Washing machines and refrigerators bought today tend to fail sooner than those bought decades ago. The causes are structural rather than a single decision to build them badly.
Price pressure travels down to components
Appliances have become far cheaper relative to incomes, and that price is met by removing material and cost from every component that is not visible to the buyer.
Bearings, pumps, hinges and motor mounts are specified to survive an expected duty rather than to last indefinitely, and the expected duty has been set lower over time.
Nothing about this is hidden. It is the predictable result of a market where buyers compare visible features and price, and cannot inspect a bearing before purchase.
Sealed assemblies remove the cheap repair
Components that were once bolted together are now supplied as sealed units, because assembling fewer parts is faster and a sealed unit can be made lighter.
When one element inside such a unit fails, the whole assembly is replaced. A worn seal that once cost little to renew now requires a major part.
That shifts the economics of repair. The part price alone can approach the cost of a new machine, so the repair is declined even when the fault is minor.
Electronics fail differently from mechanisms
Mechanical parts wear gradually and warn the owner through noise or vibration. Control boards tend to work perfectly and then stop, with no warning period.
Boards also sit in hot, damp environments alongside vibrating motors, which is demanding for solder joints and capacitors over a long service life.
Replacement boards are supplied as complete units and are among the most expensive parts, so an electronic fault often ends the machine's life regardless of its mechanical condition.
Repair economics turned against the owner
A repair involves a call-out, diagnosis and a part, and skilled labour has grown steadily more expensive while the appliance itself has grown cheaper.
Those two lines crossed. For many faults the rational choice is replacement, and once that becomes the norm, the repair network thins out and becomes harder to reach.
The thinning is self-reinforcing. Fewer independent repairers means less stocked inventory, longer waits and higher prices, which pushes still more owners toward replacement.
Regulation is pushing the other way
Rules in several jurisdictions now require spare parts to remain available for a period after sale, and require documentation to be supplied to repairers.
Some rules also mandate that common wear parts be removable with ordinary tools, which constrains the sealed-assembly approach at the design stage.
The requirements vary considerably by jurisdiction and change over time, so the practical repairability of a given model depends heavily on where it was sold.