That’s strange, because modern scroll compressors are very reliable.
Did you power up the refrigerators as soon as they were installed? If so, that might be the reason for the premature failure of the compressor. Some manufacturers warn that a refrigerator must remain unpowered for a certain amount of time (24 hours?) if it had been stored or shipped horizontally.
No. We took full care of the devices in accordance with the cautions and directions in the instructions handouts and manuals, including setup and operations.
They didn’t fail immediately, but they did fail within warranty, and they did fail in their closed refrigerant systems.
Some of the reasons for the declining quality and shorter lifespans of appliances like washing machines have already been cited. Also the reasons why repairs are often impractical and not cost-effective compared to getting a new appliance. I had exactly this experience with a fancy LG front-load washer some years ago, where the main bearing started to give out. The cost of a replacement part, combined with the labour cost where the entire machine had to be stripped down to the bare frame, made it obvious that a new machine was the only way to go.
I don’t doubt the EU study that show electronic controls to be the #1 failure mode in modern appliances, but I would question the conclusion that the electronics themselves are the problem. After all, modern cars – say those built within the past couple of decades – are far more reliable than those built, say, 50 or 60 years ago, despite being filled with electronics.
The real reason modern appliances are less reliable and less durable than older ones, as already said here, is the they’re built more cheaply. A significant aggravating factor is that they’re also overloaded with features intended to make them more attractive to consumers, so you end up with shoddy materials supporting a complicated set of features. It’s the perfect scenario for things to break.
There’s no easy answer for those looking for reliable appliances, especially because you can’t even rely on brand reputation any more since in a world of so many mergers and re-brandings we’re almost at the point where every brand is the same as any other. When I had to replace that LG washer, I looked for something that had a reasonable reputation for quality and that, above all, was basic and simple.
What I ended up getting was a basic top-loading Maytag that’s basically a newer version of the one in the picture @Crafter_Man posted and looks like the one pictured below. It probably does have electronic controls but they don’t do much because it doesn’t have a lot of options. It’s a washing machine that washes. So far it’s already outlasted the stupid fancy LG front-loader with a zillion different options and displays and flashing lights and the ability to play a tune when it’s done, and I expect it to keep going strong for many years yet.
Around 10 years ago my neighbor purchased a brand new LG washing machine/dryer combo. As soon as the warranty was up, which I think was one year, an error code was displayed and the unit wouldn’t work. He took it apart and tried to find the problem, to no avail. Online research suggested the computer board was faulty. He took a gamble and purchased a new one for $250. Installed the new board and… same error code. He was so pissed off that he dragged it out to the end of his driveway and put a “free scrap” sign on it. He then purchased old-school (mechanical controls) appliances, and they’re still going strong.
I’m pretty sure most common residential refrigerators are still using reciprocating compressors for the most part. They’re still very reliable nonetheless, but everything surrounding them has been cheapened considerably. My refrigerator from 2009 crapped out about a year ago due to a small leak somewhere in the refrigeration lines. Thinner piping, weaker joints, tighter bends, press-fit evaporators, these all are at the razor-thin edge (literally and figuratively) of holding together at all. I’d say most manufacturers and cantankerous repairmen use efficiency concerns as an excuse for cheaper build quality and profiteering.
Also, first-world repair service hours and parts can’t compete with third-world slave labor assembly line mass production. Many of today’s major appliances cost nearly an order of magnitude less than they did in the 1950s and 1960s when adjusted for inflation. It makes sense to pay a couple hundred dollars to repair a $5,000 Sub-Zero fridge rather than a $500 LG, but the $500 Frigidare from 1960 was the equivalent of $5,000 back then, so they could support a robust repair network, and expectations for reliability were higher too, just like they’re higher for Sub-Zero today.
This is huge.
I recently paid $100 to put a new glass backplate on my phone after I cracked a hunk off the old one, leaving a jagged glass edge. A month later I paid $750 for a whole new phone (same brand, newer model) with 4x the internal storage, 3x the camera lenses, and lots of other improvements.
One was US labor and them stocking a vast variety of back sizes for different phones. The other was Chinese slave labor production of hundreds of of thousands of identical completed boxed goods.
Repair doesn’t stand a chance against modern tech factories with 3rd world labor running them.
But if you cough up $3000+ for one of those German washing machines, can you reliably get decades of use out of it?
Re. appliance repairs, government rebates and subsidies have potential to make a difference in the cost-effectiveness.