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You said:
Could you perhaps give me a list of the products that have built in obsolescence that typically equals the length of their warranties?
ChatGPT said:
Here’s a practical list of product categories and specific examples where built-in/“planned” obsolescence often results in the effective lifespan being about the same as (or just beyond) the length of the warranty — meaning they tend to fail, wear out, or become unusable right when the manufacturer’s guarantee ends. This isn’t a legal verdict about every item in each category — it’s based on common consumer experiences and documented patterns of design choices that shorten useful life to encourage replacement.
📦 Common Products with Built-In Obsolescence Patterns
📱 Consumer Electronics
These often stop functioning or become effectively obsolete shortly after the warranty period, especially due to non-replaceable parts and software limitations:
- Smartphones – batteries degrade rapidly and aren’t designed to be replaced easily; software updates can slow older models or stop support.
- Tablets & e-readers – similar battery and update lifecycle issues.
- Laptops – soldered components (RAM/SSD), non-serviceable batteries.
- MP3 players & portable devices – few repair options once battery fails.
- Smartwatches – tiny non-serviceable batteries and fast component wear.
👉 Many devices have non-replaceable or hard-to-service batteries, making the device unusable once the battery capacity falls below a certain threshold — often around the same time the warranty ends.
🖨️ Printers & Consumables
Some printers and accessories are designed so life is tied to limited-use components:
- Inkjet & Laser Printers – chips in cartridges cut off printing after a set number of pages even if ink remains.
- Printer cartridges & toner – embedded electronics can prevent reuse/refills, forcing replacements.
🔌 Household Appliances
These products sometimes have shorter lifespans than expected — especially models at lower price points:
- Washing machines & dryers – motors and electronic boards fail soon after warranty.
- Dishwashers, microwave ovens, refrigerators – design choices can make key parts difficult/expensive to replace.
- Small kitchen appliances – e.g., coffee makers or blenders may wear out near warranty expiration.
🚗 Vehicles & Automotive Components
Not always designed to fail outright but often upgraded or wear out at predictable intervals:
- Annual model cycles – new designs replace older ones quickly.
- Discontinued parts – older models become harder to repair affordably.
- Components such as electronics modules and ECUs are sometimes less durable than mechanical parts.
👕 Fast Fashion & Textiles
While not “warranty-driven,” these products are made to be replaced frequently, with average usable life roughly matching minimal care periods:
- Fast fashion clothing – low-cost materials and stitching break down quickly.
- Shoes, socks, stockings – wear out faster than classic, durable alternatives.
🧰 Tech & Software-Linked Products
Products can be rendered obsolete via software changes rather than hardware failure:
- Software platforms & apps – older versions lose support, forcing upgrades.
- Gaming consoles/accessories – can become unusable with newer software ecosystems.
📊 Why This Happens
Manufacturers often design products so they are:
✅ Cheaper to produce with lower-cost components that only meet the targeted minimum lifespan.
✅ Difficult or uneconomic to repair (sealed units, proprietary parts).
✅ Subject to software or compatibility limits that shorten their useful life.
This creates a consumption cycle where products are replaced just when warranty protection ends — a hallmark of planned obsolescence.
📌 Tips to Spot & Avoid It
- Choose products with replaceable parts (batteries, filters, bulbs).
- Check repairability scores (e.g., iFixit).
- Favor brands with long warranty & spare-parts availability.
- Extended warranties may be worth it for known short-life items like printers or portable electronics.
If you want, I can tailor this list by specific product categories you use (e.g., office tech, appliances, tools) and give examples with typical warranty vs. actual lifespan.
If you’d like, next we could:
- Compare EU vs U.S. approaches
- Look at specific product categories where regulation is imminent
- Or explore how warranty length quietly encodes design life from an engineering/accounting perspective
You said:
Let’s go with warranty length …
ChatGPT said:
Great choice — warranty length is one of the cleanest “signals” of intended product life, and once you see it this way, you can’t un-see it.
I’ll break this into engineering, accounting, and behavioral layers, because warranty length quietly ties all three together.
1. Warranty Length as an Engineering Signal
The uncomfortable truth
Manufacturers rarely design for failure at warranty end — but they very often design for survival slightly beyond it.
Engineers work with:
- Mean Time To Failure (MTTF)
- Failure distributions (the “bathtub curve”)
- Component derating
What warranty length really encodes is this:
“We are statistically confident that most units will survive X years under typical use with an acceptable return rate.”
That confidence comes from:
- Accelerated life testing
- Thermal cycling
- Charge/discharge cycling (batteries)
- Mechanical wear modeling
If a product has a 1-year warranty, it is rarely engineered for a 10-year life. It’s usually engineered for something like 2–4 years under average conditions.
2. The Bathtub Curve & the Warranty Cliff
Reliability theory describes three phases:
- Infant mortality (early defects)
- Useful life (low, stable failure rate)
- Wear-out phase (rapidly rising failures)
Warranties are placed just before phase 3
That’s not an accident.
If the wear-out phase began during the warranty:
- Costs spike
- Brand damage increases
- Accounting reserves explode
So designers aim for:
- Wear-out starting shortly after warranty expiration
- A steepening failure curve at ~1.2–1.5× warranty length
That’s why failures feel “suspiciously timed,” even if no single part has a countdown timer.
3. Warranty Length as an Accounting Control
This is where it gets really explicit.
Warranties create liabilities
On the balance sheet:
- Expected warranty claims must be accrued
- Longer warranties → higher reserves → lower reported profits
So management pressure often flows backward into design:
| Decision | Accounting Effect |
|---|---|
| Thicker bearings | ↑ cost, ↓ warranty claims |
| Better capacitors | ↑ BOM, ↓ failure rate |
| Longer warranty | ↑ reserves, ↓ earnings |
The result is a financially optimized design life, not a maximal one.
From an accounting perspective:
A product that lasts too long is economically inefficient if it suppresses future sales.
4. Why Warranty Length ≈ Design Life (in Practice)
Here’s a rough empirical rule many reliability engineers quietly accept:
| Warranty Length | Typical Design Life Target |
|---|---|
| 90 days | ~1 year |
| 1 year | ~2–4 years |
| 2 years | ~4–7 years |
| 5 years | ~10–15 years |
| 10 years | “Durability-class” product |
This is not universal, but it is common enough to be predictive.
5. Software Has Changed the Game (for the Worse)
Traditional warranties covered hardware failure.
Modern products fail instead via:
- Software support withdrawal
- Cloud dependency shutdowns
- OS incompatibility
- Security certificate expiration
So now we get:
- Hardware that still works
- Functionality that legally or practically doesn’t
In these cases:
Warranty length disguises functional obsolescence rather than physical failure.
This is especially visible in:
- Phones
- Smart TVs
- Vehicles with subscription features
- Networked appliances
6. Environmental Implication (Why This Matters)
From an environmental standpoint, warranty length becomes a proxy for waste generation rate.
Short warranties imply:
- Higher material throughput
- Faster e-waste accumulation
- Higher embedded carbon per year of service
This is why some environmental economists argue:
Warranty length should be treated as an environmental disclosure, not just a legal term.
7. How to Read Warranties Like a Signal (Consumer Heuristics)
When you see a warranty, ask:
- Is it prorated or full?
→ Prorated = manufacturer expects degradation. - Are key wear parts excluded?
→ Batteries, seals, bearings excluded = short real life. - Is the warranty unusually short for the category?
→ That’s a warning, not a bargain. - Does the manufacturer sell extended warranties aggressively?
→ That often signals narrow base reliability margins.
8. Where Regulation Is Quietly Heading
Some policy proposals (especially outside the U.S.) are converging on:
- Minimum warranty lengths
- Mandatory spare-parts availability tied to warranty
- Software support periods aligned with hardware warranties
If that happens, warranty length stops being just a legal shield and becomes a design mandate.
A Framing You Might Appreciate
From a systems perspective:
Warranty length is the only place where engineering reality, accounting incentives, consumer behavior, and environmental impact intersect cleanly.
That’s why it’s such a powerful — and under-discussed — signal.
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