Comment on Samsung brings ads to US fridges
floo@retrolemmy.com 8 hours ago
When I was at Home Depot, I absolutely refused to sell Samsung appliances. They’re garbage. They’re expensive garbage, to be more precise.
The average failure rate for a Samsung refrigerator is that around three years. The condensers are garbage. Washer in the dryer? Average around five years before they break. I know, because I keep people coming back in to buy replacement appliances for their Samsung garbage.
Meanwhile, my parents have some old random branded washer and dryer from the 90s that still works today. A few years ago they replaced a part, something to do with draining. Cost them all of 40 bucks and a couple hours.
They truly, and intentionally, don’t make em like they used to.
That’s just survivorship bias. You can absolutely still get reliable appliances that are cheap to repair. I’ve had to replace a few parts on my Maytag dryer (because my wife abuses it), and I only paid like $30 for a coil assembly and replacement sensors. My washer is still going strong after 10 years.
They’re often expensive, but so were reliable appliances in the good ol days. The main problem is that people want relatively cheap stuff, and that cheap stuff is made with cheap parts that don’t last as long.
Appliances used to be major purchases, and the modern consumer wants a cheap new appliance now instead of saving up for months.
The main problem is that people want relatively cheap stuff, and that cheap stuff is made with cheap parts that don’t last as long.
That’s a problem, but these days the new problem is that even the expensive stuff is often still cheaply made and just dressed up with “premium” features and styling (that’s also cheap to implement, but artificially withheld from the lower-end models to punish people who pay less).
You can absolutely still get reliable appliances that are cheap to repair.
If you look hard enough, yes, but the other issue is that the shit I described above sells for the same price as quality but costs less to make, which means the glorified trash is more profitable. Even when companies care about their long-term reputation and don’t succumb to that pressure to enshittify, they’ll be out-competed by those that do and eventually go bankrupt or get bought out by private equity and forced to do it anyway. The market is littered with examples of companies that had great reputations for “buy it for life” products, until all of a sudden they didn’t anymore.
Planned obsolescence is very real and one of the reasons we can’t have nice things.
Yes, but the other poster is correct with the other half of the argument. Right now at this very moment in history, appliances are the cheapest adjusted for the median household income than they’ve ever been. Why? Because that’s what consumers demand. The manufacturer knows full well they can’t make a durable machine at the price point consumers are willing to pay, but it’s okay for them because they also know consumers will happily buy another one in 5 years.
Don’t like it? Buy a Speed Queen washer or dryer.
“But there’s no way in hell I’m paying $1449 just for a damn for a washing machine!!!”
Yeah, my point exactly. And theirs, too.
Guess what, my dudes and dudettes: That oldschool classic Kenmore or whatever-the-hell washer your parents had when you were growing up that’s still trucking? Adjusted for inflation, that’s about what it would cost in today’s money, give or take a couple of percent.
(I sourced that Sears pricing by stealing it from here, by the way. The management apologizes deeply in advance if you wind up pissing away your entire afternoon going all nostalgic over the contents of that link.)
That’s just not true. It’s not so much planned obsolescence as it’s companies making appliances to fit a price point and using lower quality parts to do so.
You can absolutely still buy appliances that will last decades, but they are expensive. 50 years ago you could absolutely buy a cheap washer that would need to be fixed frequently.
Are you suggesting that planned obsolescence doesn’t exist?
Yes sir
I have my great aunt’s Sunbeam waffle iron from the 50s and it still works great. Appliances used to be made to be repairable, and there were appliance repair shops all over the place
Survivorship bias, sort of. Some things were definitely made to be repairable, but a lot of stuff was made that way because it was the best option. We didn’t have cheap plastic manufacturing processes and one little logic board controlling everything, it was solid mechanical timer components.
And if they broke beyond reasonable repair, they were thrown out.
I am not going to say people should buy a Samsung appliance especially with this nonsense.
But you’re falling for, and propagating, a pretty common fallacy. it isn’t that Samsung appliances are significantly worse (Consumer Reports puts them in the bottom half of the ranking but they are very much “fine”). It is that people buy them a lot.
You see this with all kinds of brands. “Never buy Shark. Everyone who buys a Shark comes back and return it or buy a new vacuum in a few years”. It isn’t that Sharks are failing more than others (they are actually #1 or #2 according to CR, depending on the metrics). It is that they are what sell the most.
It also has to do with design/repairability. Samsung seems to go out of its way to design their products to be cost-prohibitive to repair and difficult/impossible to disassemble without damaging them. Lots of glue and brittle one-time-use clips. Lots of breakable switches and dials mounted on a custom mainboard.
The most crashed make and model of airplane in history is the Cessna 172.
The most popular make and model of airplane in history is the Cessna 172, in production since the 1950’s and some guy in Kansas is slapping one together as I speak.
I am communicating my experience. Nothing more.
I haven’t seen fans of Apple act this irrationally…
The condensers are garbage
Guessing you meant compressors. If their condenser tubing is faulty, it’s a potential fire hazard.
I made the mistake of buying a Samsung washer/dryer set in 2017. The washer actually still works and the seal has held up well, but the dryer drum jumped its tracks within the first year, and both have been plagued with gremlins.
Fuck Samsung appliances and honestly most things Samsung sells.
Hey, if you managed to keep that front gasket, clean with all of its weird folds, that is an accomplishment in end of itself
I know this is anecdotal but I bought a Samsung washer and dryer in 2013 and the dryer lasted 9yrs and the washer lasted 10. I did have to replace the heating element in the dryer around the 7yr mark but other than that they both were fine.
Congratulations. You didn’t get fucked. Like, I’m glad to hear it.
wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
Whenever appliances get brought up I always warn people to stay away from Samsung.
floo@retrolemmy.com 8 hours ago
Stay the fuck away from Samsung appliances. They’re very pretty, very expensive, and a pile of shit.
Do you want something like this sort of thing Samsung makes? Get an LG. They’re excellent. The refrigerators used to have a bunch of problems, but they fixed all that. And they make great laundry appliances, too.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
LG is getting greedy though. They removed the Permanent Press button so that you have to connect it to Wi-Fi and use the app to set that cycle. Same with “just rinse and spin”. The app is so unbearably slow that I was motivated to figure out how to set up a Home Assistant server and make my own custom dashboard to use in order to avoid interacting with that damn app.
The actual wash/dry performance is excellent, though.
Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
I’m going to say all LG laundry stuff must not be created equal. We have two washing machines at work and they both break every month . The only tech I can think of that’s worse are HP printers.
I fix ours (not my job, but it’s a good mental break from regular work), I start a new job next month and my boss asked what he should do about them.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
Meanwhile I have a pair of Kenmore 80 series washer and dryer. They’re more reliable than my own heart and lungs, and I can get parts for them when a knob or a lid switch goes bad once every decade or two.
floo@retrolemmy.com 6 hours ago
Yeah, that was also my experience when I was selling them. About 95% of them were great. And it was always this, like, 5% that just were not.
wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
I heard those linear compressors could be the best in the industry but they tended to fail. Did they finally fix that?
floo@retrolemmy.com 8 hours ago
The LG ones? Yeah, they did about 2 years ago. They’re also backwards compatible with all of their previous refrigerator, models, so if you have to get a replacement, it will actually work.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
I once had an LG washing machine that broke after less than five years. Not impressed.
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 7 hours ago
LG is positively vicious on clothes. Also, fun fact, it’ll run a gentle cycle with the water turned off. It only seems to notice water level on runs that do load sensing.
Miele, Bosch, or gtfo for cleaning appliances.
brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours ago
Stay away from Samsung. Period.
They’ve been on my boycott list for a long time.