PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE

By MADELEINE BEGUN KANE

I have one basic approach to repair persons. I run as fast as I can in the opposite direction. It's the only way I know to avoid paying $200 to fix something worth $1.98. So on those rare occasions (roughly 150% of the time) when an appliance dies after its warranty has expired, I do what any rational individual would do: I consult Consumer's Digest and purchase a replacement. I'll bet your ears perked up at the words Consumer's Digest. "She's one savvy buyer," you're telling yourself. Well, not exactly.

All I really do is check the warranty lengths so I can schedule my next purchase. Let's say my new video cassette recorder comes with a one-year guarantee. I simply mark "Day 366" on my calendar, and the VCR breaks like clockwork.

I came by my Never Try To Fix It rule the hard way. I tried to repair a television set twice, at $75 a pop.

My first attempt seemed quite sensible. After all, the set was only five years old, and a new one would cost $400. Unfortunately, it didn't seem quite so sensible when the TV self-destructed on the 91st day of my 90-day repair warranty.

But it was a good TV and hard to throw away, especially after a $75 investment. So I yelled a lot and, after getting no satisfaction, went out and found another repair person who was every bit the first fellow's equal.

Whoever said history repeats itself surely was thinking of me.

For years I've wondered why repairmen seldom effectively fix anything. And why their estimates incite so many bewildered customers to ditch the item and replace it.

After casting about for an answer, I finally coaxed it out of my favorite government insider, whom I can identify only as "Deep Wrench." He clued me in to a little-known law passed in 1959 -- right before things started to fall apart. Known as the "Make Them Buy Stuff Act," or MTBS, it was modeled on the federal subsidy for farmers. We pay farmers not to farm. Why not pay fixers not to fix? So argued the lobbyists representing appliance manufacturers all over America.

In the '50s, skillful repairmen were so good at their jobs and so reasonably priced that a manufacturer couldn't even make a sale to his mother. After all, why purchase a replacement when someone was willing and able to fix your appliance without demanding to be named in your will?

The solution was simple: encourage fixers to either bungle the job, or to quote such ludicrous repair estimates that even a miser would opt to buy rather than repair.

How do you accomplish this?

Easily. Just pay repairmen a healthy percentage of the profits on replacement appliances. The idea was swiftly adopted and, unlike our appliances, the scheme functions flawlessly.

Now that Deep Wrench has unraveled the repair person puzzle, it's time for me to tackle some other pressing national predicament. And I'll gladly do it, as soon as someone volunteers to pay me not to write.

Madeleine Begun Kane is an award-winning humor columnist who also writes for Family Circle and America On-line. E-mail her at madkane@aol.com

HOLIDAY LIGHTS
SOPORIFIC

By RICK SHEFCHIK

Are your kids already getting a little over-stimulated about the holidays? If so, I have stumbled upon the perfect antidote for sugar highs, toy commercial lust and package-peeking hysteria: Put them in the car and drive around looking at houses decorated with Christmas lights. If your kids are anything like ours, they'll be asleep by the time you've seen your second Rudolph soaring over somebody's dining room bump-out.

It's been understood by parents for years that the best way to quiet a squalling infant is to take the tyke for a ride in the car. But I've found that this technique works well into advanced childhood when there are colored light bulbs involved.

My wife and I began an annual ritual of driving around to look at brightly decorated houses when our daughter was born ten years ago. She was snoozing before we got out of the garage, but we'd go anyway. I admit to indulging in nostalgia; it always reminds me of all the years my parents took my brother, sister and me driving around to look at the lights.

Sure, it's kind of a hokey thing to do. But I believe that I learned a lot during those light-seeing trips with my family. We would inevitably cross neighborhood boundaries that I had never crossed before, opening my eyes to new sights and discoveries. I can recall thinking, "Gee, they celebrate Christmas on 60th Avenue East, too."

If nothing else, I'd like my kids to get the same broader perspective of their own community, and those next to ours. But so far they've had trouble making it down to the corner.

Sometimes we'll work with a list of well-decorated addresses, and sometimes we'll just freelance -- my wife and I glancing in opposite directions as we pass side streets, looking for throbbing glows.

In our former neighborhood there used to be a trio of tiny houses engaged in Christmas light warfare, their yards and rooftops crammed to bursting with Santas, reindeer, angels, Frostys, candy canes, marching toy soldiers, live manger scenes, and quite possibly billions of colored lights. People who lived two blocks in any direction must have had to put blankets over their windows at night to get any sleep.

But we'd pull up in front of one of these homes, oohing and ahhing, then turn to find our kids crumpled against each other in the back seat with their eyes shut, their mouths hanging open and drool pooling on their mittens.

Despite the fact that our children never actually see decorated homes on our tours, they keep asking us to decorate ours. They want to live in one of those blazing Las Vegas-type shrines they keep hearing about, instead of our drab little place with one string of lights on the porch railing.

Well, we bought a few extra strings of lights last year. Now we have enough to do the porch railing and the roof line. This year my wife would like to do a couple of the little pines in the front yard, too.

I know where this is heading.

Next year it will be a plastic Santa, the year after that a bunch of wise men, and the next thing you know we'll have tour buses cruising by.

But I'm not going to make it that easy for my kids. If they want to see homes tarted up with gaudy seasonal overkill, they'll just have to learn how to stay awake until we can drive them to one.

Rick Shefchik also writes a regular column for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Click Here To Recommend This Story To A Friend

Back to the top