JR North wrote:

The Direct Drive vac power heads I have seen are cheap plasicky
lightweight air turbine design. Poor torque to the brushes and the
loss of suction due to energy absorbed by the turbine make these
inefficient and, of course, failure prone due to cheap plastic
components. The replacement belt for my power head was $2.35 retail
at the local vac shop. 10 for $12.00 including shipping on Ebay. Try
and find replacement air turbine parts for that new vac-anywhere. The
original belt lasted 20 years and only failed because my GF sucked a
sash cord up and stalled the head.

My 40 year old vac has no belts at all, and I never bother with power heads
etc. Its as good as it ever was except for the switch replacement. Even they
they had sealed the contacts at the back of the switch with silastic etc, it still
ended up sucking enough dust into the switch that it wasnt reliable anymore.
While the switch was trivially dismountable by pushing the axle out, a quick
clean didnt see it very reliable and a new one cost peanuts so I replaced it.

Pity about all the washing machines, driers, dishwashers, VCRs etc etc
etc that have binned belts now and are much better because they have.

The only belts I have anymore are in the car.

Rod Speed wrote:
JR North wrote:

Unfortunately, you have to plan for Planned Obsolescence several
years behind.
For instance: my Kenmore washer/dryer set is 16 years old. Still
going strong. No repairs. Lots of posts in S.E.R (and here) on
current W/D models puking after 2 or so years.
My JC Penney (Eureka) canister vac is 22 years old. Only thing
replaced was power head belt a couple years ago. New vacs are
garbage. I could go on and on....


Lousy design is nothing like planned obsolescence.

Most obviously with the modern approach of beltless direct drive
systems which dont even have a belt that will ever need replacing.



Too_Many_Tools wrote:


In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

TMT

Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 9, 2007
Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter
Appliance Service shop in Silver Spring.
"You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could
years ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator
and washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
business."
Mr. Jones recently sold his home in Laurel and is in the process
of moving to Bluffton, S.C., with his wife, Jeannette.
Mr. Jones is one of the many Washington-area repairmen who have
struggled to stay afloat as residents replace, not repair, old
appliances.
"It's a dying trade," said Scott Brown, Webmaster of
www.fixitnow.com and self-proclaimed "Samurai Appliance Repairman."
The reason for this is twofold, Mr. Brown said: The cost of
appliances is coming down because of cheap overseas labor and
improved manufacturing techniques, and repairmen are literally
dying off. The average age of appliance technicians is 42, and
there are few young repairmen to take their place, said Mr. Brown, 47. He
has been repairing appliances in New Hampshire for the past 13
years. In the next seven years, the number of veteran appliance
repairmen will decrease nationwide as current workers retire or
transfer to other occupations, the Department of Labor said in its
2007 Occupational Outlook Handbook.
The federal agency said many prospective repairmen prefer work
that is less strenuous and want more comfortable working
conditions. Local repairmen said it is simply a question of
economics. "Nowadays appliances are cheap, so people are just
getting new ones," said Paul Singh, a manager at the Appliance Service Depot, a
repair shop in Northwest. "As a result, business has slowed down a
lot."
"The average repair cost for a household appliance is $50 to
$350," said Shahid Rana, a service technician at Rana
Refrigeration, a repair shop in Capitol Heights. "If the repair is going to cost
more than that, we usually tell the customer to go out and buy a
new one." It's not uncommon for today's repairmen to condemn an
appliance instead of fixing it for the sake of their customers'
wallets. If they decide to repair an appliance that is likely to
break down again, repairmen are criticized by their customers and
often lose business because of a damaged reputation.
Mr. Jones said he based his repair decisions on the 50 percent
rule: "If the cost of service costs more than 50 percent of the
price of a new machine, I'll tell my customers to get a new one."
"A lot of customers want me to be honest with them, so I'll tell
them my opinion and leave the decision making up to them," he said.
In recent years, consumers have tended to buy new appliances
when existing warranties expire rather than repair old appliances, the
Department of Labor said.
Mr. Brown acknowledged this trend. "Lower-end appliances which
you can buy for $200 to $300 are basically throwaway appliances,"
he said. "They are so inexpensive that you shouldn't pay to get them
repaired." "The quality of the materials that are being made
aren't lasting," Mr. Jones said. "Nowadays you're seeing more
plastic and more circuit boards, and they aren't holding up."
Many home appliances sold in the United States are made in
Taiwan, Singapore, China and Mexico.
"Nothing is made [in the United States] anymore," Mr. Jones
said. "But then again, American parts are only better to a point,
a lot of U.S. companies are all about the dollar."
Fortunately for the next generation of repairmen, some of
today's high-end appliances make service repairs the most cost-effective
option.
The Department of Labor concurred. "Over the next decade, as
more consumers purchase higher-priced appliances designed to have much
longer lives, they will be more likely to use repair services than
to purchase new appliances," said the 2007 Occupational Outlook
Handbook. Modern, energy-efficient refrigerators can cost as
much as $5,000 to $10,000, and with such a hefty price tag,
throwing one away is not an option.
In some cases, repairmen can help consumers reduce the amount of
aggravation that a broken appliance will cause.
Consider the time and effort it takes to shop for a new
appliance, wait for its delivery, remove the old one and get the
new one installed.
In addition, certain appliances such as ovens and washing
machines can be a bigger hassle to replace because they are
connected to gas and water lines.
"It takes your time, it takes your effort, and if you don't
install the new appliance, you'll have to hire a service technician
to install it anyways," Mr. Brown said.
Some consumers bond with their appliances like old pets, and for
loyalty or sentimental reasons, refuse to let them go.
Mr. Rana said some of his clients have appliances that are more
than 30 years old. It makes sense, he said. "A lot of old
refrigerators are worth fixing because they give people good
service. They just don't make things like they used to."

On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 07:08:07 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

terry wrote
Ecnerwal wrote:

The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated to render them
effectively non-economic to repair. "This part will (by design) break
about 1 year after the warranty runs out - let's put in in a monolithic
module containing all the most expensive parts of the machine."

Maybe that's stating it rather strongly?

Although recent discussion/discovery that IPods will
exhaust their batteries in approximately one to two
years do clearly raise the question? "Designed to fail?".

Doesnt explain stuff like cordless phones that use standard batterys.

Except you can buy much better batteries than the crap that comes with
the chinese built phone from the factory. Likely cost as much as the
phone, but often worth it.

But it's the same reason that I continue to accept
and use old appliances that I can repair myself.

I repair all my own stuff too, but accept that sometimes I need to buy
parts.

That can mean that you have to do without
some of the most elegantly usable appliances tho.

For example I refuse to buy a stove that incorporates
a digital timer/clock; they are virtually unrepairable!

If a digital timer makes it through the first 90 days, and then
through warranty, it may very well outlive YOU. Infant mortality is
the biggest issue with electronis. Mechanical timers simply wear out
or burn out, and although SOMETIMES repairable, they ARE more likely
to fail after the first year or so than electronics. Particularly as
the mechanics were cheapened and electronics become more integrated
and solid.

Mindlessly silly. My microwave is still going fine 30 years later.

Eventually can see myself, however, ending up with one of those and
deliberately disconnecting the digital timer clock or modifying the stove to use
one my older (saved) clock/timers or just dong away with the timer altogether.

Or get a clue and only bother with that if it actually does fail.
And get the benefit of a decent modern design when it doesnt.

I've never actually had a single digital clock in any system
ever fail and I've got heaps of them, plenty 30+ years old.

My experience as well. Electromechanical timers have failed on just
about everything I've ever owned with them except for the old
Frigidaire range (50 years old and still working fine when the oven
element let go and "plasma cut" a big hole in the bottom of the oven)
Several wires had burned off 30 years ago - I repaired them 26 or 27
years ago - otherwise it worked fine. Not so the timer on the water
softener that pumped several hundred gallons of water and350 lbs of
salt all over the basement floor when the timer died--------.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Out tendancy now is to replace appliances now based on fashion and not
usability. The appliance of a few years ago was harvest gold and
avacado green but those are no longer in fashion so we replace with the
black or stainless steel that is today's fashion. They don't need to
build with planned obselescence any more, we do that for them. I
should know, my wife insisted that we replace all the appliances in the
home we just bought for just that reason. All of the old ones worked
just fine but....they were not the right color.

Rick Brandt wrote:
Too_Many_Tools wrote:
In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

TMT

Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 9, 2007
Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
Service shop in Silver Spring.
"You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
business."

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.

On 14 Jan 2007 09:30:59 -0800, Too_Many_Tools wrote:

They just don't make things like they used to."

THANK GOD!!!!

On 14 Jan 2007 11:40:18 -0800, Too_Many_Tools wrote:

In my opinon, it is a symptom of a larger problem....

Companies are setting up the situation that you are forced to buy new
versus repair the used applicance, car, electronics, computers, cell
phones....because they make a larger profit.

The MBAs that are crafting the company policy are behind this.

You must be the guy who draws the "Dilbert" comic strip.

On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 07:02:25 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

Ecnerwal wrote
Rick Brandt wrote

This raises an apparent contradiction.

Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances
to see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".

Or perhaps you havent.

The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable.

Yes. And so are the current ones too with the exception of plug packs etc.

"This part always breaks eventually, we'll
isolate it and make it easy to replace".

That is just plain silly with domestic appliances. There is bugger
all except light bulbs that cant be designed to last indefinitely.

And even that has changed just recently too.

The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,

Oh bull****.

and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated
to render them effectively non-economic to repair.

More bull****. I've done just that fine with a modern electric chainsaw.

"This part will (by design) break about 1 year after the warranty runs out -

Not even possible.

It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost. The engineers
then have to decide where to cut costs. Sometimes they win, sometimes
you loose.
Cost to assemble dictates design more than sevicability. If they can
save a dollar in total per machine by making assembly easier (or by
cutting out a procedure, like de-burring drilled or stamped holes)
without increasing their warranty exposure, they do it.
This could all change OVERNIGHT if all the cheap B@$7@rds in North
America wouldn't insist on buying the cheapest whatever possible. If
there was a market for quality products at a price that companys could
afford to build them and sell them for, quality goods would still be
available. That market just does not exist any more. If it did,
Wallmarts would be closing all over North America, instead of
continuing to displace the established specialty shops that used to
sell the "good stuff".

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On 14 Jan 2007 11:17:21 -0800, "
wrote:



did you know theres all qualitys of stainless, some will last literaLLY
FOREVER not so for kitchen stainless, try a magnet on stainless the
better quality is non magnetic

The better quality for what? For some applications a magnetic
stainless may well be the better choice, while for other applications
a non-magnetic. Depends what qualities the application requires.

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

"BobR" wrote in message
oups.com...
Out tendancy now is to replace appliances now based on fashion and not
usability. The appliance of a few years ago was harvest gold and
avacado green but those are no longer in fashion so we replace with the
black or stainless steel that is today's fashion. They don't need to
build with planned obselescence any more, we do that for them. I
should know, my wife insisted that we replace all the appliances in the
home we just bought for just that reason. All of the old ones worked
just fine but....they were not the right color.


When there are no qualitative differences between products,
marketers do tend to invent imaginary discriminators such as style
and fashion to convince people to replace perfectly good stuff
for no good reason.

Don

"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message
ups.com...
In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

I used to charge 75c for a house call, when appliances were in the $100 -
$200 price range. Couldn't do it now.





--

"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message
ups.com...
In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

One thing that you might not have considered is Energy Efficiency. Sure,
your refrigerator from 1950 might appear to be working fabulously. However,
it probably costs an awful lot more in electricity to operate it than a
newer model would cost. Likewise with your hot water heater, oven,
diswasher, washing machine, etc.

Its just something else to keep in mind...

Tracey wrote:
"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message
ups.com...

In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?


One thing that you might not have considered is Energy Efficiency. Sure,
your refrigerator from 1950 might appear to be working fabulously. However,
it probably costs an awful lot more in electricity to operate it than a
newer model would cost. Likewise with your hot water heater, oven,
diswasher, washing machine, etc.

Its just something else to keep in mind...



You are indeed correct, but at least when it comes to motor vehicles, it
still makes sense to keep an older car on the road even from an
ecological standpoint as the energy required to make a new car is so great.

I'm not sure how it works out for appliances, but I tend to agree with
the OP that a lot of times older machinery seems to be better built and
easier to service. I have lots of tools that are older than I and I am
more protective of them than of ones that I bought a month ago.

nate

--
replace "fly" with "com" to reply.
http://home.comcast.net/~njnagel

I bought my first CDplayer a Sony discman for $199 in 1987. That was
after shopping all over. Today I can get a good DVD player for $30 and
a cd player for $15. I like how things get cheaper.

Logan Shaw wrote:
Too_Many_Tools wrote:
In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

I don't think planned obsolescence is a good thing or a bad thing,
because in most cases it's fictional. Appliances and other items
you buy aren't designed to fail. They are designed to be cheap to
manufacture.

The article you mentioned quoted a repairman saying that lots of
new devices are made with circuit boards (rather than discrete
components). There's a reason for that. Circuits built with
circuit boards and integrated circuits cost much, much less to
produce than ones made of discrete components. Probably half
as much, maybe even less than that.

I'm not sure people understand how streamlined and optimized modern
manufacturing techniques are. The reason we get all these appliances
and electronics items for so cheap is the way they are made. To me,
it is truly remarkable that you can go to the store and buy a DVD
player for $30. It might only last 2 or 3 years, but 10 years ago,
it would have cost $10,000 to build an equivalent machine (just
because of the processing power).

So the question, to me, is this: do you want to buy a new item
for $100 and have it last 5 or 10 years, or do you want to spend
$200 for it and have it last 10 or 20? My answer would be that
I'd rather have the item that costs half as much and lasts half
as long. Why? Because I can take the $100 I saved and put it
in the bank. In 5 or 10 years when the item breaks, I can take
the $100 out of the bank, and it will have grown with interest
that has outpaced inflation, so it will be worth more than $100
in inflation-adjusted dollars, and at that time, the price of the
device may have gone down to less than $100 in inflation-adjusted
dollars, and it will certainly be more up to date (more energy
efficient, better support for new media formats, smaller, whatever).

To put it a slightly different way, for that $30 DVD player, it
costs something like $10 labor and $10 materials to put that thing
together in the first place (because there are packaging and shipping
costs and profit). So how efficient is it to spend $30 labor fixing
it? It isn't efficient. Repairing mass-produced items isn't
efficient because one person working on one item and doing everything
by hand simply doesn't have the same economies of scale that a
highly-optimized manufacturing environment has.

- Logan

Logan Shaw wrote in
:

To put it a slightly different way, for that $30 DVD player, it
costs something like $10 labor and $10 materials to put that
thing together in the first place (because there are packaging
and shipping costs and profit). So how efficient is it to spend
$30 labor fixing it? It isn't efficient. Repairing
mass-produced items isn't efficient because one person working
on one item and doing everything by hand simply doesn't have the
same economies of scale that a highly-optimized manufacturing
environment has.

- Logan


To give a better example, look at the HP higher-end credit card sized
calculators like the HP-35 and -45. They are designed to not be
repairable. All they are are a circuit card, a keypad and a display.
They did the analysis, and it was cheaper to design the unit with an
assemble-only push-together design and handle warrenty work by just
replacing the unit, then designing it with screws so that the failed
part could be replaced. Needless to say, they also went through the
entire product and tightened up on everything they could so that they
could cut down on the incidence of repair at the same time.

Michael A. Terrell wrote:
Yes, my mother used her first clothes dryer for over 30 years. We
replaced the belt three times. A new dryer might last five years,
total. The washer lasted 18 years before the hard water ruined it,
and it had a timer replaced when it was 12 years Old. You think that
the new designs are an improvement?

My mom is using the following:

gas range, Magic Chef 1977- coppertone
refrigerator, Kennmore 1984- almond
washer Maytag 1986- white
dryer (electric) Whirlpool 1981- white
microwave Panasonic 1998 ( city blew out the 1987 microwave with a power
surge)

the dryer has had belts, drum rollers, and heating elements replaced.

washer... broken pushbutton (18 cents), and the timer

refrigerator- arm that dispenses ice through the door broke

thats all the repairs

On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:59:14 -0600, Alan wrote:

On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:46:09 GMT, "Rick Brandt"
wrote:

Too_Many_Tools wrote:
In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

TMT

Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 9, 2007
Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
Service shop in Silver Spring.
"You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
business."

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.



I think the main problem with today's appliances is that
they are NOT made so that they can be repaired.

Modules are stamped together, molded together, whatever and
the little part that wears out can't be replaced without
replacing the whole module, which probably isn't available,
anyway, so the appliance gets tossed.

I have an old toaster from the '40s or '50s. It is a
mechanical thing, not electronic, and is made of individual
parts that can be cleaned, oiled, and if you could get them,
replaced as needed. When something like this stops working,
less than an hour's work will set it up to run for another
25 years!



Alan


When I bought this house, there was a problem with the built-in oven
(an older Frigidaire). The (mechanical) clock (that I didn't need)
wouldn't keep time but made a loud UHH-UHH-UHH noise all the time. I
disconnected the wire to it, something I would never have been able to
do with a modern oven.
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.laughingsquid.com

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent
force for atheism ever conceived." -- Isaac Asimov

clare at snyder.on.ca wrote
Rod Speed wrote
terry wrote
Ecnerwal wrote:

The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated to render them
effectively non-economic to repair. "This part will (by design) break
about 1 year after the warranty runs out - let's put in in a monolithic
module containing all the most expensive parts of the machine."

Maybe that's stating it rather strongly?

Although recent discussion/discovery that IPods will
exhaust their batteries in approximately one to two
years do clearly raise the question? "Designed to fail?".

Doesnt explain stuff like cordless phones that use standard batterys.

Except you can buy much better batteries than the crap
that comes with the chinese built phone from the factory.

Not true of the chinese built Panasonics I bought.

I deliberately chose cordless phones that take standard AA NiMH batterys.

Likely cost as much as the phone,

No they dont with standard AA or AAA batterys.

but often worth it.

I doubt it. It may be truer with digital cameras tho.

But it's the same reason that I continue to accept
and use old appliances that I can repair myself.

I repair all my own stuff too, but accept
that sometimes I need to buy parts.

That can mean that you have to do without
some of the most elegantly usable appliances tho.

For example I refuse to buy a stove that incorporates
a digital timer/clock; they are virtually unrepairable!

If a digital timer makes it through the first 90 days,
and then through warranty, it may very well outlive
YOU. Infant mortality is the biggest issue with electronis.

And is really just a nuisance given that its covered by the warranty.

Mechanical timers simply wear out or burn out, and although
SOMETIMES repairable, they ARE more likely to fail after the
first year or so than electronics. Particularly as the mechanics
were cheapened and electronics become more integrated and solid.

Yeah, in spades with mics where the antique phone mics were
steaming turds reliability wise before all phones became electronic.

Mindlessly silly. My microwave is still going fine 30 years later.

Eventually can see myself, however, ending up with one
of those and deliberately disconnecting the digital timer
clock or modifying the stove to use one my older (saved)
clock/timers or just dong away with the timer altogether.

Or get a clue and only bother with that if it actually does fail.
And get the benefit of a decent modern design when it doesnt.

I've never actually had a single digital clock in any system
ever fail and I've got heaps of them, plenty 30+ years old.

My experience as well. Electromechanical timers have failed on
just about everything I've ever owned with them except for the old
Frigidaire range (50 years old and still working fine when the oven
element let go and "plasma cut" a big hole in the bottom of the oven)
Several wires had burned off 30 years ago - I repaired them 26 or 27
years ago - otherwise it worked fine. Not so the timer on the water
softener that pumped several hundred gallons of water and350 lbs of
salt all over the basement floor when the timer died--------.

The main thing I detest with modern products is keyboards. I used
to be able to buy proper double injection moulded keyboards in the
pre PC days but they arent even buyable now even with the branded
produces like Microsoft and Logitech and the stupid cheap stuck on
lettering never lasts very long at all.

But I wouldnt go back to corded mice and keyboards again.
In spades with non optical mice either.

clare at snyder.on.ca wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Ecnerwal wrote
Rick Brandt wrote

This raises an apparent contradiction.

Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances
to see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".

Or perhaps you havent.

The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable.

Yes. And so are the current ones too with the exception of plug packs etc.

"This part always breaks eventually, we'll
isolate it and make it easy to replace".

That is just plain silly with domestic appliances. There is bugger
all except light bulbs that cant be designed to last indefinitely.

And even that has changed just recently too.

The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,

Oh bull****.

and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated
to render them effectively non-economic to repair.

More bull****. I've done just that fine with a modern electric chainsaw.

"This part will (by design) break about 1 year after the warranty runs out -

Not even possible.

It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost.

Separate matter entirely to the mindlessly silly claim that
its even possible to design an appliance to break about a
year after the warranty runs out, with most appliances.

And even the stuff which can be designed to do that like
the stuff with microprocessor control that can certainly
be programmed to do that, no one is actually THAT stupid.

Or even stupid enough to try it with a random component added either.

The engineers then have to decide where to cut costs.
Sometimes they win, sometimes you loose.

And with much of the chinese manufactured product now, they dont even bother.

Cost to assemble dictates design more than sevicability.

Yes, but that can produce much better reliability too,
most obviously with modern molded appliance cords.

If they can save a dollar in total per machine by making assembly
easier (or by cutting out a procedure, like de-burring drilled or
stamped holes) without increasing their warranty exposure, they do it.

Yes, but that has nothing to do with what is being discussed,
the mindlessly silly claim about PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE.

This could all change OVERNIGHT if all the cheap B@$7@rds in North
America wouldn't insist on buying the cheapest whatever possible.

Nope, because so few of them have a clue about even
the most basic stuff that determines what will last longer.

If there was a market for quality products at a price that companys could
afford to build them and sell them for, quality goods would still be available.

There still is with tradesman's tools.

That market just does not exist any more.

Yes it does.

If it did, Wallmarts would be closing all over North America,

Nope, they'd just sell those products if thats what the customers wanted.

instead of continuing to displace the established
specialty shops that used to sell the "good stuff".

They have got displaced for other reasons,
essentially the cost of making the individual sales.

For the same reason the old style grocery stores where you
asked for the items you wanted and an individual got them
off the shelves behind him for you except with fresh food now.

"Rick Brandt" wrote in message
...
Michael A. Terrell wrote:
Yes, my mother used her first clothes dryer for over 30 years. We
replaced the belt three times. A new dryer might last five years,
total.

On what do you base this statement? To claim that (on average) a new
dryer will only last five years is absurd. What, you once knew "a guy"
who replaced a five year old dryer? The dryer has to be one of the
simplest and most reliable things in the home. There just isn't that much
to go wrong.


When you don't compare appliances to the rest of the
machinery/equipment/vehicles that an average household owns nowadays, it's
easy to think that appliances aren't meant to be repaired anymore. Compared
to everything else in your life, reliability and repairability is pretty
much the same, because the consumer has raised their expectations, so the
market adjusted.
I used to get into the points/electronic ignition argument all the time.
The opposing thinking was that points could be adjusted, and that you knew
when it was time to replace them, and mine was that you never had to do
either, and the reliability of electronic ignition was so much higher than
points that you had enough time worrying about other things that you could
afford to think that, instead of spending all your time maintaining things.
Model T's used to come with tools and a manual that guided you through a
complete engine overhaul, because every few thousand miles they knew you
were gonna have to!

Yup, electronic circuit boards aren't as structurally durable as the
spaghetti mess behind most older machines, but I can pretty much assure you
that you won't be messing with it near as often. If you have to repair a
particular brand machine, you will think less of that brand. When there was
only five or so brands, that were all made in the US, the makers didn't mind
trapping the consumer, but now that machines are built all over the world,
competition says that the customer is now highly concerned about
reliability, and won't even bother try to find the most reliable one out of
a selection of crap, but will buy what they don't have to hassle with.
Which one would you pick?

I'm not sold completely on that commentary as it relates to _all_
machinery, however. I won't buy a Toyota Corolla or Honda Accord, or any of
the million clones, simply because everyone else has one, and I can't find
mine in a parking lot. I'm confident that I've acquired a less reliable
automobile that reflects my personal taste in transportation, and when the
mass produced muck has passed on its appeal to much newer cars I'll still be
driving my own car, which retains its own appeal and uniqueness much longer.
It wasn't uncommon to get comments like: "Cool car, what is it?" on my much
older rides, from folks of all ages.

In article ,
"Rick Brandt" wrote:


I think another big factor is the ratio of cost on parts versus labor. In
the
"old days" you might have a repair that was 70% parts and 30% labor
cost-wise.
Nowdays those percentages would be reversed and that just irks people who
just
don't see the value of anyone's labor (other than their own of course).

You see posts about this all the time. "Called a guy to come out and do foo
and
couldn't believe what he wanted to charge me!" Labor really induces a lot of
sticker shock these days.

Except in my game, power wheelchair repair, and maybe a rare few others,
where parts cost far more than labor, that is probably true.

A new joystick for a programmable wheelchair controller can cost ~$800 -
$1000 and take less than an hour to swap.

A wheelchair controller is basically a 24 Volt, two-channel, variable DC
Motor Control.

A new motor/gearbox runs ~$1000. (and you couldn't until recently buy
only one or the other, but it's an aftermarket company specializing in
old chairs and they're higher than new) It takes about an hour to two
for R&R.

A main power/control module may cost upwards of $2000. The simplest
programmable, integrated joystick control/power module is routinely
~$1200.

Oh, about that motor/gearbox ass'y: Power wheelchairs have two.

Scooters mostly have just one motor/transaxle. Replacement is only ~$900
+ labor

Our shop charges $40/hour labor with one hour minimum and we're by far
the cheapest in the area. Average is ~$75.

When there's a captive market and nearly guaranteed funding of a
purchase, (Medicare, Medicaid, Insurance, Charity) prices can do some
craaaaazy things.

--
Bring back, Oh bring back
Oh, bring back that old continuity.
Bring back, oh, bring back
Oh, bring back Clerk Maxwell to me.

(Alan ) writes:

Planned obsolescence has been a tenet of the automobile
industry since the '30s. General Motors, in particular
used styling to make a 2 or 3 year-old-car look "old" and in
need of replacement with a newly styled model.

A bigger engine, prettier colors, new styles, all those
things are at the heart of 'planned obsolescence.'

"Improving" the features on your cell phone every year is
the result of planned obsolescence.

No, that's fashion. If the old still works, then it's not
obsolete.

People who follow fashion trends are in the same boat. Their
clothes aren't obsolete, they simply don't want to wear them
anymore because they want the latest.

"Fashion" allows companies to sell the same thing to the same
people.

But the notion of "planned obsolescence" is that it's designed
from the beginner to not last long.

I'm not arguing that fashion causes people to buy new things.

Michael

It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost. The engineers
then have to decide where to cut costs.


The engineers are TOLD by the MBA accountants where to cut costs.

Good designs are allowed to turn to bad designs to cut a fraction of a
penny.

The sooner the product dies after warranty, the sooner the customer
will be buying another NEW item.

As has been pointed out, the repair inventory is considered a "profit
center" which is code for gouge the customer if he wants to repair the
item.

And yes it IS a conspiracy....to get more of the public's money.

TMT


clare wrote:
On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 07:02:25 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

Ecnerwal wrote
Rick Brandt wrote

This raises an apparent contradiction.

Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances
to see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".

Or perhaps you havent.

The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable.

Yes. And so are the current ones too with the exception of plug packs etc.

"This part always breaks eventually, we'll
isolate it and make it easy to replace".

That is just plain silly with domestic appliances. There is bugger
all except light bulbs that cant be designed to last indefinitely.

And even that has changed just recently too.

The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,

Oh bull****.

and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated
to render them effectively non-economic to repair.

More bull****. I've done just that fine with a modern electric chainsaw.

"This part will (by design) break about 1 year after the warranty runs out -

Not even possible.

It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost. The engineers
then have to decide where to cut costs. Sometimes they win, sometimes
you loose.
Cost to assemble dictates design more than sevicability. If they can
save a dollar in total per machine by making assembly easier (or by
cutting out a procedure, like de-burring drilled or stamped holes)
without increasing their warranty exposure, they do it.
This could all change OVERNIGHT if all the cheap B@$7@rds in North
America wouldn't insist on buying the cheapest whatever possible. If
there was a market for quality products at a price that companys could
afford to build them and sell them for, quality goods would still be
available. That market just does not exist any more. If it did,
Wallmarts would be closing all over North America, instead of
continuing to displace the established specialty shops that used to
sell the "good stuff".

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Or the plastic and pot metal unit isn't worth fixing.

I have some had electric tools that are of professional grade. Those I
will fix my self as long as I can. Most are 25 years old and have served
me for that long. One needs a thin shim sheet. Easy to replace. Not available...

I paid high dollars for my wife to have a quality mixer. We started getting better
flavor and mixed foods / cakes / whatnot. I got the options for it - most -
and they will hold up to the years needed. But so many that I could have gotten
won't last. Glad I did the right thing in the first place.

When buying machine tools, I couldn't order the highest quality of machine, but
the tools and cutters... were as good as I could - as they last longer and
might retrofit onto better machine in the future.

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
TSRA, Life; NRA LOH & Endowment Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot"s Medal.
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.
http://lufkinced.com/



Rick Brandt wrote:
Too_Many_Tools wrote:

In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

TMT

Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 9, 2007
Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
Service shop in Silver Spring.
"You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
business."


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.





----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

Out tendancy now is to replace appliances now based on fashion and not
usability. The appliance of a few years ago was harvest gold and
avacado green but those are no longer in fashion so we replace with the
black or stainless steel that is today's fashion. They don't need to
build with planned obselescence any more, we do that for them. I
should know, my wife insisted that we replace all the appliances in the
home we just bought for just that reason. All of the old ones worked
just fine but....they were not the right color.

Time for an education...unless you have a bottomless bank account.

Take a walk through Sears, Home Depot, Lowes...any of the home supply
companies and note how much space is dedicated to "fashion driven" home
upgrades....which offer significant profit margins for those who sell
them.

TMT

BobR wrote:
Out tendancy now is to replace appliances now based on fashion and not
usability. The appliance of a few years ago was harvest gold and
avacado green but those are no longer in fashion so we replace with the
black or stainless steel that is today's fashion. They don't need to
build with planned obselescence any more, we do that for them. I
should know, my wife insisted that we replace all the appliances in the
home we just bought for just that reason. All of the old ones worked
just fine but....they were not the right color.

Rick Brandt wrote:
Too_Many_Tools wrote:
In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

TMT

Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 9, 2007
Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
Service shop in Silver Spring.
"You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
business."

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.

Too_Many_Tools wrote:
It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants
over-ruling engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost.
The engineers then have to decide where to cut costs.


The engineers are TOLD by the MBA accountants where to cut costs.

You've never worked for a company that manufactures stuff have you?

Marketing (NOT accounting) might provide a price-point that their research
indicates a product needs to be at to be competitive and the
design/engineering/manufacuring departments might be given a mandate to meet
that price point by top level management, but there are no "accountants" telling
anyone where to cut costs.

On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 21:08:57 -0600, Martin H. Eastburn wrote:
Or the plastic and pot metal unit isn't worth fixing.

I have some had electric tools that are of professional grade.
Those I will fix my self as long as I can. Most are 25 years old
and have served me for that long. One needs a thin shim sheet.
Easy to replace. Not available...

I paid high dollars for my wife to have a quality mixer. We started
getting better flavor and mixed foods / cakes / whatnot. I got the
options for it - most - and they will hold up to the years needed.
But so many that I could have gotten won't last. Glad I did the
right thing in the first place.

Have you looked inside that expensive mixer.

The reason why I am asking is that I had one experience with such a
mixer, I found one on the curb (high end kitchenaid), and found cheap
plastic gears stripped inside. Fortunately, replacement parts were
available, and after a simple part swapping the mixer was working
again, and I sold it.

The plus here is that it is a repairable unit, the minus is that the
cheap gears fail by design and are very expensive in relation to their
cost (like $20 for some **** plastic gear).

I hope that you have a better mixer.

i

William Noble wrote:
nonrepairable is not the same as planned obsolescense. A new product may be
impossible to repair because it uses custom electronics and special assembly
techniques but that doesn't mean it's planned to quit working in 3 years.

--

Yes it is - your wrong. Theres actually an engineering discipline
devoted to this subject - its called "Stress Engineering" ie how many
cycles can the door open and close before ir breaks - or, how many
hours will the just adequate component get stinking hot before it
desolders itself from the circuit board.....all things that most
technicians are intimately familiar with - (their called "bread and
butter" faults..).we used to make a living from them....the technically
difficult repairs that took EONS you did for self satisfaction and lost
money on - that was ok when there was enough of the other stuff to make
a living.

The whole societal mindset has changed - most of my customers now are
"mature aged" and have the life long expectation that when thing
breaks, it gets fixed. The younger ones - don't even bother, they
EXPECT it to break soon after the warranty ends (thats BONUS time!) and
will not even think about getting it repaired....

Modern manufacturing methods - them too - snap together plastic
assemblies designed for easy assembly with no thought for subsequent
servicing (hey, nuts and bolts cost MONEY) - done by unskilled, low
wage workers to whom a screwdriver is probably a complex machine tool.
Modern circuit boards - SMD components, machine assembled, wave
soldered - give VERY high reliability due lack of "operator error" but
again, virtually impossible to repair without specialist equipment -
fine if your in aerospace, or medical, or industrial where you have the
margins, but not domestic stuff. (and thats assuming the complex in
house LSI IC is even available - it usually isnt...)

And the manufacturers too - theres no money in servicing, 10,000 TV
sets can be ordered, delivered to the customers distribution centre
straight off the boat all from one person sitting in front of a PC - no
warehouses, spare parts stock, skilled staff to manage the spare parts,
service data to manage, field service staff to control, cost of running
a service centre....

Same for service data - costs too much. Its easier to replace something
under warranty irrespective of the fault, crush it, and claim it as a
tax loss than maintain a service centre with skilled techs,,,,

Sooo - this leaves people like us - slightly demented, do it
yourselfers, who machine bits out of aluminum to replace a broken
plastic bracket (thats why I got into this bizarre metalworking world)
- people who will spend DAYS chasing a generic replacement, who, when
they see something of a similar model in the dumpster, will rescue it
to take home for spares.....

Do I complain - yeh, fer sure. Would I do anything else - no way, I
enjoy the challenge. Learning new skills, being rat cunning and
devious, figuring out how to beat the obsolescence game....its fun
(mostly) Pity it barely pays the bills - fortunately the house is paid
for, the kids are off our hands (mostly) and I dont lust after a turbo
Porsche...(now, more tools - thats different...) And when my generation
goes - thats it, cant see anyone choosing to do this to make a living.
Sitting at a service station console taking money for gasoline pays
better.

The only industries where you CAN make good money servicing a-

1.Where the machine itself costs LOTS of money, so the repair is a
small part of the cost
2.Where people are standing idle because the machine is down
3 There is some sort of "voodoo mystique" about it (medical is a good
example)

Ah, that feels SO much better ..........

Andrew VK3BFA.

Carl McIver wrote:
"Rick Brandt" wrote in message
...
Michael A. Terrell wrote:
Yes, my mother used her first clothes dryer for over 30 years. We
replaced the belt three times. A new dryer might last five years,
total.

On what do you base this statement? To claim that (on average) a new
dryer will only last five years is absurd. What, you once knew "a
guy" who replaced a five year old dryer? The dryer has to be one of
the simplest and most reliable things in the home. There just isn't
that much to go wrong.


When you don't compare appliances to the rest of the
machinery/equipment/vehicles that an average household owns nowadays,
it's easy to think that appliances aren't meant to be repaired
anymore. Compared to everything else in your life, reliability and
repairability is pretty much the same, because the consumer has
raised their expectations, so the market adjusted.
I used to get into the points/electronic ignition argument all the
time. The opposing thinking was that points could be adjusted, and
that you knew when it was time to replace them, and mine was that you
never had to do either, and the reliability of electronic ignition
was so much higher than points that you had enough time worrying
about other things that you could afford to think that, instead of
spending all your time maintaining things. Model T's used to come
with tools and a manual that guided you through a complete engine
overhaul, because every few thousand miles they knew you were gonna
have to!
Yup, electronic circuit boards aren't as structurally durable as
the spaghetti mess behind most older machines, but I can pretty much
assure you that you won't be messing with it near as often. If you
have to repair a particular brand machine, you will think less of
that brand. When there was only five or so brands, that were all
made in the US, the makers didn't mind trapping the consumer, but now
that machines are built all over the world, competition says that the
customer is now highly concerned about reliability, and won't even
bother try to find the most reliable one out of a selection of crap,
but will buy what they don't have to hassle with. Which one would you
pick?

I'm not sold completely on that commentary as it relates to _all_
machinery, however. I won't buy a Toyota Corolla or Honda Accord, or
any of the million clones, simply because everyone else has one, and
I can't find mine in a parking lot.

I fixed that by getting a bright yellow mass
market car with the best warranty around.

If you dont like that approach it would cost peanuts to
have a remotely controllable flashing light mounted on it.

I'm confident that I've acquired a less reliable automobile that reflects my personal taste in
transportation, and when the mass produced muck has passed on its appeal to much newer cars I'll
still be driving my own car, which retains its own appeal and uniqueness much longer.

You can have both, with decent reliability as well.

My previous car lasted 35 years with very little maintenance
at all, and only got binned because I was stupid enough to not
fix the leaking windscreen because it was only a trivial nuisance.

It wasn't uncommon to get comments like: "Cool car, what is it?" on my much older rides, from
folks of all ages.

I never got any of those, but thats likely because I only ever washed it
before the rego check because it was more likely to pass without quibble.

"Martin H. Eastburn" wrote in message
...
Or the plastic and pot metal unit isn't worth fixing.

I have some had electric tools that are of professional grade. Those I
will fix my self as long as I can. Most are 25 years old and have served
me for that long. One needs a thin shim sheet. Easy to replace. Not
available...

I paid high dollars for my wife to have a quality mixer. We started
getting better
flavor and mixed foods / cakes / whatnot. I got the options for it -
most -
and they will hold up to the years needed. But so many that I could have
gotten
won't last. Glad I did the right thing in the first place.

Was it a Total Blender?

http://www.willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe

You must be the guy who draws the "Dilbert" comic strip.


No but ask any engineer....Dilbert is fact, not fiction.

TMT

Karl S wrote:
On 14 Jan 2007 11:40:18 -0800, Too_Many_Tools wrote:

In my opinon, it is a symptom of a larger problem....

Companies are setting up the situation that you are forced to buy new
versus repair the used applicance, car, electronics, computers, cell
phones....because they make a larger profit.

The MBAs that are crafting the company policy are behind this.

You must be the guy who draws the "Dilbert" comic strip.

Too_Many_Tools wrote:
It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost. The engineers
then have to decide where to cut costs.


The engineers are TOLD by the MBA accountants where to cut costs.

Good designs are allowed to turn to bad designs to cut a fraction of a
penny.

The sooner the product dies after warranty, the sooner the customer
will be buying another NEW item.

As has been pointed out, the repair inventory is considered a "profit
center" which is code for gouge the customer if he wants to repair the
item.

And yes it IS a conspiracy....to get more of the public's money.

Doesnt happen like that with the chinese products.

Just another reason why bugger all is made in
the US anymore except for stuff like aircraft etc.


clare wrote:
On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 07:02:25 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

Ecnerwal wrote
Rick Brandt wrote

This raises an apparent contradiction.

Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances
to see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".

Or perhaps you havent.

The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable.

Yes. And so are the current ones too with the exception of plug
packs etc.

"This part always breaks eventually, we'll
isolate it and make it easy to replace".

That is just plain silly with domestic appliances. There is bugger
all except light bulbs that cant be designed to last indefinitely.

And even that has changed just recently too.

The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,

Oh bull****.

and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated
to render them effectively non-economic to repair.

More bull****. I've done just that fine with a modern electric
chainsaw.

"This part will (by design) break about 1 year after the warranty
runs out -

Not even possible.

It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost. The engineers
then have to decide where to cut costs. Sometimes they win, sometimes
you loose.
Cost to assemble dictates design more than sevicability. If they can
save a dollar in total per machine by making assembly easier (or by
cutting out a procedure, like de-burring drilled or stamped holes)
without increasing their warranty exposure, they do it.
This could all change OVERNIGHT if all the cheap B@$7@rds in North
America wouldn't insist on buying the cheapest whatever possible. If
there was a market for quality products at a price that companys
could afford to build them and sell them for, quality goods would
still be available. That market just does not exist any more. If it
did, Wallmarts would be closing all over North America, instead of
continuing to displace the established specialty shops that used to
sell the "good stuff".

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Alan wrote in message
I think the main problem with today's appliances is that
they are NOT made so that they can be repaired.

I have an old toaster from the '40s or '50s. It is a
mechanical thing, not electronic, and is made of individual
parts that can be cleaned, oiled, and if you could get them,
replaced as needed. When something like this stops working,
less than an hour's work will set it up to run for another
25 years!

That old toaster probably cost about 3+ hours pay for a worker back then.
Today, I can buy one for 15 minutes pay. Really, Wal Mart has them for $8.
They can't make them that cheap and have them easily repairable too. I
doubt you can buy any war parts in there for that price anyway. Aside from
landfill problems, the new toaster is a pretty good deal.

Andrew VK3BFA wrote
William Noble wrote

nonrepairable is not the same as planned obsolescense.
A new product may be impossible to repair because it
uses custom electronics and special assembly techniques
but that doesn't mean it's planned to quit working in 3 years.

Yes it is - your wrong.

Nope.

Theres actually an engineering discipline devoted to this
subject - its called "Stress Engineering" ie how many
cycles can the door open and close before ir breaks

The reality is that that isnt done with domestic appliances.

- or, how many hours will the just adequate component get
stinking hot before it desolders itself from the circuit board.....

That aint designing it to fail just outside the warranty.

all things that most technicians are intimately familiar
with - (their called "bread and butter" faults..).
we used to make a living from them....

They werent deliberately designed in. Just lousy design.

the technically difficult repairs that took EONS you did
for self satisfaction and lost money on - that was ok
when there was enough of the other stuff to make a living.

The whole societal mindset has changed - most of my customers now
are "mature aged" and have the life long expectation that when thing
breaks, it gets fixed. The younger ones - don't even bother, they
EXPECT it to break soon after the warranty ends (thats BONUS time!)
and will not even think about getting it repaired....

Because it makes not sense to spend a high percentage of the cost of
a new VCR repairing an existing one. The new one gets a new warranty.

Modern manufacturing methods - them too - snap together plastic
assemblies designed for easy assembly with no thought for subsequent
servicing (hey, nuts and bolts cost MONEY) - done by unskilled, low
wage workers to whom a screwdriver is probably a complex machine tool.

And most of that stuff just doesnt fail, most obviously
with plug packs and molded power cords.

Modern circuit boards - SMD components, machine assembled,
wave soldered - give VERY high reliability due lack of "operator error"

Nope, due to the technology.

but again, virtually impossible to repair without specialist equipment -
fine if your in aerospace, or medical, or industrial where you have
the margins, but not domestic stuff. (and thats assuming the
complex in house LSI IC is even available - it usually isnt...)

And they hardly ever need to be repaired too.

And the manufacturers too - theres no money in servicing, 10,000 TV
sets can be ordered, delivered to the customers distribution centre
straight off the boat all from one person sitting in front of a PC -
no warehouses, spare parts stock, skilled staff to manage the
spare parts, service data to manage, field service staff to
control, cost of running a service centre....

And those arent designed to fail just outside the warranty.

Same for service data - costs too much. Its easier to replace
something under warranty irrespective of the fault, crush it, and
claim it as a tax loss than maintain a service centre with skilled techs,,,,

The reality is that costs a lot less to stamp out another in the
asian factory than it can ever cost to have a first world tech fix it.

Sooo - this leaves people like us - slightly demented, do it
yourselfers, who machine bits out of aluminum to replace a broken
plastic bracket (thats why I got into this bizarre metalworking world)
- people who will spend DAYS chasing a generic replacement, who,
when they see something of a similar model in the dumpster, will
rescue it to take home for spares.....

Do I complain - yeh, fer sure. Would I do anything else - no way,
I enjoy the challenge. Learning new skills, being rat cunning and
devious, figuring out how to beat the obsolescence game....its fun
(mostly) Pity it barely pays the bills - fortunately the house is paid
for, the kids are off our hands (mostly) and I dont lust after a turbo
Porsche...(now, more tools - thats different...)

And they are dirt cheap now.

And when my generation goes - thats it, cant
see anyone choosing to do this to make a living.

Corse they wont.

Sitting at a service station console taking money for gasoline pays better.

And so do almost everything else too.

The only industries where you CAN make good money servicing a-

1.Where the machine itself costs LOTS of money,
so the repair is a small part of the cost
2.Where people are standing idle because the machine is down

Even that is arguable, an operation like that should have decent redundancy.

3 There is some sort of "voodoo mystique" about it (medical is a good example)

Ah, that feels SO much better ..........

Andrew VK3BFA.

"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message
ps.com...
In my opinon, it is a symptom of a larger problem....

Companies are setting up the situation that you are forced to buy new
versus repair the used applicance, car, electronics, computers, cell
phones....because they make a larger profit.

Only partly true. Do you want to keep your computer forever? Do you think
you'd be on line here if you still had that 286 processor? We lived for
centuries with no computer but having one is a choice we make. I bought a
new refrigerator with the money saved on the electric bill by getting rid of
the old one. Sometimes, new really is better.

The *only* kitchen item made of SS currently tarnishing in my kitchen is
my pizza wheel. I'm not terribly upset....
JR
Dweller in the cellar

wrote:

Rod Speed wrote:

Too_Many_Tools wrote:


In my opinon...no.

I dont believe it happens in the sense that its actually possible
to design something to fail early and still have a viable product.

And there is plenty of stuff that clearly aint anything to do
with planned obsolescence at all. Most obviously with stuff
as basic as bread knives which are all metal. Those wont
even need to be replaced when the handle gives out.

And heaps of kitchen stuff is now stainless steel, which
will last forever compared with the older tinplate crap.


I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

Works fine with some things, but can bite. I just replaced
the switch in the vaccuum cleaner which is about 40 years
old. Cost peanuts and was very easy to find a new one.

The big 9¼" hand held circular saw that I built the house with
35 years ago has just seen the power switch fail and that is
no longer available from the manufacturer. Fortunately its
failed on so the saw is still usable tho more dangerous.
It uses blades with a 1?" hole. The current blades have
1" holes with washers which allow smaller shafts but no
easy way to use them on my old saw. There doesnt appear
to be any readily available source of different collets for that.

Just had the chain adjuster failed on a dirt cheap relatively
new electric chainsaw. I assumed that they wouldnt bother
to supply parts like that, but I was wrong, readily available
and in fact free. Clearly no planned obsolescence there.

And power tools are now so cheap that they are very viable
to buy even for just one job. I had to cut a copper pipe thats
buried in the ground and it costs peanuts to buy a very decent
jigsaw to cut it, just to avoid having to dig a bigger hole around
where I needed to cut it. Its been fine for other stuff since,
no evidence that its going to die any time soon. Could well get
40 years out of that too like I did with most of the power tools
that I used to build the house.

Cars in spades. I've just replaced my 35 year old car that I was
too stupid to fix the windscreen leak with which eventually produced
rust holes in the floor which wont pass our registration check.
While its possible to plate the holes, I cant be bothered, I intended
to drive that car into the ground and decided that that had happened.
No evidence that the replacement new car wont last as long. Its
certainly got more plastic, most obviously with the bumper bars that
the new one doesnt have, but that mostly due to modern crumple
zones, not due to planned obsolescence and might save my life etc.

People were raving on about planned obsolescence when
I built the house and I've had very little that has ever needed
replacement apart from basic stuff like light bulbs and the
occassional failure of stuff like elements in the oven etc.

More below.


Irreparable damage
By Bryce Baschuk
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 9, 2007

Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the
Procter Appliance Service shop in Silver Spring.

That isnt planned obsolescence, thats the fact that its a
lot cheaper to pay a very low wage asian to make you
a new one than it ever is to pay a first world monkey to
repair your existing one with all but quite trivial faults.


"You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you
could years ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven,
refrigerator and washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything
has changed in the appliance business."

It has indeed, but not because of planned obsolescence.


Mr. Jones recently sold his home in Laurel and is in the
process of moving to Bluffton, S.C., with his wife, Jeannette.

Sob sob.


Mr. Jones is one of the many Washington-area repairmen who have
struggled to stay afloat as residents replace, not repair, old appliances.

Because its generally better value to replace.


"It's a dying trade," said Scott Brown, Webmaster of www.fixitnow.com
and self-proclaimed "Samurai Appliance Repairman."

Wota ****ing ******. Bet he doesnt disembowel himself when he ****s up.


The reason for this is twofold, Mr. Brown said: The cost
of appliances is coming down because of cheap overseas
labor and improved manufacturing techniques,

So much for your silly line about planned obsolescence.


and repairmen are literally dying off.

They arent in other industrys that are still viable,
most obviously with cars and trucks and houses.


The average age of appliance technicians is 42, and there are few
young repairmen to take their place, said Mr. Brown, 47. He has
been repairing appliances in New Hampshire for the past 13 years.

He should have had a clue 13 years ago.
The writing was on the wall long before that.


In the next seven years, the number of veteran appliance
repairmen will decrease nationwide as current workers retire
or transfer to other occupations, the Department of Labor
said in its 2007 Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Must be rocket scientist shinybums.


The federal agency said many prospective repairmen prefer work
that is less strenuous and want more comfortable working conditions.

They actually prefer a decent income.

That claimed 'prefer work that is less strenuous and want more
comfortable working conditions' clearly hasnt affect car, truck or
house repair and the construction industry etc. Tho there will
always be some of that with a 5% unemployment rate.


Local repairmen said it is simply a question of economics.
"Nowadays appliances are cheap, so people are just getting new ones,"

Yep, only a fool wouldnt if the new one costs about
the same as the cost of repairing the old one.


said Paul Singh, a manager at the Appliance Service Depot, a repair
shop in Northwest. "As a result, business has slowed down a lot."

"The average repair cost for a household appliance is $50 to $350,"
said Shahid Rana, a service technician at Rana Refrigeration, a repair
shop in Capitol Heights. "If the repair is going to cost more than
that, we usually tell the customer to go out and buy a new one."

Must be rocket scientist apes.


It's not uncommon for today's repairmen to condemn an appliance
instead of fixing it for the sake of their customers' wallets.

If they decide to repair an appliance that is likely to break
down again, repairmen are criticized by their customers
and often lose business because of a damaged reputation.

Mr. Jones said he based his repair decisions on the 50 percent
rule: "If the cost of service costs more than 50 percent of the price
of a new machine, I'll tell my customers to get a new one."

What makes a lot more sense is to factor in the failure rate of that appliance.


"A lot of customers want me to be honest with them, so I'll tell them
my opinion and leave the decision making up to them," he said.

In recent years, consumers have tended to buy new
appliances when existing warranties expire rather than
repair old appliances, the Department of Labor said.

Hardly surprising given that they are now so cheap.


Mr. Brown acknowledged this trend. "Lower-end appliances which you
can buy for $200 to $300 are basically throwaway appliances," he said.
"They are so inexpensive that you shouldn't pay to get them repaired."
"The quality of the materials that are being made aren't lasting,"

Pig ignorant silly stuff.


Mr. Jones said. "Nowadays you're seeing more plastic

I had some reservations about my 35 year old
dishwasher that does have a plastic liner. Its lasted fine.


and more circuit boards, and they aren't holding up."

Bull****.


Many home appliances sold in the United States
are made in Taiwan, Singapore, China and Mexico.

And now china.


"Nothing is made [in the United States] anymore," Mr. Jones said.
"But then again, American parts are only better to a point,
a lot of U.S. companies are all about the dollar."

Fortunately for the next generation of repairmen, some of today's
high-end appliances make service repairs the most cost-effective option.

The Department of Labor concurred. "Over the next decade, as more
consumers purchase higher-priced appliances designed to have much
longer lives, they will be more likely to use repair services than to
purchase new appliances," said the 2007 Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Bet that will have **** all effect on the employment prospects.


Modern, energy-efficient refrigerators
can cost as much as $5,000 to $10,000,

Pig ignorant drivel. You can buy plenty of modern energy efficient
fridges for a hell of a lot less than that. I've done just that a month ago.


and with such a hefty price tag, throwing one away is not an option.

Bet the fools stupid enough to buy those will anyway.


In some cases, repairmen can help consumers reduce the
amount of aggravation that a broken appliance will cause.

Consider the time and effort it takes to shop for a new appliance, wait
for its delivery, remove the old one and get the new one installed.

I did mine in 30 mins total, literally.


In addition, certain appliances such as ovens and
washing machines can be a bigger hassle to replace
because they are connected to gas and water lines.

Just changed washing machines over too, with a free
one I inherited. Changing the water over took minutes too.


"It takes your time, it takes your effort, and if you don't
install the new appliance, you'll have to hire a service
technician to install it anyways," Mr. Brown said.

Only the incompetant fools that cant change the washing machine over.


Some consumers bond with their appliances like old pets,
and for loyalty or sentimental reasons, refuse to let them go.

Mr. Rana said some of his clients have appliances that are
more than 30 years old. It makes sense, he said. "A lot of old
refrigerators are worth fixing because they give people good service.

Wrong, those are normally lousy energy efficiency.


They just don't make things like they used to."

Yeah, they make them much better today energy efficiency wise.

And much better design wise too with the shelves and bins etc too.


did you know theres all qualitys of stainless, some will last literaLLY
FOREVER not so for kitchen stainless, try a magnet on stainless the
better quality is non magnetic



--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Home Page: http://www.seanet.com/~jasonrnorth
If you're not the lead dog, the view never changes
Doubt yourself, and the real world will eat you alive
The world doesn't revolve around you, it revolves around me
No skeletons in the closet; just decomposing corpses
--------------------------------------------------------------
Dependence is Vulnerability:
--------------------------------------------------------------
"Open the Pod Bay Doors please, Hal"
"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.."

"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message
oups.com...

It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost. The engineers
then have to decide where to cut costs.


The engineers are TOLD by the MBA accountants where to cut costs.

Good designs are allowed to turn to bad designs to cut a fraction of a
penny.

The sooner the product dies after warranty, the sooner the customer
will be buying another NEW item.

From their competitor? What manufacturer wants to take that chance?


As has been pointed out, the repair inventory is considered a "profit
center" which is code for gouge the customer if he wants to repair the
item.

If you have to stock, for thirty years, a part that exists only on a
small handful of machines out there, how much would that part _really_ cost
after overhead for that _entire_ period gets figured in? And since machines
change design every few years, there are simply thousands and thousands of
parts all in the same situation. It's for that reason I quit bitching about
the prices of replacement parts at car dealers. I may pay more, but I'm
assured that it will be there more so than any other source. That assurance
costs money.


And yes it IS a conspiracy....to get more of the public's money.

I'm calling you out on that one. Perhaps if all the brands and
manufacturers of appliances were consolidated so much that they _had_ to be
in cahoots, I'd be more inclined to believe you, but your appliances are
built all over the world now, by a variety of companies competing hard for
your business, not just once, but again and again, and that means that one
company with a good product will never say a word to a competitor about how
they do a better job. I certainly wouldn't, and the way to make money in
appliances is to build a better product that gives the customer the value
for the dollar they are willing to pay. Folks that want a top of the line
appliance will pay extra for the appearance of better quality, and if it can
be proved they're getting their money's worth, they'll spend even more.
What it costs me when a product fails, wastes my time, and the hassle and
frustration of resolving the situation, means far more to me than the
initial cost of a product. I've paid that price too many times, as I'm sure
we all have at one time or another, so back to the point of the most bang
for my buck is why companies competing for my precious dollar will not
conspire with each other. All it takes is for one of them to refuse to
conspire and the conspirators lose, leaving that one to earn my money.


TMT

On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 18:19:24 GMT, "Rick Brandt"
wrote:

Ecnerwal wrote:
In article ,
"Rick Brandt" wrote:

This raises an apparent contradiction.

Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances to
see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".

The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable. "This
part always breaks eventually, we'll isolate it and make it easy to
replace".

The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated to render them
effectively non-economic to repair. [snip]

What you say speaks to the issue of why did we repair in the past and why don't
we repair now, but it says nothing about the comparable reliability. If
appliances in the past were "built to be repaired" that can be interpretted to
mean that failures were expected. If failures were expected and people could
make a living performing those repairs then that suggests that the appliances
were not that reliable.



The main reason we don't repair modern electronic appliances is that
the cost of parts and labour to carry out the repairs is often nearly
as much (or more) than the appliance cost new. Why would anyone pay
for a repair on an item, which may be as good as new when repaired,
when a brand new item may only cost a little more. The new item also
comes with a new warranty.

This will only change when the standard of living in countries
producing the majority of appliances goes up considerably thus making
the cost of producing items more expensive.

However, along with that, in order to make them economical to repair,
they must also be designed for accessibility to components such that
they can physically be repaired. Designing in repairability also adds
a bit to the cost of production.

Personally, I am all in favour of repairability if for no other reason
than it saves energy and resources across the board.

Alan wrote:
On 14 Jan 2007 18:19:35 GMT,
(Michael Black) wrote:

snip

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


Planned obsolescence has been a tenet of the automobile
industry since the '30s. General Motors, in particular
used styling to make a 2 or 3 year-old-car look "old" and in
need of replacement with a newly styled model.

A bigger engine, prettier colors, new styles, all those
things are at the heart of 'planned obsolescence.'


Well, when i was growing up having a car at 100K miles meant it was shot
and junk. Cars routinely go 150/200K miles if there properly maintained
and not some boner motor or tranny combo (always exceptions to the rule).

Electronics, while in some respects is miles ahead do to large scale
integration has its own issues. Heat build up has caused many devices to
fail from bad solder joints or component failure. Electronic CRT chassis
are so flimsy that if you take the chassis out the plastic wont support
the CRT. So progress is both good and bad. CD players have lasers that
get dirty and get tossed long before the actual laser diode is gone.

Bob


----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

Ross Herbert wrote:
On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 18:19:24 GMT, "Rick Brandt"
wrote:

Ecnerwal wrote:
In article ,
"Rick Brandt" wrote:

This raises an apparent contradiction.

Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances to
see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".

The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable.
"This part always breaks eventually, we'll isolate it and make it
easy to replace".

The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated to render them
effectively non-economic to repair. [snip]

What you say speaks to the issue of why did we repair in the past
and why don't we repair now, but it says nothing about the
comparable reliability. If appliances in the past were "built to be
repaired" that can be interpretted to mean that failures were
expected. If failures were expected and people could make a living
performing those repairs then that suggests that the appliances were
not that reliable.



The main reason we don't repair modern electronic appliances is that
the cost of parts and labour to carry out the repairs is often nearly
as much (or more) than the appliance cost new. Why would anyone pay
for a repair on an item, which may be as good as new when repaired,
when a brand new item may only cost a little more. The new item also
comes with a new warranty.

This will only change when the standard of living in countries
producing the majority of appliances goes up considerably
thus making the cost of producing items more expensive.

It wont change even then, the manufacture
will just move on to new low cost countrys.

That has already happened a number of times now.

However, along with that, in order to make them economical
to repair, they must also be designed for accessibility to
components such that they can physically be repaired.

Not necessarily. You can replace components, like
you do with cell phone batterys most obviously.

Designing in repairability also adds a bit to the cost of production.

Not much tho, again most obviously with cellphones.

Personally, I am all in favour of repairability if for no other
reason than it saves energy and resources across the board.

Its a tiny part of world energy consumption.

Carl McIver wrote:
"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message
oups.com...

It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants
over-ruling engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost.
The engineers then have to decide where to cut costs.


The engineers are TOLD by the MBA accountants where to cut costs.

Good designs are allowed to turn to bad designs to cut a fraction of
a penny.

The sooner the product dies after warranty, the sooner the customer
will be buying another NEW item.

From their competitor? What manufacturer wants to take that
chance?

As has been pointed out, the repair inventory is considered a "profit
center" which is code for gouge the customer if he wants to repair
the item.

If you have to stock, for thirty years, a part that exists only on
a small handful of machines out there, how much would that part
_really_ cost after overhead for that _entire_ period gets figured
in? And since machines change design every few years, there are
simply thousands and thousands of parts all in the same situation. It's for that reason I quit
bitching about the prices of replacement
parts at car dealers. I may pay more, but I'm assured that it will
be there more so than any other source. That assurance costs money.


And yes it IS a conspiracy....to get more of the public's money.

I'm calling you out on that one. Perhaps if all the brands and
manufacturers of appliances were consolidated so much that they _had_
to be in cahoots, I'd be more inclined to believe you, but your
appliances are built all over the world now, by a variety of
companies competing hard for your business, not just once, but again
and again, and that means that one company with a good product will
never say a word to a competitor about how they do a better job. I
certainly wouldn't, and the way to make money in appliances is to
build a better product that gives the customer the value for the
dollar they are willing to pay. Folks that want a top of the line
appliance will pay extra for the appearance of better quality, and if
it can be proved they're getting their money's worth, they'll spend
even more. What it costs me when a product fails, wastes my time, and
the hassle and frustration of resolving the situation, means far more
to me than the initial cost of a product. I've paid that price too
many times, as I'm sure we all have at one time or another, so back
to the point of the most bang for my buck is why companies competing
for my precious dollar will not conspire with each other. All it
takes is for one of them to refuse to conspire and the conspirators
lose, leaving that one to earn my money.

The trouble is that there is no easy to way get a real handle on what
products on offer will last significantly longer with most appliances.

And its arguable how many really care that much about that sort of
thing now with the appliances so cheap and so trivially affordable.

Bob Urz wrote:
Alan wrote:
On 14 Jan 2007 18:19:35 GMT,
(Michael Black) wrote:

snip

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.)

Planned obsolescence has been a tenet of the automobile
industry since the '30s. General Motors, in particular
used styling to make a 2 or 3 year-old-car look "old" and in need of replacement with a newly
styled model.

A bigger engine, prettier colors, new styles, all those
things are at the heart of 'planned obsolescence.'

Well, when i was growing up having a car at 100K miles meant it was
shot and junk. Cars routinely go 150/200K miles if there properly maintained

And they dont need much maintenance either,
most obviously with suspension lubrication etc.

and not some boner motor or tranny combo (always exceptions to the rule).

Electronics, while in some respects is miles ahead do to large scale integration has its own
issues.

Not really.

Heat build up has caused many devices to fail from bad solder joints or component failure.

That doesnt happen much anymore and it isnt mostly
the large scale integration where that happens anyway.

Electronic CRT chassis are so flimsy that if you take the chassis out the plastic wont support the
CRT.

Doesnt need to, the CRT is the guts of the system everything is attached to.

So progress is both good and bad.

Not much bad with electronics.

CD players have lasers that get dirty and get tossed long before the actual laser diode is gone.

And even DVD burners are now so cheap that its just a yawn.