The appliance that elicits anger and frustrated at it’s mere sight. The treacherous device that never worked right.
Do printers count? I fucking HATE printers.
After some half a century of existing they are somehow still annoying to use.
Printers are a given, I figure.
I have a black and white samsung printer that is like a decade old with the only maintenance being adding the powdered ink and replacing the roller thingy a couple of times. Always works, never had an issue, printed thousands of pages over time in spurts of hundreds at a time and even not printing for like two years.
On the opposite end inkjet printers are the fucking worst computer accessory I’ve ever dealt with. They have always been a shitshow even before they started the ink pricing shenanigans because they are finicky and unreliable to start with.
mine has said that all the ink is critically low and I’ve just ignored it for the past few months and it just keeps going.
Nearly same here, but mine is from 2010 and all I’ve ever done is replace the original starter cartridge of toner with a generic one once, and that was 12ish years ago and 2 cross-country moves. I’ve maybe printed a thousand pages ever.
Stop buying shitty ink jet printers and get a laser printer. Pretty sure the Brother MFC my dad purchased a decade ago will outlive him.
Came here to say this. F all printers ever made.
Microwaves are allowed one proud “ding” or three “beep” before they are on my hate-list.
My microwave has an un-interuptable 6 shrill beeps, that then repeat if the door is not opened in 10 seconds. There is no mute option, and it can be heard everywhere in the house. I have seriously considered just ripping the speaker out of it. It is, without a doubt, the appliance I hate most in my house.
Perfect this is the type answer I was looking for!
Open the door to your microwave and see if it has instructions for written on its body. Mine has a secondary menu where you can turn it off.
Checked there and searched online for any demo modes/ testing codes that would allow me to mute it. Evidently, a lot of folks online absolutely hate my microwave as well, because no one can mute it. That said, the community of microwave haters has provided me with instructions to rip out the speaker if I choose to silence the wailing banshee for good.
Mine is not nearly as bad as yours, but it is loud and doesn’t stop beeping when you open the door, just continues until its preprogrammed three loud beeps are over. I muted it when my kids were babies and have never looked back. I think a lot of people worry about muting their microwave because they think they won’t hear when it’s done or something. I’m here to tell you that you won’t miss it. Go forth and rip that speaker out with no regrets.
What microwave and model is it?
Frigidaire FFMV164LSA MFG in 2012
One thing you can do if you’re not fully prepared to remove the speaker is to cover it with several layers of tape. It will muffle the sound and is somewhat reversible
Sounds like mine. Shrill beeps that can’t be cancelled, muted, or interrupted, although I think mine is 30 seconds before the reminder beeps.
My favorite part, though? It beeps when you open the door. Like, just as a sound effect. I, the user, your god and your master, am the one who opened your door. There is no status to notify me of, there is no input to confirm. It’s just useless racket that can’t be eliminated without hardware modification.
Microwaves are the penultimate Norman Object (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things). They could have a standardized UI (cue up obligatory XKCD “Standards”). Instead, every manufacturer does it differently and usually in obscure, unintuitive fashion, often differently from the same manufacturer. Do you enter the time or power setting first? Oh wait, pressing a number launches it straight into running. That part that looks like a door handle is not how one actually opens the door; press the door button first. So. Much. Hate.
You know, the worst part is, they intentionally make the interface shittier on the cheap ones. I’m very convinced of this.
I have a similar short fuse for microwaves but for the +30 seconds button. If the microwave doesn’t have this it should get tossed in the nearest dumpster. The +30 seconds button is the pinnacle of human achievement.
My microwave thinks it’s a regular oven and keeps beeping if you don’t open the door. It doesn’t seem to understand it has stopped on its own and can shut the fuck up now.
And any remaining time on the cooking timer should automatically clear after say 10 minutes. Too many people that love leaving a few seconds remaining when retrieving their food. Then the remaining time stays there forever until someone comes along and clears it.
Printers. There is no excuse for (consumer) printers to be as shitty as they are.
There are reasons, but none of them are excuses: If patent hell wasn’t a main obstacle put in place by the large printer manufacturers, I am sure open source hardware alternative would’ve forced industry improvements ages ago.
US patents only last for 20 years. Technically, nothing is stopping you from making a part-for-part copy of a good laser printer from 2005 and selling it the same way some companies do replacement toner.
It’s just that making a cheap and reliable appliance is HARD if there are dozens of distinct parts that all have to move together. Heck, id expect a near-clone of a Cuisinart stand mixer before I’d expect a printer.
(And, even then, i doubt it’d be much cheaper than just buying one used.)
Edit: patents, not parents.
US parents only last for 20 years.
Jeez, I’m way past my warranty. Almost at 27 years.
For me, it’s specifically the HP printer my wife has. It has one of those subscription models where you pay per page (or per some unit, I forget) and you can’t use it without an account and an internet connection.
I bought a Brother that offers but does not mandate a subscription and tried to get her to use it, but she is convinced the awful disgusting subscription model is easier.
Every time I see it it makes me a little sad and a little mad, but I had her put it on my network that has guest isolation, so it can’t touch or spy on any of my other devices and only impacts her.
(My feelings about it aren’t quite that strong in reality, but this is a thread about appliance beef. If her printer weren’t isolated, I might actually feel pretty strongly about it.)
Don’t worry, commercial printers are equally bad but in a different way.
Every vendor feels the need to inject their own special secret sauce into the drivers instead of making a tool that Just Works.
OS people need to make the drivers. Once.
The driver is only “I bake you a PDF, and you will eat it and you will like it”
I’m not sure about PDF specifically as a printer language but yeah basically.
even enterprise grade printers are shitty
And there is a very good reason: Good Mechanical engineers are epxensive, so instead they hire crappy mechanical engineers
Dishwashers
Modern ones have too many features that can break and brick the whole thing and the cheap ones never get good powerful pumps so they spray like shit. Just make a basic mechanical timed dishwasher with a super powerful pump and I will be all in.
This is what I want for the vast majority of appliances. It just needs to do the basic functions reliably and have a few adjustments that I can fiddle with.
Removed by mod
It could be profitable, but it isn’t as profitable as making an unreliable and overly complex piece of crap that increases sales totals which jack up stocks.
Hell, being profitable isn’t even important for lot of businesses anymore, they just want growth.
Removed by mod
Think it was something about being bought out by private equity, and being run into the ground. I’ve loved all of the instant pots I’ve owned, only have had more than one because I needed a bigger one.
Being bought out by private equity is a massive red flag for quality, they always go cheap and ride the brand recognition as long as possible.
I’ve seen products like appliances go to hell in my lifetime. There are several issues besides planned obsolescence.
Used to be, you only had 3 or 4 refrigerators to choose from. They had to be close in quality and everyone knew what order they fell in for quality vs. price. People talked about their experiences and with a limited range of choices, it was easy to know what was best and what sucked. Hell, Lowe’s sells so many different fridges that finding the “best” is too hard to figure. Now I see people talking about manufacturers I’ve never even heard of. Does that make sense?
Another problem is low prices and will to repair. Stuff is so cheap now, relative to decades ago, that people simply throw stuff out and buy new rather than attempt any sort of repair. Our TV tubes would occasionally burn out. Dad and I would go to the store and consult the kiosk or, at worst, call a repairman. TVs were too damned expensive to not fix. Now people throw out TVs that only need a $60 board off eBay. I find and fix tons of stuff off the side of the road.
That’s the thing–the actual purpose of the appliances hasn’t changed at all. Every “advancement” is typically proprietary tech made to help comply with energy and water/gas usage standards–or to add perceived value through some half-baked gimmicks. For instance, dishwashers use smaller pumps run for longer periods of time to perform the same amount of work a larger more powerful pump could handle (in many cases a single pump sufficed for a dishwasher–one rotational direction for wash, opposite direction for drain)… I’m totally on board with energy efficiency but the laughably cheap/shitty tech they use to those ends kinda blunt the effectiveness of the energy saving measures (since replacing parts–or more likely entire dishwashers when those pumps fail–is a less energy-saving process than having a stronger, more durable pump that draws an extra amp or 2)
Yeah, saving $40 a year but spending $500 every three years instead of ten isn’t saving money.
I encountered a gas stove that wouldn’t work during a power outage. It had a valve that shut off the gas if electricity wasn’t present. Way to intentionally sabotage one of your biggest advantages.
haha… yeah. We have a tankless gas water heater that requires an electrical connection. We live in hurricane country so going without power for days/weeks at a time is something we’ve lived through on several occasions. Having a hot shower during those times is the one thing my wife really appreciates. Fortunately, it’s just a 110 connection and we can plug it into a generator or battery back up…
I’m guessing a tankless water heater involves some electronic controls. It probably could be designed to use low-voltage DC with a battery backup, but that would be fancy.
A gas stove should never need electricity for a burner to work if the user supplies another source of ignition like a match. This is surely a “safety feature” to prevent people from leaving the gas on when the electronic ignition is unavailable, but nobody with half a brain and a sense of smell would do that.
My apartment gym has a Nordictrack treadmill that I hate nearly every aspect of. First of all, it requires you login to use any of the programs, which doesn’t really work with 200 potential users. It has lost internet every single time I’ve used it and needs a restart, even though I use manual mode, the UI buttons are tiny and impossible to read while you’re running, and don’t respond correctly, and worst of all, there’s no goddamn place to put your phone so you can watch Netflix.
Why would you login to…a treadmill? Why would it need internet? So you can watch Netflix on the world slowest Public computer?
The trend of having touch screens on things is horrible enough. We definitely jumped the shark with technology long ago
Your history, prob one of those gameified ones where you run on google maps like trails
imo my ideal one would just have an adjustable phone dock with wireless charging.
Anything made by Samsung.
Appliance-wise at least.
My fridge’s ice machine has never worked and instead just made my fridge piss itself on multiple occasions.
I’ve wrestled with mine a time or two. Tons of troubleshooting tips online for that exact issue, shouldn’t be too hard to figure.
My old microwave wouldn’t cook anything if the date wasn’t set.
Yes. The date.
Ah, my old oven did that trick with the clock.
Even better is that it was a strange brand and didnt have an easily findable online manual, the only way to set the date was to first push the ‘alarm set’ and ‘alarm cancel’ buttons at the same time, then use the + & - buttons to change the time.Now that’s a good prank
Find an old 70s Amana Radarange on Marketplace or whatever local selling forum is available to you.
I have both 1972 (analog rotary dials) and 1976 (electrostatic push button) models, and they can bring a cup of water to boil in less than 30 seconds. Most any modern microwave I’ve tried this on needed 2-8 minutes to do the same damn thing.
The fridge. If you close it too hard or too soft, it ends up not closed, but a fingers’ width open.
Just bought a child lock for my freezer because of this
I have a Samsung that I passionately despise. While it seems to cool fine, they designed an ice maker that either fails and leaks or jams itself with ice so it renders itself unusable.
If I paid a premium price, why can’t I just get a modest functional ice maker?
IIRC a trick you can do is take a heat gun (or failing that a hair dryer) and warm up the magnet gasket border thing. Then close the door and leave it for a bit. Something about it better forming to the correct shape and making a better and more consistent seal.
Couldn’t hurt!
This works on certain models, I have had success with Samsung and Whirlpool fridges but that’s my only experience
That’s not the issue. It looks like there is a problem with the hinges. And no, oiling didn’t help.
Elevate the front a bit and gravity will do.
Smart idea. I know, because I tried it already. Didn’t really work (a slight inclination didn’t work, and I didn’t want to tile it more).
Washing machines.
My washing machine 15 years ago would wash my clothes with…uhhhh…fucking water.
Now you can’t buy washing machines that actually wash your clothes in water. They all spritz your clothes with a little water then jiggle around your damp clothes for a bit.
I don’t live in a desert. I live in a place with access to plenty of water. I should be allowed to buy a washing machine that actually fills up with soapy water and washes my damn clothes.
I could buy a Speed Queen washer for $2,000 from a specialty store, but that’s ridiculous. Why can’t I just buy a washing machine that washes my clothes? They’re ALL terrible now. All the washers in all the big box stores are just…bad.
Get your washers used from thrift stores, the older the better
Don’t fall into the aesthetics trap, you don’t need to swap your appliances out every five years for new
The ice compartment of our fridge. It’s always a fucking compressed block that needs manually smashing up. I fucking hate it so much.
This is such a funny visual I’ve never heard of this happening
The Oatmeal is correct, the answer is printers
And by extension, scanners
Printers/Fax machines.
I bought a cheap espresso maker off Amazon. It’s so cheap that nothing can be adjusted, not the pressure, the drip, the heat, nothing. Every single shot I pull from that thing tastes like burnt ass. I even invested in some nice expensive espresso beans, and no luck. The cheap machine is in fact a piece of crap. I should have known better.
How much was it?
It’s this one. I bought it on Amazon for the same price, $29.99: IMUSA Espresso Machine
Did you buy it because it says it’s American?
No i kid, i kid.
But seriously, is that an espresso machine or filter coffee brewer? I see a portafilter but also a giant carafe like for filter coffee. You should submit that to James Hoffman on YouTube and see if he makes a video about it. Also how big is it?
