Is Planned Obsolescence a reality?

[Kaizerdave]

I was persuaded by Stefan that the idea of Planned obsolescence was a ridiculous idea because competitors would just make different products and make them better.But I've been watching a documentary on BBC and it seems to show that even things like Printer Cartridges have dials in them that counts down each print that you do, thereby making them stop even when there is fresh ink in the cartridge...Is this a reality?http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01zxmrv/the-men-who-made-us-spend-episode-1The bit I refer to is at about 11:30

 

 

Would be great to find out.

[luminescent]

I think this has to be broken down into two questions:

 

1. does planned obsolence exist at all?  and

 

2. if so how prevalent is it?

 

Otherwise, everyone sort of works with a different definition of the question "is there planned obsolescence?"

[Slavik]

I was persuaded by Stefan that the idea of Planned obsolescence was a ridiculous idea because competitors would just make different products and make them better.But I've been watching a documentary on BBC and it seems to show that even things like Printer Cartridges have dials in them that counts down each print that you do, thereby making them stop even when there is fresh ink in the cartridge...Is this a reality?http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01zxmrv/the-men-who-made-us-spend-episode-1The bit I refer to is at about 11:30

 

 

Would be great to find out.

Here is how I see it.  Are there companies that will use shady methods to profit?  Yes, no doubt there are and will be.  there are and will be companies that will use any and all methods to make a quick buck.  This however doesnt bother me in the slightest.  There are plenty of product testing sites that even now do the tests on the products to make sure that they work well, a video on youtube  of graphics cards comparisons comes to mind.  The worst the company the faster it will go out of business.  The question comes to mind though, why are such bad practices so prevalent?  I would propose, that its due to the cost of entry into the market, the cost which is imposed by gvt.  regulations, and other gvt. mandates .  The costs are so enormous that less and less companies are able to compete. 

[AustinJames]

I can't view the documentary, because the BBC likes to keep their propaganda out of the light of international scrutiny... Nonetheless, a few questions come to mind, based on the premise.

 

1.  If you purchased a printer cartridge with the guarantee it will pump out 10,000 black/white pages before it goes kaput, and it does; would you feel deceived if you then found out the cartridge could have done 15,000?

[LovePrevails]

if you want less planned obsolescence

then more competition

the freer the market the better

[Bradford26]

As a rule, more competition is better for the consumer. Wikipedia describes how, when long lasting Japanese cars entered the US market, it forced US auto makers to increase the durability of their cars.

 

The consumer is hurt when a company has a full or partial monopoly and competition is limited. However, in the case of print cartridges, there may be a few other things going on.

 

1) Companies create new printers pretty regularly. Third party vendors have to play catch up to create compatible cartridges.

2) If a company has a patent on a cartridge design or can somehow legally restrict third parties from copying their cartridges, they have monopoly powers and use them.

3) The goal is to minimize resource use for everything. It is likely possible to insert something which will measure the exact level of a cartridge and report it to the computer. However, if you have to pay for a new measuring device for each cartridge, the cartridges may no longer be competitively priced. The difference in performance does not outweigh the cost savings, so the cheaper solution is chosen. 

4) Consumers would rather their cartridge stop printing before it's empty than have a printer which suddenly prints out blank pages without warning.

 

There are some things that a consumer can do to protect themselves from planned obsolescence. 

 

1) Don't buy the latest and greatest products unless the company has a history of products that meet your durability requirements.

2) Research the average life-span of the product and purchase the 2nd or later generation of it.

3) Buy an extended warranty. A company may have designed their product to last at least as long as the warranty. New products often have unforeseen weaknesses. An extended warranty will protect you.

4) Don't buy something that you can't afford to throw away. If the only reason that you can afford that fancy new phone is that someone will pay half for it in a few years, don't buy it.

 

In the end, economics will always deal with companies fairly based on their product price and quality unless a monolithic organization with a monopoly on the initiation of force interferes.

 

I look forward to your feedback. Thanks for reading.

[ProfessionalTeabagger]

I was persuaded by Stefan that the idea of Planned obsolescence was a ridiculous idea because competitors would just make different products and make them better.But I've been watching a documentary on BBC and it seems to show that even things like Printer Cartridges have dials in them that counts down each print that you do, thereby making them stop even when there is fresh ink in the cartridge...Is this a reality?http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01zxmrv/the-men-who-made-us-spend-episode-1The bit I refer to is at about 11:30

 

 

Would be great to find out.

If that's true then there's a great opportunity to make a lot of money. Just start selling cartridges that do not do this. 

[Magenta]

I am a product design engineer for a manufacturing company. I can confirm that I do not design for obsolescence. I want to make the best product possible at the lowest cost possible. The only reason my products don't last longer is because (A) longevity costs money and we've targeted the optimum balance between cost and quality to be where we are and (B) I'm not done making improvements.

 

Intentionally making a bad product only works in an environment devoid of competition and freedom of association. When competition exists, then it breaks down like this:

• If I try to make a part that wears out sooner, my customers will buy my competitors' parts instead
• If I can make a part that lasts longer, I will earn customers from my competition

I have literally experienced the conclusion of both of those scenarios. Now, without competition and/or freedom of association, then it works like this:

• My customers can't leave, so I have no incentive to please them and every incentive to pull more cost out of my product. One of the symptoms of cost-cutting is decreased life expectancy.

Being a design engineer, I can also explain that there are several design compromises/decisions that are made by smart and careful people, the effects of which are unintuitive to those outside of the industry. For example, engineers spend most of their day thinking about how things can fail, then working to prevent failure. In the case of printer cartridges, one possible failure would be:

• Continuing to print when the ink level is too low to support a quality image.

This can harm the perception of quality in customers, because they might think, "what a piece of junk printed this terrible image? Sarah, would you order a Konica Minolta next time? I never had print jobs like this on the old Konica". Perhaps when the flow rate of ink decreases, the spray pattern has less control and then it dirties the internal components. Perhaps the ink degrades over time such that the last 5-10% of the ink is not good for printing and this could be a design decision because more expensive materials that are good to the last drop might double the price, so it's worth taking the 5-10% hit rather than a 100% price increase. These failure modes came to me inside of a minute of thinking - the guys at printer companies spend years fine-tuning failure modes.

 

In addition, consumer-level products often differ from commercial-level products. Why? There are several possibilities. A key one is economies of scale. Commercial customers require high reliability, so when manufacturing their parts, the cheapest production methods are not an option because they make lower quality parts. Therefore, the purchase price of commercial products is much higher. Also, higher quality parts require more engineering and production support to maintain the high quality. Avoiding failure is costly. Consumers can often tolerate an equipment replacement. Therefore, the cheapest production methods are viable and less staff are needed to support the production. This results in large price reductions. Here's a hypothetical:

• Commercial machine costs $1,000 up front. Lasts 10 years. Total cost of ownership for 10 years = $1,000.
• Consumer machine costs $180 up front. Lasts 2 years. Total cost of ownership for 10 years = $900. The $100 savings comes from tolerating down time and replacements.

Everything is a compromise in engineering and while the decisions made are not always intuitive to customers, nobody stays in business by making net-negative decisions.