A friend’s state of the art stainless steel refrigerator/freezer quit cooling after a few years and diagnosis found that a ‘module’ that controlled defrosting and frost free operation had failed and was no longer available from the manufacturer. Another friend had a similar refrigerator with a similar problem and the store that sold it to her warranted the unit by replacing it with another brand of similar size. The manufacturer refused to take any responsibility.
I enjoy my current frost free refrigerator with an ice maker and I was amazed that it only cost about $200 more than the cheapest stripped down models. The current appliance was bought about 5 years ago when the ice maker on the <10 year old previous unit began to freeze up and the cost of repair was excessive. At my age and living without kids I don’t know why I spent the extra $200 though. I haven’t used a dozen ice cubes in the past month and when I have friends over for a cook out I buy enough crushed ice to take care of things.
My complaint with modern(?) appliances and vehicles seems to be the inter connectiveness of the technological bells and whistles. Like the now infamous debacle of Boeing 787s the improvements aren’t add-ons that can be immediately disabled to allow operation without them the designers feel compelled to make their improvement totally overwhelm the system it should improve. No computerized transmission should ever be built that locks itself in third gear to limp home due to the failure of a non critical component. Gate shifting should be able to over ride the limp mode and the flight crew should have had an easily accessible switch to immediately shut down all non pilot controlled inputs.
Yep, our fancy fridge died at about 13 years old. Actually, it had died and been repaired once, and ever since the original repair, it kept freezing stuff my wife didn’t want frozen. So, after my wife complained about frozen lettuce for about 5 years, we got a new one. The ice maker on the new one sounds like breaking plastic, and I’ve found bits of black plastic in the ice from time to time. Oh well!
We’ve had the same washer and dryer for 20 years. I’ve replaced things on them, electric motors, heating elements. We were going to bite the bullet and replace them both when the washer quit, but a salesman at a local appliance store actually talked my wife out of it. He said he could repair it easily and the newer units didn’t last as long. Why he was nice enough to lose a sale on a new washer and dryer in lieu of a $150 repair job, I have no idea. But I gladly paid him, and it goes without saying where I’ll buy my next appliance!
It’s difficult to say if new cars are similar. I believe the engine, trans, etc will be fine. But it’s hard to imagine all the extraneous electronics and “infotainment” stuff lasting 20 years. I’m trying to imagine what will be used as an old farm / beater truck 30 years from now…
I had to replace the heating element on my Samsung dryer a couple months ago. Wasn’t difficult job. That heating element is used in many many different dryer manufacturers. No one seems to do their own designs anymore. They just buy existing parts and put them together.
Companies with that type of customer service are rare these days. I too would be sending him all my business.
We had a warranty issue with our Samsung washer. The top was rusting. Warranty work was performed by “Dish”. Yes the Satellite company.
It wasn’t too many years ago, that we thought that a car’s expected life was 10 years or 100,000 miles. I’m curious as to what kind of life people expect out of a car now? i’ve seen posts on here complaining that a car needs a repair, “and it only has 157,000 miles on it”. I’ve held myself back from saying “just how long do you expect this complex electro-mechanical device to go without repairs”?
As far as appliances go, i used to repair my own, and kept them going for very long periods. now that i can’t do that kind of work anymore, i’ve found it pretty much impossible to get appliance service at a reasonable cost. I’ve gotten to the point, that if something breaks, i simply get a new one. what do others do?
I expect 200k miles give or take before a major repair (transmission usually in my case).
Appliances…if I can figure out how, I’ll repair them myself. There’s a YouTube video for everything under the sun. In the last case I mentioned, we intended to buy new but let the appliance store repair the washer. I figured I owed them the $150 since they saved me 2 grand!
When I was piling on miles working (my wife, too) I would have expected at least 300,000 miles.
Now that my driving has been cut down by retirement, my expectation for longevity has turned to age (vehicle age) rather than miles. My Dodge Caravan is 24 model-years old and is one “daily” driver when we are in the south. Age will finally take it out, not miles.
Appliance repairs? Appliances are as easy or easier to DIY repair than cars! Hats off to AppliancePartsPro ! for making parts readily available and very reasonably priced. I keep appliances longer than I keep cars. It’s a challenge I accept. CSA
My washing machine timer went out and I bent a contact and continued to use it by manually backing it up to re-run a second rinse. That didn’t last long and the $200 part prompted me to buy a new machine
List of earlier products easily repaired:
Automobile: King Midget with recoil starter
Washing machine:. Wash board
Clothes dryer: clothes line
Refrigerator: Coolerator ice box
Radio: crystal set–only requires periodic cat whisker adjustment
Heating source: coal stove
Record player:. Acoustically amplified crank Victrola
I actually saw most of these low maintenance easily repaired devices in use in my lifetime. We did have a washboard around the house that had belonged to my grandmother. My mother did have a wringer washing machine. However, I was 9 years old before she had a clothes dryer. We had an outside clothes line and a clothesline in the basement. Our neighbors had an icebox. The husband would come home with a block of ice every other day. The first house I lived in was heated with a coal furnace. There was a damper control that operated a chain to the furnace in the basement. Our neighbors had a coal heating stove. I put together.a crystal radio kit–no batteries, no tubes or transistors. The record player in my school was a crank operated Victrola. There was a King Midget that roamed the streets of my town in the late 1950s.
Coal is no longer available in my community. The ice plant was abandoned, but has recently been remodeled to a great restaurant and bar that offers all kinds of craft beers.
Oh, one more thing: we had a reel mower which had no engine. I.mowed with this mower from the time I was 7 until we got a power mower a couple of years later.
I don’t think the “good old days” with the simple equipment was that great.
Look at it from another way the (good old day’s) that you just wrote about & like you I have seen & used every thing you said all but the crytal radio The wash board was also used to make music but was there anything in that list that could not be fixed or hard to find part’s for I would not want to go back to those day’s.
I used to mow with a reel mower when I was a kid. Dad wasn’t very good at keeping it properly greased, and I didn’t know you were supposed to. That meant it would bind from time to time and suckerpunch me in the stomach. I learned to have a healthy distaste for manual devices largely because of that stupid yellow torture-mower.
I also remember TVs before they had remote controls. Actually, I should rephrase that, because I was the remote control. “Shadowfax, get up and go turn on the TV and turn off the family room lights. Family Ties is on.” Now I do the same thing, only I tell a computer, and it does all the work without any forced child labor.
And on cars, I remember when my neighbor got herself a nifty white Corvette with a red interior. It had electric windows! I’d never seen such a thing. I thought it a fantastic extravagance - really cool but why would anyone ever need it?
Now I get annoyed if any of the 4 windows in a car lacks auto up and down functions. I’ve gotten soft.
You overlooked quill pens and Palmetto fans @Triedaq.
My objection to current technology is a great deal of what we are sold is just bells and whistles, gimmicks and flim flam. The mindset that brought us the Cadillac 4-6-8 engine continues to provide us with awe inspiring kaleidescopes of costly razzle dazzle with little benefit to the buyer.
The limo company for which I worked one summer had one Caddy with that engine, which I nicknamed the V-8-6-4-zero engine.
Because I was the rookie, I got stuck with that dog, and when I complained to the boss about almost being flattened by an 18-wheeler because the damn thing just wouldn’t accelerate properly, he told me that it needed to be warmed-up for at least 30 minutes–even in the summer.
That helped… maybe… 10%, but it was still a grossly-underpowered dog.
@shadowfax. The school I attended from second grade through eighth grade had “modern technology”. The building was built in 1924 and housed grades 1 through 12. The toilets in the restrooms had spring loaded seats. When one sat on the toilet, the seat actuated a valve which filled a tank. When one got off the seat, the seat popped up and the tank emptied, thus flushing the toilet. For the urinals, there was an overhead tank which would fill with water. When the tank was full, a valve would open and discharge the water through the urinals. Thus, flushing was done automatically. I think at the time the building was built, 1924, many students came from homes that didn’t have indoor plumbing, and probably weren’t use to flushing a toilet. Many public restrooms today have self flushing facilities. I don’t think many people today grew up in homes without indoor plumbing , it is just that operating a flush handle to them is like driving a manual transmission car. Also, the valve handles on the sinks in my old school were spring loaded so you had to manually hold them on to get a stream of water. In public restrooms today, you put your hands under the faucet and it turns on automatically and turns off when you remove your hands
The other modern technology in my old school was a radio system that could send, from a central radio located in the principal’s office and a speaker in each classroom so a radio broadcast could be sent to one or more classrooms. The system had been abandoned when I started there in im1948. The teacher brought a portable radio to class if we were to listen to a radio program At the university where I taught, a system was installed in 1984 which could pipe a video from the library to any classroom. When I retired in 2011, the system was rarely used. We brought our laptop computers to the classroom and hooked them to a projector.
Technology changes and yet history repeats itself.
On the other hand, it wouldn’t hurt kids every once in a while to have to get up and turn the channel or turn the outside antenna to try and get better reception instead of complaining about the WiFi being down! Or go get the firewood for the night once it’s bedtime. Man, I sound crotchety for 45, don’t I? But I do wonder if some of the modern conveniences doesn’t hurt your DIY ability later on. The more that’s done for us, the less we have to think about or do ourselves. Which is a good thing…and maybe a bad thing too… You probably learned why that reel mower tended to bind, and you probably learned how to fix it so it wouldn’t. So there’s a positive outcome. A “learning experience” as our parents used to say!
I’ve got to get my kids a little more involved in home chores like mowing, changing oil, etc. If I don’t, they may never learn. I’m just apprehensive because they are so different than I was. My truck’s manual windows blow their minds! On the other hand, they sometimes have to help me with finding stuff on our “smart” tv now that we’ve dropped cable. So now instead of, “kids, change the channel”, it’s “kids, errr, what did you change in the tv and why is Roku not working?”
I didn’t have to change the channel very often when I was a kid. We only had 4 channels, 2 of which were PBS. 4 was cbs, 9 was nbc, and both 2 and 12 were pbs and were identical. It’s funny I still remember that, I’ll probably never forget.
@Scrapyard_John. You are the same age as my son. I think in a different generation. In my old school I mentioned in an earlier post, we didn’t have thermostatically controlled heat. When it got too cold in the classroom, somebody opened the valve for the steam radiator and when the room was too warm, somebody had to close the valve.
My son sort of rebelled against bells and whistles. When he was first married and bought a refrigerator, he bought a side by side with a through the door ice dispenser and a cold water faucet. The ice maker never did work right. The compressor quit right after the warranty expired and was a $476 repair. He sold the house and he and his wife and daughter live in a condo. He left the refrigerator with the house and bought a simple refrigerator with no ice maker. He and his wife have really downsized. He is of the opinion that less is better–less space and less maintenance.
I dunno. That’s how the urinals worked in my middle school, and that was in the 80’s. I think it’s just because (as I learned when my then 6-year-old nephew stayed with us for awhile) kids often forget to flush toilets.
Nope. Instead I learned to wait for the gut-punch and then claim injury and stop mowing.
I think your second paragraph points to why we shouldn’t worry too much. Yeah, kids aren’t learning to adjust antennas or fix reel mowers anymore. But on the other hand they’re learning to natively work with modern technology, and in the end, that’s going to be more important. Even mechanics have to master computers nowadays. My dealership offered to program various dealer-only settings on my car about a week after I bought it. For a fee, of course. The guy was very surprised when I told him I’d already done it. “but… But how?” Well, I have an OBD reader and a phone, and grabbed the app that lets me modify dealer settings.
So, I may not have ever properly fixed a reel mower, but I can change the volume of my blinker clicks and activate the remote controlled auto-down for the windows.
