[Mistletoe]

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 January 2025 after stepping down from being CEO of Haier Europe in March 2024, a job he kept for 9 years. The previous CEO, Jonas Samuelson, started on February 1, 2016, so why would Yannick care? Yannick will probably be out with a nice golden parachute and have a shorter life than the washer. Yannick is 54 years old and I guarantee the only thing he thinks about every day is retiring soon with as much money as possible.

This enshittification cycle runs every day in the world and I don't know how we can stop it.

[rlpb]

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.

[taeric]

My guess would be more that they don't have a support org in house. Were likely running very lean on a manufacturing pipeline and are adding a lot of other services on through partnerships.

[toyg]

But they don't have in-house capabilities precisely because of the above-mentioned enshittification cycle: CEO-monkey does not care about long-term. CEO-monkey lowers costs today. CEO-monkey moves on to new job soon.

[taeric]

Maybe? It is as likely that the company focused on manufacturing for so long that they decided to keep their focus there.

[toyg]

Electrolux has existed for almost 100 years, and on its way it acquired a lot of other companies. The chances that none of those companies ever developed any sort of in-house assistance, over that time, are close to zero.

[taeric]

That is precisely a path that would lead to you not having a coherent support network, though? My assertion is that they did mergers to consolidate manufacturing. Any support orgs that they acquired along the way were not the aim of the acquisition. Quite the contrary, they complicated things in ways that are not as easy to work with as getting new manufacturing expertise.