Planned Obsolescence

[Greyfox]

So my friend's dryer died on him a couple of weeks ago. Something like a 2005 maytag and to replace the heating element, they no longer have the access panel at the back of the dryer, you now have to completely disassemble it and remove the drum just to get to the heating element. So instead of taking 10 minutes it takes 2 hours Companies really are trying to put repair people out of business and have customers just buy new ones

[KE4AVB]

I get frustrated too when I trying repair things that I used do easily.

The auto parts industry has going this path of use it till it breaks and replace with new for awhile too. They are looking at from their costs. If customer really knew how little it costs to make these things via the assembly line method they would demanding even lower prices.

As for making it harder to take apart most of the factory is done by robots and they don't care except what they programmed to do.

When I first started in electronics working on office equipment a desktop calculator sold for 500.00 plus USD nowadays they are under 100.00 for a good basic version. I was told our vendor back in the last 1990's told me that the 99.00 version only cost them 21.00 and that included the boat ride from Japan since they brought them by the container full. They could sell their dealer a new unit cheaper than they could even get and stock the individual parts for. With this we buying new machines and stripping them for parts for our warranty work.

[Greyfox]

Sounds about right, though the new heating element was only $28 so allot cheaper than a new dryer.

[KE4AVB]

It is when you do your on work but if you had to have an appliance repairman do it for you then that that where it becomes expensive. 2 Hours at shop time. Ouch.

It is a good thing that some of us good at working on things.

While I am thinking about it was your heating element the one that goes around the drum pivot point or the cartridge type?

[Greyfox]

I guess it would be considered the cartridge type (5x8x1 more or less) where it is bolted onto the back of the dryer behind the rear drum wall as it is inline to the air intake to the dryer

[DennyIN]

The place I retired from last year (after 43+ years) at one time had a vice president of purchasing that wanted to go from a 430 stainless to a 409 stainless. I fussed and told him it wouldn't pass salt spray requirements, so it wouldn't pass warranty. He told me he only wanted parts to work until they were out of warranty, it made me mad. I proved to him they would fail and that was the end of the issue, but always remembered him stating that he only wanted the product to work until it was out of warranty. A few years later, with management changes, he was de-moted to sales (and wasn't a very good one). Different mentality than when I was brought up. At one time quality was #1 and price was # 3 or 4. When I retired price was #1 and quality was, only good enough to barely pass durability requirements, with some question at that.

[Greyfox]

The place I retired from last year (after 43+ years) at one time had a vice president of purchasing that wanted to go from a 430 stainless to a 409 stainless. I fussed and told him it wouldn't pass salt spray requirements, so it wouldn't pass warranty. He told me he only wanted parts to work until they were out of warranty, it made me mad. I proved to him they would fail and that was the end of the issue, but always remembered him stating that he only wanted the product to work until it was out of warranty. A few years later, with management changes, he was de-moted to sales (and wasn't a very good one). Different mentality than when I was brought up. At one time quality was #1 and price was # 3 or 4. When I retired price was #1 and quality was, only good enough to barely pass durability requirements, with some question at that.

sadly the only company i know of that still has quality as number one anymore is surefire flashlights.

[jimw1949]

I don’t think the problem is that manufacturers don’t want stuff repaired, I think it has more to do with the manufacturing costs than anything else. I am sure there are cases where a manufacturer wants to have “built in obsolescence” incorporated into the appliances they make, but I tend to think that is the exception rather than the rule. It is my contention the reason things are made so cheaply today is because consumers don’t want to pay much for the things they buy.

If a manufacturer built a dryer that was super well made, one that would last practically forever, was easy to repair and the repair parts were plentiful as well as fairly inexpensive to buy, but the dryer costs $2,000 to buy it, how many dryers do you think they would sell? As a general rule of thumb, consumers do not want to pay for quality appliances, they prefer to buy cheaper ones and buy them more often. While there are certainly exceptions to this, apparently there aren’t enough exceptions to warrant manufacturers to build really high quality appliances.

I used to work for a rather large appliance/electronics dealership and I can tell you straight out that the number of “high end” appliances we sold were very few when compared to how many of the lower end appliances we sold. It would seem that cost is one of the major concerns in the minds of consumers, if not the biggest concern, when purchasing home appliances. So if a company can save a few dollars by leaving off an access panel, they will do it. In fact, if the manufacturer can save 10 cents per dryer they will do it. That may seem silly to some people, but think about it for a minute. If a manufacturer saves 10 cents per dryer and they sell 10 million dryers this year, they just saved a million dollars. Now suppose they were able to save $10 per dryer. We aren’t talking pocket change here, we are talking major dollars.

Companies will go to great lengths to save on production costs. We may think some of the things a manufacturer does to save money is stupid, but at the end of the day the whole idea of a business is to make a profit. To that end a manufacturer will do whatever it takes to save a buck and make a larger profit. I don’t always agree with what companies do to save money, I tend to think at times they are shooting themselves in the foot with some of the things they do. But, unfortunately, not too many companies call me up and ask me what I think they should do, they just do what they think is right and that’s the end of it.

[bobodu]

Exactly Jim. I am just as guilty as the next guy. Got on Amazon looking for boat speakers. I passed on the $20 ones but was willing to go as high as $32....didn't even consider the $120 ones .

[StarTech]

Never been in internal corporate factory meetings have you? The company that I worked for was a Fortune 500 member and they do plan for equipment to be obsoleted so they could sell more.

There is an industry standard that a lot companies have adopted of 5-7 years for the life of piece of equipment and then it is considered obsolete. And the comsumer electronic industry it is even less time.