Except its rare to see actual documented proof that this is a real practice in reputable industry. Sure it must happen (or seem to happen as a unintended effect), but from a rational perspective if Samsung does this then I'll switch to LG, thus costing Samsung business and reputation. I have no brand loyalty so it doesn't make sense to make unreliable products. I, like any consumer, get pissed off and I switch to other brands at the drop of a hat. I'll also address the article point by point:
> Motors last about 1/3 to 1/4 as long as they used to.
That's questionable, but lowered motor life is probably in the cards due to efficiency gains. Modern motors are far more efficient than old ones and the more efficient designs are simply more delicate for a variety of reasons not the least of it is lighter materials and running closer to their optimal maximum which means more wear and running hotter in general. Also the reduction of hazardous materials and other regulations means we can't just use environmentally dangerous materials like lead willy-nilly anymore. I recently read that due to laziness and consumer ignorance, your average ceiling fan was something like 30% efficient up until fairly recently. So you were burning a good 75-100 watts on what should have been 15-30watt usage. These manufacturers just used these old designs for decades, thus increasing our electric bills and adding to pollution. Consumers pick up the fan and feel its "heavy" due to this old motor and think its "quality." Its really just a waste of electricity.
>Not enough competition.
I just bought all new appliances for my house a few years back. If anything, I was bowled over by all the players in this space and had to do a lot of legwork in regards to reviews. I really don't think lack of competition is an issue.
>Refrigerator door seals are glued on now instead of screwed on
This is a generalization. For my current and previous fridge they were screwed on. Even then, strong glues could hold these for their expected two decade lifetime if done correctly. Again, the author can't, or won't, give us specifics here. Certainly cheap and poorly engineered brands exist. Name and shame. Don't generalize.
>They can often be found for $300 at big box retailers, but they usually break within 2-3 years.
10+ years on my last dishwasher before I moved and 4 in on my current one. No issues and my current one is a fairly low-end Samsung. I do ok financially, but I'm cheap. My samsung is a cheap knock-off of the 'real' Bosch at the store. It even mimmicks its styling. So yeah, I'm not buying rich guy stuff here. Also, we're parents so we run that thing almost everyday.
>There is too much confusion over who is making quality appliances.
10-20 minutes reading reviews isn't asking a lot. I spend more time reading reviews of office chairs or video games, let alone $500+ appliances I depend on for my daily living.
>Newer appliances start rusting within even a year or two whereas I’ve seen washers and dryers and other appliances from 40 years ago that are still rust free.
I can't remember the last time I saw rust on a modern appliance. Maybe this is limited to one vendor using cheap paint. I wish the author tried to be specific. Rust on the stuff I grew up with was everywhere. I remember trying hard not to cut my hand while doing the laundry. I remember my dad buying rustoliem all the time because everything rusted back then. We didn't have clear-coats as an industry norm and stainless steel, a mid-range finishing today, was rich guy and restaurant only stuff back then. We had nice thick but brittle paint, but if you chip that, and don't catch it on time, then you got rust.
> If an old refrigerator or freezer would last 40-50 years before being replaced
These were serious edge cases and as an old-timer I remember having a repair tech come out periodically and my parents paying fairly significant bills to fix this stuff. Sure they "lasted" only because we were constantly replacing their innards.
>Elon Musk would have already started working on building a better appliance that runs off a battery bank and solar.
If you think today's stuff is overly engineered and delicate, wait until you start dealing with the pita that li-ion batteries are and how short their effective lifetimes are with daily use. Let alone running solar and how much that'll cost to install within code on your roof and how much that'll increase the cost the next time you re-do your roof. I have cheap-ish electricity and natural gas available in my basement. I'm good, thanks.
Seriously, this guy isnt a researcher or engineer, he's some guy who sells junk on craiglist. This post is one step above 'forwards from grandma' territory. This is classic fallacy of idealizing the past here. I imagine as a craigslist junk seller he doesn't see the old appliances our parents all threw away, he's just seeing a biased sample of all the stuff that were well maintained or had low usage, like buying a 30 year old car with 20,000 miles and bemoaning how 'cheap and crappy' modern cars are.
That said, the modern world isn't all roses. Because there are so many more manufacturers and so many budget brands, its easy to cheap out and get a lemon. Or there are so many lines, its sometimes unfair when you get a lemon model from a decent manufacturer. When I was a kid these things cost, fixed for inflation, a whole hell of a lot of money. And even in the late 70s and early 80s, in a normal non-ghetto but not rich Chicago neighborhood, I still watched old ladies scrub their laundry on washboards and hang them on laundry lines because of cost prohibitive issues. You either could afford for the reliable $1,000 GE washer or you couldn't. Lets not romanticize a time where everything was super expensive and which left a lot of people out in the cold.
Some people are going to buy the budget Amana that is crappier than the GE they grew up with, but it regularly goes on sale/clearance for $250 or so at Walmart. Sure beats the $700+ GE if you're poor and very much beats paying the laundromat. The take away here isn't modern things are terrible, its don't buy budget brands if you want quality.
> I just bought all new appliances for my house a few years back. If anything, I was bowled over by all the players in this space and had to do a lot of legwork in regards to reviews. I really don't think lack of competition is an issue.
The post specifically addresses this: most of the brands you see have actually been consolidated into a small number of manufacturers. Brands under the same parent corporation may only appear to compete, while really being a means to achieve market segmentation and illusion of choice.
It still doesn't matter. GE is run by its own management and engineers. It doesn't matter that its all owned by one Chinese conglomerate or NBC or whoever. They're not re-badging Shenzhen #1 Super Fast Machine with the GE tag. Corporate ownership is, generally, an abstract that shouldn't matter in most cases. Unless they're purposely cutting lines or just rebadging stuff, then reading reviews is still the solution here.
I also noticed he didn't mention any giant German brands like Bosch or Miele. Nor any Japanese brands. Or less popular brands like Amana or Admiral or Hotpoint. Again, this space is full of competition. Compare that to tech where we have natural monopolies all the time or a duopoly, at best, with lots of little third-level competitors that barely get sales.
Car guys fall for this fallacy too. Latte-sipping Fiat engineers with only small car diesel experience who are appalled by off-roading aren't designing the new Wrangler. The Wrangler is its own design and designed by the same engineering team that worked on it before the buyout. The 2018 Wrangler won't be a Fiat mini with slightly larger wheels. It'll still be Wrangler and reading reviews on it will be all that matters. Of course, this can change, but the idea that a single large owner depresses the market and hurts quality is questionable. They do, of course, have a big advantage with pricing and other market advantages.
>Unless they're purposely cutting lines or just rebadging stuff
This is exactly what they're doing. Your example, GE, actually sold off it's appliance division to Haier. They had also been relabeling LG appliances for years prior to the sale of the entire division. The article for this thread also made note of the fact that "Kenmore" is nothing but an umbrella label under which includes products from almost every manufacturer. The only difference between my Kenmore refrigerator and the LG equivalent is the label on the door and the far lower number of reviews on the Kenmore due to its limited distribution. Unfortunately, the LG was widely known to be junk but since the Kenmore was exclusive to Sears, there was no information available to make this connection until I had it disassembled in my home and I began to look up part numbers to fix it.
Kenmore is not representative of the appliance industry. Kenmore has been nothing more than a rebadger for probably its entire existence, and certainly more than my lifetime. It's not a secret, and never has been. The advantage to buying Kenmore was that you could buy it at your local Sears, and you could always get parts for it at your local Sears, as that was part of the deal Sears made with the manufacturer. These days, since Sears seems to be swirling the drain, there's no advantage to buying a Kenmore versus getting the same non-rebadged model from the OEM.
> more efficient [electric motor] designs are simply more delicate
Nope. This argument works for portable power tools (lighter designs are more delicate), but not for stationary motors. The efficiency gains for stationary motors have primarily come from better drive circuitry.
> running closer to their optimal maximum which means ... running hotter in general
This is utterly wrong. The maximum power is defined by the amount of copper (and thermal resistance to ambient), which is constrained by cost/weight. Warmer windings actually mean higher ohmic losses, so the manufacturer's savings actually mean higher electricity consumption.
> I recently read that ... your average ceiling fan was something like 30% efficient up until fairly recently
Citation needed, especially with your implication that this was due to the motor itself (as opposed to say shape of blades and electrical power factor)
I'm probably wrong on the technical reasons specifically (my motor experience is limited to robotics and rc cars), but its only recently you could buy 29-35 watt ceiling fans due to the use of DC motors:
You can google up articles from the early 2000s were it was conventional wisdom that the fan ran 100 watts.
I did read a bit about motor design but I can't find it now, but clearly the differences in wattage are real. I believe the newer ones are brushless DC vs the single phase induction of old. I imagine newer fan design helps too.
This Kensgrove is a whopping 72" but with a DC brushless motor. 31 watts on the highest setting.
Sure, fans have become more energy optimized. That doesn't support the implication that the lightness was required to get the modern lower energy usage, nor that a better built (heavier) motor wouldn't be more efficient and last longer. That lack of longevity is what the "motor weighers" are lamenting - a major reason this whole topic is important is that we're currently unable to buy new more efficient appliances that will also last long.
> newer ones are brushless DC vs the single phase induction of old. I imagine newer fan design helps too.
Yes, this is the advance in drive circuitry that I referred to - same with the "DC motor" fans. It's still a fact that at the current consumer design point, adding more copper to the windings will increase weight, efficiency, and longevity.
> Motors last about 1/3 to 1/4 as long as they used to.
That's questionable, but lowered motor life is probably in the cards due to efficiency gains. Modern motors are far more efficient than old ones and the more efficient designs are simply more delicate for a variety of reasons not the least of it is lighter materials and running closer to their optimal maximum which means more wear and running hotter in general. Also the reduction of hazardous materials and other regulations means we can't just use environmentally dangerous materials like lead willy-nilly anymore. I recently read that due to laziness and consumer ignorance, your average ceiling fan was something like 30% efficient up until fairly recently. So you were burning a good 75-100 watts on what should have been 15-30watt usage. These manufacturers just used these old designs for decades, thus increasing our electric bills and adding to pollution. Consumers pick up the fan and feel its "heavy" due to this old motor and think its "quality." Its really just a waste of electricity.
>Not enough competition.
I just bought all new appliances for my house a few years back. If anything, I was bowled over by all the players in this space and had to do a lot of legwork in regards to reviews. I really don't think lack of competition is an issue.
>Refrigerator door seals are glued on now instead of screwed on
This is a generalization. For my current and previous fridge they were screwed on. Even then, strong glues could hold these for their expected two decade lifetime if done correctly. Again, the author can't, or won't, give us specifics here. Certainly cheap and poorly engineered brands exist. Name and shame. Don't generalize.
>They can often be found for $300 at big box retailers, but they usually break within 2-3 years.
10+ years on my last dishwasher before I moved and 4 in on my current one. No issues and my current one is a fairly low-end Samsung. I do ok financially, but I'm cheap. My samsung is a cheap knock-off of the 'real' Bosch at the store. It even mimmicks its styling. So yeah, I'm not buying rich guy stuff here. Also, we're parents so we run that thing almost everyday.
>There is too much confusion over who is making quality appliances.
10-20 minutes reading reviews isn't asking a lot. I spend more time reading reviews of office chairs or video games, let alone $500+ appliances I depend on for my daily living.
>Newer appliances start rusting within even a year or two whereas I’ve seen washers and dryers and other appliances from 40 years ago that are still rust free.
I can't remember the last time I saw rust on a modern appliance. Maybe this is limited to one vendor using cheap paint. I wish the author tried to be specific. Rust on the stuff I grew up with was everywhere. I remember trying hard not to cut my hand while doing the laundry. I remember my dad buying rustoliem all the time because everything rusted back then. We didn't have clear-coats as an industry norm and stainless steel, a mid-range finishing today, was rich guy and restaurant only stuff back then. We had nice thick but brittle paint, but if you chip that, and don't catch it on time, then you got rust.
> If an old refrigerator or freezer would last 40-50 years before being replaced
These were serious edge cases and as an old-timer I remember having a repair tech come out periodically and my parents paying fairly significant bills to fix this stuff. Sure they "lasted" only because we were constantly replacing their innards.
>Elon Musk would have already started working on building a better appliance that runs off a battery bank and solar.
If you think today's stuff is overly engineered and delicate, wait until you start dealing with the pita that li-ion batteries are and how short their effective lifetimes are with daily use. Let alone running solar and how much that'll cost to install within code on your roof and how much that'll increase the cost the next time you re-do your roof. I have cheap-ish electricity and natural gas available in my basement. I'm good, thanks.
Seriously, this guy isnt a researcher or engineer, he's some guy who sells junk on craiglist. This post is one step above 'forwards from grandma' territory. This is classic fallacy of idealizing the past here. I imagine as a craigslist junk seller he doesn't see the old appliances our parents all threw away, he's just seeing a biased sample of all the stuff that were well maintained or had low usage, like buying a 30 year old car with 20,000 miles and bemoaning how 'cheap and crappy' modern cars are.
That said, the modern world isn't all roses. Because there are so many more manufacturers and so many budget brands, its easy to cheap out and get a lemon. Or there are so many lines, its sometimes unfair when you get a lemon model from a decent manufacturer. When I was a kid these things cost, fixed for inflation, a whole hell of a lot of money. And even in the late 70s and early 80s, in a normal non-ghetto but not rich Chicago neighborhood, I still watched old ladies scrub their laundry on washboards and hang them on laundry lines because of cost prohibitive issues. You either could afford for the reliable $1,000 GE washer or you couldn't. Lets not romanticize a time where everything was super expensive and which left a lot of people out in the cold.
Some people are going to buy the budget Amana that is crappier than the GE they grew up with, but it regularly goes on sale/clearance for $250 or so at Walmart. Sure beats the $700+ GE if you're poor and very much beats paying the laundromat. The take away here isn't modern things are terrible, its don't buy budget brands if you want quality.