I’ve been writing about the poor quality of many modern washing machines since 2000. As a long-time repairman I’d witnessed the gradual slip between people keeping them running as long as possible to all too often throwing them away at the first breakdown – unless it could be fixed for a pittance. Since then it’s become a serious environmental issue.
The public usually gets exactly what the public wants. The majority of people don’t want more reliable washing machines – they mostly want cheaper washing machines. They might say they want more reliable washing machines, but only if they aren’t expensive, which can’t happen.
If this wasn’t true – how come hardly anyone buys a Miele compared to how many buy Indesit, Beko, Candy, Servis, Hotpoint etc? Most people know a Miele washing machine is substantially better quality and likely to last at least 2 or 3 times longer than a Hotpoint or Indesit but they won’t buy one – because they are “expensive”.
This isn’t an advert for Miele, I mention them because I don’t know of any other washing machine that is anywhere near as well built available in the UK. I use the word “expensive” reluctantly, and in quotes, because they are only relatively expensive. £800 is what a washing machine of that quality should cost these days – if not more.
They only appear expensive because other manufacturers constantly undercut the quality so much they can sell much cheaper and make them look expensive. Instead of bravely maintaining quality but seeing their washing machines rise in price, most manufacturers have found themselves constantly having to reduce quality and cut corners to keep their appliances competitively priced.
Reduced build quality
This trend has got progressively worse, to the point where they regularly redesign parts, ditching tried and tested designs in favour of cheaper new production methods designed to cut manufacturing costs.
Most appliance manufacturers have been making washing machines for many decades, and could have developed incredibly reliable ones by now. Instead, they are selling new washing machines that still suffer the same faults their previous models suffered from over 10-years ago. Instead of their appliances becoming better with time and experience, they get worse, or at best stay the same.
To be fair, it would be a very brave manufacturer to maintain standards and become a lot more expensive. But Miele seem to manage OK producing better quality but more expensive appliances. I’m sure there is room in the market for something in between the average washing machine and a Miele.
Most current washing machines are way too cheap
It might not seem as though they are cheap, but compared to what they should be if standards had been maintained they definitely are. For example, Hoover used to sell a 1200 spin 4.5Kg washing machine at over £400 in the 1990s. Yet over a dozen years later in 2008, a Hoover 1600 spin 6Kg washing machine cost as little as £211.
In 2019 Hoover’s 1400 Spin 7Kg capacity washing machine is just £234. That’s a faster spin, and much bigger drum for almost half the price compared to almost 25 years ago. Moving manufacture to cheaper countries is part of it, but these prices can only be achieved by also reducing quality and repairability.
Note: I give Hoover as an example only because I had more knowledge of their old prices as a previous Hoover Agent. All manufacturers are the same. If prices had stayed the same (not even gone up as you’d expect) then that £400 washing machine from around 1994 should cost £775.55 in 2019.
Going back further..
In 1973, a basic Hoover washing machine was £94.88, that’s equivalent to £1,192.74 in 2019! (Source Inflation calculator). Today – over 40 years later a similarly basic model but with faster spins and a bigger drum can be bought for £220. That’s equivalent to just £21.47 in 1973. So in 40 years, the price of a basic washing machine has dropped (in real terms) by nearly 80% which is absolutely staggering.
An 80% reduction in cost is impossible without reducing the quality and longevity of the product. If you want to produce a washing machine made as well as the Hoover was in 1973, (even accounting for advances in production techniques) it should cost much more like £600+ and with extra features and technical advances it should easily be £800+.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking a more expensive appliance will last longer
Top quality, extremely well built washing machines are still available and they are every bit as reliable as they used to be – if not more so. They just usually cost between £600 and over £1000. However, do not assume an expensive washing machine has to be high build quality – are more expensive washing machines better quality?
Most manufacturers prefer to sell to the mass market in vast quantities, but it’s getting harder for them to compete on price and they’ve dug themselves into a big hole. Currently almost every washing machine available is virtually the same machine inside, with hardly any difference in quality, repairability and even design.
Summary
Consumers relentlessly batter down prices by rewarding those who can do it £5 cheaper and punishing those who can’t by not buying them. Too many consumers focus on price over quality and choose faster spins and more features over solid build quality and repair-ability. The majority of consumers swap over to cheaper brands if the one they always had goes up in price.
There’s a limit to the savings to be made by clever, innovative production methods.
Inevitably manufacturers had to resort to cutting down the length of the mains cable and the hoses, reducing the quality and sturdiness of the main casing, changing metal parts to plastic etc. and reducing the quality and repair-ability of components in order to satisfy the demand for cheap prices.
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I’ve read through this thread with great interest and have decided to chip in with my two pennyworth. I think that a lot of the raw anger expressed here is simply because it is increasingly difficult these days to take the quality option when buying white goods, given that even once reputable brands are little better than the cheap as chips alternative.
In my own house I have two fridge freezers (don’t ask why) – one a 35 year old Swedish built Electrolux TR1241, the other a 16 year old Asko KF7932. The Electrolux came as part of the deal when we bought our first house twenty odd years ago, so it was by no means this year’s model even then. Over the intervening years, the only replacement for it has been the fridge thermostat, not even the light bulb has gone. The Asko was probably the best quality model going when we got it in 1995 and was by no means cheap even then. However its door seals are now on the way out, the internal fridge lining has cracked in places and the bottom of the freezer door is beginning to rust away. The reality is that I can’t get parts for the Asko, so when the seals do finally give in, I’ll have to replace it, even though I would prefer not to. As such there is every likelihood that the Electrolux will still be going when the Asko is on its final journey to the dump. And from what I can see, I’m probably not even going to be able to buy another fridge freezer like the Asko, with twin compressors, at almost any price, unless I go for a US imported GE side by side American style job. As for something with the build quality of the Electrolux – well they just don’t exist anymore. So I too sense the frustration when pursuing the quality option for white goods becomes so constrained, and limited between one or two brands, with the rest being equally poor. I’m sure that I’m not alone in wishing that manufacturers would concentrate far less on all the bells and whistles they put on their products, and instead get back to making rather less complex items that are designed to last, and which can be fixed when they do go wrong. This is though I imagine just too much to hope for.
@Dave “I’m also a Chartered IT Professional and teach computing so you’ll not be surprised that I favour Apple products as they also have very long and usually trouble-free lives. Possibly you and I would agree on Apple being good value and well made? Apple are surely the Miele of the computer world?”
Ha ha… I think you are trying to catch me hook line and sinker?? If we start a discussion about my opinion of Apple products, we will definitely, DEFINTELY having a falling out on our hands here :) Suffice to say that I don’t disagree that they are generally well made – hmmmm….. we should probably leave it at that before I start a rant ;)
Hi Mark: Most of the white goods manufacturers who made high quality appliances for decades have now moved over to mass producing lower quality appliances. Brands like AEG and Bosch once made very heavy, very high quality appliances, but now just make relatively normal appliances with little difference in quality to their competition. You can now buy a Bosch washing machine for as little as £230 and an AEG for as little as £318.
Even without looking into these figures carefully it should be obvious to most people that you cannot produce a high quality washing machine for £230 – or even £318. Why have they done it? Either because they can’t make it pay any more selling high quality or they got greedy and preferred the mass-market sell.
Unfortunately most white goods manufacturers are flooding the UK with appliances full of fancy features but lower on quality and less repairable. As far as I’m aware we’ve never had so many fridges, cookers and washing machines catching fire or exploding! Just look at some of the recent
white goods safety notices
People appear to want features, features and more features, or they are being beguiled by them. They are buying really cheap throwaway ones or extremely expensive appliances that just aren’t made anywhere near as well as they once were and should be. Until enough people start to shun the brands who only make fancy appliances at high prices where money goes into the features and not the build quality then that’s all we’ll get.
Whilst ever the majority of people think a Miele washing machine at £600 is too expensive because it only has a 6Kg drum and 1300 spin, but will pay up to £800 for a Hotpoint (and then even take out an extended warranty) because it’s got an 11Kg drum and 1600 spin and may be a fancy colour – the quality appliances will remain a niche market selling in such low quantities that they can never bring prices down without having to start reducing quality a little.
Dave – did you not see Traxxion’s, “rubbish Apple products” comment several back? ;)
Washerhelp – thanks for your response to my contribution. As you well know this problem is not simply confined to the white goods market. Going off topic slightly, the same problem affects the power tool industry, where many of the big players source their goods from the thousands of small factories which have sprouted up all over China in recent decades. As a consequence you can, for example, buy a power drill sporting a brand you’ve never heard of, but which looks indentical to that being offered by a big name at double the price. And in reality the two drills are pretty much the same, though the quality control on the latter might be rather better. I know that one increasingly common cheap as chips brand is able to offer a three year warranty on its tools – this being greater than almost all the big players – simply because it doesn’t offer any service repair or spares backup worth mentioning, thus significantly lowering its overheads at a stroke. As a result, if your tool goes wrong within three years, they’ll just send you another one and scrap the old one without even trying to fix it. As a model of sustainability this just cannot be right, but as a consumer it is just very difficult knowing which way to turn given that so many of the big names are at it.
Traxxion: Re the Which? reliability report chart you mentioned. I think it’s flawed, and don’t believe Beko washing machines (basically the cheapest on the market) are almost as reliable as Miele. However, if true it would certainly need an adjustment of attitude :)
The chart is only based on a questionnaire sent out to, “35,000 Which? members asking about the reliability of their domestic appliances up to six years old. Only 10,538 members responded”. The sample numbers used are totally uneven. 1,355 Bosch owners replied but only 139 Whirlpool owners responded.
If 100 people had problems with their Bosch washing machine out of 10,538 owners that’s roughly 1% failure rate – but if just 2 Whirlpool owners out of the 139 had breakdowns that would be roughly 1.4% failure rate. I’ve made this point before too, and repeat, I’m not a statistician so I’m open to being put right if I’m misunderstanding something here. As far as my logic works, you need the same sample size to fairly compare anything.
Regarding Miele verses Beko. 390 Miele owners responded and 215 Beko owners. If you multiply up the stats then out of every 100,000 people, 4000 more Beko owners will have a fault. The chart can’t also take into account faults after 6 years. It’s perfectly possible that the majority of Beko washing machines have long since been scrapped after 10 years but the majority of Miele washing machines are going strong for another 10 years. Therefore although I appreciate your way of interpreting the “only 4% difference” figure as being significant and proving something, I feel it’s taking something at face value which gives a distorted impression.
Another anomaly is that it shows John Lewis washing machines reliability rate of 91% yet John Lewis washing machines are actually Zanussi washing machines with the John Lewis name on. They may have a few extra features such as some extra options or a slightly faster spin, but they are otherwise exactly the same as a normal Zanussi washing machine yet this chart says Zanussi washing machines only have 84% reliability.
Although I’ve made this point in my article and elsewhere it’s worth looking again at how prices for washing machines have changed over the years.
In 1973 a Hoover washing machine spinning at less than 800 rpm with around 4.5kg drum space cost £94.88, which is roughly the equivalent of £986.75 today (according to the Historic inflation calculator)
Unfortunately that’s a pretty simplistic calculation, and can’t be 100% accurate as many things have changed but in real terms I believe it gives a fair idea of how relatively cheap many modern washing machines are.
You can buy a Bosch washing machine now for £230, which is the equivalent of £22.12 in 1973. So imagine if someone had brought out a washing machine in 1973 which instead of the Hoover’s £94.98 price was only £22 – imagine what corners would have to be cut in order to reduce the price so much.
According to this way of looking at things washing machines should in theory be on average around £900 if they’d kept pace with inflation but many are so substantially cheaper it’s hard to explain away in simple lower production costs, and surely no coincidence that they aren’t anywhere near as well made or repairable.
(Apologies for the multiple comments today). I just found whilst pruning my forum, a post from July 2007 where I stated that you can buy a Bosch washing machine for £230. This is exactly the same price as I mentioned earlier today when I said you can buy a Bosch washing machine for – “as little as £230!”
So, 5 years later a Bosch washing machine is exactly the same price. How can we expect quality products when prices are suppressed so much and people at the budget end of the market still only want to pay just over £200 for such a hard working and important appliance?
Washerhelp:
The cheapness of machines relative to inflation – hard to know. There are other obvious factors – availability of materials, streamlined production lines, better tools and engineering, more machines sold and yes, higher turnover of the machines themselves, higher markup on parts?, etc. On the flipside – generally higher labour costs, probably higher materials costs?, more competitors (but that can work both ways). Some of it is just technology I guess. I mean a computer now costs what? – nothing basically.
When you mentioned the bigger drums in your other posts, it clicked with me that this is the main difference on our purple-ish highend Hotpoint! :) Honestly, I find the larger drum incredibly useful and the machine washes well.
Oh I totally accept that a 4% difference (if it is indeed a failure rate), IS statistically significant. No doubt there is some skew in the results as well, but it still says to me that quite a lot of people, the particular type of people who subscribe to Which, are pretty happy with their Bekos. An inferior machine for a third of the money with possibly just as good results, for half the time? Not a bad deal overall.
Your intent in making your point is noble, but I feel the reality is, that if Miele could increase their market share, the prices would not come down – they would go up. Take Apple as an example….. ;P
(sorry, its done now… doh!)
Ahh…. apologies; I didn’t notice Traxxion’s earlier remark about Apple products: I was too busy thinking about my reply on the whitegoods topic.
I won’t ask why you don’t like Apple (apart from price, which is an issue for most people I think, even hardened Apple users) in case it provokes a ‘rant’.