LG to offer subscriptions for already purchased appliances and televisions, evolving into a provider for “Home as a Service”::Subscription fatigue is a thing and regulators are circling, but Korean giant reckons you’re ready to cough up after buying hardware

  • Meow.tar.gz@lemmy.goblackcat.com
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    1 year ago

    This is fucking ridiculous! Do you have to buy a subscription in order to use the appliance? If so, it seems to me that this would constitute unfair trade practice. Some shit just does not belong on the internet. Can you imagine the serious and life threatening situation that could develop, if say, somebody hacked into a system and turned gas stoves on and a fire developed? No, it’s time to draw the line at IoT!

  • doctortofu@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    Open your fridge once per day before the door locks with our SmartHome Basic tier. You can enjoy up to five door openings per day with SmartHome Premium, or choose SmartHome Ultimate for unlimited door openings, ability to adjust the temperature AND the light turning on automatically when you open the door! Act now to get a 10% discount for the first three months!

  • Meow.tar.gz@lemmy.goblackcat.com
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    1 year ago

    Mark my words we are soon going to have to subscribe to our toilets. You get one flush a day for free. Save money by subscribing to the flush-lite which gives you 2 additional flushes. If you choose not to subscribe, you will be charged 2.99 for each flush beyond the first one.

  • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    If you’re not paying for it you are the product…wait if you are paying for it you are the product.

  • sndrtj@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    Sigh. Our latest TV is an LG precisely because LG did not have ads in its OS whereas its main competitors do. Once they introduce ads, they’ll have completely lost me as a potential repeat customer.

    Guess our next TV will just be a large monitor, with no “smart” shenanigans whatsoever.

    • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I’d rather have a dedicated box and a dumb tv, the hardware rarely keeps pace than a box

    • Mkengine@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Why even use the LG OS? I always used a fire tv stick and now nvidia shield (I don’t see ads as far as I know), which is much better supported as an Android OS instead if an LG OS.

    • Meow.tar.gz@lemmy.goblackcat.com
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      1 year ago

      Well, point of fact, if you have a mortgage, your landlord becomes the bank anyway. You only get to own it after 30 years, and that is, if you haven’t needed to take out a home equity loan or other line of credit against your home to make necessary repairs.

      • Etienne_Dahu@jlai.lu
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        1 year ago

        Well yes and no, in the sense that a landlord can evict you for reasons other than failure to pay rent (YMMV depending on your country) and in some places where housing is hard to come by, a financed house ensures that you won’t be evicted because the landlord wants to make yet another Airbnb out of your apartment.

  • dustedhands@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Their gadgets built their fame because they just worked and were built like a tank. My grandparents had their stuff (from Goldstar era) and they still keep chugging.

    None of this “as a service” bs will please the lifetime customers.

  • rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    This thing with subscriptions has become insane. You can easily spend several hundred a month getting roped into all the subscriptions companies are pushing. It’s the latest way to squeeze as much money as possible out of the consumer.

    I’ve gone into subscription boycott at this point. I had too many and said screw that. I still have Amazon Prime where I think I get my money’s worth. I shop there a lot and use their streaming so it’s worth it to me. Subscriptions for appliances? No way in hell.

    • Professorozone@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, it’s bad enough that an LG TV makes you agree to have all of your data sent to them, but now they want you to pay for the privilege as well. Screw that!

      I mean, i think all smart TVs do that now. Don’t know what I’ll do when my dumb one breaks.

    • _cerpin_taxt_@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yep. I built a fully automated piracy machine that I can stream straight to any device with no hassle. Fuck subscriptions.

    • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      It’s one of those things that was a shock at how prevalent it is on the Apple app store after so much talk of how much better the apps are compared to Android. There’s not even proper filter options to filter out apps that are subscription only. It was ridiculous how you could buy an app then get pop ups to get the subscription plan. It’s why I wish a foss app store like F-droid becomes available once slide loading becomes possible so I can avoid the appstore as much as possible when I need a basic app. Like a calculator.

      • rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Yeah phone apps are horrible, don’t know about iOS since I’ve always used Android, but they’re mostly bad. The apps geared to a company service are usually fine, but the rest are just ad support systems.

        I actually don’t use third party phone apps that much, but the times I have it’s like an assault. You get a tenth of the screen for the actual function of the app with the rest of the screen gyrating ads. It’s especially a problem for me because I’m old and can’t see the screen that well. I don’t know how people put up with it. I can’t.

        • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Good thing about at least paid apps on play store is that they usually don’t have subscriptions, and there are tags warning if it Contains Ads before you even install the app.

          I don’t think Apple appstore even has ad warnings. Only in-app purchase warning. So using appstore was when I found out talking video ads exist.

  • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    Home as a Service

    This has triggered a Fight AND Flight response in my brain. I want to smash everything with a mallet then run to the mountains.
    I hate “as a Service” so much!

  • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    This little tidbit is left out:

    In order to use LG’s smart appliance features you must agree to allow the company to track your precise location 100% of the time via phone app.

    I have 2 wifi enabled LG appliances, a refrigerator and a washer. A couple of the smart features are useful such as the end of cycle notification on the washer and a high temperature / door open warning on the fridge. Unfortunately those features don’t work very well and there can be very long delays between an event (such as an end of cycle) and the app notification.

    So not only is LG’s implementation poorly done and not very functional, customers are expected to give up any semblance of privacy to even use them.

    Fuck that. I disconnected my appliances from wifi and deleted the app.

    Paying a monthly charge for the extremely limited smart features on appliances is nuts, even if you didn’t have to allow LG to constantly track your whereabouts. I hope the general public is smart enough to make LG’s subscription service a complete failure.

    • Saneless@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      My fridge drops its wifi setting constantly. Luckily it’s the dumbest thing ever so I don’t miss it. I only set it up because I was curious wtf a fridge would need to be connect to wifi for

      Turns out it loves watching The Bear. Gues it makes sense