
Canadians name top appliance brands that break down - colinprince
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/marketplace-appliances-right-to-repair-1.5475649
======
dreamcompiler
Major appliances used to last 20 years, but not today. This article tracks
with my experience and with what several repair people have told me. Many of
the "name brands" of yesteryear have consolidated and moved their factories
offshore to save money. They've also started designing compressors
specifically to last 5 years or less, and repairing or replacing a compressor
costs more than a new fridge.

The other trick (more common on washing machines) is to build electronic
control boards that last 5 years or less, so when the washer breaks you have
to pay $500 for a new control board. Washing machines used to have mechanical
controls that lasted 30 years. Now we have electronic controls with no moving
parts that theoretically could last forever but they die in a couple of years,
usually because of poor power supply design or overheating.

This is deliberate. The companies have figured out that customers will
tolerate it and go buy a new appliance every 5 years. Every company wants that
recurring revenue stream.

Why doesn't competition solve this problem? Many of the big name brands
(Whirlpool, Maytag, Amana, Kitchenaid, Jennair, etc.) are all the same company
now [0]. Kenmore and LG are still separate but on the whole there's very
little competition. The government should never have allowed this degree of
consolidation.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool_Corporation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool_Corporation)

~~~
sixothree
The junky rusted refrigerator in my garage (that I got for $200 in 1995) has
never failed me like this beautiful expensive one has.

Sometimes it just stops cooling. It reports inside temperatures 20+ degrees
below what they are. They replaced the motherboard. They replaced the entire
fridge. At least once a year I lose all of my food.

~~~
ireflect
Check out local used appliance stores. You can probably get something ~10
years old that will look new enough but still be somewhat reparable and non-
smart. Shops that sell used appliances generally also repair them, so they'll
know what's most reparable and you'll be able to go back to them for parts.

Support the repair and used-goods economy, otherwise we'll just have
disposable options.

------
computator
> _When asked to recall the manufacturer of the appliance that broke down,
> Kenmore was named more than any other brand, accounting for 21 per cent — or
> about one in five — of all appliance breakdowns in Canada._

The above makes me wonder if they understand probabality and statistics.
Kenmore is an extremely popular and long-standing brand in Canada. Of course a
popular brand is going to have more breakdowns on an absolute basis than
unpopular brands.

If they had said something like, "Kenmore owners named Kenmore appliances as
breaking down more often than owners of other brands", then I'd have more
confidence that they corrected for the popularity, but they didn't say it that
way.

~~~
kitcar
Kenmore also doesn't manufacture most (any?) of their appliances, making this
"study" even more nonsensical.

~~~
joezydeco
They _never_ manufactured any of their appliances. There never was a Kenmore
factory.

Kenmore has been a brand label of Sears since the mail-order catalog days.
Almost any and every manufacturer out there has been relabeled as a Kenmore at
one time or another, from kitchen appliances (GE, Whirlpool, Amana, LG,
Frigidaire, etc) to lawn mowers (Black & Decker, Briggs & Stratton) to air
conditioners (GE, Fedders, Carrier, Amana).

Similarly, the Die-Hard brand was used for automotive parts and the Craftsman
brand was used for tools. Again, all made by other companies (Johnson
Controls, Exide, Skil, Black & Decker, Stanley, Chamberlain, etc).

What the OP article really points to is the breakdown of Sears in Canada,
which for a long time was way stronger and more stable than the American side.

~~~
userbinator
_Briggs & Stratton_

They never made lawnmowers, but they made a lot of engines for them and other
things.

------
derefr
Hypothesis 1: things break down because they're cheap (and therefore must be
made cheaply to be profitable), not because they're from bad brands. There
aren't really any truly-awful brands; only some brands that are _willing_ to
cater to lower price-points than others, by producing cheaper (⇒ less-long-
lasting) products. _Holding price constant_ , an appliance is going to break
down at pretty much the same rate no matter who you buy it from. There are no
real fly-by-night manufacturers capturing more profit by making things cheaply
and selling them with high margins. The market is too competitive for that.

Hypothesis 2: landlords and condo developers will buy the cheapest appliances
they can when furnishing units. Thus, they'll end up buying them from the
brands that offer the lowest price-points.

Take 1 and 2 together, and you might see an outsized number of complaints
about appliances from certain brands breaking down, _specifically_ from
tenants of furnished homes/units; while other owners of appliances from those
same brands might be confused by the claims, given that _their_ appliances
that they bought themselves (at more reasonable, non-bottom-of-the-barrel
price points) have served them fine.

~~~
marcinzm
>The market is too competitive for that.

You're missing someone wanting to extract maximum money from a previously well
viewed brand by cutting corners. Kenmore is, for example, owned by Sears which
had reasons to maximize short term money.

------
anu7df
In the US, websites like repairclinic and partselect have helped me save
thousands of dollars in expenses on busted refrigerator and dishwasher. The
first time I opened up that dishwasher was an eye opener. Cheap doesn't even
begin to describe that piece of garbage. This was a 1000+ dollar whirlpool
crap. Similar story with the Frigidaire refrigerator. What is confusing to me
is the sheer number of oddly shaped parts that seem to work interchangeably
with LG, Whirlpool, Frigidaire and Kenmore appliances. The only logical
explanation is that they are all the same parent company and/or all of these
are made in the same factory with different labels slapped on in the end. Just
a speculation since I never really researched this.

~~~
userbinator
_The only logical explanation is that they are all the same parent company and
/or all of these are made in the same factory with different labels slapped on
in the end._

You are absolutely correct. No single company actually makes all the parts in
one appliance, and even if all the brands are owned by the same company, it
will tend to use the same designs from that companies that make the individual
components. The same reason you see (the same!) Bosch parts in a lot of
different European cars, for example.

------
debian3
I’m I the only one who is tired of replacing my appliances and each time
something broke I now just replace it with commercial equipment.

I had my vacuum sealing machine break on me (which is now a commercial one).
Was nice to just call the company who instructed me to pop the hood open and
we figured out what was wrong. It was just an off the shelf part at 2$ from
Home Depot.

I’m replacing everything with commercial. I don’t mind if my next toaster will
need me to call an electrician, I just hate the idea of replacing my things
and i love to fix them. I find that commercial equipment is much easier to
fix. They build them expecting it will fail and they make parts available.

The only one I have problem figuring out is dishwasher. The commercial one are
very different, they are basically build to do multiple washes in a short
amount of time. They also tends to leak water on the floor. So for residential
use it’s not so convenient. If anyone know something I don’t, let me know.
Might have to replace my 12 years old asko dishwasher soon.

------
Marsymars
My new Samsung washing machine started leaking water onto my floor within a
couple years of purchase. At least the Wi-Fi still worked.

~~~
Jerry2
> _At least the Wi-Fi still worked._

Did it at least send you a message that it was leaking? Heh.

I'm a big proponent of 'dumb appliances'. The less they do, the better. All
this IoT-ification of everything is madness. It just introduces points of
failure, attack surfaces and privacy intrusions for no benefit for the
consumer whatsoever. Oh, and they're nearly impossible to repair because
everything's DRMed and microcontrollers actively prevent you from fixing
things with 'unauthorized parts'.

My household still has 15 year old Maytag appliances that still work perfectly
and have no DRM in them. I plan on fixing them until the day I die because I
really don't want to deal with this new mess.

~~~
donmcronald
I remember reading an article about point and shoot cameras becoming popular
because most users don't adjust any settings away from defaults. I feel like
appliances are the same. Ours have a ton of options on them, but only a few
are used. I could literally use a washer with cold/warm/hot and that's it.

------
analog31
My family has lived in the same house for about 15 years. It was empty of
appliances when we moved in. I have repaired or replaced every appliance, some
multiple times, including the water heater and furnace.

Something I've learned is: There's a huge proliferation of repair info online.
Folks love fixing things and blogging about it, or posting videos. And the
parts aren't ridiculously hard to find.

We had one recently, where our washer was leaking water onto the floor. A
handful of video's later, I figured out that we were just using too much soap,
and the suds were somehow getting into some vent tube. Less soap, leaking
gone.

~~~
ireflect
I love to hear other people doing this.

In the last year I've repaired the dishwasher, washer, and dryer at my rental
unit, and the dishwasher at our home. These are all old and cheap units but
were surprisingly fixable. Lots of videos and service manuals online.

I found all the parts I need at reliableparts.com (no affiliation) who have a
location here in Vancouver, BC and who are always knowledgeable and helpful.

I spend maybe $75 in parts (total for all 4 appliances) and a cumulative 6
hours of my time. Most importantly to me, I kept these things out of the
landfill.

~~~
tacoman
I have fixed and replaced control boards in both my Kenmore washing machine
and oven. I've had to replace the duck valve in my Kitchenaid fridge (it got
plugged and froze up, leaking water onto the floor).

Without online videos, I don't think I could have done a few of the repairs I
did. I had to do some soldering to fix my washing machine so I can see how
some people wouldn't be able to do these things.

------
ajxs
Among other poor statistical methodology, it's not as though the average
respondent to this poll is likely to have a reasonable sample size of
appliances to compare. They're not saying "Out of the six refrigerators I own,
the Kenmore breaks down most often." It's actually "I own a Kenmore
refrigerator and it broke down at some point.", which is more or less entirely
meaningless. If they sampled the population to find the proportion of owners
of each brand that reported their appliance breaking and compared those
results it would be slightly more meaningful.

------
goldcd
I've fixed the odd few bits and pieces over the years, and it's very
satisfying. The problematic bit is normally tracking down the bit you need at
a reasonable price.

Occasionally you strike lucky - I think £15 for a new door-rack for my fridge,
or find a place like elementman.co.uk (they just sell replacement elements for
ovens) - but quite often you find yourself squinting at a poorly photographed
bit of a dishwasher from a similar model number and wondering if it's the
same.

What would massively help is if all the bits were simply stamped with a unique
part ID - and all these parts were listed in the manual.

You could then search for the ID and get new/refurbished/pattern replacement
parts and lookup the fitting reference.

Or, when your fridge breaks, could just easily ebay all the parts that do
work. Search for the model, see a list of the parts, check the ones you still
have working and list.

~~~
slavik81
Kenmore is good about that. I found replacement parts for my fridge, stove and
dishwasher quite easily (repairing damage done to them). The sticker with the
model number is in a standard location. Then you just look up the manual to
get the part number[1]. Then buy the part[2].

For me the main problem was the expense. It was still cheap compared to a new
appliance, but it's annoying to pay $50-$100 for a few bits of plastic. I
didn't have much luck finding cheap parts on ebay, either.

[1]: [https://www.searspartsdirect.com/](https://www.searspartsdirect.com/)
[2]: (Canadian) [https://www.reliableparts.ca/](https://www.reliableparts.ca/)

------
kludgekraft
An increasing number of brands are just that, brands. They buy product from
china, slap their logo onto the product and go to market. If consumers
complain of poor quality, brands look for a new OEM, but cannot do much more.
Service is often outsourced to other companies making the brand incentivised
even less.

------
brailsafe
This pretty much comports with my experience and impression over the last few
years, which is that products in general just suck and are getting worse. It
baffles me why people just spend money like crazy on stupid stuff, when just
being able to work less would be of better value. I would never order a
computer online not from Apple, because I'd have have little recourse if the
thing was crap or DOA, and even then, Apple's products have decreased in
reliability and consumer friendliness.

------
jungletime
Imagine being a landlord, owning a few properties, and experiencing this
failure rate. I wouldn't be surprised that this might affect rental prices on
a huge scale.

I own just a few rental properties, but I'm constantly fixing things. Just in
the last month. Delta faucet that had a plastic mixing valve, broke off. 5
hours to fix. Water damage to the vanity. While fixing the vale, noticed a
year old baseboard heater in the same bathroom, that cover fell off. Exposing
wiring. Possibly a deadly situation.

Electric Water Heater, died at 6 years. 7 Hours to replace. Within the last
year, I also replaced a washing machine and dryer. A closet door, so poorly
made, the hinge broke out. A dish washer that works, but the plastic hinge for
the detergent broke. A toilet flapper replaced twice. That also has a plastic
handle for flushing that also broke. And this is just one property, in the
last 6 months. Most of these things originally bought at a big name orange
department store.

While these appliance manufacturers might profit from selling new appliances.
The losses they cause to the economy, are far greater than their profits.

The reliable options are not really available anymore, at the orange store, or
the blue store.

------
anonsivalley652
Consumer Reports used to rate individual products and sometimes manufacturers
with rankings and try to estimate TCO/repairs, but when I subscribed to the
digital subscription to lookup gas water-heaters and gas tankless water-
heaters, there were zero reviews. Maybe they've cut-back to just rating cars
and TVs? I don't know.

Are Bosch and/or Miele any good still?

Also, Kirby vacuums eat Dyson's for breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight
snacks.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Bosch quality is still very good.

~~~
SpikedCola
+1 for Bosch. Their service/repair documentation (eg. [0]) is especially
fantastic.

[0] [https://www.frontloadbearings.com/bosch-800-plus-series-
dish...](https://www.frontloadbearings.com/bosch-800-plus-series-dishwasher-
service-manual/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
"For engineers, by engineers" if you will.

------
Shivetya
Odd list of appliance makers, Kenmore has their items built by GE, Whirlpool,
Frigidaire, and Roper[0].

That is one of the difficulty facing consumers in that you might think you are
buying from a better brand but in many cases you are not.

[0][https://dengarden.com/appliances/How-to-Identify-your-
Kenmor...](https://dengarden.com/appliances/How-to-Identify-your-Kenmore-
Appliance)

------
nneonneo
Meanwhile, the ancient Maytag fridge in our lab has been going for probably 20
years without fault (fingers crossed). I know there’s probably some
survivorship bias, but it really does feel like appliances aren’t built to
last anymore.

~~~
berbec
Isn't there still a light bulb burning from the 1900s?

~~~
saagarjha
Only because it's being run so dim.

------
jcims
Now we need a system to report which doctors lose the most patients. The
amount of information asymmetry in healthcare, bolstered by regulations and
justified by endless litigation, is difficult to navigate as a consumer.

~~~
hnick
I have a feeling that if that statistic existed today, Asian doctors would be
shown in an unfair light since the start of the year in many cities. Context
and nuance is easy to lose.

------
winrid
A lot of these brands have nothing to do with the manufacturing anymore. They
just rent out their name.

------
rodgerd
This is why I'm grateful for the Consumer Guarantees Act, which puts retailers
and manufacturers on the hook for fit-for-purpose repairs. Saying "one year
and a day, so buy a new one" doesn't cut it.

------
AzzieElbab
Looks like stats are basically a reflection of most frequently bought brands.
No one reported a broken Souz fridge because no one ever bought one

------
lupinglade
As usual, you get what you pay for. Junk appliances are all over our stores
here in Canada.

~~~
Scoundreller
I think the biggest complainers are those that paid $2k for a fridge and still
had it fail.

------
ilrwbwrkhv
where is the list of companies?

~~~
themew
In the graphic near the bottom of the article.

------
mberning
Is Samsung not in Canada? Hard to believe the are not in the top 5.

~~~
Scoundreller
They are.

