I bought one of these as part of an appliance packaged when I remodeled my kitchen. 6 months later I learned about all of this and did the filter bypass ‘hack’ mentioned elsewhere. This single act of stupidity by GE has solidified I will never buy an appliance from them ever again. This act of requiring ‘authentic’ filters is intentionally and without question anti-consumer to chase a few dollars but as long as the others don’t follow suit they’re shooting themselves in the foot because consumers will flee.
How long before we see an article about consumers repairing and chasing down ancient refrigerators that are sadly inefficient but at least repairable?
Note that you did not buy an appliance from GE, you bought it from Haier & KKR. Haier & KKR bought the appliance division from GE and licensed the GE brand until 2056.[1] The home appliances business, namely Haier Smart Home, has 7 global brands – Haier, Casarte, Leader, GE Appliances, Fisher & Paykel, Aqua and Candy. [2] Boycott the mothership for best effect!
(Most of the stuff you see with the GE logo on is licensed branding and GE has nothing to do with it except collecting a fee for the use of their logo.)
I learned this from the GE repair guy who came out to repair my broken down 2yr old dishwasher.
He also said: "Never buy anything from GE."
Then he plugged an ethernet cable into my fridge and updated the firmware. Mind blown.
The same with Samsung printers division which is actually owned by HP. I think punishing a company for selling their trademark so that other companies can mislead their customers is a good thing.
Aye, that's the point. And also why HP and Haier & KKR do sketchy things -- it's under someone else's brand, so they can do sketchy, dollar-grabbing stuff and not have to worry about the brand blowback.
Case in point, the current top comment is how they're never going to buy a GE fridge again -- even though it's not GE. Haier's gettin that money and GE is eating that bad voodoo.
For what its worth im quite content with Samsung/HP printer i got. Basic thing, no bells and whistles apart of one retarded button that nobody will use. Granted i knew story behind when buying..
Note that Candy are/were a European conglomerate with multiple brands, including Hoover, Baumetic, Kelvinator and probably a dozen more. I know they had a few Scandinavian brands, and I think they also have Servis.
Wouldn't surprise me if others in that list of seven are holding multiple sub-brands too, and a full tree-walk produces a huge list of brands.
We bought our set right after the acquisition happened. The sales guy at Home Depot told us about it and assured us the model we purchased was still pre-Haier.
I’ll be sure to boycott Haier, and thus all of GE Appliances.
The 1930s GE Monitor-Top (ironicallly also made by GE, but the good old GE) uses less power than a lot of modern refrigerators, and many others from that era are similar. Despite their age, used working ones are very expensive.
I have a 1938 Frigidaire which I restored. The compressor, which was marketed as the "Meter-Miser", draws less than 100W when running, and it doesn't run very often. So far it seems it will be around 280kWh/year. It has no "smarts" to subvert me, and the sealed nature of the system means that it could likely continue running for another century and outlast me...
A modern fridge use less than half of that, that will probably not be anything that matters. In Denmark with the current power prices, that'll pay for a new fridge over 10 years. That isn't exactly a good case for buying a new one.
I am more interested in the effect on the environment. What is the break even point for replacing an inefficient fridge with a new one in terms of damage to the environment considering things like the production process, transport and the eventual power consumption?
One site suggests that a refrigerator has 5900 megajoules of energy embodied in it. That's accurate enough for napkin math, so we'll run with it. 1 kWh = 3.6 megajoules, so 1638 kWh per refrigerator.
Two hops upthread, the commenter says "280kWh/year" for their 1938 fridge. No clue what kind of power they use, but we can calculate the recoup cost of a replacement without knowing it.
It looks like modern refrigerators are considered about 3x as efficient as pre-70s refrigerators, so let's say that a straight swap of a size-equivalent refrigerator of average efficiency will cost 100kWh/year.
Spending 1638 kWh on a new refrigerator will save 160kWh/year, so the break even point in carbon terms occurs after 10 years have passed.
This is all very bad napkin math done in crayon. If you want better figures, you'll need to know your own refrigerator runtime figures, which means measuring your fridge's power usage for a standard week of use (if you maintain a very stable indoor temperature through heating/cooling) or for a year (if you do not), and you'll need to know the energy saved per year of your current fridge, and etc.
ps. Apparently they have a fridge from 90 years ago that's still running. If you replace one modern fridge with another and only save 20 kWh/year, it will take you 90 years to recoup that cost. The 10 year figure is only possible because their 1938 fridge is so inefficient.
pps. Owner of said 1938 fridge, I intend no disrespect. This DOE paper talks in detail about the changes that improved efficiency – inventing high-efficiency compressors, changing the shape of the drain pipe (1% efficiency gain!), and replacing the refrigerant and insulation materials with more efficient ones. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/7281.pdf
It looks like modern refrigerators are considered about 3x as efficient as pre-70s refrigerators, so let's say that a straight swap of a size-equivalent refrigerator of average efficiency will cost 100kWh/year.
...and that's where you're wrong. These are the most efficient as of 2020:
The top of that list is a 5.1cft model that uses 186kWh/year. The next one is also roughly the same size and uses 202kWh/year, followed by an 8.8cft that uses 294kWh/year. 100kWh/year is, frankly speaking, impossible. Mine has 9cft.
That "calculator" is being very deceptive by grouping everything "before 1980" together. The 60s and 70s models are certainly far more power-hungry because they made them bigger and with thinner insulation (more interior space) and things like defrost heaters, but the ones before that are not.
This DOE paper talks in detail about the changes that improved efficiency
...and none of the energy usage figures they quote are anywhere near the 300kWh/year range. A look at the real numbers shows just how efficient these early models are.
In EU you can buy a A+++ fridge, that used less than 100kWh/year. Granted, I have not put a meter on mine, so I'd have to take the 2010/30/EC specification at face value.
75kWh/year is for the "cooler" only, which doesn't go below freezing. Ice takes a huge amount of energy to make, so that isn't surprising. I'm not sure I can even set my vintage fridge to not freeze, but it would probably consume in that ballpark too if I never let the evaporator go below 4C or so. The above link shows the companion freezer, which does, uses a 237kWh/year --- pretty good, but then the two together use a far more realistic 312kWh/year.
If you have both, I suspect that they have significantly more storage than your vintage fridge?
In any case, if you buy a A+++ freezer they "only" use around 200kWh/year. This is mostly due to better insulation, and is in general an environmental and economical benefit to buy if your freezer is old.
Okay :) It sounds like you have sufficient information to make an informed decision.
The only takeaway for me is that a fridge upgrade has to be at least 50 kWh/year more efficient, or it's more likely than not a complete waste of carbon.
Nowadays I cringe when I regularly see small fridges completely encased in furniture in hotel rooms, with no air circulation. They get very warm and even the top surface of the furniture sometimes.
I wonder what William Holladay, the grandfather of the article's author, would have to say about that.
The idea of putting the compressor on top is also interesting, why is it not being pursued? Noise issues?
I can see both sides. The companies are clearly making money grabs with these kinds of things (don’t forget the current state of printer ink), but there’s also a huge market filled with counterfeit or shoddy products. Those filters on Amazon are cheap for a reason — they don’t actually filter anything. If the companies priced them reasonably, there wouldn’t be a need to go to these lengths to force people.
Printer ink is going in two directions, on one hand you have HP and their "ink as a service" and remote-disabling cartridges when you stop paying, on the other hand you have Brother and others with ink tank systems that have zero DRM and you just squirt ink into.
Fortunately for the big corporations, most people lack even the most basic mechanical skills and are totally reliant upon others to do even trivial maintenance. Thus almost everything is becoming disposable because it's cheaper to throw something away than it is to pay a technician to fix it, parts notwithstanding. Car makers are really hoping the EV thing sticks so they can force you to buy a brand new car every 5-6 years once the battery is toast.
> Car makers are really hoping the EV thing sticks so they can force you to buy a brand new car every 5-6 years once the battery is toast.
What? No. This doesn't make sense at all.
First, most traditional manufacturers are NOT keen on having their fleet replaced. They don't want to cannibalize their own products. When they can, they will even retake possession of 'compliance cars' and destroy them.
Second, dealerships are also NOT pushing EVs. EVs make very little money due to less maintenance.
Third, no EV battery is toast after 5 years, except maybe first generation Nissan Leaf batteries (lookup 'lizard battery' if you are interested). Tesla's should last for 10 or more.
They really cannot prevent aftermarket batteries from being installed, or individual cells replaced. They can try to make the process more difficult (as GE is doing), but if there's enough incentive it will be circumvented.
Anything that does not deal with the drivetrain works just the same as any other car.
You might have a point if you mentioned the EV electronics. But can you repair a car ECU? Most likely, you can't. If that fails, you replace it. Same thing here, except there's less to replace.
Still driving my bought and paid for 2011 Ford. It’s borderline unrepairable on some stuff but FORSCAN gives capabilities to access most ECUs so barring any major failure I should drive it until it rusts out.
But unfortunately you’re right. It’s probably the single biggest thing keeping me from pulling the trigger on a Tesla.
I live outside the rust belt and my 2012 Civic has been paid for the last 5 years and trouble free. No repairs outside of wearing parts like shocks, brakes and a serpentine belt which was replaced even though the techs told me it didn't need it. I was just worried that 140k miles was enough service out of it. My ongoing service has been 5k oil and filter changes plus tire rotation. I've never missed that service. Take care of a quality car and it will last outside of the rust area of the US. I fully expect to keep this car until it starts to have electrical issues, if it ever does. In my experience once a car starts down that road it's time to move on.
140K miles on that Civic is just breaking it in, for sure. My wife's 1995 Civic has over 330K on it, and my daily driver 2007 Civic is nearing 200K. They both burn very little oil and neither has lost appreciable fuel economy. We do try to take good care of them, from a maintenance perspective. (I'm in Ohio, and the road salt is taking its toll, however.)
Keep your car if it works for you. Financially that's the sensible choice regardless of technology. But you should expect to have less maintenance work if/when you switch to an EV.
I suspect there's compensation/"excess space" for wear over time, somewhat like spare blocks on SSDs, and when it was new, it would've had even better range if it didn't have that compensation.
That is such a lovely thing for a big company to do in this day and age. It probably also allows them to use the battery optimally, i.e. not fully charge or discharge, for a longer lasting battery.
Chevy Volt has one of the best batteries among all EVs with excellent thermal control system. In Ukraine it is common these day to buy damaged EVs from US and restore them to brand-new state, including Tesla, Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt. One of the shops has a Youtube channel and they made an episode comparing batteries from different cars. Chevy Volt's battery cell survived already about 3000 cycles without noticible loss of charge, the test is being running for years already, charging-discharging it every 30 minutes.
The author, @ShaneMorris, says "Sound familiar?" and links to the Doctorow "Unauthorized Bread" short story[1].
But you don't need hypotheticals! The defunct Juicero required a wifi connection to "check the packet's expiration", but was enforcing use of their proprietary fruit packets. (Can't find an authoritative source atm but it was what everyone assumed and what their business model effectively required[2].)
And IIRC Keurig seriously considered doing this or had already implemented it.
The cartridge system adds a consumable part for the sake of having a consumable part.
I'm sure it's only a matter of time until they try the same thing on dishwashers and washing machines.
"The Wash Master 4000 is optimized to work with a range of certified detergents. The following cartridges are compatible with your new Wash Master 4000..."
That does make me think, I've only thought to look at it in my parents' old and new dishwashers, but they both had basically 'ads' that the detergent slot had cascade branding on it.
I always wonder how much P&G pays for that sort of placement.
As many are aware, this sort of "manufacturer parts only" tech is everywhere. First printers, then k-cups, now water filters and I'm sure the list goes on. While, initially I share the outrage at massive upcharges on parts that should be super cheap, there's another problem they're fighting. The consumer will often buy the cheapest appliance regardless of continued cost down in the future. If you can offset that loss in profit with something else that's less prevalent on consumer's minds, you can compete with other sellers. Best Buy has to sell a TV for a couple bucks profit margin but then ask $50 for an HDMI cable to make up the profit. Why? Because if WalMart has the same TV for $40 less, the customer will go there to buy. If given the option, I bet most customers would not pay an extra $200 for a fridge even if you told them the filters are $35 cheaper.
I state the above not to give these companies an easy excuse out, I still think this is not the ideal solution. But what should they do instead? I witnessed this first hand years ago when I worked retail, people would come in and ask me questions about a printer and then drive to WalMart and buy the same printer for $15 less.
>Because if WalMart has the same TV for $40 less, the customer will go there to buy. //
It used to be ready paying meant getting more quality, longer life, easier to replace parts. Now, it seems unrelated. The cheapest one may well be the best one, or a at least the expensive one has all the corners cut too.
There are situations where this isn't the case. And this may be a middle vs bottom of market thing. But expensive stuff is often the same crap with a brand logo.
I've given up on premium products. I'll either buy things that are for small offices/businesses (eg OKI printers, Karcher vacuums, etc) or simply the cheaper ones. Bought e.g. s €2000 Samsung fridge - only problems and complications. Now I've got mold in the water dispenser with no way to remove/replace it. Same with a >800€ Samsung washing machine - internal damage that magically wasn't covered by the warranty.
Right. After having nothing but small and relatively low tech TVs over the years, we bought a nice, expensive 1080p projector in 2009. It looked great, worked great, we were quite happy with it.
But a few months later, it told us that its bulb needed to be replaced soon. And the replacement was going to cost a couple hundred bucks.
I knew that projectors needed bulb replacements from time to time, but I didn't think it would be that frequent.
We just let it complain until the projector refused to work because of an 'expired' bulb.
I got online and bought a super cheap 'clone' for the bulb from China. After installing it, all was well.
That same bulb was working fine from 2009 until we got rid of that projector in 2018.
The bulb thing is about colour changes over time - which, admittedly, you may not notice, or may not notice enough for it to bother you at all. (As an old-timey film photographer, I dealt with bulbs both as light sources for shooting and as enlarger light sources. A 100° colour temperature shift isn't all that visible to the unaided eye, but it does make a huge difference where colour criticality matters. My bulbs tended to be good for 10 to 50 hours before they really needed to be swapped, even though they were still clearly bright enough.)
Sounds like something that, in the use case of a projector, you could compensate for in software 90% of the time. (With a sub-dollar chip to crudely measure color temperature.)
This is why manufacturers wish they could set the price and prevent retailers from undercutting like this. That regulatory battle is long lost, so I think we end up with an environment that sacrifices service for price.
I recently sent the following message to Fiat Chrysler Automotive's privacy group:
I was considering purchasing a 2020 Jeep Wrangler, but after
reading the terms of service for your "UConnect" monitoring system,
I no longer want to. I will consider it if I receive satisfactory
answers to these questions:
Can a Jeep Wrangler with advanced safety be purchased without
Uconnect?
If not, is FCA willing to state in writing under penalty of perjury that "Opt Out for Privacy Reasons" causes all data communication between
the vehicle and any other party to cease? Actual severing of
communications, not some weak claim that you will not use the data.
This doesn't even make sense. The advanced safety feature is the FCA equivalent of ONSTAR. You want to buy a car that has a safety feature based on them tracking your vehicle, but you simultaneously want them to guarantee you they won't track your vehicle??
If you don't want to be tracked, don't buy a truck with the advanced safety feature, pretty simple...
Sure some safety features, like sending out a request for help when an accident occurs, might require tracking. But other systems like adaptive cruise control or active lane keep assist shouldn't require tracking. There needs to be a good reason for disabling tracking to disable a safety feature.
The "advanced safety" option is auto-braking and lane departure warning. All onboard sensors. That doesn't require phoning home.
It's supposedly possible to turn off tracking. There's a "privacy opt out". That means you no longer get the "Monthly Vehicle Report" emailed to you.[1] The question is whether it really means that communications with the mothership stops. Companies lying about opt-out is common.[2][3]
None of that requires tracking when the feature isn't in use.
It could be built so that the air bag deployment is what enables the cellular connection to operate. Until the air bags deploy, the radio doesn't get any electrical power.
I'd love a vehicle that is completely radio silent, incapable of transmitting or receiving, until there is a crash.
The safety feature does not need to be on at all times. If it's anything like what Ford has, then it will only be activated when the car detects a crash.
If they would make it such that it only connects when it has to, then it would be a reasonable compromise.
And by the way, it's a little bit of puffery and arrogance to think that you can make some state something "under penalty of perjury". You're not a court of law.
It helps to establish that if you get lied to that they will have a hard time in court to explain to the judge why your five figure purchase should not be annulled. Think of it as saying: assuming that you are telling the truth will get me to for over my cash, if it turns out you did not tell the truth you will have an appointment with a judge and this will be entered into evidence as though you swore an oath that it was true.
It probably reduces the chances of an answer to nil unless they have the ability to deliver what you ask for. But the idea that a giant like FCA is going to bend over for you to disable some feature that is standard on their car is a non-starter, there simply is no process for a thing like that.
But at least their marketing&sales department is informed that they could have sold one more vehicle but did not, which given the fact that the OP is anything but stupid is probably what he was going for anyway.
Everyone complains about Amazon selling counterfeit goods - so GE comes up with something like this so you know you've got legitimate filters.
I love the concept, the execution is horrible. Give me a button to enable or disable filter verification. If I want to spend money on an official GE filter, I'd love for them to verify I got what I paid for. If I want to buy third party, you shouldn't be stopping me...
This is one place you don't need a switch.
Put the sensor there, make it always on. If the filter is not official, display it to the owner somewhere. Done.
A device you paid for refusing to work for just any reason is absurd.
What about the CO2 cartridges? Sodastream has attempted to stop people using third parties to refill them by using a weird connector. Is that not similar?
That must be quite a while ago. I have a Sodastream and have been using non-Sodastream CO2 cartridges with it for at least 5 years.
What they have tried to do is when you exchange your empty cartridges for a full one, they will only accept Sodastream cartridges. However, 3rd party cartridges are available quite readily everywhere.
We have one of those fridges. We do not use tap water to feed it so the filter doesn't really filter anything. And yet, after 6 months of use the fridge starts blinking a red LED that the filter needs replacing.
We changed the filter once because we thought the filter might be defective... never again.
Most things with a change light are based off a timer (or maybe a counter) and nothing more.
There's no mini-lab or sensor in your fridge actually testing if the water filter is working.
And even ones that claim to measure how much volume is dispensed are just counting how long the water valve is open and assuming a flow rate.
That said, the filters do go bad, and sometimes even provide media for stuff to grow on, once the contents become chemically and physically inert. If you don't want to change the filter, get a "blank" to plug in. Don't just leave an old filter in.
Our coffee machine at work has a filter. If we set the water hardness to the actual value of our water, it needs replacing quite often. So I've dialed it down and the filters last significantly longer. When we got it serviced last time I asked the technician to look if it needed descaling - it was squeaking clean inside the boiler, so I've dialed it down even more.
The shelf life of a water filter can last years if never used or wet. Since you installed it and ran water through it before then it's possible bacterial growth is accumulating there by now since bacteria can grow in carbon.
(not actually a qualified filter expert) actually I think bacteria will infect opened, even unused, filters over time. So just wait until you actually use it to replace it.
Coke has started doing this with their soda machines too. They found it's more profitable to put an RFID chip on the bottom of every paper cup and a sensor pad on the machines rather than just let people refill the cups.
I came across one in the wild when I made the mistake of visiting Universal Studios Orlando recently :/
That's not Coke. I mean, Coke provides the technology to enable it, maybe. But Universal Orlando is the one responsible for requesting and implementing the feature. Though I wasn't aware of any use for paper cups... Last time I visited, it was only for the free refill periods of souvenir cups. You pay for refills for the entire day, and it enables your chip to then use those machines all day. The alternative was that you carry around the dated receipt and get refills from vendors. So overall it was a UX win; the economics are all the same, but users get better service.
Cruise lines were the first place I saw this used, years before UO implemented it. They would have a couple FreeStyle machines scattered around the ship, that would work with the cup they would give you when you bought the beverages package. Again, overall a UX win, because they had the same packages before, but you would have to go to one of the bars or whatever to use it.
EDIT: I also feel like saying that in both instances, the machines would still happily dispense plain water. So that's a nice thing.
I encountered this system at a Disney resort hotel a long time ago.
The explanation I read back then was that they used to sell souvenir mugs with free refills for the duration of the stay. But guests would come back the next year with their mugs and abuse the system by taking more refills without paying for another visit.
So the RFID mug system enables the dispenser for the time duration of the guest visit (day, week, whatever). But now that means the dispenser also has to able to fill paper cups with single servings since the dispenser can't tell what is under the nozzle - a mug or a one-shot cup.
So now the paper cups have RFID in them and that's how we got to where we are.
If you've visited a Disney park recently, you'll understand that the cost of entry is a mere fraction of the money they expect to extract from you during your stay.
I'm not qualified at all to say this, but I'd say the park ticket is a loss leader.
The entire park is a shopping mall now. Mobile product carts and gift shops around every turn - not just at the exits anymore. The RFID MagicBands exist to eliminate any hesitation in purchasing something. The FastPasses were built to keep you walking around and buying stuff instead of waiting in a line for an hour. The hotels are full of upsells and overmarketed dining plans (if they saved you money, why would they be selling it?). I could go on and on.
I know some people going on a Disney trip soon. The cost and regimentation was staggering to me when described. You have to schedule everything. And it is all expensive as heck.
I'd rather spend that money on flying to Europe or somewhere else.
I live with schedules every day at work. I go on vacation to get away from schedules...
My favorite thing to do is to just go to a forest preserve or other park and just walk around looking at the trees and the clouds.
Interesting. My experience at UO was that the only place where you could get paper cups, the dispensers were behind the counter. So there was no need for the open dispensers to accept anything other than a validated chip. And same on the cruise ship; if you didn't have a beverage package, you go to a vendor to get a drink. (And if you did have a package, but just not your cup, they would see it on your ship ID.)
Change designs on Jan 1st. Grandfather the old mugs until Feb 1st. If you somehow have a guest staying for 5 consecutive weeks, deliver the new mugs to their hotel room sometime during their stay.
At least that‘s what I do when I‘m going out dancing I buy one drink and the rest of the night it‘s tap water for me. In a theme park I probably could bring my water bottle.
Yeah, and from any drinking fountain or food place if you ask.
The reasoning I heard was that people using it for water were also wasting a ton of ice and the machines would run out faster than they could be replenished. It did use to be common to see mountains of dumped ice in the dispenser so I do kinda believe it.
Ideally the park should be installing those water bottle fountains.
I read recently that the university I attended has put a system like this in the dining halls.
Back when I went there 20 years ago, they’d sell a reusable cup for around $40 that got you 50 cent sodas all academic year long (it was otherwise maybe $2.50-$3 for a soda). You were on your honor to show your reusable cup at the cashier to be charged for a soda. As with the paper cups, you’d get free refills once you paid for a drink with your meal.
Now they sell a prepaid RFID cup that has a certain number of fills programmed into it. If you use them all, you can add more to your cup account.
Because you still need a chip to authorize the fountain either way, the disposable cups are also chipped and programmed to allow two fills before deactivating.
It seems like a wasteful money grab at a place where it costs north of $50K/year to get in the door.
When you are in a theme park or airport, expect everything to be designed to extract the maximum amount of dollars from your wallet. You are a captive audience.
They have RFID in the soda dispensers because they want people to buy the $15 "free refill" cup. I have never visited Orlando Universal two days in a row so I don't know if the cup "works" more than 24 hours.
Technically no, it wont. But if you find a nice employee you can typically get it activated for multiple days (and pay for it). Reactivations are fairly cheap considering how many fillups you get.
You can use the cup any other visit as well, although I heard they've switched it up where the older cups no longer work - which is insane if true since it's the same tech. Guessing if it's true they want to have everyone buy a new cup.
Not everyone is in the software industry with 2 messages per day from recruiters, and that probably beats working as a greeter or deep fryer attendant.
Which company do you work for? I hope that you don't work for a FAANG or any other similar bigtech as those have probably more negative output (mass capitalism surveillance) than this company.
Maybe all the expensive theme parks are really just holding pens where corporations test out new marketing/crowd control schemes and devices on unsuspecting people so they can decide whether or not to deploy it on the rest of the US.
Coke is such a wildly wasteful company. So now not only are they introducing RFID plastic waste but also additional paper cups people are going to buy.
When I read this I took it as something special the parks were doing because of how expensive the drinks are there and not something the soda companies are themselves engaging in. Not to say they are blameless as they likely did work with the parks in doing so, but I thought the primary cause was the parks and not the soda company.
Back in the olden days (1970s) the organization I was with threw a party. My job was to go to the local McD's and get some gallon boxes of syrup. This was then mixed at the party with carbonated water to make Coke.
The interesting thing was I realized that the syrup cost $.03 per cup, and McD's was selling it for - I don't remember 45 years later but it was a lot. Puzzled, I asked about it and was told that McD's lost money on the hamburgers and more than made it up with the drinks and fries.
It's also how movie theaters make money. They lose it on ticket sales, and make it up at the concession stand, especially on the soda.
Similarly for restaurants. The drinks are the big moneymakers.
Camera makers don't make money on the camera bodies, but on the lenses and accessories.
Car dealers don't make money selling cars, they make it on the financing and the service.
My partner worked high up in a local small chain of boardgame cafes. She would stress how little it cost and how much profit was made on those drinks. I don't think the syrup costs much more than that, now! Somewhere in the few cents a glass range, and they can easily charge $2-4 for a pint of cola now.
This is insightful. It also massively calls into question if economic models on prices (CPI?) could ever keep up with reality, if trends like shrinkflation didn't make that impossible already.
you don't seem to understand the concept of opportunity cost. In this case what is the optimal maximum they can extract for this product. The production cost is almost irrelevant.
What I find amazing is the dedication to extracting potentially a little more money from people who may buy one extra cola rather than allowing a refill when the production cost is next to 0, but leaves a more satisfied, and likely return, customer.
Practices like this are likely to turn people off. The fact that they think they can do something like this just displays how much of a monopoly/duopoly this company actually knows it enjoys. Where else will their customers turn? There's nowhere to turn. So gouge them.
> Hello Shane, we appreciate your feedback and certainly understand your concerns. We will forward your feedback to the appropriate team. -BL
Where someone responds about how inane their response is, to which they direct that person to privately message for support. The person wasn't asking for support
I would say that's implied, no? The overwhelming majority of IoT threads are about this kind of situation. For example, the inkjet cartridge thread linked elsewhere in this discussion.
I probably should have been able to guess, but it wasn't clear to me! I clicked this thread thinking "uh, that's weird, what does the chip actually do?"
You can order a bypass filter from GE (they are free). Cut the RFID from it and tape it to your fridge in the right spot and it will never complain about the filter again.
The only downside is that when you dispense water it lights up a little sign that says "water is not filtered".
I do this and buy cheap aftermarket filters from Amazon.
I have a whole-home water filter, and fill up a jug from the tap that sits inside my fridge until I'm thirsty.
I have never understood why people take extra steps, have extra inconvenience, and have more expensive, harder to replace items just for the sake of saving, what, fifteen seconds filling up a pitcher?
Unless the fridge remembers the IDs of each filter, and won't let you reuse the same ID after 3 months (or whatever the service life is of a water filter).
Maybe disabling the RFID reader hardware will make the fridge bypass the lockout code?
The easier solution is just not buy a GE fridge, but the general public won't be aware of the need for that solution.
I got new appliances a few years ago and luckily it was pretty easy to get "dumb" appliances. I really hope that is still true next time I need to get new appliances.
Yeah, except that who decides if the filter is finished? Perhaps the 'smart' fridge will note that this filter has been used for NN litres and therefore must be replaced...
There's a bypass cartridge included with the fridge, whose RFID can be attached to a generic filter. (I found that out in a reply in the linked thread.)
When those disposable multi-blades were getting too costly for my taste, I just got my father's old safety razor out of storage, purchased a packet of 10 Wilkinson blades for it at ~2-3€ and still haven't used those up today.
Seriously men, do away with the cheaply made but expensive plastic trash and invest once in a nice safety razor. It's worth it.
I reuse the multi blade ones for quite a while - months each. They stop working because the blades get junk between them, not that the blades get dull. To remedy, strop them backwards along your arm to clean the junk out, only a few times seems necessary, then give a rinse under the tap. I just do this out of habit each time I use them now - they last a long time.
If everyone knew and practiced this, the razor blade industry wouldn't be a billion dollar industry. People would buy an order of magnitude less blades. The maintenance takes less than a minute, and is only necessary once every two weeks (if you're a weekly shaver). As you say, stropping will make the blades good for months.
If you are using feather blades, get something that isn't sharper than a scalpel. If you aren't using feather blades, you are pushing to hard, in fact you shouldn't be pushing really at all.
Are you talking about a safety razor[0] or a straight cut razor? I also switched, and find I cut myself a lot less than with a cartridge razor. If I do cut myself it is usually not so deep. The cartridge razor I used was Gillette Fusion, so not a cheap brand.
Are you sure the blade is properly tightened? My Wilkinson requires some force to properly tighten, slightly bending the blade, at which point it's firm, sticks out less, at a different angle, and it's not as easy to cut myself.
Other helpful tips - let the hair soak for a couple of minutes; clean/dip the blade with >90% alcohol to remove moisture, preventing corrosion and dulling. Haven't had issues shaving since.
Honestly, you've got to be doing something wrong. Maybe a bad, non-lubricating shaving cream, way too much pressure, or inappropriate holding angle. Safety blades are not known for creating horror films.
If the motion of the blade is perpendicular to the edge of the blade, it shouldn't cut you no matter what angle you hold it at (some angles will cut your hair properly but none should cut your skin.) If the motion of the blade is parallel to the edge of the blade, then you're going to cut yourself.
It's not like other people have armored skin that's immune to sharp things; we all cut just as easily as you do. It's a matter of technique.
Have you tried various blades? People swore by feather but I found those too be too stiff and sharp. I absolutely hated them. I tried Astra Platinum and they seem more flexible and provide a much better shave for me. There's a "chart" out there that lists various brands from sharpest -> smoothest
Yes, I have, and yes, my latest have been Astoria, and yes, I pull, instead of slicing, and yes, I've futzed with the angle, and yes, I've tightened the razor, and yes, I've played with not tightening it as much, and the end result is that despite all this work, the disposable plastic crap is easier and less painful.
There's a reason for why the world has switched to the disposable plastic crap - and its not because people are fools. It's much the same reason for why the world switched from horses and buggies to automobiles.
That's really interesting - I've cut myself a few times but mostly just due to impatience or a new blade. But my face also doesn't require daily shaving so I don't mind taking a few extra minutes.
As a huge fan of safety razors you're one of the first people I've heard argue against them.
That multi-blade crap tugs my beard hairs and give me irritation and ingrown hairs. I just use a trimmer now and don't bother with jobs that need me clean shaven.
I wouldn't want to go too hard on this, but there is something a-moral, if not immoral in shifting the apparent cost line, but actually putting the consumer into pay-more outcome. Up in the budget planning space for tech we often do the opex vs capex thing, and it is clear we have to be very specific what window in time the capex/opex is expected to equalize or show some benefit. Otherwise, you can incur opex forever, and pay a lot more than the capex (yes, modulo the non-obvious costs of operations for owning the capex)
But nobody does this for razors.
Terry Pratchett had a good one-paragraph rant on expensive shoes vs cheap cardboard shoes, the expensive ones last 10 years the cardboard 10 days.. its in the same space.
On a side note, people really need to replace the filters more often. The number of people I have run into who never have replaced any filters in their kitchen disappoints me.
The tap water in my current house is perfectly fine, so why should I even have a filter? My previous house the water wasn't perfectly fine (I forget what was in it, but the lab failed it) so I had a separate filter rated to take out the bad things in my water - again why replace the fridge filter that wasn't as good.
Either replace the filters or use the bypass cartridge. You don't want to leave a filter in forever so you don't get bacteria growing in your drinking water.
Physical contacts are usually the flimsiest part of a system aren't they? Probably costs more as well to have connections! RFID is so cheap they put them in paper clothes tags.
I used to always buy genuine HP cartridges, sold by Amazon (not a third-party seller,) with official packaging, non-tampered unbroken sticker on the box, and yet one day my printer reported a cartridge as "non-genuine" and absolutely refused to accept it. Maybe the chip malfunctioned. But since that day I have stopped buying genuine and I replaced them with recycled third party cartridges. A third of the cost. And they never caused this problem. A defective system caused HP to lose a customer.
I'm conflicted, because I'm tangentially in this space. While I completely understand the whole DRM bullshit for certain things, this is in another category (for me at least)
There is a huge problem with knockoffs and "off brand" items, most are harmless. Since this is something you put in your body there is reasonable concern that there is opportunity for unsavory or unscrupulous actors to make an <appliance brand> water filter that makes you sick, because it has some shitty chemical or compound in it. The genuine filters are indistinguishable from the knock offs. So when there's lead or something terrible coming out of your refrigerator your going to blame the brand. Even if the blame gets redirected, consumers will be upset the brand didn't do more to protect them.
Maybe I drank the koolaid on this, but there are a number of other accessories for products up and down the line that I staunchly oppose this scheme for. I don't necessarily buy the "control the experience" bit. I think it applies sparingly but a "works best with our brand's stuff" sticker is generally sufficient.
I wonder if this is why my fridge no longer dispenses water, as it happened around the time I ordered a new filter from Amazon. It is supposedly an official filter, and looks official as far as I can tell, but Amazon is notorious for fakes and I remember thinking it looked different than my previous filter. The only thing is, my fridge still dispenses ice, just not water.
Seems to me that there is a huge opportunity in open source programmable home appliances. I only want the hardware from the manufacturer, and I’d be willing to pay a lot more if it could run open source software. It seems theres no way a monolithic supplier could compete, but why don’t we see anything like this?
Software is everywhere and can do things that cannot be done without it. However the software needed is hard real time embedded and shouldn't run on the same CPU as the stuff we are complaining about.
> Software is everywhere and can do things that cannot be done without it.
Yes, I know (I am a software engineer with a large amount of embedded work in my resume), and I don't mind it at all when the software is actually doing useful things that can't be done well otherwise.
But there's a lot of things that are being computerized where there's no actual user benefit to doing that. All that does is increase the number of points of potential failure.
Sadly we are the niche generally - if an appliance has its firmware done right usually there is no need for another software package and few wish to program for such packages.
An open source hardware very standardized and modular serviceable model would probably be a decent analog to the domain - it would commoditise the parts and help counter the nicheness in terms of economies of scale. The rarity of people who know enough to roll their own appliance design is probably one of the biggest obstacles. It isn't like 3D printing currently.
Apparently even manufacturers who are advantaged by logistical simplicity apparently already regularly tweak the yearly designs based upon cost advantages.
I suspect that ironically technological advancement could eventually make fridges better that way - thermocouple based copling has had a slow but steady upward trend line. If it keeps up then a bunch of cooling thermocouples, electronic thermoneters, a power supply, and a few microcontrollers/a Raspberry Pi descendant in an insulated box could put it in more traditional "hacker" skillsets.
I really don't understand this kind of behavior. In the real world, this means that there will be a bunch of GE fridges out there where the ice / water doesn't work and only the person who decides the filters are too expensive really knows why. That can't be a good look for the brand...
You are dealing with two separate feedback mechanisms. One allows the creation of revenue via consumer purchases. That is the quantity companies hope to increase, and limiting a consumer to authorized components allows for higher margins by artificially limiting competition and increasing the revenue. Albeit inflationary, that works until a competitor figures out an effective forging method. The other is brand reputation, whereby future purchases are dependent on how a consumer feels about the brand. You state that such tactics cannot look good for the brand, but remember that there is a delay between the large bulk of appliance purchases and the time when consumers would be writing bad reviews, affecting future purchases. By the time this cause and effect chain concludes, most of the benefit for the first feedback mechanism has already realized, and the vendors can move on to the next deal. Keep in mind that consumers do not necessarily look at filter compatibility when making a purchase, and companies can capitalize on that. Both mechanisms contribute to stock value, but your surprise might stem from the fact that their contribution is uneven. In other words, short term monetary gains trump long term brand gains, because consumers have short memories.
I really liked this viewpoint. I feel like it's not uncommon to go over to someone's house and the ice maker or water has "broken". The good news for GE is I just say, "Oh, all fridges suck" and not "Wow, this is a GE fridge? They're unreliable."
(Which, not for nothing, is harder given all the diffusion brands. For GE, that includes Monogram, Café, Profile, Haier, and Hotpoint.)
Setting aside this abhorrent behavior and the entire question of "smart" appliances and anti-consumer behaviors, I would like to point out:
It would be trivially easy - as in, as easy as Legos - to use push fittings (such as sharkbites) and a short, extra length of hose and cheap in-line filter to insert a pre-filter just before the refrigerator.
You would then gain the ability to change the filter with any you like, anytime you like, and the interior filter of the refrigerator would last, basically, forever.
Seriously - no plumbing involved - you are putting together 2-3 pieces from the hardware store, like Legos.
They sell external filters meant for refrigerators that don't have an internal water filter. You can use those for this purpose too. They are meant to install in the water line and are compatible with the connectors commonly used.
Search the web for "5-year inline refrigerator water filter" to find some of them.
It is definitely good to have a choice between OEM and aftermarket parts. That is important! I am willing to bet that if GE allowed aftermarket replacements, the majority of customers would have still chosen OEM replacement parts.
For example, if my Nintendo Switch controller breaks, I will not even hesitate to get an official Nintendo controller. However, it would be nice to have aftermarket controllers work. However, if for example my IPhone earbuds fail, I would hate to not be able to use spare earbuds I have lying around. If my Macbooks trackpad fails, and I see the choice between using a compatible aftermarket trackpad or a genuine Apple trackpad, I would get a genuine Apple trackpad. That is my choice. Someone else would want a cheaper option, and that is fine.
Now, I could see the angle of wanting to force customers to choose GE replacement parts. Less support. They will be able to diagnose or troubleshoot issues without considering aftermarket compatibility issues. Also, yes, they will have another potential recurring revenue stream!
I have one of these, it's trivial to cut the RFID off of the "passthrough" plug and use non-branded filters. Honestly it's hard for me to get too worked up about easily circumvented rent seeking like this. I would probably return the fridge if it wasn't possible though.
Hrm.. sounds awfully like Juicera. Possibly worse. I wonder how these kinds of decisions are approved at the management level. Do they have their heads buried in sand? Is their appliance business so unprofitable that they're willing to take any risk?
Well, the Mars mission was sponsored by Disney and you had refillable air-pacs for $200, good for a day. 1 hour before they expired they nagged you. Then the belters started to sell bootleg air-pacs - Disney shit the bed and implemented uncrackable DRM, we lost 230 settlers - before the revolution...
Bottom-feeding upsells (after the sell) need a better analogy for the consumer to visualize.
We'll see if automation leads to an open-source era for appliances. The hype about robots building robots should start seeding more projects this decade to "cut the cord" from obsolete business models.
I don't know which model this is, but my GE fridge (bought 1.5 years ago) works just fine with a third party filter, and they even include a bypass cap which is just a plastic piece that goes in place of the filter and lets it work without a filter.
Won't be surprised if the fridge also checks how long the filter is in use and will stop producing water and ice after six months. Unbelievably greedy bastards.
It keeps a database of all the filter IDs it's ever seen and won't allow one ID to be in use for more than a certain period (6 months?) The reason folks use the bypass RFID chip is that it's the only chip that can remain intstalled "forever".
Your refrigerator refuses to work because of a comment overheard by your thermostat that was construed by AI as being insufficiently supportive of your countries corporate foreign policy objectives.
If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.
Reminded me of Phillip K. Dick's "Ubik", where the door refuses to open for free:
The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please."
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you."
"I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt."
...he found the contract. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
"You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug.
A little late, but here's the rest of the quote. He was locked in.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.
“I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”
If your fridge were really smart it would infer both your household’s disposable income and technical acumen based on its location and overheard conversations then tailor prices, failures, and replacement policies accordingly.
Isn’t that already in place in a more benign form? Many appliances come out under multiple brands with different skins, badges and prices. This also applies to bigger purchases like cars.
There's a real "banality of evil" aspect to this: we are building the infrastructure of a future hellish totalitarian dystopia to get people to click annoying ads and to squeeze tiny amounts of revenue from customers.
Which is a part of The Matrix story that doesn't make sense...
It would've made more sense to say that they were using the human brains as CPUs, so conciously the humans were living in society, but sub/unconciously they were performing calculations for "the machines".
Which would open up an interesting plot, if the machines' (AI) "consciousness" ran on our brains and they didn't have their own hardware CPUs, would that make the humans the machines? Or would the program be seen like a computer virus?
This doesn't really seem to indicate that was ever the plan. There is an offhand mention of a different plan, a Neil Gaiman story that I've read and has to do with aliens and is very different, and a novelization that doesn't actually exist.
Originally, in earlier versions of the script the humans were used as CPUs. IIRC the studio made the Wachowskis change to using humans for power generation.
They didn't think audiences were ready to view the brain as a computer.
I disagree, but 20+ years later I don't think it would even be an issue, what with all the `people only use 10% of their brains` nonsense movies that have come out.
Agent Smith addresses this in the first film. "Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program, entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world, but I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering."
Every time Orwell's 1984 is mentioned on the Internet it gets this exact followup comment about Brave New World. Not saying it's wrong, but this is just some kind of law of internet discussions.
The government at least ostensibly needs a warrant to access your communications to a smart device. Mandatory government surveillance and opt-in convenience products are not on the same plane.
This seemingly constant ratcheting up of anti-customer behavior by product manufacturers is starting to feel more and more like symptoms of the end of an economic cycle where executives desperate for One More Good Bonus are willing to risk damaging the company's reputation to hit the next quarter's sales target.
This is why an increasing number of consumers go with the more is less when shopping for appliances. I don't need my fridge or washing machine to have all these bells and whistles. I just need it to do its main job, and do it well with a minimum of components that can fail, and make sure it's running reliably.
My newest appliance, a microwave, has a dial to set the time, a row of buttons to select the power level and a door handle. It's the best microwave I've ever owned. It was also the most expensive, but since it is intended for commercial kitchens, I expect it to last at least ten years.
I just bought a microwave. All the reviews I found for the Panasonic model (who apparently make the majority of microwaves) with the dial to set the time had a lot of people saying it failed after a year or two.
I never spent so much time looking for an appliance. I must have spent 6 hours looking at Amazon, Home Depot, Best Buy, etc, websites. There are so many models, sizes and types. The model that died was ~25 years old. It performed well, but the company doesn't make microwaves anymore (Sanyo)... at least I didn't see that brand when searching.
The is the same argument used by people who buy SpeedQueen washer dryers. But the technology in them is woefully old and not to mention very inefficient in its use of electricity and water.
The local mom and pop appliance shop stopped stocking SpeedQueen in the last five years and replaced it with Fisher and Paykel. Their baseline washer and dryer is where it's at. They have the simplicity of SpeedQueen in terms of how cheap/easy they are to repair and replace components, but are super high efficiency.
They use(d to use) more energy and water, but maybe they get the laundry cleaner or get it done faster. A washer repair tech on reddit said that after 2017 SpeedQueen went the same direction as all the others, but if you get an older one it might be a better machine, depending on the model.
What's more inefficient: the extra electricity and water of older machines, or the extra waste, manufacturing, and shipping caused by shorter replacement cycles?
I know many people who have had to replace or service their "high efficiency" machines within 5-10 years, while many old washers seem to last at least 20 years without service. Given the electronics and specialty parts in the new machines, it seems doubtful that you could keep one of them in service for more than 15 years.
That's exactly why I tell people to buy commercial. Sure they're 2 or 3 times the price. They'll also last 20+ years and need simple maintenance and repairs.
Do your research. I witnessed an office where the CEO's partner was an interior decorator, and said partner was responsible for the office construction.
In the opulent kitchen, they put two commercial dishwashers, the kind where you preload the dishes onto a kind of rack, and slide the whole rack into the dishwasher in one step.
Greatly increases utilization of such dishwashers, because the dirty dishes can be queued up for washing, and the clean ones can be unloaded and put away while the dishwasher is running.
These dishwashers were designed around maximizing utilization during busy periods. But.
In an office kitchen, they would be run once or twice a day most of the time, with bursts only happening during infrequent events. This turned out to be an unexpected problem.
It seems the dishwashers were full of steel for durability, and they needed to run a load to warm up. Once warm, they could to load after load at high speed. But when only doing one load a day, they wouldn't clean the dishes properly.
The vendor told them this and suggested they have one "prosumer" model and one commercial model for when they had a catered event, but this displeased the CEO's partner, so the company was stuck with two commercial units.
They learned to run an empty load every day before running a full load, wasting enough time that the dishwasher lost its speed advantage. It also wasted water and energy do do one preload for each daily load.
Something to think about when buying commercial. It's usually ok, but sometimes, a commercial unit has tradeoffs that will gravely undermine its ability to function in a home or office.
> Something to think about when buying commercial.
You make a very good point, but I don't think that whether its commercial or not is what you need to look at. The intended use case is. There are several commercial use dishwashers, for instance, that are intended for relatively infrequent use. The ones you describe were intended for heavy-duty restaurant use -- that's the real mismatch, not the fact that they were built for commercial use.
But being a residential model means EPA restrictions, which means it automatically sucks. So limiting to commercial should still be step 1. Then look at use case.
The infrequent commercial resturant / office kitchen models you mention are good, but lab/ medical models are what I imagine most people want.
You can get them based on power and water availability (real 240v+ hot water heating element!!!), high pressure pumps, all stainless parts, sanitary cleaning in under 10 mins, and can use active heating for drying. Fully programmable wash cycles, both time and temperature, but in an under counter residential-like form factor. Get one of these, plus some fryer clean out detergent, and you're set.
Also, they're easily 3-10x the price of higher end residential models.
My brother and I once toyed with the idea to build a website that explored, compared and offered sources for commercial, or at least, higher-grade alternatives to consumer-level fixtures, valves, switches, HVAC and appliances. A site aimed at people who are doing remodels or building anew. Why not the marine-grade brass quarter-turn valve for the water mains or toilets? Or the much-superior commercial-grade sillcocks? Gas furnaces with electric/gas fan motors that continue to function in a power-outage?
In the scheme of a remodel or new-construction adding the high-quality, durable options is a small expense and saves on very expensive repairs down the road where you have to pay $2,000 to replace an item that would only have cost a few dollars more to install one that will almost never need replacing.
This is a fantastic idea. It's kind of the opposite or at least going in a tangential direction from something like Wirecutter. Instead of recommending the solution that will be merely adequate for the majority of people you would recommend the solution that would be the absolute best but may appeal to a smaller audience.
You also hit on something that I think too many people don't think of when they're pricing stuff. People tend to look at the sticker price alone, not the total cost of ownership. I've found that often (but certainly not always), the more initially expensive but high-quality stuff will end up being cheaper in the long run.
I think "more is less" is more accurate. These days, my list of antifeatures is more of a consideration than desired features when shopping for an appliance.
My TV has a terrible display but doesn't know how to connect to the internet, for example.
I’m sure you’re aware, but you can achieve the same by getting a tv that is full of spyware but has a nice screen, then not connecting it to the internet or blocking it at firewall/Pihole or similar.
I did this with my 4k "Smart" TV. I've never connected it to the ethernet, nor have I configured the wifi. It acts as a dumb monitor and that's what I want.
The problem is that infinite growth is impossible - there’s only so many people who need a smartphone, washing machine, etc. Once they all have it then your revenue will only be the average replacement rate as the old devices fail.
Businesses should be happy with stable revenue once they reach that point, instead they desperately try to get more, risking the company’s reputation and/or legal issues (not specifically in this case but I’m sure there are companies that did illegal stuff just to get more profit).
The current idea of running a business is absolutely unsustainable.
I think that the bigger issue is that corporations have figured out that people don't know how to multiply and are willing to pay far more money as periodic payments than they are as a one time expense.
On this water filter thing, the fridge costs about $1500. Suppose it lasts 10 years, and you replace the $55 water filter every six months. That's $1100 worth of water filters! The water filters almost double the cost of the fridge!
Profit-wise, on a $1500 fridge, it's a competitive market. You're looking at multiple brands, so GE probably has a profit of $100 at most on the fridge. On the water filters though, we know that the generic one sells for $19 and the branded one is $55. That suggests that GE probably makes a profit of at least $20 on the filter. Over the life of the fridge, that's $400 in profit -- 80% of the profit of the fridge is in the filters! If third parties are threatening that profit by making knockoffs, of course GE is going to take countermeasures to protect 80% of their profit.
Even in the water filter scenario, let's assume everyone has this fridge and is regularly buying filters. They had temporary growth in revenue but now that everyone has fridges + filters it's mostly stable again.
Do you think they'll stop there? The unsustainable idea we have of running a business would suggest they should be doing something else to even further increase the profits.
You do realize that in most of the cases name brand is store brand are made by the same companies on the same lines and the customers are paying for the label which you know due to marketing?
I literally just said that was not the case in this scenario and I provided evidence why.
If you can demonstrate that the store brand filters are the same, despite not advertising the ability to filter the same chemicals and pharmaceuticals then sure, you win.
My point was that the “name-brand costs more for no reason” is not always true. FFS
It is probably an identical filter made by the same factory with a different description written by different people because different agencies were involved.
I have no interest in buying and disassembling the filters to compare them but since they are both charcoal filters they are the same. If they were not, then one of them would be advertised as a charcoal filter and the other one would be advertised as a charcoal filter + some other filter.
As this builds up there will be a wide open market opportunity for a privacy-conscious appliance manufacturer. Maybe combined with good/minimalist design like Nest - minus the forced cloud stuff. Plus some design work on the internals to make them easy to repair/replace parts.
Shenzhen and other places is full of talent capable of fulfilling this niche.
All it takes is a brave soul to go out and try it.
Yes... which I mentioned in the very next sentence. Way to take the Nest part completely out of context, which I was referencing only in regards to offering a clean/minimal designed home appliances.
I'm convinced privacy-conscious smart products which keep things as local as possible combined with good simple design is applicable to so many niches. Including routers.
My thermostat from 1990 still works fine. It will have to continue to work fine for a while longer until I can trust more modern ones. If you connect to the internet you have no business controlling my house's heat. I'm not paying $$$ to someone to get my heat back on.
Well that's the current standard model so that's understandable. But I think consumers, especially early adopters and even Apple execs, are becoming conscious of the need and demand for privacy.
If I was a VC I'd be looking for someone to invest in which offers both modern digitized equipment without the total privacy/security sacrifice.
They'll probably be promoted if they just play the politician or lobbyist. They could give any reason at all and pretend it's justified by various basic buzz words like "protecting the consumer" and citing recent stories about counterfit products. Basically, inflate the danger to consumers from counterfits and confuse them with bullshit marketing lingo about knowing what's best for your customers. This strategy might work for those Washington SB 4799 hearings, those lobbyists I've seen giving their comments are incredibly slimy and good at evading actual concerns consumers have.
To play the devils advocate here (and to be frank, i think people should be able to use compatible products), it's possible the manufacture is concerned that products they didn't make could cause an issue. I.e. filter is too restrictive and burns out the pump. Then the fridge comes in for warranty repair and there's no way of proving what caused the issue. From the perspective of the manufacture, i kind of get it, but i still think there has to be a better middle-ground than it stops providing a service.
Yes, the middle ground is called designing the pump so it doesn't burn out if the filter doesn't allow the right amount of water through. Having an RFID chip doesn't prevent the genuine filter from becoming clogged.
I don't disagree, but i've been in the room when people make absurd decisions like this and need to be discouraged to make a more rational decision. On that basis, I'm just saying perhaps they're not evil, but they're certainly not trying very hard and potentially not smart either.
Would something like a "using unauthorized filters voids your warranty" agreement suffice? I can understand the manufacturer's desire to avoid costly repairs caused by shoddy aftermarket parts, but I don't understand the idea of rendering the end product totally unusable.
To put it another way, should my car stop running entirely if it detects that I'm using a "non-GM-certified" cabin air filter?
You would definitely want that. Here's a common every day example. Imagine for example you use the wrong oil that destroys your engine and when GM inspects the oil they say it was non certified so you need to pay 5k in repairs... I have no doubt you would not have minded if the engine refused to start if it detected the wrong thing.
I wholeheartedly disagree. I would much rather have some sort of warning than to have the decision made for me. If an indicator in the dash turned on saying "the oil is not the correct viscosity," then I would be able to decide to not run the vehicle.
Imagine you were stranded somewhere and the only option was to use the wrong oil. Sure, it may destroy the vehicle, but at least you would be able to run the vehicle and (hopefully) get to safety before your engine block melts. My issue is when the decision has been made that "you _might_ break it, so we've taken the choice away."
Another example might be, should users not be allowed to install programs on their computer because those programs might interfere with the computer's performance?
If they are building a device to such tight design tolerances, it was doomed to failure from the start even with 'proper' parts. The second it hits a factory floor the specs are going to be pushing the absolute limits of quality control testing.
This is the end result of post-modern, late stage capitalism. It will get a whole lot worse before it gets better. What we're seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg.
They also do a lot of "financial engineering", like stock buy backs. All these machinations to benefit the very few at the top. It's like the last dash for a land grab. Get it while you can, and it will all end in tears.
Of course it's probably mentioned in the user manual and mentioned in the warranty if you use unapproved filters your warranty is null and void. However, those are almost never read by the buyers.
I think their argument is usually that they shouldn't have to provide support for people putting consumables that they don't have any quality control over into their machines.
Which seems reasonable to me?
You could say that they should just invalidate the warranty, but can you invalidate a statutory warranty?
I think their unpublished argument is that they can make money by forcing people to use their own filters by making the argument publicly that they shouldn't have to provide support for people putting consumables that they don't have any quality control over into their machines.
It seems about as charitable as a profit driven corporation, which was being evaluated.
On a less snarky note: We've been repeatedly shown that companies act in their own self interest, and put out as cover reasons that are more socially acceptable.
But also, I think "restricting consumer choice because their warranty wouldn't cover it" is a terrible reason, and shouldn't be socially acceptable.
I have a hard time believing that GE has been dealing with a lot of warranty claims because people are using after market filters. Couple that with that a filter that runs more than 2x the off-brand one runs, and it looks a lot like a money grab.
You can’t even really get genuine warranty claims addressed. There’s always a catch: labor not included, part in order, no fridge for 4 days until tech can return.
> You could say that they should just invalidate the warranty, but can you invalidate a statutory warranty?
In the US a manufacturer can not invalidate a warranty for arbitrary reasons, they must prove that the owner's use or modification was the primary cause of a failure.[1]
Well my car does specify a quality of fuel that I should use, but it's a standard with (I guess) precise chemical makeup that you can verify and an industry that cares about it. I'm not sure there are any standards for filter construction?
Even if there were, should it matter? You could fill your car with moonshine and attempt to run it. It might explode, sure, but the car doesn't detect that the fuel is not the specified quality and decide to not run entirely.
While certainly there will be extreams where the manufacturer shouldn't be liable for shoddy third party components, in general it seems to me that they should be liable if their product is so delicate that it cannot use an average third party component
How long before we see an article about consumers repairing and chasing down ancient refrigerators that are sadly inefficient but at least repairable?