what to do when your vacuum cleaner breaks down? - 2 what to do when your vacuum cleaner breaks...

REPAIRING PRODUCTS

FROM A CONSUMER PERSPECTIVE ECONOMIC IMPACT ANALYSIS

buy additional warranty & repair minor failures

1

replace whole product without repair

4

repair all failures without additional warranty

3

buy additional warranty & repair all failures

2

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR VACUUM CLEANER BREAKS DOWN?

?

VITO and KU LEUVEN investigated the economical feasibility of four different repair strategies in a project for the Benelux Union.

For each consumer strategy, the total monetary costs related to the purchase, use, repair and disposal of the appliance is modeled. This is called the Life Cycle Cost or LCC.

Comparing the LCC’s for the different scenario’s shows that all three repair scenario’s are favourable compared to the replace scenario.

REPAIR OR REPLACE?

€/year*

MODELING THE AVERAGE COST FOR ALL SCENARIOS & THREE PRODUCT TYPES

For each of the repair strategies, the average Life Cycle Cost (LCC) was modeled. The LCC is expressed in €/year indicating the total cost of owning and using a product in a certain reference period.

x €/year

investment cost: purchase price, warranty cost,...

operational cost: energy, service, auxilliaries,...

repair cost: depends on type of repair, warranty period and willing- ness to repair

disposal & replacement cost: disposal cost of old product that broke down & investment cost of new product to replace it

canister vacuum cleaner

upright vacuum cleaner

washing machine

0

10

20 21

17 19

22 21 18 19

23

33 32 32

36

30

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

REPAIR OR REPLACE? REPAIR IS CHEAPER!

THREE REPAIR & ONE REPLACE SCENARIO

*based on a normalised purchase price of 100€

FULL REPORT AVAILABLE AT

http://www.benelux.int/files/7915/2896/0920/FINAL_Report_Benelux.pdf PROJECT PARTNERS

PROJECT COMMISSIONED BY BENELUX UNION

http://www.benelux.int

© Benelux, VITO, KU LEUVEN

REPAIR!