What’s the worst piece of technology you’ve ever owned?

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If you count cars: A Skoda Octavia PHEV.
I love Skoda. I love the Octavia. It was my fourth Octavia and I already ordered two more for my staff. PHEV would have been ideal for our use case.
Well,things didn't go as planned.
The whole car was bugged with software and hardware problems from day one - controll units randomly crapping out, when my dealer wanted to replace them he often had to get 5 units because four would be DOA and the one that worked kicked the bucket before I left his premises. Highlights:
A steering wheel coming loose (only slightly,but still)
The main display that shows your speed,etc. randomly shutting down. (Especially nice as I live close to Switzerland with their exorbitant speeding tickets)
Randomly playing a screeching sound at full volume (especially nice at 3am or when on a highway)
Randomly shutting of AC, some motor controls , etc.
It took 12 months for VW to take that steaming pile back, and only we sued them (Shortly before the hearing).
Second place goes to LG which sold me a OLED TV for 2k that randomly showed faulty pixel lines exactly 3 years and 3 days after I bought it (so it's out of the extended warranty programs as well). And when asked for a quote for the repair they had the audacity to ask for almost the new price for the TV back then, aka 150% of the current market value - without even looking at it first. Good way to make sure that I never buy LG anymore.
- VW really dropped the ball on software, no wonder they're buying now into other car manufacturers like Rivian, in hopes to use someone else's more developed software.
  
  Yeah. Both hardware and software, sadly. Their QA is going down the drain.
  Happy Hyundai customer now.
  
  Is there actually any car manufacturer that has decent hardware and software? I have never driven a really "modern" car but from all that I've seen so far the interfaces are typically horrible to interact with and laggy to the point where I prefer my car as dumb as possible
  
  Really can't complain about Hyundai/Kia and Volvo (Android) so far.
  
  If you buy new and sell before 100k miles, Hyundai/Kia are great. Otherwise, you better be okay with oil consumption and potential engine work, the new engines are kinda prone to failure.
  
  Tbh, with a BEV I am not that concerned with oil consumption and engine work.
  
  VW really dropped the ball on software
  Why bother with software, then? Late-80s and 90s Type III Jettas can be absolutely bulletproof if you find them in not-bagged and well cared for condition.
- The main display that shows your speed,etc. randomly shutting down
  I know two people who had this exact issue with their new-gen Golf. First cause was the French language would crash the whole dash if you cycled the dashboard views (to my knowledge they never fixed the issue and the workaround is to set the car to English). Second cause was a malformed JPEG from a radio station would cause the dash to bootloop until you drove far enough from said radio station, which would allow the car to work long enough to disable that feature (IIRC).
  So yeah, QA is down the fucking drain with VW on their latest gen. They had a new CEO, and now a new one again I think? But the reputational damage has been done. Too bad, I really liked my '18 Polo.

358 comments