That doesn't hold up, when you think about it. Most companies don't offer any warranty outside of what is required by the law, which is usually between 0 and 2 years for consumer products, depending on where you live. By your argument that is how long we should expect most products to live.
Most companies don't offer any warranty outside of what is required by the law
And parallel to that there are also companies adverting their 10,15 or 25 year warranty[1]. Now you can choose who you want to give your money to.
That being said I have no problem per se with forcing companies to offer long warranties.
[1] a further thing to look at is of course what these warranties actually cover and how likely you are to actually get help when your appliance breaks 17 years after you buy it. A 25 year warranty is useless (and should probably be illegal to advertise) if it's so full of loopholes and caveats that no one can practically make any claims against it.
That's a different point than the one I was addressing, which was that warranties can be taken as indicators of how long products can be expected to last.
What products that have extended warranties usually have in common is that they are expensive and represent significant investments for the average buyer. If you buy a car, a fridge, a washing machines, etc, you want a guarantee that you will be able to amortise that investment over as long a time as possible.
It absolutely holds up, I'm not sure why Consultant32452 is being downvoted.
No one stops a manufacturer from offering a product with a 5 year warranty, and in fact they do. Shop for products made for businesses and you will find 5 year warranties. However, they cost much more, and consumers are choosing not to pay more for the products with 5 year warranties, and instead choosing to go with the 1 year warranty.
Miele was known for making very durable products, however, even they over the years had to acknowledge that consumers were opting to purchase cheaper products from competitors, so they had to do the same to stay in business.
I think you have cause and effect reversed. Extended warranties are offered, when the product is expensive, not the other way around. Extending warranties can be thought of as a kind of insurance. If a product is inexpensive to replace, it does not make economic sense to insure it.[1]
[1] Unless you have some reason to believe the insurance is priced too low.
Warranty is another word for insurance. I'm not sure what you mean by cause and effect. If you are claiming that a product being expensive is what causes a manufacturer to offer longer warranties, I guess that's true, but I would say it is because the product is of higher quality.
Insurance is usually provided by a regulated entity and implicitly backed by the government in the even that the insurer fails. Their regulators also provide redress for consumers against unfair treatment without the need to resort to the courts and the terms usually have to be fair too.
Warranties are typically provided by the vendor who may well be financially unsound and willing to treat a customer less fairly, contain significant legal loopholes and require redress through the courts or perhaps a binding arbitration tribunal.
Is this a very recent U-turn from miele? I'm sure I saw something only in the last couple of years that top tier quality was still their primary business model. As an aside with a point of anecdata, our bosch washing machine which was sold with a 2-year warranty (thoguh actually upgraded to 4 by a special anniversary offer) and bought having just discovered that the entire washing machine industry was turning out minimum warranty-able products including formerly ultra reliable (or at least percieved to be...) Bosch, and it's just about 8 years old, with heavy use and the only maintenance it's needed has been to remove a fiver stuck in its drainage sump... but i guess we've just been lucky and should be preparing for the worst.
They might still be good quality, but from anecdotal evidence, not as good as before.
And most machines probably do work for many years, just not sufficiently enough to offer a longer warranty. Which is fine for most homes, since you're not running a mission critical operation and a few days to pick out a new washer isn't going to kill you. A business that needs machines to work might find it worth shelling out more for a quality product that rarely quits or can be fixed on site.
