SOMEWHERE, deep in the bowels of every electrical home goods manufacturer, is a department so insidious it doesn’t officially exist.

Teams of expert saboteurs are being paid top dollar (or yen) to design products which conk out the second the manufacturer’s guarantee expires. They haven’t quite managed it yet.

A washing machine once lasted a whole year after the warranty period. Meanwhile, one dishwasher gave up the ghost a week before the guarantee expired and the red-faced manufacturer was forced to repair the device at its own expense.

But these elite squads of technology gremlins are getting better. One team managed to ensure its colour ink jet printers stopped taking the yellow ink when the gadget was one day out of warranty.

So I’m exaggerating but it appears that the manufacturers of certain electrical goods are not building them to last – certainly if their appalling record among my family is typical.

Perhaps you’ve heard of planned obsolescence? This is where products are designed to be of less use (or no use) after a certain time. Usually it’s done by ceasing to make parts or compatible software for the product.

But this strategy of make-to-break is a particularly extreme and cynical form of planned obsolescence.

By contrast, my mum and dad received a cooker as a wedding present in 1974.

It took about two hours to reach 180°C and you’d have to lever open the scolding hot door with a knife because the handle had fallen off. But in 1996 it still worked. It was only a DIY accident that forced the cooker into retirement. My dad was hammering in a nail, and the hammer head flew off the handle into the cooker fascia shattering it. It still worked after the hammer attack, by the way. It’s replacement hasn’t been as trustworthy.

Since the 1990s my immediate family has been through several dishwashers, washing machines and tumble driers.

And it isn’t just white goods which seems to be made from the kind of materials normally found in Christmas cracker toys.

My late dad destroyed approximately five sets of headphones within about 10 years. When I say ‘destroyed’ what I mean is he used them for their intended purpose. The headphones, which were plugged into the TV, rarely ventured further than dad’s armchair. But despite this extremely light usage the headbands would always manage to snap, or one of the headphones would suddenly take a vow of silence. When I returned a high-end pair to the shop and complained of built-in obsolescence the shop assistant told me it was ‘usually abuse’ that caused them to break.

Apparently using headphones to watch TV and placing them on the arm of a chair when they’re not in use constitutes ‘abuse’.

From computer printers which stop taking the ink to dishwashers which stop taking the powder, the Himelfields have been, since the early 1990s, blighted by shoddily built electrical rubbish. Our pockets have been emptied time after time by manufacturers whose products cost less to replace than they do to repair.

The only enjoyment I got from one particularly odious piece of office equipment was taking it to the tip and dropping it from a great height into a skip where it smashed into several pieces. It was a moment of sweet revenge even if the real winner was the printer, having extracted several litres of joy from my person over its short and spiteful life.

It’s worth noting, however, that whatever you buy is still covered by a statutory guarantee, regardless of whether the manufacturer’s warranty has expired. You are, by law, entitled to have your money’s worth from anything you buy – and whoever sold you the product is obliged to offer partial compensation if you haven’t.