99% of people also hate how airlines treat them and think appliances should last more than a few years, but then when faced with a purchase decision, choose whatever is cheapest. Unfortunately, money talks and bullshit walks. :-(
Quite frankly, none exist. Every fridge on the market in a regular kitchen size (smaller than industrial) is an entirely plastic piece of crap with a life expectency of 5-10 years.
It wasn't an issue of money, of searching, or willingness to wait. There just wasn't any alternative.
https://gist.github.com/peteryates/b44b70d19ccd52f62d66cdd4b...
I had a Kenmore Trio which gave up the ghost after 15 years late last year. I had repaired it myself a couple times, but this last time the sealed system failed and that's beyond my skill set and too expensive to pay someone to repair.
I found basically the exact same fridge, manufactured now by Whirlpool, and the price was even within a few hundred dollars of what I paid in 2004. We'll see how long the replacement lasts. A few more bits of it that used to be metal are now plastic, but it also has a few improvements.
(The plastic drawers which slide on plastic rails... what are they thinking? Terrible design.)
I've kept my Fisher-Paykel Dish Drawers working since 2004, as well as my Fisher-Paykel double oven. The DDs have been interesting because FP has made incremental improvements over the years and they've made the parts available to retrofit to my models. Same for the oven, when one of the elements exploded, the replacement was a heavier duty element. I also retrofitted changes they made to the self-clean cycle and thermal limiter switches to prevent those from triggering incorrectly.
Our washing machine also died a year ago after almost 12 years of service. I replaced it with a Maytag HE model, and took the opportunity to redo the entire laundry room and switch from gas to electric dryer. We'll see how long these models last.
Anyway yes, while I basically agree, I've not had any appliance last me less than a decade, so I've done okay. Knock on wood.
My prior Samsung was turrible. Super loud with disconcerting random pops. Absolutely nightmare to clean (my son defrosted some meat and the juice got every where, grrr).
I haven't kept track, but I think Haier bought up GE's appliance division. Irony.
For refrigerators (looking at you GE), they build up dust, and the airflow fan dies because of built up dust. And try getting a replacement if you aren't a GE Certified repair person. Even GE referrals often suck and cannot do the job. Took three repair visits to get a fan replaced.
If anyone has some solid refrigerator suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Preferably with water and ice in-door .