If I had to guess, they don't want to leverage the web because calling the phone number to get the 10 year warranty is a dark pattern they hope most people give up on. And they know the current version of the Electrolux washer is hot garbage that won't make it 10 years, compared to the previous one that made it 20 years. Now this is not great long term for the brand, but Yannick Fierling, the new CEO, just started in January 2025 after stepping down from being CEO of Haier Europe in March 2024, a job he kept for 9 years. The previous CEO, Jonas Samuelson, started on February 1, 2016, so why would Yannick care? Yannick will probably be out with a nice golden parachute and have a shorter life than the washer. Yannick is 54 years old and I guarantee the only thing he thinks about every day is retiring soon with as much money as possible.
This enshittification cycle runs every day in the world and I don't know how we can stop it.
For such an operation like an ownership registration for a washing machine, this is totally true. But for some things (e.g., asking details about an invoice) I need to speak to someone, not to fill a form I receive an answer to in 3 days (and possibly not what I need). I say this because some companies are actually removing the option to call them in the first point, or hide it so it's very hard to find the number to call.
Not criticising the article or the decision to buy a new washing machine (20 years is a long time), but just noting that the old machine was likely fixable. If spare parts are even still available, that is. Whether it's deemed worth fixing is another matter.
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.
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?
This stuff really annoys me but the problem is really well solved elsewhere.
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.
Inside the heart of every customer support department there are two wolves. One is "do whatever we can to prevent them from phoning us: use every resource, every trick and every stalling measure to try to make sure they don't call". The other is "meh, just direct them to the call centre".
Why not just print a $.0001 sticker and stick it the machine listing all of the info needed to fix the machine... instead of building a $86million datacenter and burning through $100,000 of clean electricity every month that could have been used to power homes, but was instead used doing this?
The point isn't to make it easy to register warranty for a product.
The point isn't to make it easy to talk with customer service.
The point isn't to make it easy to communicate with the company.
The point isn't to make it easy to obtain service or replacement parts.
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.
I have a better proposal. Let's scrap the web. It's corrupted and broken, it hasn't been fun since MySpace. We serve native apps like VNC over kitty graphics protocol + mosh/ssh + ios/android/windows/macos mosh/ssh client. Even if we need to distribute a customized terminal to make it work. Get rid of the browser and the app stores at the same time.
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.
The actual reason they tell you to register for warranty via a phone number is for a salesperson to pick up, and upsell you on "enhanced warranty" or "insurance". It's proven that people feel awkward saying no to a salesperson, and agree to pay extra much more often than they would do online (they'd just tick "no" on the enhanced warranty paid product).
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.
Quite ironic for someone at Google to be complaining about a lack of long-term support for customers, when Google seems to have basically no customer support at all.
I'd say this goes for a lot of developers too. The amount of push back I see online when Chrome implements something that was previously only available in app land is weirdly high. Like do you seriously want to write separate ios app for everything?
Author chose a brand based on loyalty instead of doing research. Leverage the web indeed - Google Search would have quickly revealed Electrolux is mediocre.
Plus, the manufacturer can't run a simple website to look up serial numbers, so author prefers their AI-based solution? And then builds one himself? This post reads like satire.
Or, since they're already printing something unique when they print out the product number with the qr code, just print a qr code that goes to a website with the product number already encoded. No AI necessary.
edit: I see a number of people have already suggested this. Clearly a very obvious answer.
I hate the word "leverage" as a substitute for "use".
I remember this being absolutely endemic in the Microsoft world in the 00's but the first time I heard it was in the 1980s when the current commander-in-thief was a young upstart punk who leveraged the word "leverage" every chance he could get. For him the real use of leverage in business (e.g. "debt") rapidly turned a moderate-sized real estate empire into a hole in the ground and he recovered by becoming a television performer.
I was thinking the samething about subway. Ideally everyone would just order a sandwich online and by the time they arrive its ready to go. You scan a QR code(or enter a code) and your sandwhich pops out of hole. Having the option to make or in front of you slows down production and is awkward talking over fans and such.
32 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 45.2 ms ] threadThis 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Plus, the manufacturer can't run a simple website to look up serial numbers, so author prefers their AI-based solution? And then builds one himself? This post reads like satire.
edit: I see a number of people have already suggested this. Clearly a very obvious answer.
I remember this being absolutely endemic in the Microsoft world in the 00's but the first time I heard it was in the 1980s when the current commander-in-thief was a young upstart punk who leveraged the word "leverage" every chance he could get. For him the real use of leverage in business (e.g. "debt") rapidly turned a moderate-sized real estate empire into a hole in the ground and he recovered by becoming a television performer.
It's just a QR-code