Tag Archives: planned obsolescence

Planned Obsolescence or Rip Off?

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When I arrived at work this morning the alarm wasn’t set. We had trouble setting it a couple of days ago, and two weeks ago we had to leave it off all night as it wouldn’t set. Once is Ok, but when it starts happening like this you need to get it fixed, even if the call out is £75., and even if it was serviced just a couple of months ago.

I upset the technician who came to service it when he asked to borrow a brush – I told him at the price he was costing he should have his own brush (What’s it going to cost? £1.50?) He muttered something, so I pointed out that when I have my car serviced I don’t have to take a bag of spanners to the garage with me.

The man who called this morning blinded us with scientific gobbledygook about timing, and how we may be slower now than when it was originally set up. This is clearly tosh, as both my workmate and the boss, don’t hang about when it comes to closing up. I’m getting slower but don’t have any problems – apart from senior moments and forgetting the code.

Dwarf Iris

He then looked at the hard drive on the camera system. We had been leaving that as it didn’t seem like value for money just to call someone out to fix one thing. First he switched it off and switched it on again. Oh yes, £75 and that’s what you get. Then he told us that it had died and we needed a new one. We’ve only had it about four years and all it does is sit there and record on a continuing basis. It seems like we’ve fallen victim to a carefully managed scheme to milk us of our hard-earned profits. Or Planned Obsolescence, if you prefer a term that doesn’t accuse big business of ripping us off. Although I’m not sure why you would want a term that doesn’t big business of ripping us off, because that is what is happening. What with annual fees,call out charges, servicing and shoddy parts it would be cheaper to have a team of warrior monks on constant call to defend our property, while teams of their more peaceful brethren record our daily doings on vellum.

It turns out that the average hard disc drive lasts 3-4 years. You can see that space travel is going to be a problem. It’s OK nipping across to Mars, about seven years, but a quick jaunt to Proxima Centauri b is going to take 75,000 years, and I’m not sure how you are going to launch a space ship big enough to contain all those replacement disc drives. That’s an aspect of interstellar travel they never seem to discuss.

Lesser Celandine

Ten Minutes

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I about ten minutes (see what I did with the title?) I will be losing my internet connection as an engineer arrives to “improve” the service I will receive from BT. I have pointed out that I am perfectly satisfied with the service, but consider the price to be ridiculous. Their answer is to put me on fibre broadband and charge me less. This seems illogical when all they needed to do was to reduce the price to reflect the fact they have done very little to improve the service in the last 20 years. All they have done in that time is to provide an expensive new router to restore the service to the levels it used to be. This is not, as they claim, about progress, it is about built in obsolescence.

First we had internet, then we had broadband and now we have fibre optic broadband. That is, of course, the advantage of living in town. In the country I believe many people still struggle with speed and reliability.

We will soon see if it is an improvement or a nightmare.

Meanwhile, let us all think of Dyson’s contribution to modern life. Dyson’s main invention is not, as many think, a slickly advertised, powerful and heavy vacuum cleaner, but the concept of filters which need to be replaced (as in purchased) on a regular basis. In the old days when one Hoover bag could last a lifetime manufacturers of vacuum cleaners had to rely on selling new equipment to make money, and as they used to build them to last they didn’t sell much.

That’s the way to riches in 21st Century – design something a little worse, which needs a little more maintenance.  Then you can use your money to buy up farmland and talk about responsible farming whilst creating tons of plastic waste. Simple.

I’m off now. Wish me well.

Pictures are durable old-fashioned technology.

From Pottery to Canal to London to Manchester. 19th Century technology which still works.