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Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges

323 points · 336 comments · nonfamous

  1. 100percentjake · · focus · HN ↗
    Samsung smart appliances in general seem to occupy a similar place in the market to vehicles like the Chevy Traverse or Nissan Altima, where people with technical knowledge in that area know them to be absolute horrific maintenance and repair liabilities and yet the consumer base places them second to God.

    Obviously the review of a brand-new device or vehicle with 100 miles on it is going to have a disconnect from the realities of 60k miles of rocky ownership but I remain baffled when people buy a 7 year old used V6 Traverse, a vehicle extremely well known for catastrophic engine failure, and if I question their decision I get a "the reviews were good!". It seems like journalistic malpractice to not retroactively update reviews with a warning when critical widespread shortcomings are found later in a products life.

    1. damowangcy · · focus · HN ↗
      My guess is that the main culprit might be marketing. We underestimate how advertisement shown to us online can shape our reality.

      Last I checked Samsung had the most engagement on Facebook just behind Netflix. This means that they are spending tons of money to put their products in front of their customers via social media marketing. Go out and ask any normies for the top 3 brands for electronics, especially that of home appliances, Samsung will definitely be up there somehow, because most people think that big brand = good. How do they know it's big? Well, you see them everywhere!

      So I imagine that, "the reviews were good!" is just the surface. The truth is that they ignored all the writings on the wall. In the reality created by the constant exposure, the manufacturer is a big brand, thus they make good cars. Unless someone runs a counter advertisement to tell them about the critical problem the same amount of time or more than when they're shown the car whooshing through multiple scences sytlishly.

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