[Nasrudith]

One added difference is that the water heater. The intent may be deceptive but they provided what was asked for and what they claimed. It is almost malicious compliance. Dickish gaming and probably worth suing over but not sure if it is criminal fraud per se.

It is like the joke about Soviet factory metrics for some item like nails. They set the quota on numbers and got useless ones better described as needles. They wised up a bit and set the quota by weight next month and got one useless massive nail instead. It isn't even too far from the truth given actual management involved things like a train line circularly shipping coal between depots instead of retrieving from source or distributing to end users to boost their "metric tons transported kilometers" metric.

VW meanwhile had a covert illegal configuration while claiming mileage and lack of maintenancd urea. The claims are outright false - that it provides all three benefits instead of two of three.

[viraptor]

That kind of mentality was the joke in many eastern eu movies in the 80s. Pretty much the standard comedy in Polish movies from that time.