Of course it is - if your making a million of anything, you minimise
costs to the last cent, because 1c by 1,000,000 is REAL money. We can
put a man on the moon - is it so hard to figure out MTBF of electronic
equipment. And if the factory costs millions of dollars to set up
(they do) its in their best interests to keep them running - the costs
of shutting down are prohibitive.
And, good people, if you want a new TV set, there has NEVER been a
better time to buy one. LCD, Plasma are killing the conventional CRT
market - havent you wondered why they are so cheap now? - its
desperation time till new plant comes on stream to make the new
consumer toys....
>
> > - or, how many hours will the just adequate component get
> > stinking hot before it desolders itself from the circuit board.....
>
> That aint designing it to fail just outside the warranty.
Oh? - how come PCB pads are barely adequate for the heat dissipation of
the component - as far as I know, thats been taught in engineering
courses for the last 20 years.....ANY tech will immediately start
looking for dry joints as a first thing to do issue...
>
> > all things that most technicians are intimately familiar
> > with - (their called "bread and butter" faults..).
> > we used to make a living from them....
>
> They werent deliberately designed in. Just lousy design.
I beg to differ. You are saying EVERY manufacturer on the planet has
the identical "bad design" features.....and keeps on making them, model
after model, year after year?.....
>
> > the technically difficult repairs that took EONS you did
> > for self satisfaction and lost money on - that was ok
> > when there was enough of the other stuff to make a living.
>
> > The whole societal mindset has changed - most of my customers now
> > are "mature aged" and have the life long expectation that when thing
> > breaks, it gets fixed. The younger ones - don't even bother, they
> > EXPECT it to break soon after the warranty ends (thats BONUS time!)
> > and will not even think about getting it repaired....
>
> Because it makes not sense to spend a high percentage of the cost of
> a new VCR repairing an existing one. The new one gets a new warranty.
Yep. Thats why they are no repaired. I though this was why this thread
got started?
>
> > Modern manufacturing methods - them too - snap together plastic
> > assemblies designed for easy assembly with no thought for subsequent
> > servicing (hey, nuts and bolts cost MONEY) - done by unskilled, low
> > wage workers to whom a screwdriver is probably a complex machine tool.
>
> And most of that stuff just doesnt fail, most obviously
> with plug packs and molded power cords.
>
> > Modern circuit boards - SMD components, machine assembled,
> > wave soldered - give VERY high reliability due lack of "operator error"
>
> Nope, due to the technology.
Idiot. The technology was partly developed to eliminate manual
operation, as well as speed/ease of assembly. Do some research. NASA
figured this out in the 1960's....a huge proportion of failures were
due to poor human made solder joints - the short term cure was HRHS
certification of operators, the evolution was rigidly controlled
machine operation....
>
> > but again, virtually impossible to repair without specialist equipment -
> > fine if your in aerospace, or medical, or industrial where you have
> > the margins, but not domestic stuff. (and thats assuming the
> > complex in house LSI IC is even available - it usually isnt...)
>
> And they hardly ever need to be repaired too.
Erk. Then whats the problem? - why are we having this discussion? - if
its so reliable, surely servicing isn't an issue?
>
> > And the manufacturers too - theres no money in servicing, 10,000 TV
> > sets can be ordered, delivered to the customers distribution centre
> > straight off the boat all from one person sitting in front of a PC -
> > no warehouses, spare parts stock, skilled staff to manage the
> > spare parts, service data to manage, field service staff to
> > control, cost of running a service centre....
>
> And those arent designed to fail just outside the warranty.
But they do. 3 to 5 years from a modern domestic ANYTHING is good value
now....or has your experience been different from the rest of us? -
>
> > Same for service data - costs too much. Its easier to replace
> > something under warranty irrespective of the fault, crush it, and
> > claim it as a tax loss than maintain a service centre with skilled techs,,,,
>
> The reality is that costs a lot less to stamp out another in the
> asian factory than it can ever cost to have a first world tech fix it.
Erk (again) yes, well, thats why things dont get repaired - so cheap to
buy new ones - pity about the quality issues....
>
> > Sooo - this leaves people like us - slightly demented, do it
> > yourselfers, who machine bits out of aluminum to replace a broken
> > plastic bracket (thats why I got into this bizarre metalworking world)
> > - people who will spend DAYS chasing a generic replacement, who,
> > when they see something of a similar model in the dumpster, will
> > rescue it to take home for spares.....
>
> > Do I complain - yeh, fer sure. Would I do anything else - no way,
> > I enjoy the challenge. Learning new skills, being rat cunning and
> > devious, figuring out how to beat the obsolescence game....its fun
> > (mostly) Pity it barely pays the bills - fortunately the house is paid
> > for, the kids are off our hands (mostly) and I dont lust after a turbo
> > Porsche...(now, more tools - thats different...)
>
> And they are dirt cheap now.
That I will concede. And is not the quality the same as all the other
disposable products? And for those people out there proudly running
their Bridgeport or Monarch in their basement, they came from once
prosperous factories that got decimated by cheap modern crap. How else
could you afford them?
Its happened in my trade too - there is SO MUCH high quality test
equipment out there now, stuff I could not afford even 10 years ago.
Now I can - the companies that used it are no more, or its so cheap to
replace a "black box" that they don't need to maintain service
engineers and test gear. And in telecoms, I will grudgingly concede
that there is redundancy - but when BIG network fault happens, theres
a mad scramble to find enough techs to go out and fix it.....((because
the accountants says the new stuff is so reliable, (they read the
glossy brochures, sorta like IT people) why do we need to pay staff in
case it MIGHT break down?))
>
> > And when my generation goes - thats it, cant
> > see anyone choosing to do this to make a living.
>
> Corse they wont.
Good, you got one right.
>
> > Sitting at a service station console taking money for gasoline pays better.
>
> And so do almost everything else too.
>
> > The only industries where you CAN make good money servicing are:-
>
> > 1.Where the machine itself costs LOTS of money,
> > so the repair is a small part of the cost
> > 2.Where people are standing idle because the machine is down
>
> Even that is arguable, an operation like that should have decent redundancy.
Rubbish. Any machine thats down is losing money (ask the accountants -
they run things these days) - and there is virtually NO REDUNDANCY,
even in hospital situations - next time you visit someone in hospital,
look at the calibration tag on the machines (IV drips are a favourite)-
see how long since its been serviced. Have a look around the back - see
how much dust/muck is jammed into the air filter element on the cooling
fan....(ECG's are good for this.....
BTW - I think "redundancy" has been replaced by one of those marvelous
new management speak phrases - "Just In Time" - the premise that the
supply chain functions perfectly to avoid ANY down time.
Multiple redundancy is a thing we HOPE they put in nuclear power
stations, and aeroplanes -and even thats being pushed. Civil aviation
here - most commercial airliners have 3 generators, time was if one
failed, the plane was pulled from service. Not now - it waits till the
next "scheduled service"....(costs money to take it out of service for
"unnecessary repairs"...and besides, the thing will fly on 1
generator....)
Anyway, I just fixed a 20 yo VCR for a customer - worn plastic gears
not meshing. Cure - fit washer on shaft to raise gear teeth to unworn
portion.
And I will keep on doing things like this, and you will keep on buying
new consumer crap - whose the winner?
Andrew VK3BFA.
Thats it, no more from me - I am trying not to RANT....(and failing)
Jeff Jonas
>Only partly true. Do you want to keep your computer forever? Do you think
>you'd be on line here if you still had that 286 processor?
That's opening up a can of worms:
some PCs were upgradeable, with socketed CPUs and even
daughterboards for the CPU, but with raised expectations of our computers
and evolving motherboard chipsets and faster peripherals,
it's really hard to truly salvage much from a PC
other than disks and some peripherals.
BUT: some specialized applications require the "legacy" interfaces
that are being phased out, such as custom interface cards with the ISA interface,
or RS232 serial interfaced peripherals.
There are often items that have no equivalent in current production
so you can't just buy the PCI or USB version.
I still have some Z80 based single board computers
because they're now "old enough" to become embedded systems.
Many '486 systems /could be used again/ if anyone gave a damn
to find lightweight (NON-M$) operating systems to make them
dedicated devices, such as a digital answering machine, print server, etc.
Too_Many_Tools
> > The engineers are TOLD by the MBA accountants where to cut costs.
>
> You've never worked for a company that manufactures stuff have you?
>
> Marketing (NOT accounting) might provide a price-point that their research
> indicates a product needs to be at to be competitive and the
> design/engineering/manufacuring departments might be given a mandate to meet
> that price point by top level management, but there are no "accountants" telling
> anyone where to cut costs.
I believe it is you who needs to work in the real world and ignore the
fairy tales of academic circles.
In a real company, engineers are under the thumb of accountants. They
are to make whatever cuts need to be made to make the desired profit
margin. Products are manufactured with intentional end lifes and
without any possiblity of repair...all required by MBAs who have
dictated what the product life and quality will be.
It is done to extract as much of your cash as possible.
TMT
Jeff Jonas
>the cost of parts and labour to carry out the repairs is often nearly
>as much (or more) than the appliance cost new. Why would anyone pay
>for a repair on an item, which may be as good as new when repaired,
>when a brand new item may only cost a little more. The new item also
>comes with a new warranty.
YET despite that, there is still some favorable economics for
reclaiming and repairing stuff, even if it's sold as "refurbished".
I occasionally buy refurbished stuff since that means
"the parts that break first have already been replaced".
Jeff Jonas
I agree! If only the garbage collectors were to "close the loop"
and somehow report what products are failing the most
(dare I suggest that RFID tagging stuff from cradle-to-grave
could supply such data?)
I buy plastic storage containers since cardboard boxes
tend to fall apart particularly when stacked.
But some brands are /so bad/ that they're cracked and broken
WHILE STILL IN THE STORE!
I'm all for recycling but I bow to the economics that
transportation and storage may exceed the value of what's reclaimed
(yes, I've seen Penn and Teller's BULLSHIT show about recycling)
but there's no checks-and-balances system to correct for stores
getting credit for entire boatloads of crap that can't (or won't) be fixed.
It's not just a matter of landfill and garbage handling,
it's a lack of accountability for the merchanise that's arriving on our shores.
Rod Speed
>> The main thing I detest with modern products is keyboards. I used
>> to be able to buy proper double injection moulded keyboards in the
>> pre PC days but they arent even buyable now even with the branded
>> products like Microsoft and Logitech and the stupid cheap stuck on
>> lettering never lasts very long at all.
> I'm pleased to agree with that comment since it's on topic
> and something that's near and dear to my heart.
> I use my computer keyboard every day so it's not just an appliance,
> it's a tool. It ought to fit my hand and operate reliably.
> You'll have to pry my original IBM PS/2 space-saving keyboard
> from my cold dead hands - I ain't giving' this up for anything!
The main problem there is that I need a proper modern cordless
keyboard. I compute from a deep armchair with my feet up and
have the keyboard in my lap when entering text like now.
Even the pre PC double injection moulded keyboard,
a DEC LK01, was much too heavy in that situation.
> The keys FEEL RIGHT and really click, not fake springs here!
> It's survived a lot of pounding and frustration
> and NONE of the keycap legends are smudged.
> Only recently I noticed that the matte finish has rubbed off
> the left shift key and the "A" key, making the surface smooth.
Yeah, thats the only effect I ever got with those.
> The keyboard has been in daily use for perhaps 10 years.
>> But I wouldnt go back to corded mice and keyboards again.
>> In spades with non optical mice either.
> I favor trackballs
I dont, I prefer modern scroll wheels.
> and I lament how the award-winning ergonomic ones are
> not available anymore. That's not planned obsolescence
> or feature-itis so much as the "race to the bottom":
Its not that so much as just that hardly anyone liked trackballs.
There is no race to the bottom with high end
cordless mice like the Logitech MX700 etc.
And they use standard AA NiMH batterys so its trivial
to replace those when that is necessary, for peanuts.
> whoever sells the parts with the lowest price or highest markup wins
> by slowly deleting or removing options until they're no longer available.
That isnt happening with high end cordless mice.
> My Itac trackball's buttons are fully reprogrammable so
> they work without any specialized drivers. Nobody else
> does that in hardware, it's always part of their drivers
Which is a much more cost effective approach.
> (which are a nightmare to configure & update).
Doesnt have to be.
> Similarly:
> - VCRs have been stripped of all their buttons so
> there's no way to use them without the remote control.
Yes, because so few use those buttons and so few are
silly enough to use them even when they lose the remote.
> If the remote is lost or broken, then most of the features are "lost"
> because the universal remotes don't give all the original buttons.
It makes a lot more sense to have replacement remotes available
than to have the buttons on the front of the VCR itself.
> - home camcorders keep losing features such as aux
> mic input, which several friends require for their taping.
> They can't afford the $xx,000 "professional" cameras just to get
> features that are no longer included in the $x00 home versions.
> - high end audio equipment is hard to get: some is no longer
> made AT ANY PRICE due to Chinese products flooding the
> market with lower prices and lowered expectations.
And because its such a tiny niche market now.
> - similarly, the Yamaha CD burners were top rated for
> reliability of mechanism and firmware. They're no longer
> available thanks to market erosion to Chinese CD burners.
Reliability is irrelevant now with DVD burners so cheap.
> For the home-professional, I don't care if I can buy a new CD
> burner every week or every day, I need RELIABLE OPERATION
> that these new disposible ones cannot provide.
Thats bullshit.
> I need CDs that are burned precisely to read well a week, a year or 10
> years later. It's unsure if the cheapie CD burners can really achieve that :-(
Anyone with a clue burns more than one copy on
different media even with something like a Yamaha.
> And similarly, the CD blanks are sometimes crap-tastic despite
> all the advances in manufacturing tech that makes it possible to
> create high-reliability media, if anyone's willing to pay the extra pennies.
I've never had a problem with CD blanks except one
spindle that someone else bought for me at a dollar store
which were so bad you could literally see right thru them.
All the rest have never been a problem.
Too_Many_Tools
> > And yes it IS a conspiracy....to get more of the public's money.
>
> I'm calling you out on that one.
>
LOL....Electric staplers at ten paces?
It is a conspiracy.
The MBAs are working from the same play book.
Companies have consolidated to just a few...and they have combined
their operations so your selection is limited. They control what
repairs are available...if available...so the prices are fixed.
The third party repair depots...whether for your car, washer or
electronics ..... are being squeezed out of business.
And when it breaks...well ever hear of brand loyalty? People go back
and buy more junk. Ever wonder how Walmart makes its money?
And the end play....to make the consumer pay more....is being played
out well.
Ever wonder why consumer debt is at an all time high...if things are
getting cheaper, why don't you have more money instead of less?
TMT
Rod Speed
>>>> nonrepairable is not the same as planned obsolescense.
>>>> A new product may be impossible to repair because it
>>>> uses custom electronics and special assembly techniques
>>>> but that doesn't mean it's planned to quit working in 3 years.
>>> Yes it is - your wrong.
>> Nope.
>>> Theres actually an engineering discipline devoted to this
>>> subject - its called "Stress Engineering" ie how many
>>> cycles can the door open and close before ir breaks
>> The reality is that that isnt done with domestic appliances.
> Of course it is - if your making a million of anything, you minimise
> costs to the last cent, because 1c by 1,000,000 is REAL money.
Nice theory. Have fun explaining how come the absolute vast bulk
of cellphones still have assembly screw and replaceable fronts etc.
> We can put a man on the moon - is it so hard
> to figure out MTBF of electronic equipment.
Pointless when the absolute vast bulk of it never fails.
> And if the factory costs millions of dollars to set
> up (they do) its in their best interests to keep them
> running - the costs of shutting down are prohibitive.
Nope, happens all the time when technology moves on.
> And, good people, if you want a new TV set,
> there has NEVER been a better time to buy one.
Yes there will be with the changeover to digital TV.
> LCD, Plasma are killing the conventional CRT market
> - havent you wondered why they are so cheap now?
> - its desperation time till new plant comes on stream
> to make the new consumer toys....
Its been onstream for quite a while now.
>>> - or, how many hours will the just adequate component get
>>> stinking hot before it desolders itself from the circuit board.....
>> That aint designing it to fail just outside the warranty.
> Oh? - how come PCB pads are barely adequate
> for the heat dissipation of the component
Just the usual, lousy design. Nothing to do with deliberately designing
it to fail when its just outside warranty, which isnt even possible except
with microprocessor controlled devices and no one is that stupid even
with them. Completely pointless trying to do it with the pcb pad sizes.
> - as far as I know, thats been taught in
> engineering courses for the last 20 years.....
You dont know that the chinese 'designers' get taught that sort of thing.
> ANY tech will immediately start looking
> for dry joints as a first thing to do issue...
Only the ones stupid enough to be doing that sort of thing anymore.
>>> all things that most technicians are intimately familiar
>>> with - (their called "bread and butter" faults..).
>>> we used to make a living from them....
>> They werent deliberately designed in. Just lousy design.
> I beg to differ. You are saying EVERY manufacturer
> on the planet has the identical "bad design" features.....
Nope, and I deny that modern electronic devices all fail that way.
> and keeps on making them, model after model, year after year?.....
Even you should have noticed that the power use keeps dropping dramatically.
There's fuck all in say a PC or cellphone
that is due to that alleged pcb pad problem.
>>> the technically difficult repairs that took EONS you did
>>> for self satisfaction and lost money on - that was ok
>>> when there was enough of the other stuff to make a living.
>>> The whole societal mindset has changed - most of my customers now
>>> are "mature aged" and have the life long expectation that when thing
>>> breaks, it gets fixed. The younger ones - don't even bother, they
>>> EXPECT it to break soon after the warranty ends (thats BONUS time!)
>>> and will not even think about getting it repaired....
>> Because it makes no sense to spend a high percentage of the cost of
>> a new VCR repairing an existing one. The new one gets a new warranty.
> Yep. Thats why they are no repaired. I though this was why this thread got started?
Nope, this thread got started with the silly claim about planned obsolescence.
>>> Modern manufacturing methods - them too - snap together plastic
>>> assemblies designed for easy assembly with no thought for subsequent
>>> servicing (hey, nuts and bolts cost MONEY) - done by unskilled, low wage
>>> workers to whom a screwdriver is probably a complex machine tool.
>> And most of that stuff just doesnt fail, most obviously
>> with plug packs and molded power cords.
>>> Modern circuit boards - SMD components, machine assembled,
>>> wave soldered - give VERY high reliability due lack of "operator error"
>> Nope, due to the technology.
> Idiot.
Fuckwit.
> The technology was partly developed to eliminate manual
> operation, as well as speed/ease of assembly.
Yes, but not due to OPERATOR ERROR.
> Do some research.
Go and fuck yourself.
> NASA figured this out in the 1960's....a huge proportion of failures were
> due to poor human made solder joints - the short term cure was HRHS
> certification of operators, the evolution was rigidly controlled machine operation....
Nothing to do with why its done with domestic appliances.
>>> but again, virtually impossible to repair without specialist equipment -
>>> fine if your in aerospace, or medical, or industrial where you have
>>> the margins, but not domestic stuff. (and thats assuming the
>>> complex in house LSI IC is even available - it usually isnt...)
>> And they hardly ever need to be repaired too.
> Erk. Then whats the problem? - why are we having this discussion?
Because the stupid claim about planned obsolescence,
which clearly cant be happening when they fail so rarely.
> - if its so reliable, surely servicing isn't an issue?
It isnt indeed. That means that dinosaurs like you get stuck with
the complicated failures which are completely uneconomic to fix
because you expect a first world income in return.
Taint gunna happen while ever it will always be much cheaper
to stamp out another in an asian factory with the few that do fail.
No one is silly enough to attempt to repair hard drives anymore,
because they are so cheap to stamp out in asia etc.
>>> And the manufacturers too - theres no money in servicing, 10,000 TV
>>> sets can be ordered, delivered to the customers distribution centre
>>> straight off the boat all from one person sitting in front of a PC -
>>> no warehouses, spare parts stock, skilled staff to manage the
>>> spare parts, service data to manage, field service staff to
>>> control, cost of running a service centre....
>> And those arent designed to fail just outside the warranty.
> But they do.
No they dont.
> 3 to 5 years from a modern domestic ANYTHING is good value now....
Bullshit.
> or has your experience been different from the rest of us? -
Just how many of you are there between those ears ?
>>> Same for service data - costs too much. Its easier to replace
>>> something under warranty irrespective of the fault, crush it, and
>>> claim it as a tax loss than maintain a service centre with skilled techs,,,,
>> The reality is that costs a lot less to stamp out another in the asian
>> factory than it can ever cost to have a first world tech fix it.
> Erk (again) yes, well, thats why things dont get repaired -
> so cheap to buy new ones - pity about the quality issues....
No quality issues with anything I have bought in the last few years.
>>> Sooo - this leaves people like us - slightly demented, do it
>>> yourselfers, who machine bits out of aluminum to replace a broken
>>> plastic bracket (thats why I got into this bizarre metalworking
>>> world) - people who will spend DAYS chasing a generic
>>> replacement, who, when they see something of a similar
>>> model in the dumpster, will rescue it to take home for spares.....
>>> Do I complain - yeh, fer sure. Would I do anything else - no way,
>>> I enjoy the challenge. Learning new skills, being rat cunning and
>>> devious, figuring out how to beat the obsolescence game....its fun
>>> (mostly) Pity it barely pays the bills - fortunately the house is paid
>>> for, the kids are off our hands (mostly) and I dont lust after a
>>> turbo Porsche...(now, more tools - thats different...)
>> And they are dirt cheap now.
> That I will concede. And is not the quality the
> same as all the other disposable products?
Nope, everything I have bought in the last few years has been fine quality
wise with the exception of the electric chainsaw chain tension adjuster
which they were happy to replace for free without a receipt.
> And for those people out there proudly running their Bridgeport or Monarch
> in their basement, they came from once prosperous factories that got
> decimated by cheap modern crap. How else could you afford them?
Irrelevant to the mass market.
> Its happened in my trade too - there is SO MUCH high quality test
> equipment out there now, stuff I could not afford even 10 years ago.
> Now I can - the companies that used it are no more, or its so cheap
> to replace a "black box" that they don't need to maintain service
> engineers and test gear. And in telecoms, I will grudgingly concede
> that there is redundancy - but when BIG network fault happens,
> theres a mad scramble to find enough techs to go out and fix it.....
Nope, because the BIG network faults are just multiple stupiditys.
> ((because the accountants says the new stuff is so reliable,
> (they read the glossy brochures, sorta like IT people) why
> do we need to pay staff in case it MIGHT break down?))
The reality is that the failure rate really is very low.
Nothing to do with any brochures.
>>> And when my generation goes - thats it, cant
>>> see anyone choosing to do this to make a living.
>> Corse they wont.
> Good, you got one right.
I got it all right thanks.
>>> Sitting at a service station console taking money for gasoline pays better.
>> And so do almost everything else too.
>>> The only industries where you CAN make good money servicing are:-
>>> 1.Where the machine itself costs LOTS of money,
>>> so the repair is a small part of the cost
>>> 2.Where people are standing idle because the machine is down
>> Even that is arguable, an operation like that should have decent redundancy.
> Rubbish.
Nope, with the hardware so cheap, its stupid not to have decent redundancy.
> Any machine thats down is losing money
Wrong when there is decent redundancy.
> (ask the accountants - they run things these days)
No they dont.
> - and there is virtually NO REDUNDANCY,
Bullshit.
> even in hospital situations - next time you visit someone in
> hospital, look at the calibration tag on the machines (IV drips
> are a favourite)- see how long since its been serviced. Have a
> look around the back - see how much dust/muck is jammed into the
> air filter element on the cooling fan....(ECG's are good for this.....
Irrelevant to what happens outside hospitals redundancy wise.
> BTW - I think "redundancy" has been replaced by one of those
> marvelous new management speak phrases - "Just In Time"
Nope, completely different concepts.
> - the premise that the supply chain functions
> perfectly to avoid ANY down time.
Thanks for that completely superfluous proof that you
have never had a clue and why you got the bums rush.
> Multiple redundancy is a thing we HOPE they put in nuclear
> power stations, and aeroplanes -and even thats being pushed.
No hope necessary with heavy aircraft.
> Civil aviation here - most commercial airliners have 3 generators,
> time was if one failed, the plane was pulled from service.
Wrong.
> Not now - it waits till the next "scheduled service"....
> (costs money to take it out of service for "unnecessary
> repairs"...and besides, the thing will fly on 1 generator....)
Wrong again.
> Anyway, I just fixed a 20 yo VCR for a customer
More fool you.
> - worn plastic gears not meshing. Cure - fit washer
> on shaft to raise gear teeth to unworn portion.
> And I will keep on doing things like this,
More fool you.
> and you will keep on buying new consumer crap - whose the winner?
Me when I have enough of a clue to have replaced the VCRs with decent
modern digital TV tuner cards which will leave VCRs for dead reliability wise.
> Thats it, no more from me - I am trying not to RANT....(and failing)
And making a spectacular fool of yourself in the process.
Rod Speed
And anyone with a clue just buys a dedicated hardware router etc.
Gunner
<mike.t...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>> On what do you base this statement? To claim that (on average) a new dryer will
>> only last five years is absurd. What, you once knew "a guy" who replaced a five
>> year old dryer? The dryer has to be one of the simplest and most reliable
>> things in the home. There just isn't that much to go wrong.
>
>
> From dozens of relatives and friends who had major problems from 4 to 6
>years. My stepmother replaced a GE washer and dryer pair that was less
>than two years old because they were crap. Not much to go wrong? cheap
>parts, poor designs and sloppy assembly work. Something is making noise
>and you find a broken weld, sheared off bolt or bad bearing that SHOULD
>NOT HAVE HAPPENED.
A prime example would be a belt tensioning pulley with a bronze bushing
in it, rather than a proper sealed bearing..and no way for the average
end user to maintain it. When the bushing wears out..the pulley needs
replacement, along with the long spring loaded rod it runs on. And when
the dryer tub bearings..simply a pair of HDDP or teflon pads wear
out..the drum starts rubbing holes in itself, or putting such a load on
the belt the belt busts
Repaired all of the above in a a couple Kennmore dryers in a 10 yr
period. Turned a new pulley out of aluminum, put in proper sealed
bearings and put in a quadruple row of skate board bearings to replace
the pads.
Could hardly hear the thing running after the repair.
oh..and using a bronze bushing for the drum support bearing..same deal.
Replaced it with a pair of cheap skate board wheels. Both have been
running at least 10 yrs since then..no issues noted.
Gunner
"Deep in her heart, every moslem woman yearns to show us her tits"
John Griffin
Gunner
<rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> And yes it IS a conspiracy....to get more of the public's money.
>
>Doesnt happen like that with the chinese products.
>
>Just another reason why bugger all is made in
>the US anymore except for stuff like aircraft etc.
Ill be sure to tell my machine shop clients that.
Andrew VK3BFA
Rod Speed wrote:
> Andrew VK3BFA <abl...@alphalink.com.au> wrote
> > Rod Speed wrote
> >> Andrew VK3BFA <abl...@alphalink.com.au> wrote
> >>> William Noble wrote
Just curious - what do you do for a living? - you seem to have an
amazing lack of knowledge across many fields - is it accountancy?. And
how do you manage to translate crayon to ascii text?
Andrew VK3BFA.
Andrew VK3BFA
Gee Gunner - how come your so good at the snappy reply - I get sucked
into arguing with idiots.....
Andrew VK3BFA.