Discussion
Buying a new fridge is a traumatic experience if you live in NYC. The selection is terrible. There are two kinds of fridge basically:
1. Huge fancy monsters designed for bigger suburban homes.
2. The Landlord Specials: bare basic simple things that might fit in our kitchen.
We'd need to tear out the wooden cabinets to fit most models. And I don't really want a huge fridge. A big one just fills up with stuff and you can't find anything.
But I have the same issue with other major purchases. Phones? It's either too big or too bare bones and basic.
Same problem with dishwashers... all either massive or basically disposable.
I don't need to own a car, and that is good because I hate them all. They are all too large or too basic.
Make small things that are high quality with features! What if that could happen?
*grumble*
@futurebird@sauropods.win You're not the only one who wants those things but the "demand" part of "supply and demand" doesn't exist anymore. There's just supply and supply manipulation. They remove the things that people actually want and force people to choose amongst the options that are left then call illusion of choice "demand."
You see it everywhere from cars to phones to appliances to laundry detergent packaging to social media algorithms once you notice it.
No one ever demanded tide pods or that the electrical plugs be removed from the back of stoves. There's a huge demand for smaller sedans from people who live in cities. Ask most women (~50% of the market) what their ideal phone size is and then try and find a phone that size on the market. The users on corporate social media never demanded that their friends post be filtered out of their feed, etc.
It didn't help that P. C. Richards really put us through an ordeal. Three months ago we went in, found a fridge that was OK on sale for just $600. It was still too, big, but I was at least happy with the price and decided to put it in the breakfast nook.
"It will take two weeks to deliver."
"That's fine." I said.
And then the weeks stretched on.
They call back and say they don't have it.
1/
Now P. C. Richards is a big company with multiple stores. They serve the whole region. I say I will wait, but he says it might take until "fall" so at last I cancel the order.
We go back again and this time we still can find that same model but it's not on sale and the bill is $1500. I'm just mad and grouchy. It's almost $1000 more and I still don't even like it.
I just need to get this done. And today I get to clean out the nook to make space. Which I also hate.
2/2
@futurebird I find that cars are like that too, you’re not allowed to want a small NICE car. Small car means basic and cheap. What if I don’t want to drive a 4000lbs monster but I’d like nice seats???
The last time I had to buy a fridge, nearly two decades ago, at least there was a requirement that every fridge list how much electricity they use clearly on the display information.
Apparently the industry (both the appliance retailers and manufacturers) hated doing this so the "Energy Star" program has been repealed.
This is because when you see the electric cost for a fridge per month, you might want to buy a smaller one!
It's not in their interest to center that information.
there is no "they" who did this, the people who killed the Energy Star program have a name & it's Elon Musk / DOGE
truly an evil person who lives to make the world a worse place
Energy Star was flawed in many ways. For example products could earn the "star" despite using huge amounts of power by meeting rather paltry efficiency standards. A larger fridge will be more efficient *per cubic foot* even without better insulation or other improvements. So most large models had the star while smaller ones did not.
But they still had to show the energy cost per month for consumers: and that probably had a positive impact.
Hm, you could try to check if you find the same model on a European website. The old EU system goes form AAA (best) to G (worst).
It has been reset a few years ago (going from A (best) to G with the old AA and A being C and D now).
They also have to specify an average energy use (in kWh per year) directly on the website and in the store with a sticker that looks like the one attached.
Often there’s a link to the European product register (you could search there for the models you have available)
Example:
https://eprel.ec.europa.eu/screen/product/refrigeratingappliances2019/1787166?navigatingFrom=qr
@Landa @futurebird @peachfront @g
These labels are one of my favourite things. They’re a clear demonstration of regulatory intervention that made a market actually work well. Consumers in a market require information to be able to make good decisions and information asymmetry breaks markets.
When they introduced the scheme, most appliances were C (or worse) with a few B. Within a few years, almost everything was A because you couldn’t sell things that were B: if you’re buying an appliance that you expect to last for ten years, you care a lot about the annual cost.
They added AA and AAA because of industry lobbying: companies producing more efficient units wanted to be able to show that as a clear differentiator.
And that ended up being so successful that they had to recalibrate the scheme. An absolutely amazing market impact without the regulators having to mandate any efficiency standard, they just increased consumer awareness.
This model was one of the major inspirations for the labelling schemes in the CRA.
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