What's the Deal with Toasters??

Our Cuisinart CPT-180 Toaster is now in for repairs. It only toasts on one side, has become difficult to set (it either burns or makes warm bread) and some of the buttons either don't work or are stuck on. At least Cuisinart offers a 3 year warranty and we can get it serviced locally at Centre du Rasoir. The toaster is barely over 1 year old.

We bought this toaster for its rated performance, its 3 year warranty and its compact size. It was one of the few 4 slot toasters that was rated at 1500 watts. It made excellent toast at first but after about 6 months things started to go wrong with it.

What gets me is that regardless of price, toasters seem to last only about a year. We've been through countless toasters that just get slow, eventually make bad toast, or break, or even catch on fire!

There is no reason for this kind of built-in obsolescence, especially when a toaster is double or triple the price. We just want a toaster that can make consistently good toast for what it should last for (at least 10 years). When I think of my parent's Sunbeam automatic that was bought before I was born and died when I was about 18 or 19 years old, and made consistently perfect toast every single day until it bit the dust.

At least Centre du Rasoir's service is good: If the technician can't fix it, they replace it with a new one.