About 2 years ago, our long running fire alarm in the hallway at the top of the stairs started going off for no good reason. I cleaned it off, reset it, and a couple of days later it would go off again. I sighed, went down to Lowe's, and discovered that they didn't carry any of the battery operated fire alarms anymore. They had wired fire alarms and fire alarms with a sealed battery in them that was supposedly good for 10 years, and that was it. So I picked up one of the 10-year alarms and installed it.
A few months later THAT alarm started going off at random times, so I grumbled and got a replacement. Finally, we had some peace and that alarm behaved as it should: only going off when I actually tested it with smoke.
So, that was how things stayed until about 3 months ago, when that alarm started going on the fritz. I reset it, cleaned and dusted around it, and it stopped the random behavior.
Until a couple of days ago.
This time around, I decided that I was done with these First Alert fire alarms misbehaving so I went to Home Depot to see if they had other brands.
Sure enough, they had the Kidde brand instead of First Alert*, and whaddya know, there were AA battery operated fire alarms available in addition to the 10 year sealed models. And they were a LOT cheaper, so I picked one up and just installed it about 1/2 hour ago.
I don't know if enshittification has hit something so basic --yet so critical-- as fire alarms, but if they start asking for subscriptions for these things I think I know the answer.
*Back when we first moved into our house Home Depot had First Alert, then they switched to Firex, and in 2009 Kidde bought Firex out and the brand name changed to Kidde. Go figure. Lowes wasn't in our area at the time, so I have no idea what they carried back then.
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