We have been using softeners for 44 years, never had one fail, but the longest we stayed in the same house was 27 years, and that softener worked fine as long as we were there. We put a used one in our cabin, it's over 35 years old, but it only gets used 6 months out of the year. A couple of years ago it stopped working, so I took the valve apart and cleaned and greased the spools, it's worked fine ever since. And that well has a lot of iron, along with being hard, and the softener makes the water very nice. I do buy the more expensive salt, with rust remover, but we don't use over 3 bags a year.