For some time there has been a belief in my area that (not only) electrical appliances and indeed all electronic products are deliberately added so-called "sluts" that ensure premature malfunction of the device, whether it is consumer electronics, electrical components in cars and last but not least products for professional use. And here are the first fragments that with our "paranoia" it will not be so hot, well judge for yourself.

Is it just a law of approval that the printer or washing machine often stops working shortly after the warranty expires? It's not. Do you also sometimes wonder if consumer goods do not have a "programmed" decomposition date? Or is it just a law of approval that the printer or washing machine often stops working shortly after the warranty expires? In recent months, the German Union 90 / Greens has tried to answer these questions. Result? Party spokeswoman Dorothea Steiner commented on the conclusion of the more than XNUMX-page study: "It's a pigsty."

It has turned out that the so-called planned obsolescence has become a common practice through which large corporations maximize their turnovers. "The planned obsolescence is ubiquitous today. Components are often functionally underdimensioned, prematurely wearing or causing a substantially timed failure. The sale of deliberately poorly manufactured goods has become a mass phenomenon, "says Stefan Schridde, one of the authors of the study.

According to him, the planned obsolescence has a wide range of forms:

• metal parts are exchanged for plastic;
• Devices such as laptops are manufactured so that they can not be accessed;
• batteries are often a fixed part of the product and can not be replaced;
• accessories that are only compatible with some models are being developed;
• and so on and so on…

The most extreme case is when a company directly programes its lifetime into its products. Typically, some memory card manufacturers do today for cameras or phones: if the owner exceeds a quota, the card becomes unusable. Similarly, it works, for example, in a number of coffee makers that simply stop working after a certain number of coffees and show that it is time for maintenance.
The same is true for printers: some have been set to stop printing after a certain number of pages have been printed. Specifically, the study mentions the case of a laser printer cartridge: its built-in counter has caused the printer to report replacing the cartridge after fifteen thousand printed pages. Schridde and his colleagues managed to flip the counter three times to print fifty thousand more pages without any problems…

And where then with all this?

The biggest media scandal has so far been the beginning of 21. century has taken care of Apple. The California giant of its mp3 iPod has been designed so that it is not possible to replace the battery whose lifetime has been artificially limited to 18 months in Palo Alto. 2003 followed a mass sued in the US that culminated in out-of-court settlements: Apple had to promise to replace the battery free of charge and extend the warranty from eighteen months to two years.
After all, Apple has been mentioned in a German study several times. Among other things, because its devices are characterized by special screws, so only the owners of the specific tools - ie, Apple-authorized repairers - get access to the product's interior. (In the case of "applake" laptops it is even a little more complicated, there are individual parts even straight glued.)

The price of a component that would extend the product's life up to a full decade did not differ by one euro cent from the price of commonly used components. In addition, Schridde also considers a wide variety of electrolytic capacitors, which are essentially the most important components of electronic appliances. "For a number of products, such as televisions, DVDs, computers, and so on, we have been able to prove that the capacitors were deliberately built to cut the life of appliances by five to ten years," the study's expert says. And he adds that this is certainly not a price question, as one might think: the price of a component that would extend the life of the product for up to a decade was not even one euro cent from the price of commonly used components!

However, electronics is certainly not the only consumer commodity mentioned in the study. You can also find it:

• soles of low-quality rubber that prematurely swing and are additionally attached to the shoe so that they can not be replaced;
• spiral plastic zippers that prematurely terminate the service;
• or cotton with such short fibers that the fabrics made of it last only for a few months.

"Experimental examples show that planned or at least tolerated premature obsolescence is ubiquitous. Batteries that can not be replaced, glued caps, or specifically built-in weaknesses make it clear. It is a prasárna, "says German Green Speaker Dorothea Steiner. So, not only does it generate huge costs for consumers, but also gigantic garbage mountains, which can be seen as a fatal problem for the environment and ultimately for the health of all of us.

Actually, nothing new

It should be noted that the planned obsolescence is not 21. but in certain forms it has existed for over a hundred years. A classic example of a systematic shortening of product life is the legendary Phoebus 1924 incandescent cartel.

At that time, leading bulb manufacturers, including Philips, Osram, General Electric Company and Compagnie des Lampes, agreed to unisonously reduce the life of their products from 2500 to 1000 hours. The cartel proved to have existed until 1942, when US government General Electric and others sued for unfair competition.