How do you even find quality appliances anymore?
We bought our house over eight years ago and it came with a number of appliances. Within the first year, both the refrigerator and the dishwasher crapped out on us. We replaced them with new Frigidaire and Whirlpool models respectively, but I definitely haven't been satisfied with them. Now my washer and dryer are acting up and I'm not sure how much longer they've got.
When our fridge first started giving us issues, we had someone come out to try to fix the existing one. He basically told us that it would be around $400 to replace the failing motherboard on it — and given how simple that fridge was, it was essentially the price of a replacement. So you can't fix anything—you just throw it into a landfill and buy a new one.
The principle of "you get what you pay for" doesn't seem to apply, either. I don't need a fridge that has a 20-inch OLED screen for connecting to a Samsung account. Paying more just seems to get you more features that are likely to cause problems down the road.
Before we bought our replacement dishwasher, I got a subscription to Consumer Reports. The one we got was one of their recommendations. But it's just… not a good dishwasher. Little parts of it keep failing (e.g., the top rack's glassware holder-spine-thingies). And it's leaking, too!
So, to bring it back around to the subject title, how do you even find reliable appliances? Does anyone even make reliable appliances? It seems like there has been a race to the bottom among all of the appliance manufacturers (not that this is a unique to appliances, as this Vox piece explains). Long-term reliability doesn't move units off the showroom floor, so it doesn't get prioritized. (Plus there's the whole economic disincentive for "durable goods" to actually be durable.) And with model numbers changing annually, there's no good way to keep track of which models have proven reliability.
I used to sell appliances maybe like 7 years ago, everything from blenders to $15,000 fridges. One thing that I learned is that everyone has a certain brand that they dislike, usually one they've had a negative experience with in the past. Doesn't always mean the brand is terrible, just that that person will never buy that brand again. The second someone would tell me something like 'oh I hate _____' I would just delete that brand from my brain for the rest of the conversation. Even if I personally have that exact brand at home and love it.
All this is to say that you're going to find A LOT of 'oh this brand sucks' or 'avoid such-and-such brand' all over the internet when you go to look for advice. I see it every time a question about appliances pops up on Tildes. Literally in this thread as well. And what you'll find is that while one person has had a terrible experience with a certain brand and swears against them, another will be like 'weird, I've had so-and-so brand for 10 years and never once had a problem'.
What this means for appliances shopping, and what I usually do nowadays when I need something, is to compare features and read reviews to look for common issues. Find a couple of models that you like and that are in your price range, then look for reviews online. 20 reviews saying this fridge sucks because its from a garbage brand mean nothing to me. 20 reviews saying this fridge sucks because the ice maker went bad is pretty telling.
In general though, other people are right when they say that the fewer features the better. The more bells and whistles something has nowadays, the more that can go wrong with it. A big reason why appliances used to last so long back in the day is because they did like one thing and one thing only. I usually figure out what features I absolutely need, then find the cheapest product from a reputable brand (i.e. one that I've heard of before or that seems to have a variety of products in that category) with those features. Hasn't done me wrong yet, but of course that means nothing since I could have just gotten lucky. Also that doesn't really apply for high-end appliances, but that's a whole different game.
While I have also noticed that many people have a hated brand (I'll mention mine later), I have noticed that every brand appliance across the board has quality issues compared to older models. This isn't simply a matter of "more feature to break", I've tried half a dozen brand appliances over the last 20 years and not a single one has lasted more than 5 years.
My personal "brand to hate" for appliances is Samsung. I bought a washer, dryer, refrigerator, and dishwasher at the same time when I bought my previous home about 13 years ago. Every single one of those appliances failed catastrophically before year 3. The dryer drum cracked and shredded hundreds of dollars of clothing. Fridge just stopped cooling at all and I lost most of the food. The main control panel died on the dishwasher. The washer started leaking water everywhere internally. Every one of those other than the washer would have cost as much to repair (or more) than buying a new appliance. I haven't used a Samsung appliance since, but the other brands (Kitchenaid, Electrolux, Whirlpool, LG, Frigidaire) only fared a little better.
I'm now feeling like the only smart move is to spend as little as possible on appliances so the failures don't set you back as much.
For older anecdotes, My parent's and my in-laws all had appliances last 10-25 years. I remember being astounded at their 20 year old refrigerator that looked its age, but worked without a hitch. And their oven and microwave that, at the time, were both older than I am. They still had both of those when they sold their home to move, so who knows how long they would have gone.
It seems that in the case of refrigerators the culprit is always the compressor - and that makes sense because it's the only mechanical part except for the doors in a basic model. And it's always an LG compressor. That would be fine except you can't really compare refrigerators based on compressors - manufacturers don't publicly advertise that information, and they regularly swap them out whenever they get a better deal and can get away with it. If they did tell you exactly what compressor came in it, it wouldn't be terribly useful information for the consumer; they don't have any way to evaluate what that information means. The only people who will be able to tell you what the reliability of those compressors are are the manufacturers, and that is a trade secret.
An expensive fridge doomed by its compressor is what landed LG on my own personal never again list. Of course I can't know whether the Samsung replacement will be any better.
I would love to see compressor specifications (refrigerant connectors, electrical connectors, chassis mount points) standardized, by regulatory action if necessary, to ensure replaceability with an arbitrary brand down the road. Market freedom for appliance manufacturers is serving the consumer, and the environment, very poorly; the world is increasingly flooded with large disposable appliances full of bulky, odd-shaped plastic panels and wave-soldered circuit boards.
When I tried to have our original fridge fixed like seven or eight years ago, the repair guy who came out said the one thing he would definitely avoid it was the Korean brands (i.e., Samsung and LG). If for no other reason than that finding parts for them is apparently a nightmare.
But for all I know, the dude was just racist against South Koreans! It sure would be nice to have empirical data to go by.
Just to make my original point even further: when I was still selling appliances, Samsung and LG were some of the brands we recommended the most, specifically because they were so ubiquitous that finding parts for them was easy. Electronics were a problem, I'll give you that. Anything electronic that needed fixing was often a pain in the ass to deal with but that's the same with any brand, Samsung and LG just dealt with it more because they focused heavily on the electronic side of things to differentiate themselves from the established American brands like Whirlpool and GE. But then guess what? Once the established brands saw how much bank Samsung and LG were making with their shiny new features, they started innovating shit too.
You want a hot water heater in your fridge? You got it.
You want a super thin over-the-range microwave for some reason? Say no more.
"See, we're hip too!" -GE and Whirlpool probably
I sold a Samsung fridge to my parents that is still going strong almost a decade later. I myself have purchased an LG washer and dryer that have been great for 5 years. You're going to get TONS of stories like that. One person tells you Samsung is trash. Another will tell you they've had Samsung with no problems. It's all anecdotal evidence. None of it means anything unless they get specific about what went wrong. And it will often vary appliance by appliance, even within the same brand. Samsung might have a great washer that sells well and everyone loves, and then another one might have a recall because it literally couldn't stop exploding.
And you want a real mindfuck? Lots of these brands contract out to other brands to make their appliances for them. Can't tell you how many times people would come to me asking for Kenmore appliances because they had a Kenmore for 20+ years and didn't want to consider anything else. Except Kenmore was a Sears rebranding of other brands: "As of 2017, Kenmore products are produced by manufacturers including Whirlpool, Samsung, LG, Electrolux, Panasonic, Cleva North America, and Winia Electronics. Today, the brand's portfolio is sold across Amazon, Lowe's, The Home Depot,[3] Target, and many other online retailers." -Wikipedia
That fridge that grandma loved might have been South Korean all along. And the microwave was most likely a Panasonic in disguise. And that's not even mentioning brands that all fall under the same umbrella company like Amana/Whirpool/Maytag/KitchenAid/Jennair.
I'm not here to defend or hate on any brands, nor contradict anyone's own personal opinions. I just see the same type of comments over and over every time something about appliances pops up. It's like cars, I bought a shitty Hyundai many years ago that kept giving me issues, so now I don't ever want to buy another one. Meanwhile I've had a Honda Fit problem-free for about a decade now, so I'll continue to buy (or at least consider) Honda when the time comes to get another car. Got my wife's grandmother a Kitchenaid fridge that I considered to be an amazing deal (I have a Kitchenaid myself that's around 13 years old now). Fridge broke two months later so she returned it and got a cheaper LG and has been happy with it ever since.
Other people will have different experiences to these that I've mentioned. Friends and family will have opinions. Basically everyone online will have opinions. But they're all just that, opinions. Even my opinions don't mean shit. Until someone says 'oh don't get that washer, its been known to leak' or 'that engine is a brand new redesign, might want to give it a few years to see what the reliability is like", everything else is subjective. Focus on the why, not just the 'Samsung sucks'. If it's a good reason, and one you see on multiple reviews online, then maybe it's worth paying attention to.
I worked at an office supply store in the technology department for a long time. I sold computers, printers, etc.
For years, I was all about selling printers. Where I lived, they were very popular for some reason. (Could also be the time period, 2001-2007.) There were certain brands or models that I just knew were crap; I always tried to steer customers away from Lexmark printers. And I had a chart I created in Excel that I printed/laminated to show the printing costs of the ink for various printers. I quickly developed a few favorites because they had good print quality and low printing costs.
But there were some customers who had an axe to grind against certain brands, and there was no convincing the otherwise. Or they just really loved a really crappy brand, like Lexmark.
The one thing that always drove me crazy, though, was the fact that I had no idea what the long-term reliability of anything I sold was. I knew what printed well and I knew what the ink cost, but I couldn't tell if I was setting people up with something that was going to break quickly.
IIRC that time period was around when printers were becoming "convergence devices"; where they were starting the transition from single-purpose devices to MFCs, laser printers became more available in the consumer market, and most importantly networking was starting to become a standard feature.
It was indeed. I think I talked several people out of getting printer/scanner/copiers that had faxing capability.
But more often than not, my focus was on convincing people to spend a little more upfront in order to get cheaper operating costs. Unless they were printing very, very infrequently, there were more small office oriented units that would be significantly cheaper to own over the long haul. (It was a lot of that and a lot of making sure people didn't buy printers that printed crappy photos when they intended to do photo printing. I made it a point to get each brand's photo paper and print the same photo on as many of them as I could. It was an effective demonstration. Some of them made hideous photo prints.)
Availability of parts is definitely something to consider. For example, where I live, it's better to buy Toyota cars than Honda cars because Honda parts are not locally available and mechanics have to get them shipped from a long distance (in part because few people here have Hondas, probably because the parts have to be shipped in...). But this advice will vary from location to location, and it will vary across time, and it can vary from model to model.
Even better, buy products that just use generic parts and then you don't have to think about brands. For example, our dishwasher is not a common brand, but it is more or less identical to the economy model sold under several different brands. The parts are so easy to find and information is so easy to come by that, so far, we have done all our own repairs on it and saved a bundle of money. We have had this dishwasher for 12 years (and we bought it secondhand to begin with, so who knows how old it really is), and we can still find brand new parts easily because the same dishwasher is still being made and sold under different brands.
The funny thing is that I love some products from Samsung and LG (generally display and memory/storage components), but I feel like the mindset that comes with many of their electronics products (i.e. tons of features, not meant to be repaired) is coming through and is just bad for appliances. You're right though, substantial empirical evidence would be great to have. Manufacturers, even good ones, tend to want no part in sharing that sort of data.
This works well for online reviews of all kinds. Any time I'm looking at a product I really care about the quality/longevity of, I go straight to the 2 star reviews and start reading. Ignore anyone complaining about things irrelevant to the product (e.g. "package arrived late" type reviews) and decided whether the complaints made in the remaining reviews are about things I care about.
If peoples' common complaints about the product are things I don't care about, then it's likely that the product will work well for me. Conversely, if there's tons of people complaining about an issue that would be deal breaker for me, then it really doesn't matter what the numeric rating is or how much affiliate review sites and/or reddit love it, I probably don't want it.
This reminds me of airlines. Everyone (at least in the US) has their story about the one time an airline didn't fly them well enough so they've vowed to never fly that airline ever again. As far as I can tell, American, United, and Delta are almost exactly the same in every way.
I don't think you can. I think you just have to mitigate as best you can. Avoid garbage brands like Samsung, avoid unnecessary complications like smart devices and try to get something with a decent warranty. Then cross your fingers and hope.
That's a bit defeatist.
I think that appliances are getting a really bad rap right now because of the echo chambers on the internet. People don't talk about appliances that work except when they are responding to people who are talking about broken appliances. They are also fairly expensive so when one breaks down they are absolutely going to vent about it. These echo chambers have the effect of lowering consumer confidence.
But the thing about appliances is that manufacturing them is just like anything else; it's statistically impossible that at least some of them will have defects that will cause them to fail. Sometimes it happens quick, sometimes it takes a while. And even if they don't have minor defects entropy will claim them all anyways.
You're not wrong but how do you find quality when to your point they could break at any time?
So avoiding brands with a bad reputation, which would in theory break more often, and seek good warranties, so it's less of a hassle when they do unexpectedly break, would seem like good advice. It kind of sounds like you are agreeing with me.
I don’t entirely disagree with you but I do disagree with the way you expressed it, I guess?
I work in a company that sells very expensive leisure appliances and in that particular industry the manufacturers sell their products in tiers to which it is common to offer 1, 3, or 5 year warranties. Here’s the thing about those warranties, though; the parts that are used in those products that are most likely to fail are usually common across the tiers. I have been explained by one of the manufacturers sales reps that the difference in cost is largely because of those warranties. So for the most part I do not think that spending extra for longer warranties is unwise. I’d call it gambling but it’s a rigged game. It may end up that you will pay less than you would if you didn’t pay for the warranty, but it’s been statistically calculated that you won’t.
Brand reputation is a good proxy for quality, but as I put in another comment one of my recommendations is to seek out the simplest appliances because those have less things that can fail.
Extended warranties generally take advantage of consumer ignorance about the bathtub curve. After any initial manufacturing defects shake out, usually in the first year of use, the risk of failure decreases sharply, until wear and tear takes over.
Extended warranties past the first year are usually wasteful, unless the inconvenience and expense of failure are so great that they merit expedited repair/replacement (e.g. business laptops).
Exactly. If they were worth it for the consumer, retailers wouldn't promote them so heavily.
I've been on the other side of that, selling consumer electronics and, let me tell you, I had plenty of managers who would rather have no sale at all than a sale without an extended warranty.
And now I want to know what you sell? Expensive leisure appliances... Hot tub?
Yeah, that makes sense and is good extra context for anyone purchasing appliances. How would you suggest changing my approach based on your knowledge? Put less value on warranties?
Yup.
I don't really think you're wrong per se, just lacking in nuance. The thing about warranties is that they can be correlated with the manufacturer's confidence in it, or they can be inversely correlated. People talk all day about Toyota's quality, for instance, but they have one of the shorter warranties in the car industry.
The thing that is more important than the purchasing decision is how you treat it after you take it home. It's in investment, and it should be treated that way. We tell everyone who buys a hot tub from us how important it is to take care of the water in their spa, but at the end of the day at least 90% of the people we send technicians out for repair all have failures relating to poor water chemistry. Samsung gets a lot of flack about their exploding washing machines, probably deservedly so, but the failure is caused by loading in clothes unevenly – something that will damage any vertical washing machine.
But you're still right that you should avoid the stuff you know will be bad. There are always products made to save a buck that will fail very quickly or perform poorly.
I was thinking either hot tubs or jet skis
Re washers I have a non exploding Samsung and I guess we baby ours? I've seen people wash shoes all the time, or overstuff theirs.
Two things.
First as a rule of thumb you should be paying more money for fewer features. As long as you stick with reputable brands you will get quality.
The other thing is to get recommendations from qualified sources. Unfortunately those are very hard to find these days because media outlets will not likely give an unbiased opinion on the products you want, and individual reviews are extremely likely to be fake. Consumer Reports is an excellent source still. The wirecutter is reasonably acceptable but should be taken with a pinch of salt, because I have seen a few of their articles where it didn’t seem that the writer had a 100% accurate grasp of what constitutes quality for the given item. When it comes to word-of-mouth or individual opinions, seek them from places that wouldn’t normally talk about them to make sure that you’re getting real people. Here on Tildes is a great resource for those, but large media sites like Reddit, Instagram, etc. probably aren’t going to be great because of the bot takeover.
Generally you don’t have to worry too much about variation between models of any given thing made by the same manufacturer. Instead think of the features you need or want from it and buy accordingly.
When it comes to home appliances a huge number of brands are actually made by a Chinese company called Haier, so looking by brand alone may not necessarily be good enough. That being said, I actually think that Haier’s quality is much better than most people would give them credit for. Their products tend to be fairly simple overall and simple means less likely to fail.
The electronic hardware inside appliances can often be really simple, so you may want to see if you can find a good local technician who might be able to repair the board and give you a better rate. That being said, board-level repair has become something of a rare skill these days so it may not necessarily save you much.
I think, ultimately, that's the problem — there's no reputable source of reliability information out there. For most people, they just have to rely on their personal experience and the anecdotes of people they know. Customer reviews are nigh on worthless because of how much they have become gamed. So that leaves Consumer Reports and professional reviewers like the Wirecutter. (And I do mean actual, professional reviewers — affiliate link-laden blogspam masquerading as professional reviews are a blight on the Internet.)
While I like professional reviewers a lot more than user reviews, professional reviewers can't do more than comment on initial perceived quality. They get to try out a lot of stuff which gives them a wide breadth of experience to base their opinion on, which is good. But the flipside of that is they never get to use product for very long. And on top of that, even if they did, they can't tell if the unit they are testing is representative sample of the product generally.
Which leaves Consumer Reports. It has been years since I was subscribed it to them, but I was kind of disappointed by the experience. I should probably look into it again, though. It's as close to empirical data as is available.
The modern illusion of choice in markets is pretty bad, too, and I think this is indicative of that overall trend. I'm a car nut, and there has been increasing awareness that cars have become homogenized because everyone is getting all of their major parts from the same small number of suppliers (e.g., everyone uses ABS designed and manufactured by Bosch). Homogenization would not, in itself, be a real problem if the underlying quality was there. But it's not. And manufacturers don't have a huge incentive to push their suppliers to make things any better because they know all of their competitors are ultimately using the same poor-quality crap that they are.
Yeah, that guy we called out years ago definitely didn't seem like someone who was going to be able to do any kind of repairs to faulty electronics. The best he could do was replace them. It's unfortunate. Doubly so because of how many things rely on poorly-made electronics.
And of course, this creates a feedback loop. The more disposable we treat everything, the fewer people there are to repair things. And with less and less work available to them, technicians will be less well-equipped to deal with the worst kind of problems. (Plus, I would imagine they have to charge more, just because there is so little demand.)
I can't stand how much society has embraced disposability. Big appliances take a lot of energy to produce even if you are only looking at the metal panels that make up their exteriors. People look at EVs and say the lithium batteries are wasteful but at least they get reused – we're putting lithium batteries in one-time-use vapes and emergency battery packs which will be thrown away after a single use!
Everything needs to be repairable. Anything that is not repairable is designed to be trash, and we should not be supporting such industry. If we are making products so cheap that it's less expensive to replace than it is to repair or reuse, we need to make changes to reverse that trend.
Disposability isn't something you can blame on the consumer. People don't really consider whether this refrigerator is disposable or repairable - they need a refrigerator and they have a budget for it. They're choosing from the available options in that budget. Manufacturers are constantly figuring out ways to make their processes more efficient which makes their refrigerator less expensive than the one next to it in the store. Our machines are also becoming more complex, requiring more specialized tools and training to service them.
Rare is the consumer who has the luxury of paying more for a product because they recognize their small role in our shared, global environment.
What drives nearly all of this is profit. If we want any kind of manufacturer to consider the environment, we need to make it unprofitable to do otherwise.
I didn’t blame the consumer, I blamed society. That includes consumers of course, but it also blames the companies producing them. I am not blaming consumers for choosing the cheaper options, I am blaming them for buying explicitly disposable products like plastic dining utensils and the like.
Manufacturers have much less of an excuse. There are many examples of them making changes to their products simply as a way to force people to abandon their old products and buy a new one. Printers are the perfect example; HP, for instance, will make constant changes to their inkjet print heads, a wearable item that will inevitably need to be replaced, and discontinue the old ones far before people would generally need to replace them. When they are available, they are sold for prices that can exceed the price of the printer itself, and there is practically zero technical information available to do the repairs to themselves.
Refrigerators, on the other hand, aren’t really designed to be disposable in the same way. For basic models if they fail it’s simply because of low quality; something failed because it wasn’t designed with high quality materials or put together with care. Yet at the same time they have similar problems to printer parts when it comes to the availability of the compressors inside them.
I mean, I think if you mandated that everything have a 10-year parts and labor warranty, we would find a sudden increase in the long-term reliability of a lot of products. Or, barring that, baking the cost of proper disposal into the purchase price.
But that's a pipe dream. Everyone wants to buy the cheapest thing that seems the most shiny. So it's a race to the bottom with a veneer of superficiality over the top of it. And it kind of works! Samsung appliances, for example, are slick-looking. I've got a Samsung phone and TV that I like. If I didn't know any better, I would be rather inclined to buy one. (But I do know better, so I definitely won't be.)
Following this thread with interest.
Our Samsung dumb washer dryer pair still going strong after 8+ years, but I would attribute that to dumb luck and that we bought them from Costco, rather than merely the brand
My community has someone who services and repairs sewing machines: if I need a new one I'm going to ask his advice for exactly what model to buy. Same with cars, I'm going to ask my mechanic for an exact year and model. Even with the same brand there might be big differences between models and years. I myself would rather keep my Seiko mechanical watches than any fancy digital or fashion watch because I know their sturdiness and I can service them myself: most fashion watches you're lucky if you could toss the whole plastic movement and replace with new.
My hunch for old school work forever mechanical goods / appliances is to ask folks who services and repair them.
Sewing machines are such a fun example! I love them, they are such intricate, cool machines.
I picked up a fair share of second hand machines, and the seventies were such a turning point. Plastic started showing up in the most annoying places (gears, levers, bobbins, plates, just everywhere) and even well known brands started going downhill. With those changes also came features no one will use, like embroidery stitches. Now, machines are over the top, with way too much electronics and things that can break.
Although industrial machines are built to withstand anything, they are very impractical for home usage. The one I picked up a couple months ago is terrifying to operate and will only do one type of stitch. I therefore love my very simple and cheap Pfaff Calanda 17 the most. It’s such a well built machine, does only the most simple work, but does that so incredibly well. It brings me so much joy listening to it run: so effortless and smooth.
If anybody is looking for a machine, my advice would be to start looking for second hand machines from the late 60s/early 70s. Don’t be afraid to pick one up and decide later it’s not the one for you. You can always sell them again.
ETA sorry for the very long reply that doesn’t even really apply to your comment… I saw “sewing machine” and had to tell something about my hobby
I grew up being told Singer brands were good but they totally went to the dogs some time in the late 90s, I think. I hear Brother machines are still decent, and I'm a very occasional sewer so mine hasn't had anything happen to it yet. I'd love to hear about your hobby maybe in a casual thread
If Brother sewing machines are anything like Brother laser printers, I expect their sewing machines spin straw into gold thread and sew your clothes into the finest textiles imaginable while you sleep. Seriously Brother makes incredibly good printers that just do their job exceptionally well and get out of your way otherwise. It would in no way surprise me to learn that their sewing machines are similarly magical.
My father-in-law got my wife a Brother sewing machine something like 15 years ago. Unfortunately, it didn't take long to break—a gear inside the machine that was acrylic and very quickly wore out.
Now, was there some operator error involved? Possibly. My wife was pretty young (early 20s) and never really trained on using a sewing machine. But still… Acrylic gears? What were they thinking? (Cost, obviously.)
Meanwhile, my Brother laser printer is a beast. I picked it up on sale for $50 between 10 and 15 years ago and it's still trucking along. At this point, the drum or high-capacity toner cartridges are more than I paid for it! (Fortunately, I never print anything, so it's not really a problem.)
Do you mean nylon? Acrylic is a really odd choice to use for gears.
Plastic gears can actually be a positive feature, since they can have features like self-lubrication or better fail states compared to metal gears. I couldn't comment on this specific thing, but it could have been that they chose it to reduce the severity of potential injuries or as a sacrificial part that would fail instead of breaking other components. Though it could have just as easily been a cost-saving measure. Metal gears can be very expensive, comparitively.
I seem to recall this is the case for KitchenAid mixers. For a certain gear, they use plastic instead of metal. The metal would last longer, but fail catastrophically and destroy the mixer body. Whereas the plastic gear is an inexpensive overnighted part.
I once destroyed three KitchenAid mixers under warranty with the same bread recipe, which was well within the stated capacities of the motor. It turned out the whole product run had a defective controller board, with a thermal switch which would die permanently and never reset after the slightest overheating.
I got a more expensive Bosch multipurpose mixer/blender/food processor, and never looked back at KitchenAid.
You know, that makes a lot more sense.
Whatever it was, it was a piece of crap.
I don't know what the inside of the machine looked like, but if there was only one gear made of plastic, it was likely what's called a sacrificial part. It's like an electrical fuse for mechanical parts -- when too much load is put on the system, that gear will break first, preventing all the other more expensive parts from getting damaged. It's then much cheaper to replace that single part than the whole machine.
I could've written this myself! Last year I wanted to find a new (old) machine and hadn't owned a Singer before. Growing up I always thought Singer was the best brand. I did some research and found a machine from the 70s. I was super excited: to finally have a cool looking Singer and it was dirt cheap. But after taking it home and taking a closer look, disappointment set in. So much plastic. Even the bobbins are plastic, and they were all falling apart. A lot of the plastic parts have become brittle and are breaking.
I've given it a good clean and service, and bought some new bobbins to make it whole again. It runs nicely, but I don't think I'll use it often. It's going to end up on display somewhere, because I still enjoy looking at it a lot!
I'm not sure I would agree with the idea of buying a 50 year old piece of complex machinery, especially if you aren't familiar with how they work.
There are definitely still 100% electromechanical sewing machines on the market. Both Singer and Brother have them, and from what I have heard from other sewists the Brother ones are pretty good. Looking at their website they have a basic one with just 14 stitches as their basic model.
My girlfriend did just this a few months back, with a late 60's Kenmore from Goodwill, and there's an abundance of online resources she was able to find to walk her through the process of getting it back to operating condition, all without prior experience.
I bet they are nice to own now. What I see though, is that new materials just don't last that long and there's a tendency to build things in such a way that when something small breaks, the only way to fix it is to replace an entire assembly.
I'm into cars, electronics, woodworking machinery, sewing machines, etc. I'll take apart just about anything that needs fixing. What I see is a lot of materials that don't stand the test of time. One good example was my 16 year old Audi, built in 2003. Even though I took great care of that car mechanically, it started to fall apart in very unexpected areas. It was mostly plastics that were giving up. They become brittle over time and just snap. I don't own a 3D printer, and maybe if I did it wouldn't have been such a headache, but it was a never ending stream of things falling apart that could only be replaced by ordering a new part.
And the same I see with electronics. Old prints I often re-solder, replace exploded caps, etc. It's super simple to trace leads and figure out what's wrong. Not so much with SMD components. At least I can't (yet!). And neither can all the shops that offer fixing as a service. They are masters in swapping out parts, but not really fixing. And I can appreciate new prints are way better because they are smaller and consume a lot less energy, for example, but not everything needs to be complex. Like a fridge or a water cooker or vacuum, these appliances should just be dumb devices.
This is why I'll pick up a 50 year old machine over getting something new. It will easily continue to work for another 50 years, it'll be easy to fix when something does break because it's serviceable and it'll be built like a tank. Maybe the best part: you can pick one up for €40-€100 (not sure what prices are like in the US). And even though I think most people can figure out how to service them themselves, even if they don't feel they are mechanically inclined, they'll probably have an enthusiast (like me) in the area that will happily take a look and fix what needs fixing.
Sorry for the incoherent rambling. This topic is just so exciting to me. I'm just really passionate about fixing things and am always sad if something has to be thrown out because it can't be serviced.
I totally get it. I like to fix things too, and I get upset at having to throw things away when it seems so arbitrary that I can’t get the stuff I would need to do a repair.
I haven’t really got a chance to do it myself yet, but I am told that it is actually easier to work with SMT parts than through-hole stuff if you have a good hotplate. The surface tension of the solder is supposed to help align everything. I was thinking about making a topic about it to ask if any electronics gurus had any recommendations.
I miss my Samsung refrigerator/freezer. It lasted 8 years without any issues (left it behind at the apartment) the refrigeration was good and the interior design was excellent. Now I have an LG that seems designed to make the worst possible use of interior space, beeps annoyingly for weird reasons (can't turn it off) and has the stupidest issue debugging system that requires using an app with a remote subscription even though the process is entirely local.
(Note that my Samsung fridge didn't have any screens or connect to anything.)
I have this issue too.
For a laundry washer, I did a bunch of research and settled on a Speed Queen TC5000 series, about 2 years ago, no issues so far. It was $1500 at the time which I didn't consider cheap, and it's just a basic top-loading machine that looks like it could have been made in the 70s or 80s. But everyone says they last forever. The company claims "they are built to last 25 years" (but only warrantied for 5 I think).
I noticed a decent amount of reviews I saw on Speed Queens were from landlords. It may be a good strategy to look at products marketed to or preferred by them.
As for my dryer, this isn't a solution most people would or should feel comfortable with, but a while ago I decided to try and retrofit my appliances as they break. It has been interesting and rewarding. If you're technically minded and want a detailed description of how that went, that's the rest of this post. ;)
Please do not do anything unsafe based on my ramblings. there is certainly a safety risk here and it may be irresponsible as I'm not a consumer appliance expert, but I do work professionally with electronics in industrial equipment.
I started 5-6 years ago on my dryer. It was a cheapish Kenmore that we had bought used on Craigslist in 2009. We bought a washer-dryer set for I think around $200 for both. The washer had one of those knobs with all these settings, like "Perm Press", "Delicate", etc. on one side, the other side was a timer where you just set the minutes. From day one only the timer seemed to work right, the other settings would just run the dryer forever and not stop. So we didn't use them. It lasted almost 10 years like that and then one day it started stopping in the middle of a load, it would only run a few minutes and then just randomly stop and need to be restarted.
I had more money and time at that point and considered buying a new one, but decided to make a project out of it, figure out how this dryer worked, and decide if it was worth fixing. I found wiring diagrams online and after deciphering them a bit and just tracing out the wires to be sure, it actually seemed to be simple inside. The knob was attached directly to this clunky circuit board thing that controlled everything. The important safety stuff is all in these little modules or sensors so I could easily replace the timer knob/control while still leaving the elements in place that I didn't feel confident messing with.
Here is an electrical print of it when I was done:
https://envs.sh/FJ9.pdf
I replaced the controller with an adjustable timer relay(T1 on the print) and a 3 position switch labeled HEAT: OFF/LOW/HIGH ("NoHeat" and LoHeat" on the print the high position has no contactor). I also added a 10-amp circuit breaker just cause.
The original appliance had the same wiring, except where the wires go to T1 or the selector switch, they would have gone to the knob controller module. I made a new drawing with all the modules in dotted lines so it was easier for me to understand and diagnose any issues.
It's a gas dryer which made me apprehensive about safety, but the module in the bottom right where I just pasted in the old print is a self-contained thing of pressed sheet metal and rivets that screams "NOT SERVICEABLE" to me. It controls and ignites the gas valves . It has the gas line going directly to it and only has 2 wires going into it. If those wires get 110VAC it does its thing and makes heat with gas. In general, I believe It pulls a decent amount of amps to heat an ignitor and then only when the ignitor is pulling the right amount of amps that indicate the temp is right it opens the gas valves. but there seems to be some redundancy and other temp sensors going on as well.
So I happily don't have to mess with any of that. I just control when I want heat and send 110 to the heat module when I do.
If you look closely the motor has an internal switch that will only allow the heater to run if the motor already is, that switch also doubles as a latch to keep the dryer running after you start it with the push button.
These appliances seem engineered so cleverly to be as cheap to produce as possible while also meeting safety standards. It's really impressive and kind of weird sometimes.
For example, check out the "Thermostat Heater". What's going on there is the thermostat is a single setting thermal switch, It just opens at one specific temp, like 150F or something. so when the dryer reaches that temp it turns the heating module off, then turns it back on when it goes below 150F (or probably 145F or something, there is probably a dead zone to prevent constant fast cycling)
When you want "Low heat" their solution is to feed 110VAC to a small heater attached to the thermal switch. So the ambient temp around the switch gets a little "boost" and, effectively, the switch opens at a lower temperature.
Interestingly I had trouble seeing how any of the "Perm Press", etc. features would have ever worked. The circuit board was clunky, with no chips, just a few resistors and things, I didn't try to trace it out. The timer part was mechanical and physically moved the knob slowly unit it opened a contact. The other settings had no sensors or anything to tell it when the clothes would have been "done". I looked it up and some dryers have humidity sensors or other stuff. This one didn't have anything except what's on those prints. My best guess is that it somehow senses amp draw so it can see how often the heat is cycling and the timing of that somehow tells it when to stop. That seems pretty optimistic by the designers though, that some unconsidered factors wouldn't mess up that timing.
It's also possible the nicer models have those sensors and the cheaper ones don't but still have the non-working features on their knobs. But that seems dangerous to let it just run forever...
Anyway, Those electrical parts were probably $50-$100 altogether.
I also went on one of those appliance repair parts websites and bought any parts that looked wearable, there was this strip that was like a seal and bearing in one that the drum rides on, I replaced that, a belt, and a few other things. Probably another $50 or so. I also sanded any rust spots on the drum and painted them with high-heat paint.
The drier has been working fine for at least 5 years since I did this. I feel that if it ever breaks electronically it will be easy for me to diagnose and replace whichever module is broken.
A few years after this my gas oven broke. It had a little LED screen to set the temperature. I found that the LED screen is just an adjustable thermostat connected to a probe that goes into the oven, when it reaches the temp setting it just sends 110VAC to a gas valve/igniter module much like the dryer. the LCD screen thing costs about $200 to replace. But I found you can buy generic oven thermostats that just have a knob and come with their own probe that fits in the same housing as the old one. I bought one for about $50. It's mechanical so maybe it will last longer. I just mounted a piece of sheet metal in place of the screen and mounted the thermostat knob on that. I also added an indicator light to show when the oven burner is on. because I've always wanted to be able to easily see when the oven is actually heating.
When my washer broke two years ago I thought I would do the same kind of repair. But its issue was the drum was loose and shaking all around. I took it apart and saw how it was engineered structurally to just barely be able to hold itself together. I considered redesigning it and making a stronger frame. But realized I would be basically designing and building a washer from scratch at that point. The $1500 Speed Queen seemed like a better bet. The hope is if it ever does break I will take it apart and find something worth fixing.
My experience with NEW stuff has been hit and miss. Our LG Washing Machine sucks and is annoying as hell; it's always leaked and requires constant maintenance it seems like, but we've had it for close to 10 years and it still works, so we're not going to replace it soon.
Our Whirlpool fridge has been excellent in the 5 years we've owned it. We did pay a little more for it and special order it, but that's because I was adamant that we get one without and ice maker and without the water on the front, it's just plain jane, stainless steel. The one issue is that the drip line from the freezer clogged with mold, but I got access to it and cleaned it, problem solved.
My Microwave was just bought at Lowes and no regard was paid to reviews or anything and it's been great and functional for 5 or so years now.
Otherwise? Stove, Double Oven, Dishwasher, Dryer and secondary/garage fridge was all free/second hand. I almost wonder if that's the "hack" here: Find something that someone has already been using for awhile and given that they're selling it or giving it away, it's bound to be in decent shape and functional. I know that's probably not what you want to hear and it limits your options as far as what you can select, but again, if it's on the market, it probably still works with minimal issues.
I did become aware recently that brands like Whirlpool and GE have been using LG parts and that's a common failure point; I've heard similar complaints about LG appliances, which track with my own experience with my LG Washing Machine. I'd probably start looking for appliances and verifying if they contain LG parts or not and then avoiding them if so.
Edit: I should say, I believe there's a class action lawsuit about that last paragraph there. I'll see if I can find it and come back with the source.
Edit Edit: Here's a relatively recent article detailing this lawsuit
I didn't find any definitive information about other brands containing LG parts, but I'm in the middle of cooking dinner and could give it only a minute or so at most, so I might recommend more research.
Another vote for going secondhand. I’ve picked up used washer/dryer/dishwasher/fridge and all of it is 15+ years old.
Everything still works and there’s loads of manuals online for fixes. The dishwasher even has a safety recall that they sent out a technician to fix.
Specific brands:
Knocking on wood, but I have an LG washer and dryer I bought back in 2021 which I think I selected for delivery speed (lots of models were taking months to ship due to shortages), and they’ve both been fine for the past couple of years. Hope that continues.
As for used appliances, I love the potential savings but don’t feel like gambling on bringing in pests, which feels like it’s unavoidable for both appliances and furniture.
I've got an LG washer and gas dryer I got in 2018 - no issues at all. Love them both. We have an LG refrigerator (2018) and dishwasher (2023) too. Have loved them all and will be sorry to leave 3/4 behind when we move this summer to a non-gas home (taking the fridge - it's a top freezer big single door fridge; been great).
FWIW, the majority of my furniture is used as well, never had a problem in the 15 or so years we've been doing it.
For laundry (washer/dryer) there is but Speed Queen. Look into it.
Beyond that, it's a crapshoot. Good luck.
Don't buy appliances from consumer electronics stores.
If you are a Costco member, they have a fantastic warranty. If you are buying a full kitchen and laundry rooms worth of appliances, an executive membership may pay for itself with the cash back from their purchase.
Anecdotally, we have had Samsung & LG refrigerators that weren't worth there price of admission. Before that we had a KitchedAid for 15+ years. At the moment we are 5 years into a Bosch kitchen and everything still works as it always has, knock wood.
We are 25 years into a (used!) Maytag gas dryer and (new) Miele washing machine. Very early on we needed the washing machine serviced but it turned out we were using too much detergent and the fix was to run a couple cycles on the hottest setting then use less detergent in each load.
Interested in what other people say here. I had a Whirlpool refrigerator that came with my place. Probably was originally installed in the early 2000s. Never had an issue with it but I wanted some newer features like the French door models and freezer on bottom. In 2021 I bought a brand new LG to replace it. The Whirlpool still worked find mind you. For about 2 years everything was fine but I eventually switched my dog over from kibble to fresh food because he's the best boy and I love him. The fresh food required that I store it in the freezer until the day before so I ended up having to store about 10 to 15 days of food packs in the freezer. The packs aren't big at all. Imagine storing like 10 bags of frozen corn in the freezer. Filled it up about halfway or so. Plenty of room for more if needed. Well... Apparently that's asking entirely too much. With about 10 to 15 days worth of food in the freezer it causes ice to build up around the radiator in the freezer and about 14 days in the ice builds up so much that it pushes against the circulating fan and the fridge noise kicks up to the equivalent of a DC-10. So now every month or so I have to disassemble the freezer and take a heat gun to it to thaw out. It fucking sucks.
I had some people come take a look at it and I've spent around 400 dollars but basically at this point I have no reasonable recourse but to just buy another refrigerator. It feels so incredibly wasteful both from a cost perspective and a waste perspective.
One thing to keep in mind is that different types of appliance may be wildly different within the same manufacturer and brand.
I used to have a Candy (italian brand) dishwasher. I liked the design of the drawers but in just a couple years it started having all sorts of annoying issues ranging from stopping half way through the programme, not washing the dishes properly, flooding the kitchen, etc.
I've had the same Candy microwave oven for a decade and it just keeps going. Never an issue.
My current dishwasher might be Electrolux (Frigidaire parent company), seems OK but I've only had it for a year so I can't tell. The only brand not yet mentioned in this thread that I can recommend in the long term is Bosch for laundry.
Appliances are the bane of my existence. I own several sets because we have some rental suites and this last year I had to replace 5 of them.
Honestly, the most durable washing machines I have ever bought are old school top loading Kenmore/Inglis/Whirlpool washers (same washer different names). If I buy one used for $400 it has a much better chance of lasting 15 years than the brand new fancy ones I can get at Costco for $1500.
And dryers drive me nuts. I just need one that has 3 or 4 settings. Its a drum. With a heating element. The last one I was forced to get is a front loading machine with 28 buttons and options on it. And it has wifi connection. Drives me nuts. I dont need 28 options and an app for a dryer, I just need it to dry clothes like dryers have been doing for 50 years.
Dishwashers are even worse. The cheapest ones aren't even worth the $600 they now cost. I just took out a Whirlpool one and I installed only 5 years ago. And you cant really buy them used as they are inevitably broken in some way the owner couldn't figure out so that's pointless.
I just bought an entire set of stainless steel Samsung - stove, fridge, microwave, dishwasher - for $2000 for a basement suite. After reading reviews Im not sure that was such a good idea, they have a pretty sketchy reputation. Guess Ill find out.
Lastly, I have actually daydreamed about starting a new appliance company called SturdySimple. They would be exactly that. Very simple machines, like washing machines and dryers with only 3 options, an old school electromechanical timer/control and parts that are so simple to replace anyone can do it with a few tools in 15 minutes. I'm sure it would sell to the landlords I know, not sure about a new generation of consumers who seem to like apps for control.
I just recalled when I first moved into our own house, we bought a used harvest gold Kenmore dryer off a friend for 70 bucks. That thing lasted 22 years. When it FINALLY died, I took a pic and sent it back to my friend with, "What the hell, bud, I paid ya $70 and now it's dead!? Ripoff!" lol
If these aren't short term rentals then you should consider leaving them unfurnished so that you're not responsible for them. With today's housing market you'll still get many potential renters.
$2000 sounds like a really small amount of money for three major appliances and a microwave. But maybe the math is a bit different if you're a landlord making large purchases on the regular. Lord knows I've stayed in many accommodations where they just use the cheapest stuff they could buy.
The market is indeed pretty hot, but where I live in western Canada no one rents out houses that aren't equipped with appliances. It would be a major drawback as most renters dont own their own either.
FWIW, even as someone in the US, back when I was still renting I would’ve thought twice about a rental with no appliances.
Wouldn’t have outright avoided such units, but they’d need to have some pretty significant pro’s to offset the need to buy (and when it comes time to move, lug around) my own appliances. When renting likelihood of needing to move for some reason or another is much higher which makes owning appliances unappealing, unless the tenant can work out a deal with the landlord to get a rent discount for leaving the appliances on the property or something.
You should do it. :) Sell simple, but reliable appliances to everyone. You'd make a killing, even if they cost a bit more. I know a lot of people who are sick and tired of appliances not doing their job or dying young. I don't know anyone that cares much for all the fancy features either. They are not new devices and there's no reason they need to be disposable rather than repairable. If enough people wanted them, you could branch into fancy features that use a reliable machine as the base. Just make those fancy bits replaceable, maybe even programmable by the user.
Just try not to sell out to the big brands when they offer you tons of cash. I'm sure they'll be lining up to throw money at you in order to get hold of your company to liquidate or turn it into another brand name that uses its old rep to sell terrible products like Craftsman (or Crapsman as I call them now).
I often look at NYT's Wirecutter instead of consumer reports, then I look at customer reviews when available. I also have repaired a few of our appliances that were good, just had a part start to go. For example, our dryer wasn't getting as hot as it once was so I found a site that sold replacement parts with comprehensive guides and just replaced the $60 part.
I don't have a silver bullet unfortunately. I recommend getting as simple of units as possible, realizing that can be hard these days. Still, where possible, simpler units have fewer things to fail.
I've had better luck with a local appliance parts store. I had the clutch and transmission go out on my (ancient) washer, and my local parts store had both for much less than I could find online. I was also guaranteed to be getting the correct parts, since I went in with a photo of the model number label. They also had the one special (inexpensive) tool I needed to do the replacement easily, and suggested I buy that as well (that likely saved me a lot of headaches).
Electrolux ovens are awesome in Europe. Americans know this brand as Frigidaire though, I'm not sure they're the same models.
A very good question, which is why I recently asked on here for recommendations for fridges. We have yet to replace our fridge, but the thread has some generally good tips that I think can apply to all appliances. For instance, don't buy brand new models. Look at models that are at least 3 years old, so that there's a history of reviews that can tell you if there's any patterns to them breaking down.
Finding truthful or accurate information online is becoming impossible thanks to the likes of Google. Aside: here’s an article on how that happened https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/
So now I either get a personal recommendation from someone local, or if I’m in a hurry like I was today, I run into a shop and say “I need a dehumidifier” and hope I get lucky.
Can I just borrow this thread to rant for a minutes?
Our central heat pump died last week, in the middle of frigid Canadian winter. The technician talked us through taking the panel off and taking some pictures, and some of the wires connecting to one of the boards are fried. They're very inside wires: no mice, no water, nothing, just probably terrible soldering? Do you guys want to see pictures?
This unit was installed late October 2022. It hasn't been even two full winters yet and it's burned itself to death.
Parts are warrantied for 10 years, but the service is going to be $200 an hour and sky's the limit. Not to mentioned this whole week we've been on super expensive auxillary heat.
Does anyone on Tildes know about home insurance? Can I claim insurance on the unexpected loss of service to this thing and the service cost that it's going to incur? Or will I just be setting myself up to pay out in higher premiums if I make a claim?
edit: brand is GE.
My mom ran an insurance office for like 20 years. Generally speaking the answer to both of these is "it depends". Talk with your agent, they'll know the specifics of your plan. Also, as an aside, being able to plainly ask questions like this and get answers is the difference between a good insurance shop and a shitty one - in my opinion it's worth paying a little bit more in premiums to get this kind of service.
I have no experience with HVAC stuff, but I would be very surprised if the warranty didn’t cover labor for the repair. It’s one thing to charge to have the technician come out, but if you were to rip out the unit and take it back, you wouldn’t expect to pay for their labor then, would you?
Yes, I'm also shocked that they're going to charge me $200/hr.
I can't help with the insurance questions, sorry, but I'm very interested in seeing pictures.
https://envs.sh/FrY.jpg
https://envs.sh/FrC.jpg
location of these wires, relative to the unit.
https://envs.sh/Fr1.png
would love input from folks who know wires and such. Maybe i'm being unfair and things burn to death within 2 years all the time.
That looks like a proper failure. I can’t tell you what went wrong, so I won’t speculate. If this is caused by a faulty part or installation, it does seem very unfair to have to pay for the part or labor of getting it fixed. The cost will likely not be in the replacement part but in the labor, so even more annoying.
Good luck getting it resolved quickly.
Disclaimer: not an electrical/mechanical/HVAC engineer.
My hunch (and maybe an EE can correct me) is that there’s excessive current in one of the wires (or the gray box to the side), causing heat that degrades the cabling over time. Either that, or if there was previously a spacer at that location, vibrations caused the cable to degrade, leading to electrical arcing.
There is a magazine/organization here in Czech Republic caled dTest where they publish once a month a test of specific appliance, be it toaster, robot vacuum, ... They do like 10-20 dofferent brands/models and structured table on how they did in different parts of test/their function. They also include an article where they point out a few models that did best and worst in each test and they also say how the test was done, what was the method.
This is independent and paid service, you can subscribe for the magazine in paper form, electronic form or buy just one specific test (price being probably around 50-150CZK which is 2-6€, I bought just a few of them and if I remember correctly, I paid somewhere in 80-100CZK). You know beforehand what models they tested and when and you are able to have a look if they are still in the market before you buy.
I bought a toaster based on this which works fine. I didn't want another 10-15€ toaster that does firat toasts barely toasted and after fifth they are black and not-edible... This one (Graef) do fine toasts - you get predoctable outcome toasts out of it no matter if you do just one pair or a dozen...
I also bought robot vacuum based on those tests. Testing outcome was that all models (ranging 100-1000€) are mediocre at best... So I picked rather expensive one (500€) and it's quite good. It got worse over the year though, not doing all the rooms or gettting lost), I suppose firmware updates fucked it up...
Maybe have a look if something like this is available where you live.
Consumer Reports does some product testing, too. But as I alluded to in one of my other comments, all these professional reviewers can do is comment on the initial perceived quality. Long-term reliability is just not a thing they can properly assess.
Consumer Reports does collect long-term reliability data on cars, but it's mostly from post-market surveys of CR members. This has the usual recall bias of uncorroborated surveys - people tend to overrate cars they love, and underrate cars they dislike. It does tend to surface complete lemons, though.
General tech contractor here:
Buy dumb, buy simple, and consider buying old.
Buy dumb: avoid smart features. Hell, avoid screens and buttons.
Buy simple: literally the fewer features the better.
Consider buying old: many older items were manufactured before planned obselecence reached those production lines. This comes with the caveat of doing research. For washer/dryers, if you can find any that are 'Speed Queen' brand, get them.
Refrigerators: avoid ice makers, or at least if you must have an ice maker, select one that has the ice maker IN THE DAMN FREEZER SECTION. If it's in the door it is more likely to fail, if it is in the non-frozen section it will be competing thermally and cause problems. While there are exceptions, get freezer-on-top, not freezer-on-bottom. Much simpler, less to go wrong.
As a side question for people who consume ice regularly: from this thread, it sounds like fridge built in ice makers are a failure waiting to happen. Is having automatic unlimited supply of ice that important to most households?
Maybe it's like hot water percolator a in an East Asian home: people are going to be wanting hot water all day every day, and ice cube trays won't keep up with demand?
For me personally, I would not choose to have an ice maker, both to reduce complexity and also because it means the fridge will then need a water line input which is another source of failure (water leak damage is expensive and a horrible frustration to have fixed what with tearing floors apart).
I just use plastic ice cube trays in the freezer. Nothing to fail there.
Is consumerreports.com still a trustworthy organization? In the past I would have trusted them with my life. Have not checked in on them in a while.
As I recall, they are a non-profit organization that has a pretty straightforward mission. I don't see any reason they would be any less trustworthy now than they used to be. At the end of the day, it's mostly just aggregating the data from the consumer surveys they send to all of their subscribers/members.
cool, I'm just so used to everything in this world being destroyed and corrupted by corporations that I kind of expect it by now.
(RIP my sweet NPR)
Wait, what happened to NPR? I don't listen to them very frequently anymore, but I wasn't aware of any issues related to their management.
I kind of stopped listening to NPR when they began doing regular promos for Koch Industries. The coverage has always suffered somewhat from false balance, but it's gotten much worse these days with significant Beltway insider opinionating and diluted coverage of climate change. Pacifica Public Radio programming is definitely less filtered.
Can't prove it, but I bet anything that NPR puts on their Republican friendly puff pieces in exchange for this money.
I think Hanlon's Razor applies here. They are trying to be "fair," I think. Which I don't think your average Republican politician deserves, but I get why they might want to.
The Bosch dishwasher I own, which is a recent purchase, can be connected to wifi and controlled by an app but it’s purely optional. I’ve never connected it and it works fine. Same for my LG washer + dryer and GE fridge (the last of which I find odd, because it’s not even a “smart” fridge… what functionality is an app going to add exactly?).
So in case it makes appliance shopping easier in the future, mention of an app or app-enhanced features doesn’t necessarily indicate requirement to use the app or connect to WiFi.
So many of the drawers in my fridge have broken. It's absurd. I've taken to buying replacements on eBay. It's not super cheap, but it's not too bad. Much better than throwing away an entire $1,500 refrigerator.
At this point, I can't find much of an explanation besides planned obsolescence. How do you make drawers/shelves this bad?
Hey yo Hulk, maybe go a bit easier on those drawers next time.
Joking aside, it must be super frustrating to replace multiple. I've noticed that getting the genuine replacements can also be super expensive. Once a little plastic lever on my dishwasher broke and Bosch charged $40 for a replacement. It must have been a part that broke often, because eBay was full of knock-offs for under $10.
Yeah, I've taken to buying eBay knockoffs when I do replace them.
In fact, I finally tracked down the part I need for my dryer. It's around $90. And if you're thinking, "isn't that a significant fraction of the price of a completely new dryer?" Why, yes; yes, it is. But I figure better that than throwing the entire dryer into a landfill.
(And I'm not oblivious to the cost of stocking parts for every single appliance ever made. Or even just the ones from the last few decades. Though this burden would be much lighter if we weren't constantly reinventing the wheel on crap. If manufacturers were responsible for maintaining a steady supply of those parts for a decent length of time, I think we would find appliances were substantially re-engineered far less often.)
If you can, don't wait until your fridge dies before you look for one. Otherwise, you get fewer options.
Also, pay attention to where you get your appliances. I find that a lot of big box stores including Costco, has delivery issues in my area. Many places uses third party contractors for delivery, and they are pretty awful around here. When getting a new fridge, I ended up going to a local chain that hires their own technicians, and repairmen. The guy who installed and delivered were great and professional. We ended up getting extended warranty through them since we had good experience years ago in fixing our dishwasher.
In me and my husband’s experience these days is hey all suck and you can’t get away from a bad brand cause most brands are under a conglomerate (seems like about 3).
Either buy something cheap cause it won’t set you back too much when it dies, or buy the features and what you want cause it won’t matter, none are reliable.