This is why none of my brand new appliances will ever be connected and allowed a firmware update.

Until it becomes a requirement.

It's often a requirement to use any smart features. My SIL has a coffee maker that requires an Internet connection to program the delayed start. It still has all the buttons of the previous generation that ostensibly allow you to have your morning coffee ready when you get up, but blinked at her demanding an SSID before you could use the interface; now it can do whatever they want it to do. Ostensibly, you can set more options and set them more easily from a phone app over the cloud, but practically I just want the coffee to be hot and ready at 6:05 AM.

Avoiding anything labeled "Smart" is a great way to massively reduce cognitive load and improve reliability around the house. I recently replaced my old cheap coffee maker that finally broke with a new cheap coffee maker. It took about 5 seconds to set the timer for the next morning and I'm confident that's the last I'll have to think about it for years to come.

Then it gets returned. "requirements" are a two-way street.

I’m talking my ovens, cooking top, washer and drier. It’s all Siemens and it works perfectly not being connected so i can only imagine downsides by connecting it.

Well, sometimes updates are not for "new" features but also for fixing core stuff.

Did I ever tell you, I "love" software engineers and their mentality of "ship first, fix bugs later"?

/s

How can I push back against PMs and suits when they want stuff like this? I think whatever I think to say or have said is just talking past them; they don't seem to care about the ability of the product, just that it appears good enough to sell.

The one and only way to convince management to be interested in quality is to convince them it will cost the company lots of money to ignore it, and to convince them the company will be able to easily attribute that cost increase to them specifically.

Appealing to common sense, or morality/ethics, or a sense of professional responsibility or pride in the work, won’t help. Saying that crap work will tank the company won’t even help, because if attribution is missing, there’s no fear of punishment and a good chance of failing upwards. IOW, just assume that most adults will act like horrible selfish children most of the time and you’ll rarely be disappointed.

We've lowered our expectations so much that common decency like that is now "above and beyond".

Indeed, I'm not sure why software gets so much leniency. If a Bose technician had broken in at night and desoldered the speakers' MCU I don't think anyone would be this generous with their expectations.

I started just sending broken products back to Amazon. My DENON smart speaker broke outside of warranty (1.5 years), so I bought a new identical speaker and returned the broken one.

It's unethical but I am just tired of paying $$$ for products that break right after warranty ends.

I did exactly this with a busted ASUS monitor. Bought a 43" 4K display for my desk and it failed after barely 2 months of use. Contacted ASUS and their support said they'd be happy to fix it under the warranty, after I sent the item to their repair facility in Texas, on my own dime. A 43" monitor. Would've costed me $180.

Fucking ridiculous. I ordered a second if for no other reason than to get back to work, and that one arrived broken! But, fortunately, the power supply was in-tact so I took them both apart, constructed a working one, kept it and returned the broken parts. If whoever's fulfillment can't even be fucked to check the ones they're shipping out to see if they're shattered, I figured it was long odds anyone would even care if I did it. And I never heard a thing about it.

And an interesting side note, I received refunds for both purchases. I have no idea why, but clearly some folks working at either Amazon or ASUS aren't too on the ball.

And the monitor I built still works too, so.

FWIW, if this was somewhat recent, Gamers Nexus recently did a segment [1] on ASUS' warranty support and practices, and they say that they are making some improvements to the way warranty support is being handled. They claim that they retroactively reviewed, or will review, warranty cases for issues such as what you outlined like shipping being charged, high RMA fees, and so forth.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0ZoCYXmF0Q

This is becoming the most valuable benefit of buying on Amazon. At least I can always return a broken product and not just eat the cost of the ever-decreasing quality of consumer electronics.