This enshittification cycle runs every day in the world and I don't know how we can stop it.
This must be the case for so many discarded appliances these days, especially underengineered ones with common issues.
Also, not using the QR code protocols properly is a pet peeve of mine. I recently scanned one that was just a URL in plaintext (no web link protocol). If I was on an iPhone or using a simpler QR scanner, it would not work at all.
The old machines are absolute workhorse beasts and they can work indefinitely as brand new with some maintenance here and there.
However my expectation of people doing this are basically zero. So this is an anomalous post. By the time you write a blog post complaining about how a machine has a required IoT thing, you could have fixed a handful of issues short of soldering in new relays or triacs on the control board.
Anyway, it said it lost communication between two boards. I opened it up, checked the wiring harness, and found zero visible problems. I replaced both boards. Same error code. There are 3-4 other computers in that model, so I guess the next step was to replace all of them.
The first two were already a substantial fraction of the price of a new washer, so the entire setup went to the dump (or, hopefully a parts reuse company, but I doubt it). Most technicians refuse to touch Samsung appliances because they are impossible to debug.
Anyway, we replaced the pair with a brand that’s supposedly repairable. Fingers crossed.
I wonder if they ever made front loaders that were affordable, energy efficient and reliable/repairable. There’s no reason these things shouldn’t last more than 20-30 years on average. Maybe there’s a market for such hypothetical old machines.
This is actually a difficult problem I feel. Misaligned incentives aside. How do you keep a company running if it is so good it captures the whole market in 15 years, but it takes 30 years before it's products need replacing? (This is a simplistic presentation of the issue, but I feel it's understandable enough to start to formulate ideas on how? You could think of lightbulbs that last a century if you like {would lack of competition inhibit progress??}.)
I would love to buy Samsung's washer division, say, and work to make the machines invincible and completely repairable. Then use the profits to bootstrap other such projects. Eventually make the company cooperative, etc, maintain the longevity and work on reducing running costs, improving cleaning, etc.
- support model. You pay 1/10th the manufacturing cost per year. They immediately give you a new one if it fails. Profits are dictated by the difference between the real mean time to failure and ten years. “10” is set by law.
- the price of the machine includes the cost of supplying the above service contract for 30 years, by law. The price of the machine therefore drops as the reliability increases.
- all machines must be 100% recycled by the manufacturer, who also pays for environmental externalities. They pay a prorated multiple equal to the number of years under 10 that a machine is in service before replacement.
- warranties must be 10 years and renewable, and must cover parts, labor, and installation, including things like modifications to cabinets and and legally required code improvements
Not everyone would buy a new fancy machine the same year, so in steady state, they should be able to sell machines, just fewer per capita than today.
I'm pretty sure that's the fault of terrible tooling being available to most people. No devices have built-in easy-to-find QR generating abilities, so to create a QR code most people end up searching the Web which is overrun with trashy URL-shortening-and-analytics services, freemium or paid, that wrap your link in their crap and make the URL expire or die with their fly-by-night website. Hackers know that it's possible and free to just make QR codes of the right type, and are able to find proper software to do it, but most people are throwing darts with the assistance of Google so they end up with crap usually.
I tried to figure out if this stuff was available in other browsers but unfortunately came up short.
Googler, opinions my own.
Article: "Listen to this overcomplicated warranty registration process with some jabs at overcomplicated IoT bullshit. They print the custom unit serial number on the sticker anyways, why not just also customize the QR code to also embed the serial number?
"Anyways, here's an overcomplicated way that uses AI ML to parse that custom unit serial number from a picture.
"Oops, it doesn't work for complicated browser jerry-rigging reasons."
Couldn't you just print the product number as a barcode/qrcode and let a "dumb code scanner" read it, instead of having to download a multifunctional LLM?
When the only tool you know is the hammer you're going to hit inappropriate things with it.
The page loads but doesn't offer to register the product, which is probably for the best.
When you buy an Apple product it has a number on it Axxxx and a serial number somewhere. That's all you need to identify your product to anyone. That includes service manuals and spare parts.
And as far as warranty registration goes, they register it at the point of sale/activation as the warranty starting. Job done. No humans / lookups / anything required. It just happens.
As for finding service manuals and user manuals - maybe what they need isn't the web but FTP. I mean, if it were still supported by browsers. I remember when some vendors just used to have folders with PDFs you could browse.
The problem with "the web" is that this is no longer a website, but a content management system, or worse, a "customer engagement platform" that is hostile to creating a folder full of PDFs that have stable links. They probably still have that FTP site in a webified form somewhere for service partners, just not for Joe Public.
I worked at a large insurance company and this was definitely the approach. There was a website, but you had to call to realistically get almost anything done.
One product manager's big innovation was to completely remove passwords. Every time you wanted to log in, you had reset the password and be sent a link via email. Of course the didn't announce this, so you would be probably spend 20 minutes frantically looking for your password that didn't exist.
(I once bought a grass rake with 2 or 3 dozen metal tines, and it arrived with a huge sticker across all the tines. Which when I attempted to peel off, left a scattered layers of paper hard glued to all the tines. Not happy.
Same with a rolling hot dog cooker. Glued “temporary” sales sticker covering half the transparent hinged top. Not happy.)
My usual flow chart: Nothing, water, alcohol, goo gone.
I’ve never ended up with a marred surface.
Hell I've got a 55 year old piece of electronic equipment here with the serial number sticker still on it.
It still worked last time I plugged it in. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to find someone to calibrate it when the 40’s roll around again. :-)
But even without that calculus, you can put a bunch of stickers on, all over the machine. They cost nothing and can be applied automatically. Better yet, punch it into metal part of the washing machine.
There is a whole class of people who are smart enough to fix simple things, but not smart enough to recognize their limited ability. They will strip out all the screws on the machine and then claim warranty after replacing random electronic components on the control board. In reality the problem will be a dirty contact that is a 5 minute fix.
The point is to "technically", and therefore legally, offer those things and minimize the cost of offering those things.
All of these things are working precisely as intended. The company is not optimizing for customer experience or product quality, they're optimizing for profit.
Customer support representatives, with very few exceptions, are just going to tell you whatever they think will get you off the phone.
In I.T., this is generally accomplished by blaming whatever adjacent equipment/services they can plausibly pin the issue on.
I had to buy one a couple of years ago. Snarkily I asked the floor salesman if I could get the washer “without all the smart features”. He said “let me check”, which had me puzzled. He came back to inform me that they still had last year’s model which was before the “smart” features were rolled out. He said they can sell it on the same warranty, & since it was older I would get a significant discount. I cherish that machine for its dumbness.
…No such luck for TVs.
Of course I'd prefer a plain dumb TV but there weren't any cheaply and conveniently available at the time. Second best thing is a de-Googled TV. Now if only I could figure out a way to disable the Google buttons on the remote so that kids don't accidentally get into the app store (ads!) or activate the voice control.
Convince me it's a bad idea?
That's also why the author went on a queue: the call-center is not for the washing-machine company, it's an insurance-selling center that works with multiple companies.
Contrast with apps that force you to update and redeploy every few years.
datadrivenangel•1h ago