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0 pointsbaq1y ago0 comments

That's the point. If customers don't complain strongly enough, the manufacturer is incentivized to develop products prone to malfunction. If the cost of malfunction is raised, the incentives change.

If they got invited to a hundred cases at the same time, they'd send a lawyer and perhaps even would tweak the design to include some extra $1 parts which actually work.

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mytailorisrich1y ago

It's a trade-off. People don't want appliances that break down after a few years but they also want cheap appliances...

In this case it seems to boil down to: "In the end he replaced the light bulb (which hadn't worked for years, we hadn't bothered replacing it) and the message had gone away anyway."... i.e. the guy could have replaced the light bulb when it broke and perhaps nothing would have happened in the first place. So this article comes across as complaining too much, frankly.

baqOP1y ago

and the next day the error came back and ultimately something else had to be replaced.

a failed bulb could result in a 'please change the bulb before the rest of me breaks' on the display, too.

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