I used to be in the same boat, up until a few weeks ago when I updated the BIOS on my new work laptop. It's been a shitshow ever since: it takes around one minute to POST, the webcam isn't detected anymore, it doesn't go to sleep.
And the best part? "Because this update contains security features, it cannot be rolled back".
---
edit to name and shame: HP EliteBook 845 G8
This is a real issue though, there is the risk of failure during the procedure, less so than it once was, but then the risk that the update actually performs worse than the previous version.
The latter I don't know how we resolve.
I was usually able to this, and my other HP machines propose to do a BIOS downgrade. But in this particular case I haven't managed to do a rollback, even with a "BIOS recovery", whatever that is.
Perhaps they can get in touch with your supplier to pass a complaint about the poor update so they might be able to pass it on to their devs and hopefully fix the issue?
I would try have your org reach out to the middleman and see what they can do, suppliers, resellers and partners etc can be quite helpful in encouraging manufacturers to pay attention.
Generally speaking though, outside of printer ink, which I've always considered to be a racket, this sort of thing is perhaps less of an issue.
That's not to say people like Sonos and others haven't used firmware updates to brick otherwise perfectly functional devices in order to force consumers to "upgrade" before now.
Then for something high performance like an NVM.e SSD, you could potentially gain a lot of performance, or lose it, depending on the manufacturer's goals for stability vs speed.
After a couple of decades of updating firmware on things whenever possible (including my car which had me leave the engine running sitting in the car with the window down for 2 hours in the winter), I'm yet to have a real issue.
That said, I also have the tools and skills to dump flash chips and would suggest doing that to anyone before an update of certain devices, or, you know, just don't do it, as you suggest.