I am continually amazed how much replacement parts for consumer items are. Cases noted lately:
-last summer I faced a dilemma-scrap a 19 year old washing machine or fix it (it needed a water level control switch). The local appliance parts store wanted $120! for a new switch (I eventually found an on-line source that sold it for $55).
-my Norelco electric razor: after many year’s service, I needed to replace the cutter/heads-cost? $36.00 (you can buy a brand new one on sale for $40.00).
Why price replacement parts so high? Do manufacturers care so little for their customers, that they try to screw them in such a blatant way?
I suppose every operation is a profit center today-but really-who in his right mind would spend almost as much to fix an old shaver, as buy new?
For the items you listed, why in the world would you want to repair instead of replace? A 19 yo washing machine may work, but a new one will use less electricity, less water, less detergent and generally save you its cost in just a few years. Even more so cheap electronic items like a shaver. Those things aren’t designed to be fixed. Recycle the materials and buy a new one.
They have to buy, store, and inventory the parts. Pay for the utility bills for the building, not to mention the building, as well as the salary of the people who stand behind the counter. They probably don’t sell many water level control switches for 19 year old machines either, so there’s a little surcharge there.
As with TVs, it’s probably a better idea to replace them than fix them.
Morgenstern is on the right track. In addition to those points, consider packaging, shipping, cataloging, etc. What it costs to make the part is only a small part of what it sells for. The selling price reflects what it costs to make the part available to you.
Planned obsolescence.
William Clay Jr. said Ford planned to raise replacement parts prices as high as possible to make up for lower profit on vehicles and to force people to replace vehicles earlier. Most industry does the same.
I worked where we had the tools for stuff that hadn’t been for sale for years. It is expensive to run off a hundred parts a year for a replacement part. It’s even more expensive when you have to find and get components to work in an assembly. The engineers have to check that a substitution can be made and sometimes the tool has been modified to a new revision or irreparably broken and a new tool has to be made. It all depends on how much they decide to continue support for old models. The tools only have a limited life and running a 8 cavity mold making one part because the other cavities are wore out is one example of the additional costs. The end of support is when they start scrounging suppliers for a couple parts they may have archived. That’s it when those are gone. It gets expensive to supply components years after the last production model manufactured.
19 years out of a washing machine is hardly “planned obsolescence.”
When I worked at HP they told us there was some law that said manufacturers of devices need to provide replacement parts for a certain number of years. However, no price controls were put in place either so they can jack up the price as high as they want for those parts.