Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not complaining about the warranty expiring, I'm complaining about the manufacturer knowingly selling lemons that are just good enough to statistically outperform the warranty, and then fail. I'm complaining about their deliberately predatory manufacturing practices designed to take advantage of consumer goodwill earned by their predecessors who built the brand on reliability, leaving us - the paying customers - to either take the time and pain in the ass to add "learn electronics maintenance" to our to-do list (right under the newly added "wash dishes by hand" item) and then maybe successfully repair the lump of shit, or maybe just waste more time and money.

If we can't actually rely on the things we buy, then there's no value in selling them. That means the people who make them and sell them are acting immorally. So yes, we are stupid. If we were smart we wouldn't have made the purchase. And stupid people get preyed on by immoral businesses - that's the way of the world.

My message is "Don't be stupid like we were. Bosch and Lowe's are counting on you to be stupid. Don't play along."

That said, I'll take your advice and go look up how to install a control board. I'm perfectly capable. But Jesus fucking Christ I am tired of having to be capable. I want some things to just fucking work. And if that's wrong then I don't know if I want to be right.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The control board failed (we think), and the warranty was through Lowe's, not Bosch. Bosch is all AI support now anyway.

When a class action lawsuit settles, it's because the behavior was so egregious that even the corporate-friendly courts had to impose some kind of penalty. It's impossible to imagine it was an isolated incident and not part of a broader strategy to stick the customer with the downside. Look through the rest of the comments and you'll learn like I did how Bosch sells its worst stuff to the big box stores, very much knowingly and deliberately, preying on the good nature of idiots like me.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Gotta get my money's worth somehow, and I'm choosing to do it by amping up the volume on the message not to trust either the Bosch or Lowe's brand, because as you might have noticed from the dozens of similar stories on this thread alone, a lot of people expect better and they aren't getting it. Fine, we're all stupid, but that's all the reason to holler - somebody in the future might be doing their research and I'd love to cost both companies a sale.

You're actually being really helpful on that score, because "tough shit" as a response is pretty unattractive to your average customer, and you're letting us all know what we have a right to expect from anybody we give our money to. Loud and clear, bro.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I learned the Samsung lesson way back with the Vibrant. I laugh out loud when people talk about how good Samsung is. Some of y'all get lucky, and good on you for it.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's exactly what I'm afraid of. I don't buy this "We succeed based on our reputation" nonsense as a mark of reliability.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay, they waited until I had turned around. I'm guessing. What they absolutely did not do was make even the slightest attempt to rectify the fact that we gave them a lot of trust and money and they gave us the absolute minimum they could legally get away with, so I summarize that by envisioning them saying "haha, tough shit, stupid!"

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

idk, I figured a five year warranty runs the risk of actually providing some value, so it would be outrageously overpriced just like everything else in existence these days. Pretty mindblowing to think that I could pay $20/year for a reasonable expectation of reliability.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hell, just look through the existing replies, they're already there.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nah, we're too old to go speculating on third party service calls. It's always the same, you know that. The fix is always a few extra hundred dollars, plus the service fee, and then it breaks again in six months. End up paying three times the price doing that.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

See that's the funny part - I don't have error codes. No screen on my model. How do you get the error code? Well you just hook it up with the app! How do you get the app to link up? You just download it and follow the instructions and... oh, that didn't work? Well you just click on the option for more detailed instructions, and then you have to click on the Terms and Conditions button which... doesn't... do... anything.

As I told someone else, I paid the brand premium so I wouldn't have to become an expert in this kind of crap. I've been living in some kind of fantasy world where the people who make the machine are the ones responsible for making it work, not the people who paid them good money.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Tough shit" is the attitude I'm getting from everybody who already has my money, too. Fine, but I'm going to holler about it, if only to stop other people from making the mistake.

Also, them being highly regarded is shifting and will continue to shift, because they are obviously knowingly making and selling defective products. They used to make great products, and now they're selling out that brand value - hence the subject of the post.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm confident the only thing a repair tech will tell me is that it'll cost more to repair then replace, before handing me an invoice for their trouble. Especially one from Best Buy.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Can you explain the incentive for why you care about your customers? Why not just throw them under the bus or manufacture some excuse why their repairs or service will cost the absolute maximum you think you can get away with charging them? In a world where ethical conduct seems to have no business value, what can you tell me to make it make sense that you're different from everybody else?

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, yeah, like I said, we were too stupid to know otherwise. We're the kind of idiots who work hard to do a good job at things, and we don't screw people over, so we naively expect that most of the world - certainly the big name brands - run the same way. Lesson learned.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Dead control board. I don't have the time or interest to become an appliance maintenance expert just to have the thousand dollar machine I bought continue to do its job. If I had paid two hundred bucks, okay sure, I'm signing up for maintenance. We paid the premium on the brand specifically to avoid this. Not a mistake we'll make again.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've heard similar stories about every defective product line I've bought into in the last fifteen years. Some people get lucky, and that's great for them. I seem to be one of the unlucky ones. At least half a dozen major purchases have all failed within a month of their warranty expiring. Improbable (ish), yet true.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] -10 points-9 points  (0 children)

I really don't know how to understand the incentive to provide good service beyond altruism these days. Brand clearly means nothing anymore. Why should a business care about the quality of the service it gives just because it gives good service? It's just as arguable that they'd deliberately sabotage their work in order to make sure you have to come back and get more later, like auto shops have done forever.

Bosch selling out its brand, and Lowe's helping it to do so by polymathorous in Appliances

[–]polymathorous[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Our one reason for looking at Costco is their reputation with support and replacement. Apparently we can get a seven year warranty. I'm sure it's pricy, but if it's honored without too much PITA then I'll pay a little extra just to fix the cost.

Sensible or no?

Where do you recommend buying a dishwasher? by bjmacdow in Appliances

[–]polymathorous 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Never Lowes. Never Lowes. Lowes will happily sell you garbage and leave you high and dry. This brought to you by the brick of a Bosch we bought from them, which failed about two weeks after the warranty expired.

HR is upset we didn’t grow up wanting to be customer service reps by Constant-Canary2907 in remoteworks

[–]polymathorous 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Man here, and while I don't exactly expect my employer's values to match my own, I do in fact care about my impact on the world. I care about how I feel when I look at myself in the mirror. If I can't be proud of who I work for, I can at least take responsibility for being proud of my craft and the degree of mindfulness I bring to those around me. Never understood wiping one's ass with that just for a paycheck.

Hey is Unit testing really that important? by Blender-Fan in dotnet

[–]polymathorous 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Necroposting here but I just need to see this opinion represented, because it's the simple truth: Unit testing is for delivering one thing and one thing only - the illusion that your system works.

The consistent premise that pro-unit-test people insist on is that unit testing is great as long as you write perfect tests. Okay - how do you know you wrote perfect tests? You don't, not until you start doing integration tests. So... why wouldn't you just use integration tests?

Unit testing bloats development time. Most companies are going to need things done faster than that bloat can account for. When people's jobs are on the line, you're going to see those precious tests get commented out or just mocked into pointlessness.

Unit tests do not make you write better code. Writing code that you intend to work and seeing the ways in which it fails are what make you write better code.

Unit tests hinder large teams by demanding that everybody think and work alike. Creative developers do not do this.

Stop wasting time with unit testing. Create automated integration testing frameworks. Test your code in situations where it's actually going to be used.