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Appliances these days are absolutely junk compared to the ones from the 70’s thru the 90’s. My parents and grandparents had the same washers and dryers for 20+ years. Same refrigerator, same stove. For decades. Everybody I knew had the same appliances the whole time we were growing up.  My friends dad passed away awhile back, when I went to his house ( hadn’t been there in 10-15 years) they had the same refrigerator that had been there since the 70’s. 

Myself, I only wish I could get 10+ years out of any washer or dryer.  I did have a speed queen that lasted about 10 years, that I really loved and just replaced. I still have it, but I need to see if it’s worth fixing and then put it at my shop to wash work clothes etc. 

We’ve been married for 23 years, and we’ve been through at least 3-4 refrigerators, 3-4 washers, 3-4 dryers.  

I has a small chest freezer in my basement that's as old as I am

bought it for $25 back in 1990

I guess I’ve been lucky.  So far.

Most appliances don’t have compressors

Refrigerators and air conditioners do.  

Okay utee, you're an engineer and know a little something about manufacturing consumer electronics, right?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on *why* appliances are getting worse, if you believe that to be the case. And if possible, if you have a belief that the lower-cost stuff is actually *more* reliable than the higher-end stuff, what forces are driving that.

My own thought is that if reliability is being sacrificed, it's most likely due to a "race to the bottom" on cost, driven by market competition. Much as the airline industry long ago gave up on "service" or "customer experience" because the average consumer compares fares on online booking sites and will usually pick the lowest fare possible and isn't willing to pay for a better experience.

But that's just my supposition.

Yeah I don't know that my observations are universal, I'd obviously need to look at more industry-wide data to get the bigger picture, but the failures seem to be so common and so ubiquitous, it's hard for me to imagine it's not happening to everyone, everywhere.

Race to the bottom is probably part of it.  I have no doubt that manufacturers COULD produce a more reliable product, but can they afford to?

Safety and energy efficiency regulations might also have something to do with it.  Those types of things always add cost to the product.  So if you're spending money to satisfy those regs, you've got to cut the cost from somewhere else.  Reliability might take a hit.  It's also possible that energy efficient products are somehow by their nature less reliable, there could be some inverse relationship there, but I'm not sure what it would be.

And I'm not sure why low-end appliances would be more reliable, other than potentially having less complexity.  It's why I always cringe when my i s c & a aggie wife wants to buy the "luxury" version of a product, more bells and whistles.  To me that just seems like more shit to break.  The sunroof on my pickup stopped working after a couple of years, the sunroof I didn't want and didn't need but it came standard on the high end Platinum trim package of the truck that she picked out for us...

Our old dryer stopped drying and I was told it needed a $430 computer.   My wife wanted new gear anyway stacked as our laundry room is small.  It was ten years old or so.  Complexity.  

@Gigem @utee94 Thanks. So I think there are a couple of common themes:

• Appliances as a matter of inflation-adjusted prices (and probably also on a common "hours of work needed to purchase" as incomes have increased) have become significantly cheaper to acquire.
• Energy efficiency is much improved, but that may come at a cost, potentially significant. Especially since some of the efficiency gains are not exactly "consumer" driven where the consumer is willingly choosing the more efficient model, but that they may be driven by the need to meet government/industry efficiency standards.
• There is a race to the bottom on cost/price.

What I find odd is that there are so many people here lamenting "they just don't make 'em like they used to"... But I think with what we've learned in engineering disciplines over the last 50 years, there should be no engineering reason that they can't make 'em like they used to--or better.

Ultimately I see this as a consumer problem. If consumers truly valued higher quality/reliability, you'd think this would be reflected by manufacturers offering units [perhaps more expensive] with longer warranties and trying to build a brand based upon that reliability.

Think Hyundai back when they were still a niche brand in the US. They were offering 10 year / 100K mile warranties when nobody else was offering over 60K or so. Now, they also weren't charging a premium price, so it's possible they were bleeding money for a while doing it, and maybe building the US brand was being subsidized by profits in other markets... Or it's possible that they knew their designs were good enough to make money even with those warranty offerings.


So to me, this might be an example of the old economic concept of revealed preference. Consumers say they want higher-reliability appliances. They complain about the appliances we have. But when it comes to buying, other things are more important to them.

For me, they're all equally shit.  Doesn't matter the brand.  Samsung, I'm told by multiple people, is shit.  Whirlpool is OK, but 5-7 years they're toast.  Maytag is Whirlpool.  Kenmore is and always was made by about 3-4 different manufacturers.  The speed queen washing machine I had lasted 10 years, and it needs fixed now.  I liked it a lot because it was simple, it used a lot of water, and the clothes were clean.