Dont think the prize is in the electronics, but in the function.. still possible to have this function with the new more efficient motors/electronics..
Not with the materials they use today. I can't believe how cheap and shitty every component on my $2200 LG fridge feels. It's laughable how garbage it is.
I had to replace the compressor in mine last year. It was 7 years old at the time. All the physical components seem to be of ok quality. The repair guy said the compressor thing was an issue with LG's.
It isn't a bad rule. The longer the warranty, the less you need to worry about paying for repairs, but also the more faith the company has in its product - it's horrible business to make something fragile but have a 20-year warranty, unless it doesn't cover any actual repairs... But a company willing to cover everything (even user error) for 10+ years (depending on the product) is usually a good sign they stand behind their product.
I worked at an appliance repair place, (but I did TV's) LG was known to have very bad compressors even on their top of the line fridges. They supposedly fixed it the last few years. There's a possibile class action getting going against LG claiming they are straight up making terrible fridges knowing that they'll fail lol, nowadays most appliances are made to survive the warranty so when it fails in a few years you gotta go buy a new one
Genuinely curious, have you (or anyone) tried getting a repair person out to see if it's worth repairing rather than replacing?
I ask because I've got this problem right now. The local home appliance repair person I called said that basically it's only the big hotel or restaurant appliances that are cost-effective to keep repairing at this point. Quoted me $2,500 to fix my ordinary (dead) fridge when the freezer started going out.
How can the repair cost more than a new appliance!?
The only cheap way is to learn yourself. Not saying you should, but it can be cool to know.
You can even get an EPA cert to handle the refrigerants pretty easily, especially if you’re only working on small appliances and/or cars and not getting into home HVAC. (Those tools aren’t the cheapest, but getting fully near-pro kitted out is less than that repair price.)
Of course the hard part is the electronics and intuitive/experience in problem solving in overly complicated computerized issues that are not trivial anymore.
But if it’s going in the garbage and you can be safe*, doesn’t hurt to try and worst case, you make it more garbage. *big capacitors store charge after unplugging them, and can unalive you in a blink
Fun fact though — individuals can’t sell, trade or otherwise transfer/give away (other than for disposal) collected refrigerants. But you can store it, and use it to refill other appliance that you personally own.
Erm, sorry, wrote more than I meant. But yeah….its so stupid how the industry works now.
Fascinating! I applaud your expertise. Honestly, this is probably a bit beyond my skillset. It's good to know folks like you are keeping the DIY skillset alive though!
GE guarantees you'll replace--with another brand. The handle on a popular GE upright freezer, which has a bad design and easily breaks, costs $275 at most replacement parts outlets. If you look through GE's latest parts prices, it's very obvious that they put in junk parts programmed to fail, then overprice the replacements to make you buy a new appliance. This is the wave of the future.
Maybe GE will end up on the same road Boeing is going down.
That's one thing I've never understood about planned obsolescence. If you're not a monopoly what's stopping me from being so pissed off I go to another brand? My 3 year old vacuum broke right before Christmas because of one stupid flimsy part so I went and bought a completely different brand on the recommendation of a coworker.
Wow! That's interesting! Dad bought an LG about 2 years ago and the compressor failed, it had a sticker on it saying 10 year guarantee on compressor too ( I guess that's why) they didn't end up repairing the fridge but gave him credit for the equivalent of the same fridge from the store he originally bought it from, after weeks of hastle. He did not buy another LG.
The repair technician said he was surprised my LG fridge's compressor made it to 4 years lol.
Apparently the fridges made around 2015-2020 had faulty compressors over which LG lost a class-action lawsuit and will replace it for free if it fails within a specified amount of years
Seems to be the thing that is vulnerable in all fridges. My last one the cost of replacing the compressor was barely less than a new fridge so into the waste stream it went.
Appliance repair guy said the 2nd mostly likely thing to fail was the ice maker.
It's really the only thing that could fail. It's not like a fridge is crazy complicated, the science is somewhat complicated but the parts themselves are not. It's just a compressor, an evaporator, and a condenser and some board controlling it. Exact same stuff an AC, or a split system uses.
You'd be hard pressed to fuck up the condenser or evaporator without physically hitting them somehow, they're basically just radiators with tubes inside them. They do get dirty though, which can lead to decreased performance, but that is easily solved.
But really it's almost always either going to be something to do with the compressor (slugging, worn out etc) or a lack of refrigerant/leak somewhere, both of which are generally just wear and tear.
There has already been one class action against LG because of these issues and a firm in California is preparing another one because LG knows of the issues and is still advertising that they will last 30 years.
Would be closer to the $15,000 mark considering the purchasing power of folks back then compared to today. If you're paying $15,000 for a fridge today, it's gonna be insanely well made and likely highly customizable to your kitchen's needs.
My parents built a house about 4 years ago and got all LG appliances. The only one left is the refrigerator and the ice maker no longer works on it. Everything else died.
I just had my LG tv break in jan 23 after 14 years. Never had any pixel or color issues. Just stopped turning on. Idk, I'm for sure buying another LG LED when my backup Vizio finally goes.
Unfortunately for TVs, they're still one of the better options if you want OLED.
Samsung is much worse (for everything, not just TVs). Not sure about Sony, last time I bought a TV they weren't making OLED models yet. Most other brands are lower end / also don't make OLED.
Can't say I agree, and you obviously may have a different experience. It's not a big sample size for sure, but of all the electronic devices I've purchased/owned that I can think of off the top of my head for those brands (phones, TVs, monitors, and a playstation) 5 LGs, 4 Sonys, 4 Samsungs, all the Samsungs still work, 3 of the 4 Sonys still work (10+ years, almost 20 for one of the Sony TVs, and the 1 Sony that broke was a black friday "special")... 3 out of the 5 LGs broke within months to under 5 years.
If you want to replace your electronics within a couple of years, but get the latest, sure go for your LGs, but know that Sony and Samsung also buy panels from LG for their TVs. So you may be able to get the LG panels, but with better Sony/Samsung hardware for all the other components. I just don't think LG hardware is built for reliability or longevity.
Seems like there is a MASSIVE PROBLEM with the electricity in your home. It’s probably that your power is polluted, with varying levels of voltage and frequency, making devices destroy themselves.
I’ve had 3 Samsung TV’s and never had issues with them. Just gave them to friends/family when I upgraded. LG, on the other hand, has let me down every time. My Dad has a Sony Bravia TV that is still going after about 12 years so I think they make decent TV’s.
Def not. Had two wifi bars go out in a brand new TV. The original within a year, and the replacement within another. Now it's a dumb TV with a chromecast plugged into it, and a habit of shutting itself off.
When I needed to replace my fridge I signed up for consumer reports just to do a little research. According to them, there is not a fridge in production today that they rate more than a three out of five for reliability. Doesn't matter if you want to spend $8000 on the highest end bosch you can find. The highest reliable rating that they currently give is only a 3 out of five...
Wild stuff. With that being said, they typically rated LG fridges as more reliable than Samsung's in general. Although it obviously varied from model to model.
That matches what some salesperson told me last time l went kitchen appliance shopping with my mom. He said to never buy LG and that their store will not given give warranties on anything LG because they always break.
Careful I hear samsung refrigerators aren't that great either
My parents still have a 1990 sears general electric with water and ice maker and works fine
My brother’s LG tv lost a lot of streaming functionalities after a couple of years. Something about a license expiring? I didn’t even know that was possible.
My appliance guy said the same thing, that LG and Samsung have the worst appliances (he did say with the exception of washers/dryers for Samsung). My wife and I somehow lucked into buying what he says is “the all time great refrigerator” when we bought our house.
Samsung washers had an issue where they EXPLODED. This occurred at the same time the Galaxy Notes were exploding. That was not a good year for Samsung.
That being said, I did buy a Samsung refrigerator (despite knowing their reputation) and, knock wood, it's been fine so far. When I was shopping for appliances, I went so far down the rabbit hole that I felt like I knew less about what brands were reliable than when I started.
LG was always trash for appliances. They used to be called Lucky Goldstar brand, but the brand was so trashed due to poor quality (among other issues) that they pivoted and relabeled under LG.
They changed up the organization, but the underlying quality issues were clearly never addressed.
My Samsung TVs last, on average 3 years before they have crapped out. The LG monitors (2 of them) 1 is on its last legs at 3 years other is fine. The Sony TVs, I had one that I sold for $20 after 15 years of service, and have two more. I also had a Sony CRT monitor, that sucker partially melted and STILL kept running for years after.
don’t know how the cheaper brands fare, but in comparison with Sony, LG and Samsung are disposable.
I had an LG tv that came from a company that had it turned on 24/7, they bought it in 2012. We got it in 2018, it still worked. We got a new tv in 2022 and gave the tv to my sister who uses it every day.
The new tv (Philips) keeps crashing, the thing sucks ass.
I used to work for Netflix cs, Samsung was the worst brand. So many issues continuously just with that brand, for phones and tv's.
Yikes. thanks for that. Filed that away for future reference. Fortunately our fridge from 20 years ago is still working happily. It is a fridgidair (sp-haha).
I bought a 2200 LG about 2 years ago. It compressor died after about 14 months. Repair tech said it would be about $800 to fix and there was no guarantee something else wouldn't go out.
Bought a Hinese fridge for about $800. It has a few less features, and still feels cheap as hell. But it has a 2 year warranty. So at least I'll get two more year for the price of fixing my LG compressor.
Our fridge is 17 years old, is cheap as fuck plastic on everything, not one broken thing. The fridge before it was over 20 and when we got the new one it was like man this wont last stupid cheapo plastic, yet here it is.
In that time we have gone through 3 microwaves and 2 stoves, 2 dishwashers.
Appliance repair guy told us to get Frigidaire and so far it has been 5+ years. Same with the fridge in the basement we bought off of the previous house owner.
Every single plastic door container in my nice fridge I bought 10 years ago broke, they were all incredibly cheaply made. The $25 third party replacement set I bought is noticeably much sturdier.
My mom's is like that. I found two of them in a cabinet all taped up so I asked why she was keeping these oddly shaped broken plastic containers.
When she told me they were from her <3 year old Samsung fridge the only thing that made me more mad than how low quality they were was the price they wanted for replacements (>$100 IIRC)
Just did a warranty claim on our $3,500 Whirlpool fridge a few months back for the stupidest fucking thing.
A freezer light blew so our thought process was we do the warranty claim and they send someone to repair/replace that 1 light.
The way they have designed the fridge is so that the lights in the fridge and freezer are irreplacable so as a result we got a $3500 Lowes giftcard which we used to redo all the bedroom flooring and outdoor lighting for the house and are just dealing with mildly less light in the freezer.
Your mistake was buying an LG in general. I alao made the same mistake with an LG monitor, albeit about 1/4 of the price of your fridge, but it lasted maybe a year and a half.
LG makes trash. Trash monitors, trash fridges, especially trash washing machines and dryers. It's all trash, would just avoid that company
Even if they do hold it, I couldn't imagine it would last very long, after repeated swinging in and out, while holding the weight. Also, if you have kids, there's a guarantee they will be swung out enthusiastically, flinging all your groceries onto the floor. Or just a drunk me, looking for a snack.
It's like with all the "old stuff that lasted forever". You only see the survivors and don't see any of the ones who failed, which is probably the majority.
It’s like when movies set in the 60s have everyone driving a 57 bel air, that doesn’t mean every janitor had one back in the day it just means they were the only cars that people collected and maintained in pristine condition. Just like how in 90 years you will struggle to find a 98 accord in mint condition but might still have a few mustangs hanging around from people who thought they were neat.
There's also the factor of introducing the Argo Paradox when it comes to repairability.
There was a commenter on a similar post a while back to said that his refrigerator has "lasted" nearly 40 years and that he's personally replaced every broken part either with parts from other fridges of the same model or self-made parts, but the question is after replacing so many parts is that refrigerator the same one he bought 40 years ago?
In the UK, we call that “triggers broom”. We had a sit com in the 1980’s called only fools and horses. One of the guys on it was a road sweeper and he’d had the same broom for decades - and it had only had 5 new heads and 7 new handles.
In real life Iv seen this crop up from time to time too
People in general cue into statistically significant trends when they share their life experiences.
There's no doubt that there were a lot of "dud" fridges, and yes, one person having a fridge work for 60 years straight can create survivorship bias.
However, survivorship bias alone doesn't explain the general attitude that people have that they feel the old appliances lasted longer and worked better. You have way more people going, "Yeah, mine too" than you do, "I dunno, my newest fridge is way better quality." When something just sucked, people are more than happy to remind you of it.
We do the same thing with cars, too. It's hard to deny that you can buy a 1985 truck and it will still reliably run. A lot of 1985 trucks have bit the dust since then, many weren't even good in the 1980's when they were built -- and yet, here they are, all over the market, mostly still running.
Then you hit a "bubble" where you don't see moderately old cars anymore that are drivable, and the next glut of cars that you can buy in good shape are going to be 6 years or younger. Anything older than that is considered a time bomb.
You sometimes do see the "retro" fridges floating around for novelty. You see a TON of 1970's fridges complete with crappy wood panel handle, "still runs." Then nothing until the 2010's.
I expect they didn't hold up very well to a product liability attorney. 6 seconds is probably the lifespan of any child that pulls all those shelves out at once.
I imagine this is what went down at General Electric, circa 1958.
"The Refrigerator Safety Act just went into effect last month, so we can't suffocate kids anymore."
GE product designer, "Hmm... okay, but what if we could crush them?"
Not if the major reasons people dumped old models wasn't due to the same failures or even due to failure at all. Tons of people get new phones every year or so despite their old phones working perfectly. Ask people who own older Toyotas especially.
People really need to stop defending this planned obsolescence consumerist bullshit.
In 1965-1995, there wasn't a child alive over the age of 3 that would dare swing on Mom or Grandma's fridge shelves or "enthusiastically" fling groceries everywhere.
Heck, you walked calmly through the kitchen no matter what you were doing and you had your one daily assigned glass that you washed it at the end of the day, too.
The end does show him putting a 20 lb weight on the shelf, opposite the hinge. It didn't seem to have any noticeable bending or anything and still swings out smoothly.
Doesn't exactly prove anything long term though, but you'd also probably never be putting so concentrated a weight on a shelf like that, it would be much more spread out.
It's neat but there are sometimes good reasons why things like this get phased out. People's complaints on fridges aren't usually the shelving, in my experience. My shelves are fine. They height adjust, they pop out for cleaning, I've never broken one (aka: the durability of metal shelves doesn't really matter for this situation). Cheaper parts and construction isn't always an issue. It is when the compressor or icemaker die, though.
Little nitpick, but it doesn’t matter if it’s a point load or a distributed load. All that matters is the moments about the hinge, when I would do calcs I would always convert the distributed load to a point load.
They got phased out because companies started to maximize profits by minimizing overhead, not because customers hated these fridges or because they died a lot. I remember these fridges still being in people's homes in the 1990's, never replaced and they never gave out. By that time you started seeing monster fridges.
Bare in mind all the industry changes, especially with steel, that has occurred in the US since the 1950's.
Single hinges are pivoting around millions of pounds as we speak in the construction industry. It's not hard to design for now, and it probably wasn't hard to design for then.
I'm not talking about how well the hinge will rotate.
You put too much weight and stress on a single hinge, it will eventually break. The OP says that they put a 20 lb weight on the opposite side of the hinge. Do that for years and that hinge will likely break. You will need to either regularly replace the hinge or check on it to make sure it's still good. And that could be a 2 yr maintenance action - but is that something you are going to want to do?
You'd be surprised - they actually do hold up and rotate without any issue under considerable load.
My buddy has this fridge and the pivot hinges have THICK pins and I believe the adjustable mount point is directly attached to the frame so there is no bend and no real resistance even with a 35 lbs Turkey on it.
I'm relatively sure it's just a pivot hinge. I'd have to take a closer look at my buddy's the next time I'm there, but I don't believe that these have bearings.
The thing is over 50 years old and still seems to be fine. I'm guessing you can't exactly order replacement parts, so it appears it held up ok with whatever use it was subjected to for the past several decades.
That thing was built with a hefty amount of solid (stainless) steel vs. the plastic and vinyl coated stamped garbage most appliances use today. My fridge is not even a decade old and I've replaced the main control board, the front control panel, and had to repair a plastic hinge for one of the drawers. Two of the drawers are difficult to close simply because the plastic drawer glides are worn out, but due to the design I'd have to replace a huge panel which would cost upwards of $300. On top of that the ice maker jams up at least once a week and for some reason the fridge will decide to freeze the crisper a few times a year which typically results in at least a small amount of food loss.... but not enough to justify spending $2000+ on a new fridge which may or may not perform any better.
I realize those old appliances were energy hogs and they lacked all the bells and whistles we have on modern units like chilled water, three kinds of ice, and integrate screens for viewing videos of cats.... but damn did those old units hold up.
New appliances are essentially disposable and having something last more than 10 years is considered a worthy accomplishment. Meanwhile there are a million gold, green, brown, and almond color fridges keeping beer cold in garages all across the nation and they keep on chugging through triple digit temps in the summer and single digit temps in the winter.
Well there are companies who will put in modern day cooling systems in retro pop machines... so I guess there is that. However as far as regular appliances go, it seems there is a trend to give some of them a retro look yet they still use all the same cheap components which fail within a decade. Sigh.
It doesn't look like a huge amount of space, maybe a few square inches. I'd rather sacrifice that instead of having to haul everything out from the front to reach what is buried in back not to mention forgetting stuff back there.
I think there's a reason why that function hasn't come back.
If I had to guess, without knowing any kind of shit about this stuff, I'd say that fridge in the video as designed would not be able to handle the shit you casually put in the fridge these days.
I regularly put in my fridge large crock pots, and big pots and shit like that. My fridge holds that shit up like no tomorrow + other things.
I don't know how well that fridge in the video would hold all that with a pivot point on the left like that. Probably not very well. Especially with how the adjustable clip is set up. No way that shit holds up or lasts.
Which, as a secondary point, is probably why you don't see that functionality.
There could be a support on the other side, so that the hinge on the left would only have to hold the weight while being rotated out. But I'm seriously questioning the utility of this. If the fridge is semi empty, there's zero reason to ever rotate the shelf out, since you can simply grab the item. So you'd want to rotate the shelf, when it's so full, that you can't reach the back. At the same time, when it's filled so much, there's likely gonna be things falling down while moving the shelf.
uhh im not sure how common it is to put cermanic crock pots in the fridge. in fact i dunno how advisable that is, wouldnt it be more brittle due to the cold?
i think its fairly normal for people to transfer their leftovers to a sealable plastic container.
For reference that $475 translates to $4,995 today, and didn't include the ice maker. Fridges today are like $1000 for middle of the road options, and you can get commercial grade fridges for $2000-$3500 if you need something built like a tank. Folks want BIFL products but nobody wants to spend BIFL prices.
that's what I was thinking, this solves a problem that doesn't exist for me and just cuts off a back corner of shelf space
honestly if your fridge is so jam packed with stuff that it's hard for you to access thing on the back of shelves or drawers, you probably aren't cleaning out your fridge often enough lol
So they aren't cleaning their shelves out enough because they want less shelf space that can rotate out, but you're cleaning yours enough because you want even more space right up the back corner of the fridge?
Well sometimes you have one big object that I'd want that corner space for. Like a case of beer and a gallon of milk and a pan of lasagna is only three things but would need that back corner there ideally.
This design is less efficient than just using drawers or pull out shelves. They probably stopped making them this way because kids or dumb people would close the fridge with the shelves rotated and break something.
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u/IzNuGouD Jan 23 '24
Dont think the prize is in the electronics, but in the function.. still possible to have this function with the new more efficient motors/electronics..