That is a mostly reasonable comment but has one assumption and another important implication:

1) Assumption: Extended warranties are available for these appliances that would cover the expected usable lifetime of the dishwasher plus the extra purchase 2-3 year warranty.

This assumption is incorrect. Lifespan for something like this would, formally, fall under the category of durable goods. In this case, the expected lifespan of a durable goods such as a dishwasher is 10 years. The manufacture warranty falls well short of that, And a 2 to 3 extension will still not covered that time span. Of course life span of 10 years in this case would assume some potential paid maintenance by the consumer. But would not assume maintenance due to errors that would be significant enough to warrant a class action lawsuit. As such, an extended warranty would not be a sufficient substitution for problems arising from an issue that would warrant a class action lawsuit.

2) Implication: The implication of your comment is that consumers should bear the cost of errors that are sufficient enough to warrant a class action lawsuit, and pay for such errors in the form of an extended warranty.

I disagree with this. It does not seem to be a reasonable expectation as a cost the consumers should bear for systemic defects or negligence. If there’s an issue such that a class action is necessary to remedy for the issue, then a consumer should not be the one bearing the cost of that, even if it was an easy and simple matter of an extra purchase of a few dozen dollars, which as covered in the above assumption #1, would not be sufficient in any case.

All of that aside, as a matter of consumer purchasing and economic implications, I believe that consumers should have a very transparent understanding of the manufacturers warranty presented to them on point of purchase. Options for an extended warranty are nice but not necessarily required. Beyond that though, if there is an issue with a product that should reasonably have been remedied, or something that was deliberately or negligent ignored, the standard terms of the warrantee are moot. Because the manufacturer has not acted and produced a product in good faith, Either by accident or actual knowledge of the issue.

For example, a car may have a warranty that, as a standard from some manufacturers, last five years. That is the duration for which the manufacturer is obligated to correct things that went wrong during the manufacturing process. However, if there was a design flaw, and that design flaw perhaps for example rendered a car useless due to a bug in the software once the clock in the integrated circuit governing the electronic system hit a certain date, that would be a flaw that went into exceeded in terms of customer expectations and rates, boundaries of a standard warranty. We would hope such an issue would be easily rectified by some sort of software upgrade understand the age where those types of things are the norm. But if a manufacturer resisted that type of solution then I think something like a class action would be fully warranted to require the manufacturer to either render the product usable, or compensate the consumer for what might have been the remainder of the cars usable.

Within reason. Cars can be maintained to run for 100 years! But I would not expect the Ford corporation to make good on a design bug found in a model T car designed more than 100 years ago.

Exactly where the balance of time and liability may fall is probably not subject to a specific formula. It depends significantly on the type of good in the nature of the flaw that might be present in the knowledge of the manufacture in terms of how the flaw entered the product. These are not always, and probably almost always not, simple things to determine. This is where class action lawsuits enter the picture to support the collective rights of consumers, where individuals have significantly less power than the corporations producing the goods.

The problem, as I have pretty much stated, is that class action lawsuits are a very poor vehicle for remedying this sort of issue.

I am open to further discussion if you disagree with all or part of this, and may read any response, but I do have some thing of a short attention span and may not necessarily Replying to any response you were right, but I am probably likely to at least read it. Thank you for the discussion.