"Rick Brandt" ) writes:

This raises an apparent contradiction. Most people believe that appliances were
built much better in the past than they are now and yet in the past a whole
industry survived on doing appliance repairs. Perhaps they only seemed to be
built better in the past because we kept them longer and the only reason we kept
them longer is because we repaired them instead of replacing them. The flipside
of that same coin is that perhaps today's appliances only seem to be inferior
because we replace them more often and the only reason we replace them more
often is because we don't repair them.

But what you had was a relative handful of items, that people took great
care in deciding about before purchasing, and cost quite a bit, and of
course when they needed repair the parts were generally generic, because
the items were generic.

No, the whole household is loaded with things. INstead of buying a few
things that you expected to last pretty much forever, and you'd want
to get the most out of, you buy something cheap because it might
be nice to have that sandwich maker or that $15 rotary tool. The things
have become cheap in part because demand has lowered costs (design costs
and profit can be spread over far more units), but also by cutting out
the expensive stuff.

So a tv set forty years ago was handwired (I have no clue whether that
was a good or bad thing, but it was costly) on a heavy metal chassis, and
was a significant purchase for most households. But when something
broke, the cost of repair was low compare to the cost of replacement, to
that tv set would be taken to the local repair shop. But, pretty much
all the parts in that tv set were generic, so that repair shop did not
have to be in some relationship with the manufacturer, and the parts could
be had at the local electronics store (and since those stores were selling
to all kinds of people, the same general parts to repair that tv set were
also used by they hobbyist and even the professional, the stores could
survive with a relatively small stock that was bought by many), so the
repair shop often didn't need to keep a lot of stock, especially not
a lot of specialized stock.

But in order to increase the market, manufacturers had to lower prices
so those who couldn't afford before could now. So they shifted to printed
circuit boards, and when ICs came along they started using them, which
allowed for higher integration (ie fewer overall parts). The smaller
parts meant no heavy chassis, which would have gone anyway because
that cost money, not just to buy the metal but you had to ship it
to the store near the consumer.

The price goes down. But the cost of repair stays the same, or goes
up, because tracking down the problem is labor intensive. Manufacturers
often switch to replacing boards, which keeps labor costs down but
means you aren't paying for a fifty cent part but the whole board.

So if you paid a thousand dollars for that color tv set in 1966 (just
a figure I pulled out of the air), the repair cost was a small percentage
of the cost of buying a new one. Plus, it was easier to pay out a little
here and a little there than to come up with another thousand to buy a new
tv set.

But if you paid a hundred dollars for that tv set today, you'd be
paying a good percentage of that cost in having a repairman try to
find the problem. That tips things in favor of buying new. Plus,
in order to get that tv set price so low, the parts aren't generic,
and the repairman has to deal with the manufacturer to get the replacement
parts. That ends up being problematic, or requires some sort of
contract with the manufactuer (and added cost). The tv sets are
no longer as generic as they were forty years ago, so the repairman
finds it harder to figure out what is wrong, often requiring service
material from the manufacturer, again an extra cost.

The cheaper something is to manufacture, the less sturdy it will be
mechanically, since that is one way to cut cost. Hence things are
less likely to last as long, even if people were willing to spend
the money to repair them rather than buy new.

And I want to add something about "planned obsolescence" because it
is often misused. If people are choosing to buy cheap, it's hardly
that the manufacturers are making things so they will break. The
consumer often wants that cheaper tv set or VCR.

And there is the issue of just plain obsolescence. Forty years
ago, there'd hardly be any electronic items around the house. A
tv set or two, some radios, maybe a stereo. But look around now,
and everything is electronic. It's either been invented in the past forty
years (not even that long in many cases), or at the very least could not
have been a consumer item until recently. Once you have consumers buying
the latest thing, things are bound to go obsolete. Buy early, and things
still have to develop, which means the things really may become obsolete
in a few years. It's not the manufacturer doing this to "screw the
consumer", it's a combination of new developments and consumer demand.

If my computer from 1979 had been intended to last forever, it would
have been way out of range in terms of price. Because they'd have to
anticipate how much things would change, and build in enough so upgrading
would be doable. So you'd spend money on potential, rather than spending
money later on a new computer that would beat out what they could
imagine in 1979. And in recent years, it is the consumer who is deciding
to buy a new computer every few years (whether a deliberate decision or
they simply let the manufacturer lead, must vary from person to person.)

Michael