Excellent, less waste, more money in your pocket, and new skills developed! Win-win-win, maybe a few more wins added in there!
Oh, wait, wait... no, no. But what about the profits of the brand holding companies who missed out on a new sale? Who will think about their second vacation homes?
I mentioned this to some coworkers and their collective reaction was "I would have no idea how to fix that and would have bought a new one." In the face of a little research and $30 versus shelling out hundreds for a new one, they'd pick the latter? Well, okay then.
You live in a coastal area, I'd guess? I ran into that sentiment regularly when I was in Seattle, and couldn't stand it. It extended to random tech repair work too - bad power input pin on a laptop? Well, solder it up, I mean, you need a higher temp iron to deal with the thermal mass, but those aren't hard to... oh, I guess I'm the only person who has one? Huh. Sure, I'll repair it for a price.
I'm radically happier living out in rural farm country in the mountain west now, where people generally work on their own stuff (and I'm working with a few other people to more and more build the weird replacement parts you can't get from the appliance makers). "I fixed my dishwasher, bad water pressure sensor, ugh..." would, out here, be more than likely met with a good discussion on what other nonsensical cheap parts fail on home appliances and where to find them/troubleshoot them. It wouldn't be weird at all, and "I bought a new one, dunno what was wrong with the old one..." would be the weird thing.
I've concluded that at least part of it is that knowing how to do things with your hand and tools is considered
blue collar among the chattering coastal classes, and of course that's something They Are Not And Will Never Be. You pay
those people to do the things you're proud of not knowing how to do. It's insane to me, but... whatever. I don't live out there anymore. And I fix my own stuff.
I'm just annoyed because it feels like I'm fixing our stuff more often than I ought. I've replaced, in the past 6 years, one freezer thermostat, one drain pump on the washer, a burner control on our stove, I've cleaned out a few valves that build up a bit of grit, and that's not counting the times I've had to defrost our fridge's idiotic icemaker with a hair dryer.