Planned Obsolescence vs Reality: Why Appliances Break After Two Years

Walk into any French kitchen and you will find the same story: a seven-year-old fridge humming along next to a four-year-old dishwasher that has already been repaired once. The dishwasher is not worse technology. It was just never built to last that long. That gap between expectation and reality is what people call planned obsolescence — and most of the time, it is not what is actually happening.

What planned obsolescence really means

The strict definition is deliberate design choices that shorten a product's useful life: a glue-sealed battery, a part available only for three years, a firmware update that slows older hardware. These cases exist, and a few French courts have ruled on them. But they are the exception, not the rule.

For most appliances, the real reasons are blander:

• Cost engineering. The cheapest component that passes the warranty period is the one that gets sourced. If the warranty is two years, the design is built to survive two years.
• Repair economics. When a replacement part costs 80% of a new unit, consumers replace instead of repairing. Manufacturers know this.
• Software lifecycle. Connected devices lose vendor support long before the hardware fails. The hardware is fine; the product is "dead."
• Design for replacement, not durability. Plastic gears, snap-fit assemblies, and proprietary screws make repair technically possible and economically irrational.

None of this requires a secret plot. It is just a system where nobody is incentivized to build things that last longer.

Why this matters for the planet

The environmental cost is concentrated in manufacturing, not use. A washing machine produces most of its lifetime CO₂ before it ever spins a load. Doubling its lifespan roughly halves its per-year footprint. The same logic applies to laptops, TVs, and smartphones.

So the question is not "is this appliance green?" It is "how long will it actually be used?" — and that is the variable that most consumer choices and most regulations ignore.

What France is doing about it

France has been the most aggressive European country on this front, and the policy stack is worth knowing:

• Repairability Index (since 2021) — a score out of 10 displayed on product pages, grading how easy a product is to repair. Vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, lawn mowers, high-pressure cleaners, laptops.
• Durability Index (since 2025) — a successor for televisions and washing machines, combining a repairability sub-score with a reliability sub-score (warranties, lifespan evidence, firmware commitments).
• Bonus Réparation — a state-funded discount for consumers who choose repair over replacement at a certified workshop.
• Spare parts obligation — brands must keep parts available for a legally defined number of years after the last unit is sold.

None of this bans short-lived products. It just makes the trade-off visible on the price tag.

How to read a Repairability Index label

Before buying a regulated appliance in France, you will see a colored score from 1 to 10. Practical rules of thumb:

• Below 6 — avoid unless the price difference is large. You are paying for a short lifecycle.
• 6 to 8 — the current market average. Acceptable, nothing more.
• Above 8 — usually means documented spare parts availability for several years and a reasonable price-to-product ratio on parts.

The score is not a quality guarantee. It is a repairability guarantee. A 9/10 product can still fail. But when it does, fixing it is realistic.

What this changes for you

As a consumer, three things actually move the needle:

1. Buy on lifespan, not features. A cheaper appliance replaced in three years costs more — and wastes more — than a pricier one kept for eight.
2. Check the score before you check the price. The Repairability Index label is the first filter, not an afterthought.
3. Repair before replacing. A €120 control board on a six-year-old washing machine is almost always the right call.

As a brand or importer selling into France, the same transparency is now mandatory for several categories, and the DGCCRF does audit listings. That is where tools like Ripskore come in — assembling the document set, calculating the score, and producing the audit-ready package from the files you already have. The compliance work takes a week or two internally; the deeper shift is treating repairability as a product attribute, not a legal checkbox.

In short

Most appliances do not die young because of conspiracy. They die young because nobody is paid to make them last. France is the first country to make that cost visible at the point of sale. Whether you are buying a dishwasher or selling one, the score on the label is the new question — and the answer is starting to matter.