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submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

Fridge failures: LG says angry owners can't sue, company points to cardboard box::NBC Bay Area’s Consumer team filed a report focused on faulty fridges, and then, viewers responded resoundingly about their own refrigerator problems....

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[-] aelwero@lemmy.world 169 points 1 year ago

LG effectively has said that their owners manual and a cardboard box have authority over the courts. Clearly, as the courts have nullified it, they fucking dont.

All I see is a damned good reason to ban arbitration agreements outright. If you want to arbitrate a tort, you should be required to motion the court for it.

[-] ArchAengelus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 53 points 1 year ago

I agree. I think arbitration should be limited to one-off cases, not class action lawsuits because you sell a faulty product.

[-] punkideas@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

It shouldn't be allowed for contracts of adhesion (take or leave it contracts for consumers). Mandatory binding arbitration should be limited to business to business negotiated contracts.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Arbitration should be allowed any time, never mandatory. Among other things, this would help balance the overwhelming power of the corp since they would want to encourage arbitration treating you fairly there

[-] Railison@aussie.zone 157 points 1 year ago

It boggles my mind that consumer protections in the US are so weak.

[-] bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 84 points 1 year ago

When you realize a significant number of our laws here are written by industry lawyers, it makes a lot more sense.

[-] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 61 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Absolutely. Mandatory arbitration is a miscarriage of justice so obvious that it is truly shocking to me that both the courts and the legislature allow it to continue.

[-] aramova@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Live here for a few months and you'll see a whole lot of things that'll boggle your mind.

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 43 points 1 year ago

Lol.

Any judge worth his salt will ask LG for proof the consumer agreed to arbitration.

[-] db2@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago

LG will say that by opening the box they agreed to the terms, Microsoft started that one.

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's not proof.

What if the delivery company opened it? What if the consumer didn't see it?

Prove the consumer read it. LG has no signed document, nothing, proving the consumer read and agreed to this.

A software license is different - when installing you click on a button saying "I agree".

[-] Shirasho@lemmings.world 36 points 1 year ago

There has been legal precedent that terms of use are not legally binding since they don't expect customers to read it before clicking the I Agree button. They have made the agreements so long and put them in everything that they concluded there is no possible way anybody would ever read all of it for everything.

[-] bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago

Not only that, but your average consumer isn't very well versed in legalese to actually understand everything in them.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

A software license is different - when installing you click on a button saying “I agree”.

I did no such thing. Maybe my cat walked on the keyboard. Maybe I skipped over it with a debugger. Or maybe I did click on the button, but it did not constitute a legal meeting of the minds because I already owned the goddamn thing and it was nothing more than a mechanical step necessary to use my property!

Clickwrap agreements for software are no different at all. They're just as much bullshit as this nonsense LG is trying to pull, and always have been.

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Hahahaha, I like your cat!

Yea, I didn't apply the same logic. Again, the complainant would have to prove you clicked agree.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Last night the TV I’ve had for three years stopped working until I agreed to their terms of service, including their personal data sales. There was no opportunity to disagree, nor anything I could do with the TV until I did. You could prove I read it, but it’s ridiculous to claim I agreed to it before buying it or that I had any leverage for fair treatment.

I suppose I shouldn’t have had my TV on the network but it has an Apple TV app and my Firestick doesn’t

[-] cousinofjah@twit.social 2 points 1 year ago
[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Vizio. It wouldn’t even let me use the built in airplay or Chromecast until I agreed to sell my soul.

The only thing that worked was HDMI inputs

[-] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Stories like this are why I will NEVER buy a TV with built-in smart features. Its only job is to take signals and produce pictures and sound. These days, I don't even need a TV tuner. If I have to pay for a giant monitor instead, that's fine, I'll just wait until I can afford it, or buy smaller.

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Uggh, I hate that crap on my TV.

I reset my TV recently... Except apparently I didn't because it came right back with all my settings. Dammit, I said RESET. wtf.

(Yea, apparently Samsung and others use a feature that once it gets network, it connects to Samsung servers and pulls the config back down if it's on the same net. Wtf??)

[-] cousinofjah@twit.social 1 points 1 year ago

And can it be factory reset?

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I plan to reset and keep it off the internet by the end of this month.

The problem was I couldn’t treat it as a dumb TV because of the missing app on my Firestick. It doesn’t help that Firestick has been getting shittier and shittier. And I’m not watching ad infested Prime TV after spending so much money on it

Im disgusted at the whole mess and ready to give Apple more of my money on the hope that Apple TV is not as ad infested as either the Firestick or the TV. Rumor has it there may be a new Apple TV coming out: crap, now I feel like I have to wait and see what my choices are

[-] cousinofjah@twit.social 2 points 1 year ago

@AA5B yeah the enshittification of streaming TV is well underway. Pretty soon the best option will be to buy a computer monitor

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

It’s long been tough to do. I thought that when I bought my tv a few years back, but the smart tv was cheaper and had much better specs than any similar monitor, and there were many more choices

[-] fitjazz@lemmyf.uk 10 points 1 year ago

I never saw the box for my LG fridge. If you have a large appliance delivered the delivery people usually open it and leave all the packaging in the truck and just bring the appliance itself in.

[-] GlitterInfection@lemmy.world 37 points 1 year ago

I hate LG more than any other company after dealing with their worst in class customer service when I bought a defective TV a couple years back.

It took 6 months of actively calling them and then creating a Twitter account and tweeting at their PR team and emailing the CEO to get my money back on the piece of junk.

Multiple hour+ long calls. Each time where I had to tell them everything from the previous calls that was supposed to be entered in their system, and was, but the call person literally didn't look at the screen in front of them. An hour long wait on hold to the claims department where someone picked up and then audibly hung up.

It was infuriating. But I had a $2,000 piece of junk in my house so I wasn't going to let it drop.

[-] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago

Shit like this is why I use my credit card for big purchases like that. Your shit doesn't work and you fuck around making it right? I'll get a charge back and you can deal with the credit card company because I ain't got time for that shit.

Haven't had to pull that card very many times, but its very nice when the business fucking me around suddenly really wants to make it right so they don't have to deal with the impacts of a charge back.

[-] bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

It's amazing what happens when you mention chargeback to all these shitty companies and how quickly they change their tune.

[-] Patches@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Charge backs cost them money in fees but more importantly - enough charge backs will increase their fees/penalties/required balances and in excess - remove their ability to take payments entirely.

[-] yesman@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Everyone thinks the US is a litigious society, but it's the consequence of our political order. The lack of regulations are "compensated" by the right to tort. In many instances, there is no authority to enforce rights, only the ability to sue. The Americans with Disabilities Act works this way. (and there are many calling to remove that option, making the entire law theoretical)

Of course, the idea is that lawsuits will discourage people from getting redress because of the high-bar to enter a case into the legal system. But that wasn't enough, so the capitalists are trying to take that away too.

There are few things more obscene under capitalism than a privatized court system.

[-] derf82@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Arbitration clauses need to be banned, at least for regular consumer purchases.

But thanks to lobbying, that will never happen.

But at least I know never to ever buy anything from LG and Kenmore.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 6 points 1 year ago

I'm starting to run out of mid-range appliance brands. Had problems with Bosch and Samsung. Now take off LG and Kenmore. There's a few others, but for the most part, it's either cheap appliances left or the higher end stuff like Sub-Zero/Wolf.

[-] tja@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

You have to fight the root cause. Your politicians want this or they would implement rules against it

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just like consumer protections, they are bad at looking ahead: things need to get disastrous before politicians are moved to act.

I kept expecting shrink wrapped terms of service would do it, since it’s so clearly unfair to insist you agreed to something you can’t see until you’ve already “agreed” by opening the package. And I don’t see how most of these are even legally supportable - that’s great that you want an arbitration clause but how can you claim I agree with a contract unilaterally imposed by a conglomerate a billion times my wealth and no opportunity to read or bargain? How can you claim it’s legal to insist I sign away basic rights (yesterday I watched a video where a company was insisting there is no guarantee of fitness for purpose or that it functions on delivery).

By virtue of our legal system relying on lawsuits for any sort of redress from fraud, I’d call the right to sue a fundamental right in our economy, that should not be able to be signed away

[-] ThiccSemperTyrannis@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

Had one of their fridges a while back with their proprietary compressor design. It kicked the bucket at about 2-3 years old. All appliance repair shops that I contacted in my area, including an LG-certified one, declined repairs. Most of them even immediately asked if it was an LG when I asked if they did compressor replacements to head me off at the pass. It was a good product while it worked, but that's only half the equation.

[-] Zozano@lemy.lol 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In 2023, my new LG dryer shit the bed after three months.

They sent a technician twice to replace the lint filter, and sent a third lint filter via mail when the error started again.

Apparently the lint filter sensor is dependant on a tiny magnet which can come loose if the plastic housing is so much as tapped wrong.

How many people do you think open up their lint filters over a bin and tap the lint out?

Fucking moronic design.

We never found out if it was a sensor fault, we were lucky enough to get a store credit and traded that fucker in. LG never again.

[-] books@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

Had an lg fridge shit the bed after a year or so.

Samsung did the same after a year.

Fuck them both.

[-] ahriboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

Chinese OEMs will steal the share

[-] festus@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

I know that Chinese brands have a bad reputation, but there are some really good products they make too. I have an ice cream maker (compressor based) that's both cheaper than any of the traditional brands but also has a really fantastic build quality. It wouldn't surprise me if over time some of the Chinese brands start to target western consumers more, and if they actually deliver quality products while the traditional brands aren't then they might gain significant market share.

[-] CptOblivius@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

I have one of these fridges that failed. It was delivered and installed initially...I never saw the box. How does that factor in? Plus don't buy LG, it's a shit company.

[-] ____@infosec.pub 2 points 1 year ago

A million years ago I worked for ATT wireless, and had to shill their (circa 2006) crap phones.

Not a brand I’m a fan of even all these years later.

[-] kevincox@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

A[n LG] spokesman said, "our focus on customer satisfaction is paramount.”

Ok, that got a solid laugh out of me.

[-] x4740N@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

My parents have a LG fridge and so far it's still running strong

Is it the newer recent fridges with defects or models from a specific country ?

[-] Landless2029@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

Mine is about 7 years old. 2 years ago the compressor died on it. It was a new custom LG design. The part normally lasts 10 years.

I was out of warranty but LG still fixed it apparently due to a class action lawsuit forcing them to cover the compressor specifically due to all the failures.

Take what you will from that.

this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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