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One day, my printer acted up. With my blood pressure spiking, I went on Google and quickly discovered that I had just been the victim of what is considered a classic error that would appear roughly after two years on the dot. I phoned the hotline and spent about 30 minutes in hold music limbo until I finally reached a noticeably tired support agent. In these moments, I like to remind myself not to blow my top but to stay calm and explain my situation with facts. Maybe it was because she was so tired but she was surprisingly blunt and honest. "The error occured in the warranty period? That's not supposed to happen!"
Shortly thereafter, she must have become aware of the ambiguity of her statement and went on to explain how to proceed in the most professional terms possible. I would only have to pack up the device, fill out a ridiculously lengthy form, pay for the shipping and then I would receive my repaired printer in about 4 weeks time.
That’s was the look I had on my face when I learned the truth. Well, maybe not quite as cute.
The great conspiracy?
After the call, I didn't know what was more infuriating. I stared at the form in disbelief (a PDF for me to print out, very funny) that was about as long as a tax return bundled with a petition for naturalization for the Vatican. They were probably counting on me giving up but far from it, things like that only motivate me! Still, I couldn't get her statement out of my head. The error wasn't supposed to occur in the warranty period so it was half a year premature? I'm not into conspiracy theories, I don't believe Paul McCartney died in 1966 or that aliens are running our governments and I don't wear a tinfoil hat. Yet, I smelled a rat and began to investigate.
Toothbrushes in agony
If you think of ways to increase your profit margin with different kinds of products there aren't that many options available. Innovation is rare and often expensive, not every product is a lifestyle accessory and sooner or later everyone will own a TV even in emerging nations. So isn't it a natural conclusion to design products in a way that predictably shortens their lifespan? With some products, this approach is quite obvious. Many electric toothbrushes feature built-in batteries that you can't get to and replace unless you destroy the device. Considering that all batteries have a limited lifespan this may significantly dampen your joy of buying. I might grin and bear it if this was only the case with low-cost products but many brand products are being made in the same way and come with a hidden expiration date.
A tank in the laundry room
Things get more complicated with technical devices that involve building parts, software and different construction methods. An engineer once explained to me how all of this plays together. "If you construct a device you may want to place heat-sensitive capacitors in a way that makes overheating less likely. But you could also deliberately position them next to heat sources to reduce their lifespan. And what about ball bearings? Will you be using cheap resistors for 2 cents a piece or proven parts for 10 cents? The line between quality and planned obsolescence is being blurred more and more." Planned obsolescence, an ugly name for an ugly phenomenon. I couldn't help but think of my grandma's sturdy washing machine that's has been running for more than 30 years, with a noise level comparable to a Leopard 2 tank, admittedly.
Debated since 1920
Consumerists and politicians have tried again and again to put an end to this practice or find ways to detect it reliably. It's hard to determine whether companies are doing it on purpose or by accident. Neither case would be reason to be proud. The idea itself is nothing new, back in 1920 the CEO of General Motors found it a good idea to get consumers to buy a new car every 3 years. Judging from this angle, my alarm clock that I have been using since 1991 might be considered faulty design.
When no one else is willing - help yourself!
But we don't have to take this lying down. There are multiple organizations that take a critical look at this practice and publish black sheep. Websites such as https://www.ifixit.com provide tips and hints on how to repair various devices and more and more DIY sites with similar goals are being created. Finally, there are many neighborhood groups that help consumers find and fix errors for a small fee. We need to consult Google before we buy our devices. Some companies (printers, cellphones even cars) are notorious for selling products that break down once the warranty expires with unholy precision.
Junk products with big names
Many companies that have spent years to establish their brand are at crossroads. Why buy products that will break down just as fast as generic, cheaper alternatives? Aren't companies shooting themselves in the foot while crying out in pain at the same time? To us as customers this means: Buyer beware! Base your purchasing decisions on research and facts and don't instantly throw out everything that stops working. Maybe you're just a 25 cent part away from a successful repair.
What I would like to know: Which of your devices broke down way too soon?
Eigor 2015/10/25
Wrote
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W4V_4ZxBFg
Look at / it is in Slovak language."
This can be viewed in English at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfbbF3oxf-E
I have two examples for you:
First was a 1970 Toyota Corona Mark II station wagon (remember them?) With a 12 month/12,000 mile warranty, it ran 12,584 miles before the top came off one of the pistons and went through the side of the engine block, at 5:00 in the morning, 200 miles from home. It was towed to a dealer local to where the breakdown occurred (who already had one of the identical color and model vehicles with the identical problem parked on his lot waiting for parts. Fortunately, this occurred returning from a lengthy trip, where it turned 12,000 miles in transit, so Toyota agreed to cover it under warranty. This was Thanksgiving, it took months for a short block to arrive from Japan, and I got my car back on Valentines day. It was traded for an Oldsmobile Cutlas S on the next day.
The second issue was a Frigidaire front-loaded washer that I bought from H.H.Gregg, with their extended "all major components" warranty. The salesman explained that the computer circuit board was located inside the machine, along with the water vapors, vibration, etc. that happen in a washer, therefore I need extended warranty coverage to protect it. At 12 months and 4 days, the circuit board self-destructed. Frigidaire wouldn't touch it, so I called H.H.Gregg. Long story short: they charger $45 to come out and tell me I had a problem with the circuit board. They wanted to charge me $600 for a new circuit board because the warranty was for "all major components" and the major components in this washing machine consisted of exactly "the motor", period. I sent the washing machine to Goodwill and purchased a Whirlpool from another appliance store. I have not set foot inside H.H.Gregg since and will not recommend them to anyone who asks.
My acquired Electrolux vitesse vacuum cleaner started burning up belts inside a year of purchase. The belts proved to be pretty expensive to rplace, and was not much different to other belts available for various other machines. The problem was the motor shaft, which extended past the housing to accommodate the belt. had become slightly rusty and rough as a result. It surprised me somewhat that a motor shaft, which is accepted as being hardened, and therefore impervious to becoming rusted in dry conditions in the household, should present such a problem. I then machined a flat brass sleeve and pressed it on to the shaft.
The brush now spins at a slightly higher speed, the noise level is slightly increased, but I now have the satisfaction of getting some use out of an initially expensive vacuum cleaner. I am disgusted that a manufacturer should put out such poor quality products when they have been making vacuum cleaners for eons of time.
Back when BlackBerry phones were vogue, I bought a Bold 9900. Conked out on me exactly four days after the warranty expired. Then the proposed cost to repair it was about two-thirds what I paid for it. That sucked!
John Brathwaite, when my Garmin did as yours, I simply laid it to the side for about 3 days, plugged it back in, let it charge for a few minutes and it came back on. If you feel that "a few years" is not a good lifespan, purchase a Magellan, they last a few months at a time. I've owned 5 Magellans, 4 of them were replacements for the one I purchased. They finally agreed it was better to supply a product that wasn't going to fail after 2-6 weeks than to refund my money to purchase another brand.
About 15 years ago, we purchased a VAX vacuum cleaner for £250, which was more than we could really afford, but figured it would last forever as it was a good make and very expensive. Wrong! After 13 months, 1 month after the warrenty period, it broke down. We phoned the company and the very rude lady basically told us 'too bad' as it was out of warrenty. It was only after threatening her with trading standards that she agreed to have it fixed as a 'good will gesture'. We had to travel by several busses as we didn't have a car at the time, carrying this heavy device around. We did manage to get it fixed, but it only lasted a few weeks after that. I'll never buy another VAX, mainly because it was supposed to be a good make that let us down badly, but also because of the so-called support we received.
Not everything breaks down. I have two TV's (Panasonic and Polaroid) that are over 25 years old. I have one plasma TV (Panasonic) that is 10 years old. My biggest problem is finding accessories with cables that plug into them. Roku and other manufacturers no longer make cables for the three-color ports. Yet all 3 Roku's still work. My 2 year old Nook HD+ has had continuing cable issues that Barnes and Noble has known about since day one. My Garmin Nuvi is almost 10 years old and is more reliable than the one in my 6 month old car.
On the other hand, I had 4 hard drives fail within 1 month after I bought a new computer. So it's a mixed bag.
Love this article! I have a little to contribute...
Being a web designer for 17 years I'm no stranger to the computer world. I had a printer that i just loved a while ago and after 3 years of light service i suddenly got an error message. The printer simply stopped working. So i looked up the error code. It said that the number of pages the printer was allowed to print had reached it's limit.
Oh really???
The printer is still in good working condition but it's programming has been set to shut the printer down after a certain number of pages had been printed. Ok - find a work around.
I searched the internet for a fix an 'lo and behold' i found a tiny program out there that reset the page number. It worked perfectly. I got 3 more years of service out of that printer before it genuinely did wear out.
In the computer world it's SUPER easy to disable a product on exactly any day they choose. It's just a matter of programming.
ALWAYS search for a fix. If you can't find one, don't ever buy that product again. Oh, and the new printer i bought a year ago was the same brand as the first one (Canon). I don't appreciate the calculated failure but I got 6 years of beautiful photography out of my old printer and i love the second one even more :)
Bottom line:
Even some manufacturers noted for high quality products have design flaws that make it easier just to buy a replacement. Using the Internet to search for DIY solutions can save on repair or replacement costs and extend the life of a product for little or no out of pocket expense.
Our story:
We have used Miele vacuums for quite a few years now, due to their quality and reliability. Recently we had to have the motor cleaned due to improper use (operating without a bag), and the dealer offered to sell us a new model at a large discount. My wife declined, and as luck would have it, the newly cleaned vacuum had a problem with the power cord auto-retraction shortly thereafter. After getting quotes ranging from about $90 to $180 USD to fix or replace the mechanism, we decided to search the Internet for descriptions of the problem.
Internet search engine responses included several DIY blogs or websites that described how to fix the problem, which involved taking apart the machine, adding a couple of spacers or washers to keep the cord retraction unit from sliding sideways on its mount, and putting the machine casing back on. Savings from DIY made up for the cost of having the motor cleaned.
The only drawback is that now my wife lets me do my share of the vacuuming around the house.
Complaining about planned obsolescence is hilarious coming from ashampoo as a software company. Windows XP is still quite popular but Microsoft make more money and drive XP out. Several other software packages and pieces of hardware won't work on newer iterations of Windows. The first version of QuickBooks that I bought 15 years ago did everything I needed but they force me to buy a new version every year that not only costs a lot of money but steals my time and frustration to install and relearn. The same with Ashampoo software. I bought an earlier version of Snap but I still use an old version of FSCapture because it has the one feature that Ashampoo snap doesn't. My black and white Brother laser printer requires me to make a Gamma correction in order to get a descent print out. A software vendor whining about hardware planned obsolescence is the pot calling the kettle black.
I’d never voluntarily give up an operating system like Windows XP that can still run many of our applications. The thing is that many modern features cannot be implemented on these older operating systems. That is why they are excluded from future development as hard as that may be.
We have a 10-year-old Whirlpool refrigerator that just broke. The freezer worked but the refrigerator had no power.
I went on line to troubleshoot the problem and found a video on YouTube that was similar to my problem and it showed how to replace the defective board. It even showed the spot on the board that had burned causing the failure. When I removed the board my burn mark seemed to be in the same location.
My problem took 10 years to show up but the video stated the failure usually took two to five years to surface.
I'm not saying this is planned obsolescence but it appears to be that or a poor design.
I am a technician so I was able to repair the burned trace on the board. It's a good thing I was because the board is on national back order, no repair shops in my area or on line were able to get the board for two weeks.
I would have had to live without a refrigerator or buy a new one.
Oh yes we have all had prrinters that die just on the warratee period. Apparently most have a "waste ink tray" with an absorbant pad which is there to catch the ink wasted with every on/off cycle and with each cleaning phase. When that becomes saturated the printer dies. It is replaceable at cost or with great difficulty (it is buried right at the bottom of the printer.
I too have suffered at the hands of Garmin which starts to load but then just sits there doing nothing - I won't buy another, not just for that reason but because it persists in saying TURN left when it is just a bend in the road - most people would either not mention it or say BEAR left.
My HP desktop computer has electrolytic capacitors that halve lifetime each 10 degrees (C) temeprature rise. They are in the pcb near to a cooling plate that gets hot. So they break down and take other electronics with them. Just after the two year warranty. And the power supply has a special shape so others do not fit. And it is not deliverable anymore. I called HP and they did not care, that is what I was told because it was outside warranty. Even it it is a design error. So I am never buying a HP computer anymore and told them I would post this everywhere. I have photos to proof this if you want.
My Garmin GPS failed last Wednesday. This is the second one that failed in that way after a few years of service - I plug it in and after a few minutes it goes blank and nothing after.
I will not be buying Garmin ever again.
My cell phone, regardless of the brand. I've gone through several cell phones over the past few years. It gets more and more frustrating each time I buy a new one, only to know that it too will go the way of the DoDo in a very short time. Right now I have a Motorola Moto E Lte, which replaced another Motorola cell phone, but I know in my heart-of-hearts that this phone will most likely last about as long as the last one (that one lasted only 7 months).
Cars seem to do the same thing. I bought a Chevrolet Uplander back in 2005 in which immediate problems arose, but every time I took it into the dealer to have those problems fixed, they miraculously never found any of them. It seemed that I was the only one who had those problems. I'm on my third car since that time, all with other automobile brands, and the all had problems.
I too remember how my mother's washing machine, refrigerator, and stove all worked for decades, some until just before she passed at age 97. Most were made back in the '50s and worked so much better, and with little repair over the years, than the modern versions.
In the end, it's truly our fault for putting up with the garbage that has been thrust upon us. If we all stood together and refused to buy crap from companies that produce and promote them, then maybe, just maybe the greedy idiots who try to shove garbage down our throats may just wake up and smell the coffee!
No surprises here....built in obsolescence has been around since the 1960's when Vance Packard wrote all about it.
Potato peelers made the same colour as the potato so that it get thrown away by mistake. Car mufflers built to last, only as long as their warranty.
Look him up..its an interesting read, and piece of history.
I've been repairing computers for some years and notice that HP, among others, uses proprietary CD drives in many of their consumer computers. Generally, these drives are designed with custom fronts that make it impossible to apply them to a generic drive. When these fail, the price of a replacement is often 4 to 5 times the cost of even the best of generic drives. The last time one failed on the very last day of the warranty period, the HP rep informed me they would do me a "favor" by replacing it. I now avoid purchasing these case designs and keep on hand a USB drive for future failures, which will work in any computer. When purchasing replacement drives, it's helpful to research users' comments and failure rates, avoiding the cheapest models which often are being dumped because of their unreliability.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W4V_4ZxBFg
Look at / it is in Slovak language.
How far does this kind of exploitive manipulation travel what new kinds of exploitation are being utilised and what's coming shortly?
My? ISP talktalk went down for two days it claims has just had a major security breach and that it has arranged for us to get free bank account monitoring as a result.
Wilful Blindness?
I dare say that our bank accounts are being monitored by the security services and wouldn't it be convenient if they could arrange for us to pay for it. The fact that the MD of talktalk Ms Dido Harding is the daughter/grandaughter? of a noted military figure from the last century who rose to become the head man C.I.G.S. of the british armed forces.
I note events which occur because sometimes I see a pattern like the gradual privatisation by stealth of our local communal housing which was done so surrepticiously few perople realised that we who had paid for the land and the buildings were not paid for our possessions. God they are clever
This exact same process happened with Margaret Thatcher when she privatised so much of our Home Industries and the London Government kept the monies. It's still happening everywhere schools hospitals the whole panjandrum is up for sale and we will not see a sheckel.
When you bring this to peoples attention they clam up and stop talking to you and you finish up a pariah with no friends and the odd nodding acquaintance but how can anyone with any self respect inside them accept this situation and do nothing about it....
To answer your question, thankfully, very few. Did have a Desktop from a certain manufacture with a bad combo sound/modem card that did not work out of the box. 'Their' solution was to pack it up at my expense and take it to the Post Office and mail it in at 'my' expense. I had just set it up to my liking for my Daughter, deleting all the crapware, loading freeware software on it and tweaked all the settings.
They did not get the fact, that enroute to the PO, I would be passing Costco and I would return it there, instead, for a full refund. My solution was to buy a separate sound card and a separate modem card for under 20 cocos. That was in 2001. I have boycotted that company since.
I did have a successful outcome with a stand alone, GPS's proprietary USB cable. I was unable to update maps, as the unit was not being recognized by the Laptop. I tried everything before I called. Got a tech that surmised it was the cable and over-nighted one to me. The new one fixed the problem and no issues since. This was late 2011.
I do use Google and other engines to look at reviews of products prior to buying, as well as using them for solutions to a broken machine. I like to DIY first, before calling. Most times I can fix it myself. Example: W7 Laptop I am using now, was having issues with its trackpad. Downloaded Drivers from manufacture's site first, then deleted the current driver, rebooted, and then installed the driver anew. Result was that the issues I was having have gone away. Have done the same with Sound and Video Drivers on this machine.
Interesting, last Monday my expensive BOSCH top of the range washing machine, broke down just 10 months after the warranty ended. Last Friday my w/m repair man told me the cost of the component, the electronic 'heart' of the machine would cost £300+ to purchse the part if he can get hold of one at all in a reasonable time. BOSCH service engineers would be quicker, but charged £120.00 callout. So I just bought a new machine for £20.00 more, and not a BOSCH. When I bought what I thought was something that would last at least five or six years, disappointment, was the really the adjective that didn't cross my mind when it didn't.
When I think back to our first w/m it was15 years when it went and only then because it didn't fit in the new kitchen. When I was a young man we could repair our cars,even down to a rebore with a few spanners and a bit of ingenuity,now you just replace,replace,replace most of today's stuff.
Thanks for the chance to rant little.
Noel
I have to agree with your planned failure hypothesis. My HP printer failed way to early. The mechanical hardware worked fine. The drive system just stops responding reliably to command.
As a computer tech (doing this for a VERY long time!!) I've run into this regularly. The one that stands out in my mind is the computer company (which I won't name but has only 2 letters in it's name!!) that sold millions of laptops with a 1 year warranty but had a video chip that routinely failed in 13 months! If you had the secret handshake and unpronounceable password...and could actually speak to the right tech support agent they would admit that they knew about the problem. They also made arrangements to provide an "extended, enhanced warranty" that would cover the laptop for an additional 13 months. Then with all the T's crossed and I's dotted...they would send you a shipping container (prepaid!) and would repair the laptop with about a total turnaround time of 5 days! Pretty nice.
However, most of the tech support agents that were available to the general public on the public "Support Line" phone support(which is the number included with the laptop and is the ONLY number that the public regularly knows) did NOT know about the "extended, enhanced warranty" and offered to have the laptop repaired...for a fairly substantial fee! This went on for at least 6 years worth of new models and "upgrades that I'm sure of...and that's scary!
I went from liking this companies products and recommending them to my customers to not recommending them at all because I can't trust that they have mended their ways and really do intend the best for their customers!
Paul
Had the same experience with a laser printer, a paper jam. But there was no paper jam! It had just been started and the printer hadn't even printed yet. Rang the company to ask where a local serviceman was available, was told there wasn't one in my vicinity, in fact not even in the same town, but they would book a technician to come and fix the problem From another centre. The cost was going to be two times what I originally paid for the printer. It was cheaper to go and buy a new printer. It was the most annoying experience, just out of warranty.
I can vouch for this. 12 years ago I bought my first laptop from a firm with a fruity logo, and everything from that machine, to all the other products I subsequently acquired timed out just on or after the warranty expiry. I don't do fruit any more, thanks!
So the problem still remains, whadd'ya buy?
Guess we're all screwed in the long - er medium - sometimes short- run!