Yeah it is. Have had to put it off for a couple of days. Just found the sodding fridge has conked out . Literally 2 hours after a week of shopping arrived FFS.
My fridge is >30 years old, as is my dishwasher. I've had them from new. No, they weren't particularly expensive examples.
My freezer is >25years old, and cost £10 second hand.
Car is 15years/0.11Mmiles old, gets serviced twice a decade whether it needs it or not.
Two things spring to mind here, yes of course appliances will typically last that long if you don't switch them on
Unfortunately for that contention, they have been in use continually.
Seriously appliance were really made much better than they are today, back in the day when you brought those, even over engineered in some cases, barn door engineering is the phrase I think?
They were far from the most expensive items on the market at the time - so well engineered rather than over engineered.
I have to admit that I've had to pre-emptively repair the dishwasher's metal racks, since some of the plastic was cracking. Sugru is wonderful stuff
So, WTF is going on under the flightpath into Heathrow? Alternatively, since I used Which?'s reports as the basis for most of those choices, I consider that subscription a bargain
Do you still subscribe? If so and have done ever since you made those purchases then its possible that you might have over the years paid the différance once you get round to actually replacing them no?
I do still subscribe, and I do still use the reviews. The benefits are:
- saving my time by directing my attention to the better alternatives. Example: when buying a car I (1) look to see the top 2/3 cars for reliability (2) go and sit in an example of each to see which is most comfortable (3) search for an example of that type
- for subjects I don't know much about, it indicates which questions I need to consider
- buying more reliable things => spending less time/money on shopping (and more on TEA )
- avoiding unnecessary expense. My father claimed that the subscription paid for itself, because he switched to using ordinary soap rather than Cusson's Imperial Leather
- it has (some) product/manufacturer reliabilty information
- they actually use the damn things. Imperfect? Of course. But better than most other sources which are thinly disguised press releases along the lines of "I've unboxed it and think it is better than sliced bread". (Mind you, even Which? is beginning to fall into that trap ).
Having said that I'm pissed off that much of the detailed information is only on the website, in a form that is unnecessarily difficult to digest
- there's too little information on each page, presumably to cater for those prats that only have handheld computers with 3" screens. Typically each product's review is sperad over four(!) pages
- the "star rating" tables summarising the quality/price of each product's multiple attributes only allows 4 items to be compared