The other day, I went to pick up our new lawnmower from the local depot for a large catalog/online retailer. I don’t want to say the name, but if you are crafty, you would figure it out.
The new lawnmower was a replacement for one we bought used in 2001, when we bought our first house. After taking it in for service, only to have it die, again, the following week, I was done. If anything was going to give me a second heart attack, trying to start that mower would have been it. I figured a new mower was cheaper than a coffin. This new one would have electric start.
However, I thought more than 15 years of service wasn’t too bad for a used mower, so I bought one from the same product line. Having stopped at four different stores in town, I found there were next to zero gas mowers left in Estevan. I went online to place an order, especially since this was a rare beast with electric start.
I was not impressed with the man who ran the depot. He had the audacity to berate me on the phone because I ordered online instead of coming into the store and ordering directly through him. Seething as I picked up the new mower, I pointed out to him my next stop was to go to the bank to withdraw $700 to pay for the repair of our seven-year-old fridge. This was the second repair in two years for a top-of-the-line, $3,000 fridge, purchased from the same company. Again, I don’t want to say the name, but if you want to know more, ask Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken. He’s an elite sort of guy.
“Did you buy extended warranty?” he asked.
“No,” I replied.
Oh, well, fridges these days only last five to 10 years, he responded, adding it doesn’t matter what make or model.
With my second repair in two years, it would appear he is horribly and absolutely correct. It is also apparent he has no problem selling a product that rapidly becomes junk.
The fridge in my dad’s basement is probably 40, maybe even 50 years old. When I called him to ask, he said my grandparents bought it in an auction sale before I was born, so that has got to be at least 40 years.
It still works. So do the two freezers in the basement that are at least 30 years old, and likely much older. And the old Maytag washer is about the same vintage. Repaired a few times, but still works. The Maytag repairman, at least from that age, truly was the loneliest man in town.
Sure, they may not be energy efficient like new ones, but where is the savings if you’re dropping $3,000 for a new fridge every seven years? That’s my entire power bill for the whole house for more than a year.
Why is it that new appliances – fridges, washing machines, dryers and dishwashers – don’t last much longer than the warranty period, but newer vehicles are so much more reliable? With advances in synthetic oils and oil monitoring systems, and regular maintenance, almost all new vehicles these days are reliable well into the 200,000 kilometre range, and many more will last far longer than that. Now you can go sometimes over 10,000 kilometres between oil changes, depending on what the sensor tells you. I never push that limit, but you get the point. When was the last time you saw rust on a vehicle less than 20 years old?
So it is absolutely true – they don’t make things like they used to. While our vehicles are much more efficient, run cleaner, better and longer now, our appliances are also more efficient. They are more efficient at getting thrown out and replaced. Their planned obsolescence is money-grubbing and despicable, not to mention wasteful.
The appliance stores and manufacturers should be ashamed of themselves, letting their products go so far downhill.
Stop producing crap and sell things you can be proud of.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
