Yesterday, we gave away our ~6-year-old GE French-door refrigerator after a
never-ending slog of repairs. At least the guy and his mother who came to pick
it up have a side-hustle of repairing and reselling appliances. There's hope it
won't end up in a landfill. He offered to sell me a 4-door Samsung. No Thanks!
I'm done with over-complicated appliances. Refrigerator repair is not a skill
I'm looking to hone any further.
The strange thing is: its not like these simple appliances have been out of production. Go to any shop in a developing country and you can get cheap and easy to repair models from well known brands completely new.
Try the same in Europe, no luck. Almost impossible to get an AC without completely unnecessary Wifi for example.
I am not quite sure what the reason for this is. Part might be that the legally required energy efficiency scores are only produced for the higher end models that come with all the stupid unnecessary gadgets that break all the time. But it is clearly a total market failure as I don’t think anyone enjoys having a half broken fridge all the time…