Build a Better Mousetrap
Column
9-7-19
The washing machine bit the dust a few days ago. Actually it was more like it choked, drowned and broke the dam. I knew there was something different about the laundry room almost immediately after stepping into the inch of water. I'm a quick study.
To be honest, it had leaked a few other
times, but this was the Big Kahuna of leaks.
This was a room with a melted ice skating rink. Hoo boy.
This machine didn’t owe me anything, though. It was only the second one I ever owned.
We had been married four
and a half years before we bought our first washer and dryer in 1971. They were installed in the basement of our
Marblehead, Massachusetts rental, just a week before the arrival of the world’s
most perfect child.
Frankly, it wasn’t until the installers left
that I thought, well, that’s it. I am
finally and truly married. This long
date is over. We own a washer/dryer.
One might have thought
that being nine months pregnant, with a baby who eventually made her entrance
at well over nine pounds, might have given me a sense of the permanence that
I’d signed on for. But nope, I finally
became domesticated the afternoon the Sears guys delivered my work partners.
I had decided that to be the perfect mother
meant that I wasn’t going to buy any of those new-fangled, packaged, pretend
diapers. MY CHILD was going to wear
cloth diapers, perfectly washed in gentle Ivory Snow. My new machines were certainly up to the task
of a load of baby clothes and diapers every day, all pre-rinsed, of
course.
When I went back to work
five months later, I bought my first box of those pretend diapers. The old-fashioned baby sitter wanted only
new-fangled diapers. Within a week I was cutting Pampers coupons and the
washer/dryer worked only every other day. And then also for the next 24 years.
Both kids were well out of
college before I bought our second washer/dryer combo. And since the original set was Sears Kenmore,
made by Whirlpool, why wouldn’t I buy the same ones again? The only difference is that they were not 1970’s
Harvest Gold, they were late 1990’s Bright Almond. The gold set had had one washer repair, the
almond set, until the recent flood, had received a new dryer timer about 12
years ago. 48 years, four machines, two
repairs. Jeesh.
The machines were like
members of the family except they didn’t require second helpings, dessert or
emotional support. I just loved them – reliably willing to work any day. Unfortunately, this illness was terminal.
I had been looking at
washers for a few years, trying to wrap my head around all the electronics that
operate them. These babies are no longer
mechanical, they’re micro-chipped like everything else in our beep-beep
world.
I’d seen pairs that sold
in excess of $4,000. When Dear Richard
and I went to search for real it was with a great deal of trepidation, armed
with info from the latest Consumer Guide.
Our final decision took
the bulk of an evening. We arranged
payment, order time, and delivery. Then
they offered the warranty for purchase.
The saleswomen had been helpful throughout the process but before we
weighed the warranty decision, we asked what the life expectancy was. We received a shrug with the answer that it
could be six or eight years, maybe even ten.
WHAT? What happened to my 24-year
work partners?
Last year we had to buy a
replacement refrigerator in an emergency.
The expensive, stainless, French-door beauty died two days before we
were expecting a houseful of company for a long weekend. The repairman sensibly told us that he’d be
happy to replace our compressor but in the end we’d have spent many hundreds
and still have a 13-year old fridge. He
actually thought that the fact we got 13 years out of it was great!
The salesman who sold us the new refrigerator
speculated that ten years would probably be a good run. How did we come to this? How did we go from a country that makes 24-year
appliances to only eight or ten? At
first I thought it’s because most new appliances are imported. That is true.
Wait a minute. It seems
that these electronically run machines require a lot of repair. But the auto industry figured it out. Cars now last for a couple hundred thousand
miles. And car companies don’t offer
10-year warranties with purchase if they couldn’t stand behind it. Oh, and the
warranty comes with the car, it’s not a separate purchase.
So logic tells us that we
should have Toyota and Honda making washers and dryers. After all, they taught the reliable
car-making gig to the American auto industry.
Now, finally, most new cars do much better than they used to.
It was Longfellow, the
dead poet, who is attributed to saying “Build a better mousetrap and the world
will beat a path to your door.” The appliance section needs a better mousetrap
builder.
If a washing machine
company builds a better model with a FREE warranty and the possibility of a
reasonably long life, they’ll corner the market.
I don’t know why we have
to tolerate this planned obsolescence.
Have we become such a throw-away society that we are going to happily
toss washers, dryers, refrigerators, dishwashers, et al, on the ever-burgeoning
trash pile?
Dear Honda,
We need you to manufacture washing machines. And we need you to improve the current
mileage estimates. Please. We’ll beat a path to your door.
Hugs and Kisses,
Your American Consumer.