> “People shouldn’t be forced to ‘upgrade’ to the newest model every time a replaceable part on their smartphone or home appliance breaks,” said Mark Murray, Executive Director of Californians Against Waste. “These companies are profiting at the expense of our environment and our pocketbooks as we become a throw-away society that discards over 6 million tons of electronics every year.”
This. Don't know when all this changed ( 80s ?) in the US, but even appliance repairs are sort of a thing in the past here. If a washing machine or microwave stops working people simply get a new one.
I was quite amused to see an "Appliance Repair" van parked in my neighborhood in San Francisco the other day. I started chatting with the guy and turns out he was from Ukraine and told me that in the former Soviet Union countries, they never throw away any appliance if it stops working. They repair it. Same is the case in countries like India (where I was raised), china.
Esp. in India, there are scores of Radio, TV, phone, appliance repair shops in every city and even in villages.
Appliance repair is still quite common in the U.S. The notion that white goods get disposed of as rapidly as they break down is something of an internet-spread cliche.
Most large property management companies employ a group of repairmen, or have contracts with several appliance repair companies. If your refrigerator stops cooling in a large apartment building, the management sends a guy to fix it; they don't Amazon you a new fridge.
Similarly, if your washing machine breaks, your home warranty company isn't going to send out a replacement machine until an appliance repairman says the thing can't be fixed.
I've lived in about a dozen different apartments and houses in almost as many cities in the last 15 years. I've had my appliances fixed by repairmen at least five times.
Interestingly, I had two brand-new GE appliances in brand new apartments that needed to be repaired within their first year of operation. But my current 1999 Maytag washer keeps chugging along without complaint. (Though its companion dryer has been repaired by a repairman twice — once for a clogged exhaust hose that caused a small fire, and once for a dead igniter.)
> Appliance repair is still quite common in the U.S. The notion that white goods get disposed of as rapidly as they break down is something of an internet-spread cliche.
I disagree. The fan in our fridge died recently. I was able to find the motor online for around $150, and I called a few local appliance repair shops to see the cost for labor. They charged between $75 and $100 an hour and estimated the repair at 2-3 hours plus parts. That's a minimum of $300 to repair a 10 year old fridge that I could replace new for $800. Worst case it would be nearly $500 to fix, and the compressor could go out the next day and cost just as much.
If you think spending $800 to buy something is a better idea than spending $300 to fix something you already have, I respectfully posit that you may not be average.
but its a gamble - I've seen ppl spend much more than the cost of replacing because they were being stubborn and didnt want to believe that it might be cheaper to replace in the medium term.
It's not always a binary choice though, in my case I actually ended up buying a used fridge off craigslist. I found one that was a bit of an upgrade, newer, and about the same cost as repair.
I think the notion that "An apple product cannot be repaired" is also an internet spread cliche.
I found that it was pretty easy to replace the battery and screen of the last few cellphones I've owned. Ironically, it was much easier (and cheaper) to find the necessary parts to repair the apple ones than the cheapo android phones which often cost as much as the aftermarket parts.
If you consider the cost of specialized labour needed to diagnose the problem, then repairing quickly becomes unaffordable for a $300-$1000 purchase. This bill will not stop that.
Appliances are physically larger, and therefore are much more difficult to dispose of, ship, and get into place. So if you compare the cost of repair, to the shipping and disposal cost, they probably become equivalent. Goodluck getting a fridge out of your house without damaging the walls for cheap.
I've never had luck repairing Apple products. I've destroyed ribbon cable connectors on an iPad and an iPhone. Without microsoldering skills and equipment that's a hopeless situation.
I had a third party fail to repair the "touch disease" problem on an iPhone 6.
Anything I've fixed that involved replacing glue strips or removing little splintery bits of broken glass left the device in dodgy shape. Things don't quite fit right, they make squeaking and cracking sounds when you touch them. Aluminum enclosures seem to get gouges and scratches in the process, even when using soft plastic spudgers to separate and scrape things off.
You can never be certain of the waterproofing after you've messed with something.
These are thin, tiny devices that are half put together by machines, half by people that do this for hours and hours day after day with specialized tools - and even they don't get it right all the time.
They're not toasters. I think the days where a normal person can fix this stuff are ending if not already long gone.
On an iPhone 5S I have replaced both a cracked screen and an old battery.
The replacement battery was ~$7 USD including shipping, while the replacement screen (all-in-one digitizer/glass/screen assembly) was ~$15.50 USD including shipping.
The special screwdrivers/suction cups/spudgers/etc required to perform the procedure were included with the parts.
The swap process was relatively straightforward & lots of high quality photos/videos detail the entire procedure. Numerous guides are freely posted all over the internet.
Getting parts for a cheap Android device, however, proved more expensive than the cost of replacing the device (ignoring labor costs). The market is so fragmented it seems harder for an efficient parts supply chain to develop organically, let alone the knowledge/repair guides to effectively use those parts.
I mostly agree with you, indeed Apple devices are by far the easiest to repair (or get repaired) because guides and parts are richly available, and in absolute numbers they are always the most sold phone (hence why you can find a repair shop for your iPhone 6S in a yiffy, but your Xiaomi Mi5 will lead to headscratches.)
However, since the iPhone 6 Apple has taken to adhering the battery to the case with insanely strong adhesive tape, which means you have to take out the logic board and heat the device to get the battery loose. It’s not impossible, but it certainly docks some points from the repairability score.
We just upgraded our Apple 6 to Pixel 2, due to it having some Network Not Found issues. Tried all tricks available on internet, but none worked. Eventually asked Apple and they aggreed to replace it with similar phone given we pay $300. I said, why buy again the same phone which probably have some hardware issue which apple is not agree to resolve. As ppl know, they are having the same issue with higher version. I asked the customer representative, and they mentione, hold the phone. If they get enough complaints, they might look into it and offer a free repair. I think most of the users of old phone might have upgraded to new one and so i am guessing not enough ppl will compain and all those phones will go to waste.
Often the problem with many modern electronics is not doing the repair itself, but getting the thing back together again or getting it back in to working order, because quite often these devices are not designed to be repairable by the consumer.
Witness the widespread use of "security screws", epoxy on chips, cases which can not be opened without breaking them, and explicit warnings that opening the device would void your warranty.
There's also the ever greater miniaturization of components and the ever greater increase in density of parts inside a case. The former often requires microscopes and other specialized equipment to service them, and the latter results in parts not fitting back in the case after you've completed your repair.
It gets even worse when software is involved, where the user is usually at the mercy of the manufacturer to come up with a software update (if they even ever choose to do so) or require some specialized equipment and authorization to even attempt to do their own repair (as is the case with modern automobiles which have so many computers in them).
When I replaced an iPhone5c screen, the notion of selling the glass+LCD was still new. We used a hot gun to delaminate the cracked screen from the glass, then UV cured epoxy to glue the screen back (don't ask me why we had a UV gun). That was a pain.
Now, the glass + digitizer + LCD (or OLED) are sold as one piece. Sure you are "paying for a LCD/OLED" that "isn't broken", but the cost still comes down under $100 (typically) and saves probably 2 hours of labor.
I hired an independent repair guy to come to my house to fix my iphone charging port -- they don't have offices, they make house calls -- and I was totally embarrassed that the problem was belly button lint. He was nice and only charged me $20!
It's all about volume. iPhone has volume, so you can get all kinds of accessories and inexpensive repairs for it.
My neighbor runs a washing machine repair business in a suburban neighborhood in Alpharetta, Georgia. He seems to stay very busy. This is a fairly affluent area so its not that people can't afford to buy new appliances (on average).
It also depends on the brand. I regret getting a Samsung for my area because if it breaks, then I am screwed. A key criteria for me now is the bias towards simple things that have operational support from the community.
I specifically paid more for Whirlpool laundry appliances recently (over Samsung or LG) for this exact reason. I know that spare parts are available online and even locally, and many of the repairs are things I can even do myself (as I did with my previous Whirlpool top loader).
It seems like Whirlpool and Maytag have long histories of repair and general reliability (at least as far as their marketing and the zeitgeist go), so I wonder what's different about them vs Samsung or LG (maybe it's a tech vs mechanical approach to the problem? I know Chevy vehicles through the 50's-70's used a very limited and common set of parts on everything from the drive train to the car frame, whereas modern companies wish to optimize and reduce costs while innovating).
I have no idea about the modern front loaders, but when I had to repair my old top loader, it was all parts that seem to be standard across dozens of models for many years— the clutch assembly, agitator cogs, gearbox, pump, etc.
a lack of, and the people that do repair things don't like them. It's like picking a programming language, and you have to pick your stuff based on the available market.
I own two rental units, in one of them very recently the washing machine "stopped spinning". Upon investigation i found out it was just a belt on the inside, which after some struggling with I was able to repair. Belt cost me $75 CAD, but much better for my pocket than a new machine and way easier to coordinate. Not to mention, the environment.
My stove (a 1950s General Motors electric...yes they made stoves apparently) was finally too old for the local repairmen to want to repair it since they no longer had the equipment to replace the outlet which was a different standard at the time.
That's definitely not the case everywhere. In my apartment that was in the attic of a detached home, the landlord certainly tried to repair anything as a first step. In my current apartment building things are replaced or just left broken.
My ovens been broken for over 8 months now and is too expensive to replace so it sits unfixed because they don't even attempt repairs. When the water heater had a problem however it was just replaced immediately.
There's about 200-210 units in the building and I see at least 2 items every week in the trash out of a combination of water heater, fridge, or washer/dryer
The only thing I've actually seen them repair has been the air filters and I think that's only because it takes them 30 seconds to replace
I wouldn’t say most companies do it. My complex (owned by a large national property management company with multiple properties in multiple states) doesn’t repair them, they buy new then sell the old one to another company who then does whatever they do with them. They definitely don’t send repairmen in to fix it.
Probably about the time that it became cheaper to replace a thing than repair it. Labor is expensive in the US, and so are aftermarket parts. It might cost $400 to repair a TV, and $400 to buy a new, 'better' model. I've even witnessed folks choosing to spend a bit more on a new thing rather than repair the old out of fear the old thing will just break again soon and putting them in the same predicament. For most folks, that's a no-brainer. (personally, I would repair it myself, but that's not an option for some due to skills, required equipment, time, etc)
Yes, these are both good points. People remember the good old days of socketed chips that were easier to repair, but wave soldering is cheaper, produces a more reliable product, and fewer connectors means higher signal speeds and/or margin.
> It might cost $400 to repair a TV, and $400 to buy a new, 'better' model.
You are correct. This is also uniquely western. Labor costs are almost as much - and in some cases more than - buying a new item to replace the broken item.
I repaired my AV receiver recently with four $1 capacitors and a YouTube walkthrough. The local electronics repair shops wanted $100-150 just to look at it. Ridiculous.
Edit: this repair took 1.5 hours and required only basic tools and skills.
Yep. You essentially 'ate' the labor costs, which are exorbitant in the US.
I recently had a plumber come in to look at my leaking toilet tank flush.
Cost for parts = 10$ as I later found out at hardware store.
Labor = 236$ (I'm not kidding). It literally took the guy 5 mins to change the flush balloon thingy. I observed him and now do it myself too.
It's almost seems like Plumbers in the city (San Francisco) have ganged up together to set price for any kind of repair. I did call 2 other plumbers and they both quote price in between 220 and 240 USD.
The cost is whatever the market is willing to pay for things. The market is composed of those who are willing to pay for services.
Plumbing parts are cheap in most cases easy to work with and forgiving of screwing up. Turn off the water and start again. This is why poor people fix their own shit. Prices would have to be very cheap to be worth paying for services.
Middle class + are time constrained and willing to pay significant sums to avoid digging into their available time.
Offering a perceptively reasonable price for easy jobs like your toilet would result in lots of people calling them for such easy jobs when they could be engaged in more lucrative matters.
You can see your bill in terms of opportunity cost. Both the value of the middle class persons time saved and the plumbers who could be engaged in more lucrative endeavors.
Since the plumbers time and the average middle class persons afternoon is worth $236 its unlikely that you will find the service for a reasonable price.
So only software developers are allowed to charge "exorbitant" labor rates?
Plumbers (like mechanics) also often have set fees. Sometimes, the repair is really simple, as in your case, and would probably have been very easy to do yourself. Other times, there are going to be complications that can take quite a bit more time.
I'm surprised at comments about the cost of plumber service calls given SF HNers are often programmers commanding 6 figure salaries themselves. Something plumbing and programming have in common is that both are high-demand specializations that most people are not willing/interested in spending their time with. It should be no surprise that these specialists' time isn't cheap.
Probably once or twice a year, I find some piece of electronics out on the curb by the street (stereos, TVs, whatever). It is almost always a blown capacitor on the power board, because we don't have a grid where I live, and so we have pretty unstable power supply (at least by the standards expected by most Americans). Still vastly better power than most places in the world, but it does kill a lot of electronics, which most people just don't fix. So they toss it. And then I come pick it up, replace the blown caps with high quality replacements, and then I have a perfectly good television. It's pretty crazy.
You're probably right, and I've repaired so many over the years that I've started to run out of friends and family to give them to. I get so much out of the actual repair work that I don't feel like I'm losing out on anything, but your comment has got me thinking that it's something that could be valuable charity. I'll look for a proper place to donate. Thanks for the suggestion.
Not being super savvy with electronics - but enjoying to tinker - is this a visually apparent problem or do you need the test the capacitors to identify the issue?
This is almost universally a visually striking thing to identify. If you google for blown capacitors you'll see what I mean. I should also mention that "capacitor plague" is a different specific issue caused by poor quality components. I've seen a few different kinds of failures, but the majority of them are bad capacitors on the power board. The way these things fail (when it's due to a power issue like we see here), there's a loud "pop" sound, and that's a capacitor exploding, usually on the power board. It leaves black marks, soot, etc. I have very rarely ever needed to use my multimeter, although I do use my multimeter anyway, just to ensure I'm actually doing worthwhile repair work. Other things cause shorts on the boards which can damage something and cause someone to throw it away. I have opened up a TV and found one of those big, tropical, "outdoors-only" cockroaches that straddled the wrong traces. Heh I've seen some weird stuff but yeah, usually the problem is very easy to spot.
It doesn't seem unreasonable for a repair shop to charge $100 for a diagnosis if it might take them a couple of hours. I'd expect them to be charging at least $50/hr. for labor. And that would probably be half of the hourly rate for mechanics at an auto dealer. It's great that you were able to do it yourself for next to nothing but these are exactly the economics that make taking something like an AV receiver into a shop to repair so iffy much of the time.
I wonder if it's a combination of a) appliances are now much cheaper as a percentage of our disposable income b) planned obsolescence. The ironic thing is that we now have such easy access to repair manuals for stuff online. Some things have gotten much harder to repair though since the devices have become more compact (laptops and phones).
For many of these appliance repairs, the costs quickly add up to a large fraction of a new appliance. In some of the countries you mention, the labor cost is lower.
>>Esp. in India, there are scores of Radio, TV, phone, appliance repair shops in every city and even in villages.
Indian here.
Our First TV we bought ran a good 25 years. It was repaired at least 2 - 3 times. Often for 1/10th the price of a new TV. It finally totally croaked. I salvaged speakers etc, and put it to good use.
The TV we have now is running for 10+ years and is going strong. Its a CRT TV. I've told my family we will buy a big new LED one once this croaks. But its going quite strong. Given everyone around has moved on these latest LED TVs, my family is quite pissed that the TV is still running strong :)
My friend gave a new LED Sony TV to me to see if it can be fixed. When I enquired the costs came up to 60% the cost of a new TV. At that point you wonder if you want to keep it and repair it, or just toss out and buy a new one. The problem is lack of serviceable part inside.
Also they don't make durable products anymore. Even in India.
Alternate thoery: The repair cost of a new appliance will generally increase/stay fixed over its life (hard to find parts, labor rates remain fixed). The price of an equivalent new appliance will tend to decrease along an expected rate of innovation. Thus, the expected life of a product tends to reflect a pivot point where the repair cost curve exceeds some threshold where a new appliance becomes attractive financially.
The rate of innovation is then the primary drive of expected product life, and if innovation increased in the 90s and 00s, expected product life naturally decreased. If innovation slows, expected product life should start increasing again.
Microwave yes. Not sure about washing machine. And I've both had a service tech in and done my own repairs for a dishwasher, freezer, and an oven.
It's definitely partly about the cost of getting a repair person in, especially for a major appliance where they have to come to your house. (Often twice. Once to diagnose and once to replace a part.) Though I'd note that repair parts, even from third parties, can be a pretty substantial portion of replacement cost even if you can diagnose with some certainty and do your own repair.
>Though I'd note that repair parts, even from third parties, can be a pretty substantial portion of replacement cost
This is so true. I've was shocked to realize that the parts to repair my dishwasher would very nearly equal the price of a brand new dishwasher. And all the 3rd party places seem to have nearly the same prices. Fortunately I talked to the manufacturer and they replaced the parts even though it wasn't under warranty anymore, but if they hadn't I probably would have just gotten a new dishwasher.
Call around and wait for someone to come and fail to fix the appliance. Pay way too much for said unskilled labor. Either pay again or wait forever for the original person to come and do it right as they dodge your calls and try to avoid having to finish the job. Oh and you are still on the hook for the cost of parts. And oh yeah they broke something else while they were in there. Good luck getting them to admit they did it and fix it. Also they scratched up your floor and dinged your walls.
Most of the people doing this kind of work are doing it for a reason, and it's not because they are reliable. The barrier to entry is low and there are little to no consequences for doing a bad job. Repeat business is not that important because things just don't break that often.
And then when it is finally fixed you have an old machine and the next thing breaks soon after. Or you could buy something new with a warranty sold by someone with a brand to maintain.
I wonder if this is people just not realizing that things can be repaired? Between books and youtube videos I've been able to repair our washer and dryer, refrigerator, oven, dishwasher, vehicles (I once repaired a turn signal switch by soldering on a piece of metal from a soda can), etc. I've replaced many damaged ipad/iphone screens and they've all worked flawlessly afterwards. All of these things are already repairable. It just takes a little bit of research to learn how to diagnose what is wrong, figure out what parts are needed, and do the repairs. It used to be a lot more difficult before the WWW.
We had a washing machine (LG) problem that required the replacement of the drum. The drum was under warranty so no cost but the labor cost put it at around 2/3's the price of a new washing machine with new features and the new warranty.
Same with repairs to our HVAC system. We had to have two visits to replace two in warranty items. The labor each time was just shy of $1000. The third warranty break down the guy gave us free labor because it was just getting ridiculous.
This is eerily similar to the essay from the Novel 1984.
You just realize at one point in time, the growth of a capitalist society is limited by consuming power of the masses. So after that the only way to grow is to destroy and rebuild.
I've been using a Macbook Pro with an external keyboard for the past year. The builtin keyboard no longer works:
1234567890-
qwyuiop
asdghjkl;
zxcvbnm,./
Notice no E, R, T, or F keys. First the R key went out, and I got around that by leaving "r" in my paste buffer and typing Command-V instead of r. But then the T key went out about a month later.
Apple wants $600 for a logic board replacement.
It's so annoying to lug an external keyboard everywhere I go. Tiny wireless keyboards just aren't as responsive. But it's less annoying than paying $600 on top of a $2k MBP.
Odd that "logic board" replacement is required for a keyboard fix..
The apple repairs timeout. A coworker who was looking at a battery replacement on an "air" was told it was 6+ years old thus "vintage" and no longer serviced by apple.
Where do you sell them? eBay? I have a 2010 MacBook Pro gathering dust. I'd be happy to get pretty much whatever I could for it. It's never going to be used.
I hear about this often, and it happened to my sister's Macbook as well (to the point it was obviously deformed and they tried to tell her she dropped it).
Is this a case of people being more likely to complain about it because Macbooks are generally much more expensive than other laptops, or does Apple really have a battery problem with these devices?
Lithium ion batteries tend to swell when they get old. It's pretty universal. I've replaced the battery in old UPSs as well a very old 4G iPod (in which the swollen battery was keeping the clickwheel from working properly).
I'm surprised that the Apple people tried to make it seem like it was your sister's fault. In both of my cases, I went to the Apple Store and the batteries were replaced without hassle, without charge, and out of AppleCare.
Once I didn't even have an appointment; I just walked in with it and they went, "Eeeew! We'll take care of that for you. Stand right there."
In their defense, it was one manager or something, and the laptop was grossly deformed. I assume it was the battery, as I'm not sure of any other explanation. It was probably 6-7 years ago now, so the details are hazy, but I do recall her being upset and recalling how she actually got into an argument in the Apple store for a good 15 minutes before they finally accepted it. I'm not sure if they finally accepted it because they gave up, or someone looked closer and realized there were no marks on corners/sides to suggest a drop but more towards the center there definitely was deformation of the case. IIRC the tech that initially examined it was fine, but a manager came out after they took it in back.
That is delightfully stubborn of you. I wonder what really goes "wrong" with those logic boards. Could it be as simple as a bad solder joint needing to be reflowed?
This. Don't know when all this changed ( 80s ?) in the US, but even appliance repairs are sort of a thing in the past here. If a washing machine or microwave stops working people simply get a new one.
I was quite amused to see an "Appliance Repair" van parked in my neighborhood in San Francisco the other day. I started chatting with the guy and turns out he was from Ukraine and told me that in the former Soviet Union countries, they never throw away any appliance if it stops working. They repair it. Same is the case in countries like India (where I was raised), china.
Esp. in India, there are scores of Radio, TV, phone, appliance repair shops in every city and even in villages.