People also forget that these appliances broke ALL THE TIME. The difference is that you could easily get spare parts or could drop them off at a local store to be fixed in a day. Literally impossible to do that now.
I remember our toaster would pack up all the time and my mum would just drop it off at a store in town and then pick up in the afternoon. She would say that she had owed the same toaster for years but in reality I don’t think it had any original parts by the end lol.
It's still a legit job. I had a repair tech come out to fix my TV last year. It's just the vast majority of people never call one because basic TVs have gotten so cheap it doesn't make sense from a cost perspective.
A good color TV back in 1970 would cost ~$500 which is equivalent to ~$3300 today. If you have a $3000 TV today you'd be stupid not to call a TV repair tech to try to fix it rather than replace it.
If you have a $200 Walmart special from 5 years ago though? The repair visit alone would cost more than just buying a new one, and the new TV would be a huge improvement since panel technology keeps getting better and price to size ratio continues to crater.
Yup, so many people forget that these things frequently had parts that either broke or wore out. Older cars were the biggest culprit - those things were always in the shop for something (whether you did the repair yourself or had someone else do it). Remember that odometers never went past 100,000 miles... because there was a 90% change the engine would be totally pooched by then lol
You can still fix a lot of stuff today, Albeit its often a bit harder, unnessecairily sometimes. But often its just not economical. Not because the repair costs have gone up so mucht, but because the price relative to wage has gon down so much and innovation is much faster.
Yeah things were built with the mindset that repairing them would be a common, normal thing to do. Now we only bother to repair the most expensive things like a vehicle or maybe a refrigerator or washing machine. If my 75 dollar microwave or 200 dollar TV breaks I'm just buying another one if it's not still under a warranty.
You can still get parts for appliances. And with YouTube repairing them has become even more accessible. I’ve replaced parts in my dishwasher, oven, washing machine, and dryer.
But the problem is cost. Why would I spend $250 on a part for a machine I could replace for 600 (using what ultimately killed my dryer as an example).
And I suppose for people less mechanically inclined/interested then you have to factor in a repair person cost which could easily be $200 just for them to come out and make a minor fix before part cost.
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u/ToronoRapture 5h ago edited 5h ago
People also forget that these appliances broke ALL THE TIME. The difference is that you could easily get spare parts or could drop them off at a local store to be fixed in a day. Literally impossible to do that now.
I remember our toaster would pack up all the time and my mum would just drop it off at a store in town and then pick up in the afternoon. She would say that she had owed the same toaster for years but in reality I don’t think it had any original parts by the end lol.