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[–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

I suspect this is actually what's changed - labor is so expensive compared to the cost of the machine that people replace their appliance with a new one because it's only a little more than fixing their old one.

The guy on an assembly line who places a particular assembly in place and connects the tubes/bolts can perform that task on hundreds of machines in a day. The guy who has to drive to each person's house to replace the exact same part can do maybe 2 a day, assuming he has the right part on hand, and assuming that it's easy to diagnose which part has failed.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Sure, but I don't think the price balance was historically close to today. Appliances may have been, relatively speaking, a much bigger investment to the point where paying a repair technician for a service call was usually the better option. Today, not so much.

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