How long are your appliances going to last?

Once you have gone through the trouble of searching for and installing a new refrigerator, you might be wondering how long it would take before the next refrigerator debacle.

If you're like the average person, you 'd assume that any major new appliances will last for about 10 years. Consumer expectations are strikingly consistent across major appliances.

Producers tend to agree. We have asked manufacturers of over 20 brands, and most say their appliances should last about 10 years. Certain brands make longevity claims far more bolder. Miele, who placed himself as a luxury brand, and Sub-Zero / Wolf, the maker of the cooking centrepieces of the aspirational chef, claim 20 years; Speed Queen, who manufactures washing machines, claims 25 years.

But just because a supplier promises that the product will last ten, twenty or twenty-five years doesn't mean that those years are trouble-free. Data from tens of thousands of users in a global appliance survey in 2018 show that there will be plenty of problems with any appliance within the first five years, as you can see in the statistics below.

Need you an extended warranty?

Whether purchasing an extended warranty to cover an appliance that goes beyond the standard one- to two-year manufacturer warranty is down to your risk tolerance.

During the extended warranty you will consider how likely Helpful site the appliance is to fail and whether the replacement will cost more than the repair itself.

For example, we predict that approximately 25 per cent of all refrigerators are likely to develop problems in years two to five after the typical one-year warranty expires. But our data shows that the average cost of a repair is $162, the same as the average cost of an extended warranty. And if something goes wrong, it's a wash, and if not, it's a loss.

But if you look at the potential to get hit from an extended warranty with a whopper of a refrigerator repair bill, you are even less likely to get your money's worth. Less than 1 per cent of our members who purchased a fridge between 2008 and 2018 had a $500 or more repair bill.

Here's a data-driven look at how problematically different appliance categories are, and what types of appliances are your best bets from which brands — and your worst.