[alkonaut]

This has a very simple reason: the cost of manufacturing has shrunk and the cost of repair has not. Because repairs require expensive people and manufacturing can take place with automation or cheap labor.

The worst offenders aren't large appliances, it's the cheap crap. If a store sells me an electric toothbrush for $79 and it breaks after a month shouln't just be required to replace it, it has to be worse than that to make products where even 1/1000 fail. And the result of such action would be that electric tooth brushes soon cost $200 instead of $79. But that's a good thing.

When I browse appliances or electronics, I want to know the lifespan. Not just the warranty. I want to know how long people actually use this particular product. And it can't just be based on some Amazon review system, it needs to be reliable and cover every seller. Like car mileage I need to have a decent idea about what to expect. And even if just 10% of product have this rating - that's also a good thing. It would mean less churn because manufacturers would be reluctant to replace an officially labeled product with a new one.

So we'd have longer lasting, rarely replaced models, more expensive products. Which is what we need.

[dist-epoch]

There is this person which repairs advanced electronics on youtube - motherboards, video cards, usb sticks, ...

At $70 per hour it doesn't take long for repair to become more expensive than a new item.

[zelse]

Northridgefix? Tronicsfix? TheCod3r? (Louis Rossmann, of old?)

There's several of them, but it really depends on the value of the device more than the cost. A lot of what Northridgefix repairs is valuable for the data being recovered more than anything, where the value proposition isn't clear. That said, if someone's paid $2000 for a GPU, I can understand their willingness to pay $300 to get someone to painstakingly microsolder some components back on.

[johannes1234321]

> When I browse appliances or electronics, I want to know the lifespan.

An approach for this is to switch from owning to renting.

Say you rent your washing machine for 1000 runs.

Consequence then is that you have predictable cost per run and since the vendor is responsible for maintenance and deposition, thus they have an interest in making the machine repairable and recyclable.

[moritzwarhier]

I don't dislike this idea as much as many do in principle. But it would indeed allow companies to abuse me. Would only be good when there is enough competition to keep prices down.

Problem is then you'll have to pay a premium for people who are careless with their appliances, or just use them 10x as much as you etc.

And of course this allows the lender to make profit margin as well. So as a consumer, I end up paying more.

But still, for many appliances and devices which I am not an expert in repairing, I'd be OK with this deal.

Many tenants here do this already with the lender being their landlord.

I knowingly pay a premium to use a simple bike with this model:

https://swapfiets.com/

(they're pretty successful here in Europe / NL and germany at least)

I know that the price for this exceeds a good used bike after a year or two at most.

But it often took me months to getting around to fixing my bike, I'm not very good at it, and professional bike repair is also expensive and takes me time.

Renting the bike is still more expensive, but it allows me to have a working bike without hassle; and if something breaks it takes a maximum of a workday or two to have it fixed or get a replacement.

[a_gnostic]

No thanks. In that case I prefer to build my own, so I know how to fix it myself. Some people and laws might take issue with that though.

[idiotsecant]

There is no law that will prevent you from making a washing machine.

[a_gnostic]

Not everyone wants to build their appliances from scratch, but many people might want to have my appliances. IP laws might prevent me from selling them…

[swader999]

5 gallon bucket and a plunger. Drill hole in the lid for plunger.

[syndicatedjelly]

Does the plunger have to be new?

[swader999]

It depends

[justinclift]

Preferably Open Source it too. :)

[papa0101]

'You'll own nothing and be happy' world then?

[johannes1234321]

Household appliances aren't a thing many people are attached to, which simply should work. Giving up the worries there might make people happy.

If one doesn't get the feeling that one overpays. And that fear will likely win, before another model reaches scales where it is beneficial.

We can see that a bit with cars in cities, where car sharing tries to do that, while profits are hard to make (also die to hard competition between companies)

[doctorwho42]

In a world where customer service is being reduced YoY, and slowly given over to chatbots. You are telling me that you trust companies to give you timely service for something you rent?

When was the last time you had trouble with your Internet router or modem? A large number of people rent these items from their ISP.

(1) the cost of renting, in this case, is way higher than the actual value of the device. (Last I looked, you rent for a year, you are better off buying your own)

(2) repair requires a 12 hour window of your time. May not be able to come due to high volume of work per tech.

(3) no penalty for the company really if your stuff doesn't work for 3-5 days, as long as they 'are working on fixing it'