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Ok_Skill_1195 t1_irs3j53 wrote

Reply to comment by sarhoshamiral in My mom’s 1982 GE toaster. Same age as me. Used every day. by TummyPuppy

While you're absolutely right there's some survivorship bias at play, let's not pretend planned obsolescence hasn't become a huge issue.

That's not even to talk about the number of products on Amazon from drop shippers that are essentially hot glued together to work for the bare minimum time to complete the sale

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sarhoshamiral t1_irshy20 wrote

I actually haven't seen a study suggesting it did. My perception is that we have cheaper options now that used to be not available and as you said for those you get what you pay for. On top of that complexity of items increased drastically as people want more features which adds more points for failure.

But overall, at least based on my experience, a mid-tier priced appliance still goes a long way if you maintain it properly. The latter being a huge point. For example, for anything that use water the lifetime will heavily depend on your water supply. If you have hard water, the appliance's lifetime will be much shorter compared to someone who uses that appliance with soft water. That has always been the case though.

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Helhiem t1_irt6xdu wrote

It’s really not a huge issue. Even the testing they do products nowadays is way more stringent. We also demand things to be complicated so they do more things giving more chance for things to break.

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