[cc439]

>I do know one company that has a reputation for not doing this. Miele in Europe but then their appliances are double to triple the price of typical companies.

I think Miele serves as an excellent example for why the market has moved away from designing products with a 30+ year expected service life. If the average modern appliance lasts for 5-10 years as this article claims (and has proven true time and time again in my experience) but the reliable brand costs 2-3x more, you would have to be absolutely certain that the "reliable" product will actually last at least 20-30 years if you are to ever make up for the initial cost premium.

The problem is that even the most well built appliances will have random part failures and the chance of a failure happening (25-50% IME) over a span of 30 years is high enough that it has to be treated as an inevitability. Even if the parts are available that far in the future, the cost of having a technician diagnose the failure ensures the repair will cost at least $150 in labor alone and the average cost for any appliance repair with parts included is somewhere between $300 and $400 in my experience.

My point is that the "cheap and unreliable" appliance is almost always a financially sound choice even though it leads to a graveyard of dead appliances over time. The real problem is that graveyard of broken appliances we leave behind by making the financially sound decision to buy an appliance we know will only last ~10 years at best.

[r00fus]

There's another factor to this - the US homeownership has gone down over the years, and will likely go lower.

More renters = even less incentive for reliable products, as the cheapest install that works is sufficient to rent.

[Arizhel]

Not necessarily. The problem here is that many appliances are the property of the landlord, and it's their responsibility to repair or replace them. Landlords who buy cheap junk appliances that need quick replacement are going to see their profits wiped out.

I really don't see how home ownership is a factor here at all. This is just a symptom of modern society where people don't expect things to last and don't penalize mfgrs who sell them short-lived junk, and instead look for generally the cheapest stuff.

[r00fus]

> Landlords who buy cheap junk appliances that need quick replacement are going to see their profits wiped out.

Have you rented recently? I can tell you from my own experience (US/Ca and Ut) as well as family/friends who don't own - that often landlords (or property management companies hired to manage the rental) much prefer "new,shiny,cheap".