- cross-posted to:
- videos@lemmy.world
- mealtimevideos@lemmy.cafe
- cross-posted to:
- videos@lemmy.world
- mealtimevideos@lemmy.cafe
Capitalism.
I literally have clothes hanging on a line across the living room because our just out of warranty $1,000+ Samsung “smart dryer” died again a month after I replaced every sensor and the heating element, and I just don’t feel like taking it apart again to “maybe” find the problem.
Before this we just had a plain white box from Maytag; easy to work on, cheap replacement parts. It was probably 30 years old when the motor seized and my wife asked for newer, fancier machines. Big mistake.
We have similar ‘smart’ Samsung washer and dryers that we purchased last year after our old Kenmore units bit the dust after many many years.
I am quick to warn anyone that I come across DO NOT buy Samsung machines under any circumstance.
Our wash times (and dry but especially wash) went up from astronomically. Even though the load size was supposed to be one of the largest we could find it no where near compares to what we had. Plus, a month or so after we had ours we received a notification from Samsung that they needed to log into our washer and do a ‘firmware’ update because several of those models were causing fires.
Imagine your washing machine causing a fucking fire and burning your house down.
And the fix is a firmware update not a total recall? So its either buggy overcomplicated software or the update tweaked things to reduce the power draw so you got less machine power than what you were advertised.
Which honestly for a washer machine is pretty cool they can fix that sort of issue without the hassle of replacing the big machine, but if only these kinds of major safety issues could be figured out in pre-production.
From my memories, the price of appliances haven’t changed much in the last couple of decades. They maintain or increase margins with cheaper parts, less QA, looser performance tolerances while keeping the same sticker price. Whatever the quality sacrifice equivalent word for shrinkflation
Enshittification, just like with online services.
Enshittification means something more specific than just making a thing worse. It means making it worse in a way designed to exploit or take advantage of the user by stealing their personal information or something like that.
This is more like “value engineering” and “planned obsolescence.”
Good vid but he’s falling a bit for the corporate propaganda that costs determine prices and that consumers have real power over price setting. Most firms maximize prices while minimizing costs. Consumers have especially little market power in a consolidated market like home appliances.
I haven’t watched this video, but based on your comment I don’t think I’ll bother.
It is my sincere understanding that the degradation of quality is from the companies trying to leverage extended warranties as the true profit center of appliances.
planned obsolescence (pretty much the cause of so much crap)
Add feature creep, so there’s more things to go wrong and there’s higher chances of something breaking.





