If it can get a good number of views, maybe it can at least generate enough impact to cut off a few hundred units of sales. That won't make a massive impact, but it's better than nothing.

If Bosch allowed me to update the firmware of my unit to not lock out features, I'd maybe consider doing that locally over an ad-hoc connection. Wish they would've just included Zigbee, Z-Wave, or Matter instead.

If there was any influencer I'd want to know that from it's Louis Rossmann.

I mean, we all know what people say they want and what they'll do when/if they buy something may be two totally different things.

And: creating a dishwasher (or $appliance) that does its actual job good enough to be worth buying isn't something that can be hacked up in a weekend or two.

Edit to add: maybe - as Bosch pretty much has figured out how to make good diswhasheres - it'd be easier and more approachable to hack, rip out, replace the control electronics. Chances are this is going to work on more model than the one...

It's probably also true that high turnover of goods across brands due to early replacement allows for slimmer margins and higher yields, and hence lower cost of purchase. So on the other extreme, make things break more often and sell them cheaper and more often, which seems to be the status quo.

The economic problem to solve, then, is how to encourage brands to increase the durability of their goods. There are some review publications that perform stress-testing, but few keep metrics on long-term durability in a real-world setting. At a minimum, I check consumer review sites before I buy just to avoid the worst brands, and there you do see some people coming back after a few years to leave a warning to other people. And perhaps this kind of feedback has some effect.

Hopefully people start prizing 'dumb' products, and start leaving bad reviews on products that rely on an internet connection, when they're left stranded after the connection drops out.

Jeff's using his internet fame to reach far more people. I previously thought that Bosch were a good brand (only had a blender and a temperature controlled kettle from them though), but now will avoid them.

Sure it would be nice, but just like all things, not to be pessimistic or fatalistic—the HN rejection of something doesn't practically matter to most companies. I mean, why is it is that Steve Bannon is the loudest voice against technofeudalism today? Why can't we get louder and get other people listening?

On the dishwasher, they had a hard time routing the hoses properly, so the unit was sticking out something like 3 cm from under the furniture. I had to redo it myself.

On the washing machine, they routed one of the pipes with too narrow an angle, so that the water wouldn't come out. Fortunately, to the point of this post, the machine was "smart" enough to figure this out and complain about it (via a code on its display).

You were told the answer. You just don't like the answer.

At least now you (and your readers) know to ask probing questions about app requirements for new appliance purchases, though. So, kudos for relating your experience.

It's free to file an issue, and in most cases you'll get a direct response. The issue here is product fails to perform as expected, and resolution is that the manufacturer remove the unit at their cost and give you a full refund.

Arranging an alternative purchase is your issue.

And contact your local news media as well. They love stories, particularly if there's existing footage they can air. VNRs (video news releases), the original "fake news" became a hot item in the 1990s Because Reasons. And you've already got the footage and audio.

Maybe someone who is skillful enough to be able to DIY a micro-controller will also think about these issues and deal with them too? Or is that too hard to imagine?

That is not what the post to which you replied said nor implied. Instead, it reads thusly:

  Dishwasher electronics are subject to elevated heat and 
  humidity levels. A DIY solution will be extremely 
  unreliable. An amateurish job on the power electronics can 
  be a fire hazard and will void any insurance policy if they 
  find out what you did.

> Maybe someone who is skillful enough to be able to DIY a micro-controller will also think about these issues and deal with them too?

Maybe all people who attempt such things are not aware of the concerns raised?

Safety third.

That sounds draconian, do you have any examples of home insurance policies that do this? Is this common in reality?

I suspect you're going to sink a whole lot more time over the unsatisfactory lifetime of the dishwasher. It sounds like the sunk-cost fallacy.

>Plus, now I have a long-term project to hack my dishwasher.

So you'd rather waste more time, probably days or weeks, on a hack where Bosch can change implementation anytime, than return it?

That's a bit of a sunken-cost fallacy.

Here is a device that is going to be used every day for the coming 5 to 10 years, with a least 3 useful functions that cannot be accessed, and it's going to annoy you every time you use it.

Some devices simply have to work without friction, and that is worth spending home maintenance time on (and our hard-earned cash). Dishwashers, washing machines, printers..

Life is too short to waste time and energy on those, and I would argue that the energy, time, friction and annoyance you are probably going to encounter on the lifetime of that device is probably more than the 6 extra hours that would have been spent returning this unit.

Just my 2c, from the sideline, not walking in your shoes.

But especially in such a case, I still believe that the general point stands. If time and energy is tight, you cannot afford to have friction points due to the appliances you use daily, because the friction they cause is a perpetual reoccurrence that is really energy draining.

I understand that time is short and budgets can be tight, but on such things, put the effort and the money in to make sure they work the first time around, and to make sure they stay out of our way.

Life is too short to be the slave of the malfunctioning devices around us, and it's only once the re-occurring low-level friction points are gone that we generally realize how draining they can be in everyday life.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43469297

It's linking to a website with the following explanation:

  However, perhaps inline with the German attitudes towards privacy, the BSH "HomeConnect" appliances have a no-cloud mode built into their app without any hacks required to disconnect them from the internet. They do require a one-time connection to perform key exchange of a long-live authorization key, but from then on the appliances can be operated entirely disconnected from the network.