The appliance that elicits anger and frustrated at it’s mere sight. The treacherous device that never worked right.
Samsung Fridge (don’t judge me, it came with the house).
I knew it was a “when” and not and “if” it would start having issues, and it finally showed its colors last month.
Front panel buttons either refused to work at all or would cycle through every option continuously and randomly.
Want water? Sorry, only crushed ice today. Want ice? Sorry, just water today. Oh, I actually did want water (starts dispensing). PSYCH! Now I’m going to shoot ice at you and splash water everywhere.
Was about to just toss the thing and get something dumber and more reliable, but decided to roll the dice with a replacement control board from ebay. Thankfully, that worked and I’m only out $80.
Are you sure someone wasn’t pranking you? Cuz that’s hilarious.
Lol, if only. It’s not a “smart” fridge, but it does have a lot of, frankly, unnecessary electronics for what it does. Electronic components that, as any internet search for Samsung appliances will confirm, can and do go bad and are a pain to repair.
I used to really want an icemaker for convenience, because invariably I’d run into a mostly-empty ice cubes tray when I wanted ice cubes. Or I’d fill the ice cubes tray before it was empty, but then I’d partially-melt the ice cubes there and make them unusable until they refroze.
I didn’t care that much about chilled water, because I can throw ice in it. But the ice cubes were a pain.
I even got a dedicated icemaker at one point, when I wanted softer ice to run a small shaved ice machine.
But…finally I figured out what I needed to do differently. Instead of freezing water in ice cube trays and taking the ice cubes directly out of the tray, just go stick a container in your freezer. Whenever you get ice cubes, if the ice cube tray is full and there’s space, just dump it into the container and refill it. Now you have a big container of ice cubes that’s always full. Just replicates what freezer-integrated ice cube makers do. Haven’t had any issues since. Maybe this is obvious to some people, but it wasn’t to me.
You can get little containers that will fit into the door shelves if you want to stick them there:
Oh, I absolutely love my ice maker. Didn’t think I needed one until I replaced the fridge in my old house with one that had one. Now I can’t live without one (except in the dead of winter when I clean it and just turn it off for ~2 months)
Dogs love chewing on ice cubes, especially in the summer. Between keeping bowls of ice cubes out for the dogs and me making margaritas and slushy cocktails all summer, I’d never be able to get by with ice trays.
Dogs love chewing on ice cubes, especially in the summer.
Just as a warning — I don’t know if it’s an issue for dogs, or as much of an issue for them — I once chipped a tooth by chewing on ice. I liked chewing on ice too. Would sometimes put a little black pepper on it. The dentist told me to knock it off, not good for teeth.
That being said, at least the icemaker ice I had was softer, much easier to crush, probably would have been much less of an issue, so if you’re giving 'em ice from one, maybe that avoids any potential issue.
Dogs chew on bones which are much harder, and other than potential for bone fragments/splinters, they’re fine (such was my logic, anyway lol). But for good measure, I asked their vet a good while back, and was given the green light.
The fridge. If you close it too hard or too soft, it ends up not closed, but a fingers’ width open.
Anything made by Samsung.
Appliance-wise at least.
A refurbished 2019 tablet I got from them that is supported by LineageOS has been giving me trouble on the flashing side of things, so I’ll second this.
I mean I like microwaves but it pisses me off it wants to know the date and this goes for any item that wants internet access. Time I get. Its sorta convenient to have it show it when its not doing anything else but why the F do you think you need to know the date. Im not setting you to go cook something later. Really it comes down to it refusing to work after power loss until you put in time and date. My microwave always thinks the days start on november eleventh two thousand eleven.
Daylight savings
11/11/11 is the Skyrim epoch
“Smart” TVs.
I just want my TV to show pretty pictures with sound thrown at it by the digital receiver. If I want, I can attach a computer for streaming. How is that such a big ask?!
The cost of a TV is subsidized by advertisements and deals with different apps for prominent placement.
I mean, yeah. Somehow I’m aware of that. But also, we haven’t bought a TV for almost a decade now, and my biggest mistake is letting it update to the latest version. If there’s something these adverts have done is drive me into consuming even less than ever before. I actively don’t buy stuff now.
Disconnect it from the network and factory reset it.
That stopped mine showing me adverts. Won’t stand adverts from a device I’ve paid to bring into my home.
Only had to do that because I checked to see if the “download subtitles” feature would actually work.
Spoiler
It didn’t.
TV’s are actually cheaper not because the tech necessarily being more available (even though it should) but instead it’s because companies are harvesting your data on smart tv’s and selling it making more profit than they would make with just selling you a TV. On a separate but somewhat related note, has anyone else noticed smart phones becoming more expensive as they become more protective of the users privacy?
I couldn’t find a dumb TV, so I got a smart one didn’t give it wifi access. Every time I turn it on, it shows me a clock that’s wrong and I think “Not so smart now, are you?”. It’s a perfectly functional dumb TV.
The dumb ones are typically “display” monitors, like what fast-food restaurants use for their menus. Likely more expensive, but built better too
Not built better, just under-driven on brightness so they can run 16-24 hours a day. Contrast suffers, frame rates are limited, you’re paying for support you will never use, and enterprise software features you will also never use.
Yep. Best way to get a TV that will never sell your data or show ads is to literally blacklist its MAC address at the router level, and then assign the “smart” functionality to a device environment you control, like a Shield Pro with a custom launcher or an Intel NUC media PC or NAS or something similar.
The Samsung man will still sneak in your house at night and check your watch history. There is no escape.
I’m so happy my old 1080p dumb TV is still chugging along. Acts as a third screen to my computer, has a minor spot with pressure damage making the colors darker there. Ultimately still far superior to all the smart junk and cost me only 270€ when it was new in 2014
Gas stove. Literally playing with fire every time I need to light the front left burner. Usually I have to let enough gas come out to have the neighboring burner’s igniter light it up. I keep my distance just in case.
Just get a long refillable butane lighter? Or one of those electric arc lighters? (Some of those have a long extension)
I have to “prime” one of my burners. I’ll turn it on the power boil setting for a second or two to let gas out and then back to the ignite setting to spark it
…and once it’s ‘fixed’, it starts doing it again within weeks. Always the same one…
I have a camp stove that I got for really cheap because someone returned it because the igniter didn’t work. The spark gap was too high, so all I had to do was poke the wire over a little, and it works perfectly now.
For me, the “power burner” is so weak it can’t bring a pot of water to boil or properly saute anything. Everything online says that it must be because the gas outlets are dirty, but they are spotless.
And it slowly poisons you!
My plumbing pisses me off, does that count
Sure! But I would love to hear more about the plumbing
I bought a cheap espresso maker off Amazon. It’s so cheap that nothing can be adjusted, not the pressure, the drip, the heat, nothing. Every single shot I pull from that thing tastes like burnt ass. I even invested in some nice expensive espresso beans, and no luck. The cheap machine is in fact a piece of crap. I should have known better.
How much was it?
I wouldn’t call it an appliance, but I almost always use cast iron for beef.
Air Fryers.
It’s a tiny convection oven.
Technology Connections has shown me that air fryers are just a glorified toaster oven. They don’t do really anything better, so just stick to a toaster oven.
Yeah, but it has its use. I make tofu nuggets with mine almost exclusively, can’t really do it with a normal convection oven in my experience.
Yes, and it’s glorious.
I don’t have space for a full sized oven, and I am also convinced the little guy turns out better results than the proper convection oven my mom used to have.
Convection toaster ovens are the best though. They let you “air fry” in a far better form factor, and you can also toast and bake in them.
I keep trying to use my convection toaster oven as an air fryer, because goddamnit an air fryer is just a small convection oven and so is this!
It never turns out well and then I say, see? Air fryers are stupid.
I suspect the 10x larger fan on an actual air fryer makes a difference, but I’m not willing to give up the counter space to try.
I encountered a gas stove that wouldn’t work during a power outage. It had a valve that shut off the gas if electricity wasn’t present. Way to intentionally sabotage one of your biggest advantages.
haha… yeah. We have a tankless gas water heater that requires an electrical connection. We live in hurricane country so going without power for days/weeks at a time is something we’ve lived through on several occasions. Having a hot shower during those times is the one thing my wife really appreciates. Fortunately, it’s just a 110 connection and we can plug it into a generator or battery back up…
I’m guessing a tankless water heater involves some electronic controls. It probably could be designed to use low-voltage DC with a battery backup, but that would be fancy.
A gas stove should never need electricity for a burner to work if the user supplies another source of ignition like a match. This is surely a “safety feature” to prevent people from leaving the gas on when the electronic ignition is unavailable, but nobody with half a brain and a sense of smell would do that.
I’m guessing a tankless water heater involves some electronic controls. It probably could be designed to use low-voltage DC with a battery backup, but that would be fancy.
It definitely has to if it doesn’t have a pilot light, else its electrical ignition won’t work, but if it has that, there are various ways you could make it work, including just using the heat from the pilot light to drive a thermoelectric generator to get a small amount of juice.
Printer, obviously
Microwaves are allowed one proud “ding” or three “beep” before they are on my hate-list.
I have a similar short fuse for microwaves but for the +30 seconds button. If the microwave doesn’t have this it should get tossed in the nearest dumpster. The +30 seconds button is the pinnacle of human achievement.
My microwave thinks it’s a regular oven and keeps beeping if you don’t open the door. It doesn’t seem to understand it has stopped on its own and can shut the fuck up now.
Microwaves are the penultimate Norman Object (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things). They could have a standardized UI (cue up obligatory XKCD “Standards”). Instead, every manufacturer does it differently and usually in obscure, unintuitive fashion, often differently from the same manufacturer. Do you enter the time or power setting first? Oh wait, pressing a number launches it straight into running. That part that looks like a door handle is not how one actually opens the door; press the door button first. So. Much. Hate.
Yeah, I can see what you mean. Generally, they’re similar-enough, at least in basic functionality, that I don’t have an issue using someone else’s microwave though. The advanced functionality can vary a lot.
What does kind of annoy me is that they’re basically the one device — VCRs used to be the stereotypical holders of this position — that has a clock, but also is a device price-sensitive enough to both:
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Lack an internal battery to keep the clock powered when power is lost.
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Not have a network link, cell link — not that I really want those — or radio time signal receiver to automatically set the clock.
The result is that every microwave I see seems to wind up showing an unset clock.
I get irrationally upset over microwaves that don’t let you use the timer and cook functions simultaneously
looks puzzled
Hmm. What are you doing with that? Like, you want to be cooking for a certain amount of time, then after the cooking completes, have a timer trigger to start a second cooking period?
More like, I need to heat this frozen thing for 4 minutes. Also while that’s going on, I want to set a timer for my pasta which is cooking on the stove for 6 minutes to remind me to check it.
Oh, so this is like, a timer for an alarm rather than to control the microwave’s operation. Gotcha.
Exactly. I have a batch of cupcakes in the oven so the timer is set for 12 mins, but I also want to melt some chocolate for the ganache while that’s going.
Luckily, my microwave supports doing both, but I’ve cooked at other people’s houses and their microwaves are essentially bricked while the timer counts down which is so crazy to me it’s like they’ve made this appliance worse on purpose.
Didn’t they somehow send time info down the power line in some places? Or maybe I’m just misremembering this?
I can’t think of anything that quite fits that off-the-cuff, at least not in the US. A quick search doesn’t turn anything up. I can think of some related things:
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The AC signal is used as a clock in a number of devices. This isn’t a “clock” in the common-language sense of the word, but in the electrical engineering sense – it provides a reliable frequency over the long run. Some (common-language) clocks and timers have used this to keep them running at a steady pace, but it’s not really a time signal, wouldn’t help restore an on-device clock setting after power loss.
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X10 is a low-speed networking protocol that runs over local power circuits for home automation. I’m sure that at some point, someone has made some product that permits setting a clock with it. The limitation is that your signal doesn’t span across household circuits, which I suspect one would want for a “whole house time signal”.
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There have been powerline-based ISPs, where the power company shovels data over the line using high-frequency modulation. In theory, you could use one of various Internet time protocols over that. I think that that was kind of a dead end, technology-wise — there’s just not that much data that you can push over an unshielded, non-twisted-pair, metal power line.
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I would not be surprised if there’s some data protocol that power companies use to talk to smart meters that includes pushing a time signal out specifically for them – they do push and pull data over that – though I don’t think that that’s accessible to other devices.
That being said, could be some company out there that did that locally. Not technically impossible.
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You know, the worst part is, they intentionally make the interface shittier on the cheap ones. I’m very convinced of this.
My microwave has an un-interuptable 6 shrill beeps, that then repeat if the door is not opened in 10 seconds. There is no mute option, and it can be heard everywhere in the house. I have seriously considered just ripping the speaker out of it. It is, without a doubt, the appliance I hate most in my house.
Perfect this is the type answer I was looking for!
Open the door to your microwave and see if it has instructions for written on its body. Mine has a secondary menu where you can turn it off.
Checked there and searched online for any demo modes/ testing codes that would allow me to mute it. Evidently, a lot of folks online absolutely hate my microwave as well, because no one can mute it. That said, the community of microwave haters has provided me with instructions to rip out the speaker if I choose to silence the wailing banshee for good.
What microwave and model is it?
Frigidaire FFMV164LSA MFG in 2012
Mine is not nearly as bad as yours, but it is loud and doesn’t stop beeping when you open the door, just continues until its preprogrammed three loud beeps are over. I muted it when my kids were babies and have never looked back. I think a lot of people worry about muting their microwave because they think they won’t hear when it’s done or something. I’m here to tell you that you won’t miss it. Go forth and rip that speaker out with no regrets.
I moved from the US to Europe and I keep joking that the largest QoL upgrade has been my unbelievably dumb microwave. It has a power knob, a timer knob that is spring wound, and when it hits 0 it physically hits a bell like an older toaster.
I fucking love it. It was like 20€
Wait what do US microwaves do? Play the national anthem?
Newer ones have way too many digital buttons and a loud repeating beep when finished. Even newer ones, probably Bluetooth or something
https://homemicrowave.com/microwave-with-alexa/
Want to set up your microwave with Alexa for plenty of cool tricks, but didn’t know how to pick the best microwave that works with Alexa?
Having an Alexa compatible microwave in your kitchen, you can control the microwave and adjust the cooking setting simply via Alexa’s voice control feature.
Speaking for myself, I don’t really want Internet dependency, much less a microphone sending data to the Internet on my appliances.
Yeah, you still have to put the food into the microwave, might as well just press the button there too.
My microwave’s beeper only work in 10s increments. Meaning if I enter a cook time of 91 seconds, I get 91s at high power, 9s at low power, and a beep. If I listen for the power change, I have a 9 second window to open the door. It’s perfect; no annoying beeping, and the timer reads 0:00 so it doesn’t need to be cleared before reuse.
I want to open up my microwave and rip out whatever device makes the beep. Who has ever forgotten they have food in the microwave? I was hungry 3 minutes ago, I haven’t forgotten, and it’s not going to burn.
My parents used to have an old Amana Radarange. Built like a tank, wood paneling and chrome, warm incandescent lighting…I miss it. It didn’t have a beep or a bell or anything. Once it was done it would just…turn off.
My partner took our microwave (an obnoxious thing I bought at a charity shop for $15) apart and wrapped the dinger-thing in a thick rubber band to muffle it, then put it all back together. It sounds so much more polite now, and he didn’t have to cut any wires or otherwise fuss with the basic function.
I have to try that, thanks for the idea!
My crappy electric Philips toothbrush from the internet of shit era. If you press the single button it has slightly wrong it goes into some Bluetooth pairing mode or whatever that you can’t take it out of until it gives up 2 minutes later.
Our gas stove. Unreliable AF, and has a tendency to cook unevenly. The oven also fucking sucks. Multi-thousand dollar premium PoS. I miss my resistive electric stoves.
On the other hand, the air fryer never burns things and almost never has issues.
