We keep having to replace the logic board on our dryer.
Motherfucker, your job is to get hot and spin. I want the old "egg-timer that flips a switch" tech to come back.
A good dryer senses the moisture and adjusts the heat so it dosnt shrink your clothes and you dont have to take them out damp and hang them anyway, throws in a few reverse spins so clothes dry more evenly, and some other stuff Im sure.
Bet someone chimes in with "but the new one is better because it uses less energy". I'm too lazy to figure the math on that but I can't imagine that the 20% more energy usage of my old machine is greater than the energy cost of manufacturing, shipping, extra repairs (parts, transportation) that the new "better" machines need on 1yr to 18month cycle of fixing or outright replacing.
It's not like the reasons new ones are more efficient is inherent to the reasons they're more fragile though. You know how you can tell? Because machines at laundromats are just as efficient and don't break all the time!
I owned a laundromat. They are not efficient and cost a mint. The focus is on "wash fast, next customer please."
My wife hates our "ugly" fridge that came with our house. It's about 25 years old works perfectly, even the ice maker. She is a frugal person that can't justify replacing it until it breaks. Yet it keeps on ticking. Everyone I know who has a fridge made in the last 10 years has a broken ice maker. I'm happy with the "ugly" perfectly functional fridge.
If the only issue is the looks, could you not do something like a vinyl wrap or just plaster it with art?
The fridge is the appliance that consumes most power. A modern fridge, with a high energy saving rating will pay itself in a couple of years.
Fuck in door ice makers. You're adding complexity and making the whole thing less reliable and less efficient.
You always have to leave the door open...
I picked this up from my parents.
When I moved out, I lived with a flatmate for a few years and I left the washing machine door open after using it and my flatmate closed it.
I explained to her why I left it open and she just stared back at me. Not once had she ever thought of this and said it made so much sense. She is about 20 years my senior.
Certain habits seem to be so obvious, but unless handed down, someone may never even think of it.
Reminds me of that guy that never thought to let the shower water get warm before stepping in.
You know the funny thing?
You can still buy appliances that last and have good service.
But you don't earn enough to afford them, like your parents did.
This is not the case. Washers used to be more expensive as a proportion of median income back then. According to this page a new Kenmore washer cost $289 in 1980. The median family income in 1980 was $21,023, so a new washer would cost 1.37% of a family's annual income. Compare to now, where the median household income is $83,150. As a proportion of median income, a $289 washer in 1980 would cost about $1500 today, which is about what a durable, well made washer with a 7 year warranty costs. Manufactured goods were largely more expensive compared to wages in the past.
This is some bullshit. You can go to Home Depot or Lowe's right now and get yourself a pretty decent washing machine for $600 that will last you a decade.
The only people who end up in the situation like OP are the people who buy overly cheap products or overly gimmicky products, and then wonder why they don't work as well as the standard products. If you buy a $150 washing machine from AliExpress or buy a washing machine that requires wifi, then don't be surprised if they stopped working not too long after you bought them.
This is my mother in law to a tee, she buys second hand washing machines on craigslist for $100 - 200 they last about a year and she buys a new one. Always complaining about "planned obsolescence". I keep telling her "no one is selling a good used washing machine, they had problems with it and got a new one" Meanwhile she criticizes me for spending $700 on a washing machine we have had for 10 years now.
She has a saying "poor people have poor ways" which she thinks means that when your poor you work with what you have, I have told her it is an insult that means poor people are poor because of their actions and decisions.
Not AliExpress, but fucking Samsung. They may appliances with all the cool smart features and they're everywhere, but holy shit are they terrible for reliability (both per my own experience and according to repair people I've talked with).
One of these days I hope to eventually own a home. When I do, I want to buy one of the industrial-ass washing machines and dryers they use in laundromat and hotels. I'm sure it will be very expensive, but I firmly believe in "buy once, cry once". I want a laundry machine that is built to run 24/7 for 10+ years. Used at a personal pace, it should last forever.
That's because Whirlpool bought up all of the competition. Whirlpool, Kenmore, Maytag, Amana, JenAir, Roper, Kitchenaid etc are all the same company and the competition they didn't buy has less incentive to produce much better units because now they have to compete with cheaper built machines.
They didn't buy up Bosch (to my knowledge) but maybe they're not in the us?
Similar story for clothes dryers:
My parents' dryer had 2 knobs for temperature and run time, and a start button. Ran forever and dried clothes.
My dryer has like a dozen programmed cycles that rely on a moisture sensor that doesn't work and leaves clothes damp unless you use the manual time & temp settings, which takes several capacitive button presses on a circuit board that is likely to die before any of the actual mechanical components of the dryer. Also for some reason it has Wi-Fi.
"And for some reason it has Wi-Fi ." will be the last line in humanity's epitaph.
You can go buy those old washing machines. They're still out there. I got my washer and dryer used for 100 dollars each.
Nothing digital on them, all analog. Fixed a washer overflowing issue by replacing the $20 pressure level switch. Twice I've had to replace the heating element for the dryer, $20 bucks for those. Everything is replaceable with a flat head screwdriver and a youtube video.
Go buy those old washers and dryers.
My washer I bought in 2015 for a condo worked all the way to when we sold in 2024. Likely still going because it never had an issue.
New house washer purchased last year, still no issues.
My inlaws have gone through several in the last 10 years.
Biggest difference is user error. My inlaws wash a big load of towels every single day and load the washer to the lid. I load 3/4 full and don't go through towels like crazy.
People just don't know how to use appliances.
99/100 times user error is the answer to most stuff. Users are idiots who will not accept responsibility as long as they can say "well it's the appliance that is built bad".
Your parents washing machine also cost more because it was made better. The best price I could find for a standard washing machine in 1980 was $289. To put that into perspective, according to CPI inflation that is the equivalent of about $1,100 today. As a proportion of median individual income, that's like $1,550 today. You can still buy a Speed Queen washer for consumers that costs $1,500 and will last a long time, but people largely don't because the shitty one costs less than half of that.
This the argument I have with clients on a daily basis, in regards to all kinds of manufactured goods. People are astoundingly awful at understanding and visualizing inflation and the value of a dollar over time, even people who are specifically educated on this point and even work with it as part of their jobs. Everyone has some threshold beyond which they absolutely won't countenance paying more than $X for Y, but this is always arbitrary and whenever the course of events drives the median price of whatever-it-is past that line they lose their minds.
Durable goods manufacturing is a race to the bottom because it has to be in order to overcome everyone's moronic preconceptions about what a product "ought" to cost. This isn't just a capitalist greed thing, although it's certainly that, too -- corners have to be cut, panels have to be made thinner, it has to contain more plastic and less metal, because otherwise it'll never be cheap enough for 99% of the population to agree to buy it and even then they'll all still bitch about how shoddily made it is. Year over year every manufacturer has to figure out how to make it cheaper to slide under MSRP. The manufacturers who take the opposite strategy inevitably wind up as niche players, because as much as people spout that they'd happily pay more for a better built thing, the flat out truth is they're all full of shit and to the nearest decimal point, none of them actually will if given the opportunity.
The problem is it is rarely an easy proposition to just "pay more and get a better product" especially when it comes to home appliances.
In most big box stores every option will be shit. Companies know that there are consumers at every price point and so they have a product for every price print.
The problem is the expensive isn't really better, it's the same fridge with the same compressor as a cheap one except it has a wifi dongle or a tablet in the door.
Of course there are the Vikings and Thermidors and whatever but those are Velben goods that priced so high that you could get 5 to 10 of the cheap options for the price of one.
What are people doing with their laundry equipment and other appliances? I'm not saying you'll get 30 years out of new appliances, but I still routinely get 10ish.
Luck of the draw.
We're suffering from design issues. People want refrigerators with the freezer on the bottom and washers that open in the front.
Then companies want to make you connect to the internet so they can put an app on your cell phone and sell your data to every bidder.
Then, adding insult to injury unless you buy the top of the line they skimp. (And even then sometimes, looking at you Samsung refrigerators) That mid-range dishwasher no longer has a mascerator in the sump and the walls and the swing arms are all made out of plastic with no bearings. They're not putting good seals and isolation around the logic boards.
You can buy good long-lasting stuff if you're careful. But man are you going to pay.
When people look at a $3000 - $4,000 laundry set vs a $1200 set They start to ponder if it washes clothes does it matter.
I want to start an appliance company that offers 10 year warranties with an additional 5 year replaceable parts availability promise. The designs will be simple, functionality simple with minimal quality of life improvements, and all repair manuals will be published on the website along with tutorial videos, while also banking on building a product that simply lasts longer.
I'm willing to bet that if that is what you advertise on, the longevity of the product at a minimal price, then the company should do fine.
If it's a side-loading washer, you're not supposed to close the door all the way when it isn't in use. That's why it smelled.
Speedqueen
I keep seeing people say this, but they only have a 3 year warranty. Samsung, siemens, and random chinese companies I've never seen in the US offer 20 year, on much cheaper machines.
The thing about speed queen is that they go out of their way to be repairable though.
Samsung is willing to bet they can make a profit while covering 20 years of repairs, whereas Speedqueen is only willing to bet 3. That says to me the speedqueen is less repairable or Samsung and others expect to weasel out of their warranty.
The washer and dryer at my mom's are 30 years old. She's had repairmen laugh at her for having them, but they're much better made than anything new.
Newer machines are several times more water and energy efficient.
Still nice that they lasted long and were easier to repair.
More water and energy efficient to run, yes. If you have to replace them every couple of years the resources used to make new ones need to be included too though, and that will have a big impact on the comparison. That said, I have had a modern front load pair for at least 5 years now, no issues.
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