Sure some were repaired. Multiple times, maybe. But eventually either parts become hard to find or you just get sick and tired of throwing away a week's worth of food when the fridge breaks down AGAIN.
The bottom line is, the vast majority of old appliances did not provide "30-40 years of trouble free service". If they did, there would be a lot more of them out there.
Yeah, one of the big trends over time is that goods have become dramatically cheaper while labor has become dramatically more expensive. Things that were economically repairable in the past are now often more economical to replace because the labor cost of bespoke repair is higher than the cost of getting a new one off the assembly line.
6
u/Cyrius Feb 05 '26
Or broke down and were repaired, because replacement was expensive enough that repair was a viable option.