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For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

blog.tomayac.com

11–20 of 178 posts

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#12
post #6

Not criticising the article or the decision to buy a new washing machine (20 years is a long time), but just noting that the old machine was likely fixable. If spare parts are even still available, that is. Whether it's deemed worth fixing is another matter. This must be the case for so many discarded appliances these days, especially underengineered ones with common issues. Also, not using the QR code protocols prop…

Do you know where I can read more about QR code protocols? I was under the impression that a simple URL (with http/s) is common, and I've never had it not on any device.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#13
This stuff really annoys me but the problem is really well solved elsewhere.

When you buy an Apple product it has a number on it Axxxx and a serial number somewhere. That's all you need to identify your product to anyone. That includes service manuals and spare parts.

And as far as warranty registration goes, they register it at the point of sale/activation as the warranty starting. Job done. No humans / lookups / anything required. It just happens.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#14
Inside the heart of every customer support department there are two wolves. One is "do whatever we can to prevent them from phoning us: use every resource, every trick and every stalling measure to try to make sure they don't call". The other is "meh, just direct them to the call centre".

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#15

If I had to guess, they don't want to leverage the web because calling the phone number to get the 10 year warranty is a dark pattern they hope most people give up on. And they know the current version of the Electrolux washer is hot garbage that won't make it 10 years, compared to the previous one that made it 20 years. Now this is not great long term for the brand, but Yannick Fierling, the new CEO, just started in…

They may also try to use the warranty registration as an opportunity to sell insurance products, such as "protection" for other white goods. I had this with a new boiler (American English: "furnace"). They took the registration but wanted to sell me a further warranty on related heating system components not directly part of the boiler. Interestingly, it was a different company that specialises in such products. I think they probably have a business arrangement with the manufacturer to handle the warranty registration admin and possibly the warranty servicing too, presumably at a discounted price compared to the raw cost of merely servicing the warranty itself, in return for the opportunity for upselling their own products.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#16

I fail to see a useful usage for AI in this case. Couldn't you just print the product number as a barcode/qrcode and let a "dumb code scanner" read it, instead of having to download a multifunctional LLM?

The author works in Google developer relations, and while devrel aren't quite marketing they will use the latest and greatest Google hammer.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#17
post #13

This stuff really annoys me but the problem is really well solved elsewhere. When you buy an Apple product it has a number on it Axxxx and a serial number somewhere. That's all you need to identify your product to anyone. That includes service manuals and spare parts. And as far as warranty registration goes, they register it at the point of sale/activation as the warranty starting. Job done. No humans / lookups / an…

Product/warranty registration is often a way to collect more data about you as a first party.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#18
post #11

I tried hitting the "identify" button but got the error "LanguageModel is not supported." This is on latest Safari, iPadOS.

PromptAPI seems to be the usual fire-and-motion Chrome move.

It doesn't work for me in Chrome either. Oh irony.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#19

I fail to see a useful usage for AI in this case. Couldn't you just print the product number as a barcode/qrcode and let a "dumb code scanner" read it, instead of having to download a multifunctional LLM?

They could, that very qr code is on there and contains the product number and serial number inside a URL query that links to qr.electrolux.com.

The page loads but doesn't offer to register the product, which is probably for the best.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#20
Why not just print a $.0001 sticker and stick it the machine listing all of the info needed to fix the machine... instead of building a $86million datacenter and burning through $100,000 of clean electricity every month that could have been used to power homes, but was instead used doing this?
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