Sale of Goods Act, how long should a digital camera last?

fluffnutter

moonrakerz wrote: »

This is the sort of WRONG information which annoys me so much about many of the comments posted on here about SoGA !!!

SoGA does NOT mention any period of time which an item may be expected to last, nor does it refer to the cost - FULL STOP !

This just leads people to gain grossly exaggerated expectations about what they can expect - usually they just end up looking stupid !

neilmcl's already pointed out that the SOGA does not, as I thought, make specific mention to six years. He does also mention that legislation allows you to bring a case under the SOGA within six years. He's even generous enough to suggest that this 'may amount to the same thing'.

All this he managed to do without getting his knickers in a twist.

Jakg

Mids_Costcutter wrote: »

How long would you expect it to last then? 2 years? 3 years then throw away? Do you think our expectations of how long household goods should last have changed over the years, say since the 1970s or 1980s?

For a low-end (in 2005 £140 was low end) consumer camera, 3 years is a good life


Lifetimes of goods have got a lot shorter, but they've also got a lot cheaper and more complicated.

moonrakerz

fluffnutter wrote: »

All this he managed to do without getting his knickers in a twist.

WHOSE knickers in a twist ???

whatmichaelsays

Mids_Costcutter wrote: »

Or is that something that the manufacturers are helping to ensure?

It's more to do with consumers demanding cheaper technology.

If consumers, en-mass, demanded quality, manufacturers would provide it.

Mids_Costcutter

whatmichaelsays wrote: »

It's more to do with consumers demanding cheaper technology.

If consumers, en-mass, demanded quality, manufacturers would provide it.

Well of course we all want cheaper electronic goods, but would you really be satisfied buying a camera for 'only' £140 if it lasted just 2 years or a £300 TV with a lifespan of less than 5 years? Built-in obselence works well for manufacturers, but we all have to pay the cost of disposing of all the mobile phones, PCs, cameras etc. that are dumped after only a couple of years.

I'd like to think that consumers could demand better quality en-masse, but how?

Mankysteve

Mids_Costcutter wrote: »

I'd like to think that consumers could demand better quality en-masse, but how?

Simply only buy brands and products with excellent reputations but we will all have to pay more and buy less.

Nilrem

Aye, the only way out of it is to buy goods from manufacturers with reputations for quality and be willing to pay more

One of the reasons a lot of things don't last as long now is that they are using plastic where they used to use metal (things like gears, linkages etc), that cuts production costs considerably (the plastic is cheaper to both handle, process and make into the final form), which lets them make the device a lot cheaper, but at the expense of long life as the plastics tend to wear a lot faster.
Things like some of the ecological laws also don't help, from memory the modern lead free solder is much more finickity to work with, and potentially suffers from a major but unpredictable problem of random crystallisation (it can "grow" microscopic tendrils which can short out)*, which doesn't help as it means manufacturing has to be much more precise to ensure that you don't get problems.
Then there is the fact that things are a lot more complex now than they used to be - your LCD TV (even just the LCD screen on a camera), effectively has as many individual lighting elements as something like the Blackpool tower (a HD TV will have about 2 million crystals in the display panel that have to react individually to avoid any deap pixels, and you can't repair them without replacing the entire panel which is why most manufacturers have a dead pixel policy that doesn't count it as faulty until a number have failed**).

Of course, the fact that people always seem to want the latest and best means that a lot of things get replaced sooner.



*One of the reasons equipment intended for "vital" use is exempt from the regulations, is that the reliability of the new solder is a problem that they can't risk peoples lives on, nor for things like space or military use (you really don't want to lose a billion pound satellite due to this issue - I think Nasa have been researching it for years).

**They usually follow the international engineering standard for it, with more expensive sets being checked more thoroughly.