Your Refrigerator is not Really Breaking Down after the Warranty Period

I need to get a few things off my chest regarding product warranty period misconceptions. I often get together with my friends on the weekend over dinner and drink when all of a sudden one of them breaks into a tirade of don’t buy this brand, they suck! When I try to qualify that with them and ask why, I’m almost always told the following, “They tried to sell me an extended warranty at the store for x dollars but I declined. The fridge was warranted for 12 months but it broke after 13 months!”

“Those bastards! They always design things to break right after the warranty period expires!” I usually sit shaking my head in amazement at these assumptions. None of my friends are neither electrical nor mechanical engineers and I always explain to them how this is just not true.

When I whip out a pad an pen and begin to explain the bathtub curve, which is probably the easiest way of explaining reliability engineering, they sit as awestricken as I did when they made their bold claims about products being designed to stop functioning after a short while.