Are there any actual long-term reliability studies for appliances today?

[michaelz08]

It doesn’t feel like there is. Consumer Reports is obscure in the data they collect and it’s only from members, who perhaps aren’t always representative of the regular population. They’re really only good for performance testing, and even then it doesn’t seem like they’re perfect.

Yale Appliance “publishes” their results under the term reliability, but I take issue with that term as they only go back a single year. That’s more like “initial quality” than reliability. No wonder their rankings can be a little weird… LG beating Miele? Really?

Some repair folks make videos on YouTube, nothing consistently quality though. Ben’s appliances on YT sometimes leaves me scratching my head.

Any thoughts on all this? Any other sources people find to be worthwhile?

 

[combo52]

Long-term major Appliance reliability studies

Hi Michael, other than consumer reports there’s really not much, and consumer reports while helpful is quite flawed. They only ask how many times the appliance is broken. They don’t really take into the severity of the repair, etc..

I think consumer report should also ask what your last dishwasher was, and how long it lasted for for example that would give some idea of longevity that people keep an appliance.

I don’t see any problem with consumer report data being limited to their readers. They have several million readers, although their readers tend to be a little more affluent and better educated than the general population, I don’t think it should affect the ratings too much.

Very expensive high-end brands are going to have many more warranty calls, when people pay that much they expect a little more.

High end appliances are also made in more limited numbers and do have more problems initially at least.

I get a lot of information from my customers. I’m always been very analytical and analyze Appliance life and repair rates, I’m always asking my customers how long the machine lasted what problems they have with it how many people are in the house how many loads a week they do, etc. so I get a fair idea of which machines hold up better than others.

I do wish organizations like consumer reports would actually take the Appliance apart and see how it’s made. You can tell a lot. I had to put a heating element in a five year-old Electrolux dryer today. What a piece of junk. It’s a pain in the ass to get together in part half the screw strip out you certainly wouldn’t be able to take it apart and put it back together five times, this type of thing would actually be very easy for consumer reports to analyze, but I don’t really think they care about long-term reliability anymore.

If you look at Speed Queen laundry appliances compared to almost any other, you can see that they’re designed to be repaired the front panels come off of everything, almost all gas dryers today have to be completely disassembled to get to the gas burner Speed Queen take two screws off just like old times and the gas burner and such as right in front of you.

Changing a door boot on a Speed Queen front load washer is a simple task, changing the water pump on the front load washer only involves four screws and two simple hose clamps, for example. So it’s easy to see why the average Speed Queen will probably last twice as long as other machines.

John L

 

[henene4]

Short answer: No, not really.



Long answer?
I worked in engineering at BSH in the built in cooling department.
As an engineer as general, you are taught do design something as long lived as necessary, yet as safe as needed. The saying "Everybody can built a (sturdy) bridge, only an engineer can barely build a (sturdy enough) bridge" is pretty damn true.

As a company, you know exactly how long you have to have appliances last to fullfil your goal.
You know exactly, what a customer tolerates. Which failure rates are acceptable, how many customers you can stand do loose in a year etc.
And your job is to hit that number as closely as possible, for as many use cases as possible.

Of course, a higher end manufacturer has more of a BOM cost per appliance that a BOL manufacturer - but it's not that different in many ways.
All you know is that if you have small margins and your appliances last to long, you'll be out of business soon.
If your margins are great, but you sell 2 year appliances, you'll be out of business aswell.
Your customer knows that if you pay BOL prices, they won't get a TOL product - so they understand a 300$ washer will probably not last as long as a 800$ appliance.


So the manufacturers know how long their appliances last, pretty damn exactly, and they know what their targets are.
Those numbers exist - but getting them is EXPENSIVE. The place I worked at had an entire department with dozens of employees and probably the same number of thermal chambers and even more test stands just to validate that the goals are met - anything that lasted to long could be made cheaper, anything that broke to early had to be reinforced.
That's why repairing modern appliances is a gamble - if one thing breaks, the rest isn't really designed to last longer than something else.

But because those numbers are expensive to research you don't want them to be out there.
Your competitors DO buy your appliances, test them and validate their designs against those.
You DO NOT want them to get those numbers for free.



And who does pay for that research outside the companies?
No one.
Again - we are talking DOZENS OF MILLIONS A YEAR for one product category at one manufacturer.

Getting the same empirical data is just not economical outside the companies.

 

[michaelz08]

Short answer: No, not really.



Long answer?
I worked in engineering at BSH in the built in cooling department…

Fascinating! I greatly appreciate the insight. That was a great read.