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Why New Refrigerators Fail
We all remember the old refrigerators: the appliances that lasted for decades and seemed like they could run forever. I wish I still owned one. I just had an expensive refrigerator die – a top-of-the-line Electrolux that keeled over exactly two years after we installed it. And now I understand why.
The repair guys have told me that all fridges and freezers sold now have a short life — something like four years on average. Why?
The answer is a combination: they banned Freon (for so-called “environmental” reasons), which did not corrode the heat exchanger pipe the same way. The new refrigerants have all kinds of nasty lifetime issues.
And, to save a little money, they use thin-walled copper pipe instead of the classic thicker walls, or aluminum. So with condensate comes corrosion, pinholes, and … the refrigerant goes bye-bye.
So I have just paid too much money (but still one-third the cost of replacing the fridge) to replace a flawed part with the same damned part – just newer. And now the clock is ticking anew.
This is nuts, of course. I understand about a manufacturer saving some money here and there. But on units that cost $1-3k… really?!
If anyone has a manufacturer who actually is willing to pay the extra few dollars needed to make long-lasting appliances (and is not a five-digit SubZero-type brand), please let me know. We have a big home and we feed a lot of people: I think we have seven full-size standing freezer-only units and three to four refrigerators. I cannot replace them all every four years!
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Unless you pay a substantially lower price and if it doesn’t last, as long or if you have to spend more on repairs, that is literally inflation. It’s the same thing as shrink inflation.
Why not use propane as a refrigerant?
R-290 (Refrigerant grade propane) has already been approved by the EPA. Propane has been in commercial use for over a century, its a well understood chemical – so engineering talent for the handling and storage of propane shouldn’t be an issue.
Maybe Hank Hill had a point?
My parents have the same full size freezer they keep in the garage that has been running since the early 1960’s. Never failed.
But why does that benefit the manufacturer? If you have to buy a new one every few years, then that helps sales.
I’m hoping to inherit that freezer unit.
I say we are in decline and you point to amazing technology. Then you go on to prove my point. Any system which puts pennies over pounds is in decline.
I was just told by my dishwasher repairman yesterday that I’ll need a new pump on the unit that is about 13 months old. We had it bought and installed a little over a year ago. A very basic model, no bells or whistles.
Good for a year. Then the pump, which is $150-200 bucks, takes a week to ship. The unit was like 600-700 bucks I think, GE model.
Good repair guy, though – he kind of overlooked the warranty expiration and put it under warranty. And he works for GE.
The car comment was spot-on. The cars now will last a couple hundred K miles, easily, just with old changes and routine maintenance (filters, etc). Didn’t used to be like that.
Everything else, though – we’re all being treated like suckers due to environmental lunacy and people making a buck.
Finding an easy place to store the dead hookers is always a challenge.
Cars are financed over much longer periods. The average finance period is 69 months new, and 65 used cars. Cars must outlive their finance periods – Imagine how unhappy a customer base would become if they where forced to pay for cars that where no longer functional – or how unhappy banks would become financing these vehicles – with a very high default rate, interest rates on these loans would soar, and the periods would shorten… Causing cars to be unaffordable to the masses.
Now, its not the automakers fault that cars have become more expensive – its generally regulations. Safety, emissions – air bags and back up cameras all cost money. Such features should left to the consumer to decide.
We just got a new Electrolux a few weeks ago. We were replacing a very similar Electrolux (in looks at least) that had been going strong for 17 years. I will not be a happy camper if this one only lasts a few years.
I’m not good at explaining it, but forcing fleet mileage became destructive decades ago. They have totally overdone it.
I have a 2019 Subaru Forester and it seems like a great value. The cockpit and the adaptive cruise control are just wonderful. I’ve never dealt with it myself, but the videos of how this thing works under emergency handling are very impressive even though it’s not that expensive and it’s has really high ground clearance. It’s basically a bunch of electronic glowwinkies and the low Center of gravity of the boxer engine that make for this emergency handling. The new ones are supposed to have a slightly better suspension and a way better adaptive cruise control. They didn’t jack up the price much, either.
The thing I wonder about are CVTs. It sounds like they’re not going to be economical in the long run compared to a regular transmission. You don’t repair them; you replace them even though they are cheaper upfront. Having said that, the Subaru CVT is excellent.
And have a single point of failure? No, thank you!
I have new dishwashers that have had the control panels fail – same model, both breaking within 2 months of each other, only 2 years old. Clearly the thermal cycling with perhaps moisture/contamination did them in – probably the solder problem RushBabe so astutely identifies. The replacement circuit board is cleverly priced at 40% of a new unit, so we fixed one. But I think we’ll replace the second, if we can find a unit with a suitably long warranty. Paying 40% of new every 2 years does not appeal.
You are right that maintenance is much less work, but the underlying designs are deliberately weaker.
I have considerable inside information on this. Cars WERE built for 200-400k miles – think of Volvo or Toyota.
But 10-15 years ago carmakers started shifting, realizing that buyers don’t care about life over 100k. So now all sorts of things that never used to fail (like wheel bearings) are now failing at 75-125k miles. This is a deliberate design decision.
Windscreens used to be thicker, and rarely chipped. Because of the ^%$#@ fuel standards, they pulled weight out of the windscreen, making them much less rugged. They did this to every other part of the car, desperately trying to shed weight – which usually also sheds toughness.
Ford led the way down, and I will never buy one again. Volvo is probably no longer making the bricks they used to make. Perhaps the toughest Toyotas are not compromising, much. But every other brand, including Hyundai and Honda, are no longer designing cars that will last anywhere near that long.
If they would back off, the world genuinely would be a better place. Just really horrific central planning.
I wouldn’t know how to Google it, but I just read a really great article that a lot of the eco goals are going to get taken care of simply by people ***liking*** ***hybrids*** ***not*** forcing pure electric cars. No government force necessary. It was a really good explanation on how the resources get conserved or not.
I love our five-year-old LG refrigerator. Never a problem (so far). It replaced a 12-year-old GE that was having minor problems.
But we also replaced our dishwasher a few years ago with a new, expensive Kitchen aid. It’s very pretty, has lots of options, is freakishly quiet – you can be standing three feet away and not be sure it’s running. The only problem is it doesn’t get the glasses clean.
Lot of conspiracy theorizing in this thread…
Mazda is trying to make a hybrid that uses a rotary engine. It sounds like they are having a lot of trouble, but if it works, it will cut down considerably on the resources to make a hybrid.
When my wife bought her first home (a condo), there was an old International Harvester refrigerator running in the garage. She lived there a few years before moving to Raleigh. After the move, she rented her condo. Fast forward many years later when she decided to sell it. On a trip out west, we dropped by her old condo (now empty) and checked it out. Sure enough, that old fridge was still in the garage, happily running to keep the inside cold. It’s cliche, but they don’t make ’em like they used to . . .
That’s some very dubious logic. Making things heavy is not always better.
Go to Home Depot and buy a box of TSP cleaner in paint section. Add one tsp to every load. (Same thing with your clothes washer) It’s to replace the TSP they removed to make the Eco Facists happy about 10 years ago.
We have the Bosch DW, and I have to check the little red “operating light” that shines on the floor beneath the right hand side of the door. Maybe my hearing is going, but unless the house is absolutely silent I cannot hear it when it’s cleaning.
Perhaps. Physics still plays a role, and reducing mass increases the local force in a collision. So all else being equal (which they may not be!), a heavier windscreen will better resist damage. For the same reason that in vehicle-vehicle collisions, the heavier vehicle delivers much better protection of the passengers.
There is considerable anecdotal data that quality has dropped.
https://www.carcomplaints.com/news/2020/hyundai-palisade-windshield-crack-lawsuit.shtml
https://5thgenrams.com/community/threads/are-our-windshields-prone-to-damage.20332/page-2
Here is one comment that resonated:
I’m not sure it fits the “conspiracy theory” mold. For more than fifty years I’ve been hearing of a service economy and “planned obsolescence”. If we’re not manufacturing our own products we are at the mercy of foreign manufacturers, and they can make them as poorly as they want no matter how much or how little they cost.
Mazda has been working on a rotary engine since the 60s.
lol
It’s an interesting topic. I would think it would be perfect for a hybrid, but apparently it isn’t. It’s like rotary engines are worthless for anything but go karts. They will stick four of them in some types of racing cars, which is really cool.
Maybe it is planned obsolescence? A few years back we bought a new house and decided to splurge on a swanky new refrigerator/freezer with water filter and ice maker. We’d always had pretty basic models before that. Within about two and a half years the ice maker quit working. We got a GE tech to come look at it and his assessment was a bad motherboard. It was going to be around $500 parts and labor to have the thing replaced. We declined, paid his trip charge, and sent him on his merry way. We can make ice cubes the old fashioned way with the little ice cube trays, thank you very much.
I will never buy an expensive refrigerator again. Just a basic model with no extra electronic mumbo jumbo will do just fine.
We had a similar experience with a two year old dishwasher. I bought parts and tried to fix it myself but apparently whatever was wrong wasn’t what I thought it was because my fixes didn’t…fix it. Called an appliance repair person and he said do yourself a favor and get a new dishwasher because it’s not that much more than the cost to repair the old one. At this point, I don’t see a reason to even waste kitchen space with a dishwasher. In my next house I’ll probably opt for more cabinet space and a larger dish sink. It’s not really difficult to hand wash dishes…
This is a great discussion.
Do you think the CPI incorporates all of this very well into one single number? It obviously doesn’t.
It cannot. And all the numbers are being cooked.
I have a 2009 Toyota Tacoma with a quarter of a million miles on it. No issues.
I have another one. Turbo engines help them beat the fleet mileage requirements, but nobody gets that mileage in real life. It’s possible that turbos aren’t going to last as long as regular engines, for no net gain.