No more Bosch for me..
No more Bosch for me..
Nice write-up by Jeff.
Things are getting out of hand. It's time for a change. Only buy equipment with local access.
I'm with him, what happens when my internet drops out (which it does on the reg)?
I can't run the dishwasher cuz AWS us-east-1 is down
They didn't learn the lesson of Sim City.
I don't think we should let vendors get away with this stuff.
Yes returning it is a huge hassle. But if you're not returning it you still bought their product, supported them financially and that product line. Even if they see you not activating cloud features in numbers, others do and they can make very favorable calculations.
The single most effective way to not let them get away with it is returning it. As an unacceptable product.
Yup, all his top video comments said this shortly after video release. Personally, I always check for this stuff pre-purchase, but if I ran into it now, I would return unless I specifically bought it to self-host and block internet, which you can do with Bosch, but I wouldn't, because for a dishwasher that's dumb.
LG pulls some of this BS too. When I tried it a few years ago, the LG app required always-on precise location permission to function at all. The smart features on my washer and refrigerator also require them to always be connected to the Internet but those features were more limited that what Jeff describes. I was willing to allow the appliances Internet access from an isolated subnet, but there is no way I'm going to allow LG access to all of my phone's location data just so I can run their crappy, barely functional app.
In Mexico Bosch is even more customer hostile. My Bosch water heater had to be replaced because Bosch discontinued the repair parts needed to fix it. It's only 3 years old.
I have a Samsung fridge and the app is the same - it demands always-on precise location or it refuses to function.
Absolutely. Fucking. Not.
Bosch has a lot of goodwill. Interesting how they decide to spend it. Also Consumer Reports needs to start considering Internet connectivity, because the risks from Internet connected dishwashers are real and scary.
I moved to a new place and it came with one of these.
Besides the inconvenience of essentially paywalling features, it fucking GUZZLES rinse aid and send you notifications about needing more, and it doesn’t rinse it all the way off meaning my dishes need rinsing before drinking out of a glass for example.
Fuck Bosch and fuck Consumer Reports. What an absolute ingot of microplastic pollution someone rammed into my kitchen
Forget rinse aid. Get one of those ramekins you get with some desserts, put in some vinegar and put the dish among the plates at the bottom. Sparklyyyyy.
(I had a Bosch too, now have a Miele)
On the 500 series, it needs a rinse aid refill about once a month using it once a day to once every other day.
I hate how they don't mention connectivity anymore when buying shit. None of the reviews mention this either that the app has tracking and that you have to pay for stuff. If they do mention it, it's barely a brief mention of it, and nothing more. I got my van in 2023 and it needs an app but luckily Toyota gives me an option to turn all that shit off so now I have a dumb van supposedly. And I fucking hate vehicles with Wi-Fi. Why the fuck does my vehicle need Wi-Fi? My phone has Wi-Fi.
That's horrible.
One more time I'm reminded of Unlicensed Bread (C. Doctorow).
BTW the title made me think of car parts. Bosch sell all sorts of stuff.
Oh! The IOT toaster, perhaps a really good analogy! That was a good read and fitting for this situation.
When was it published? 2019/2020 ?? Well, took just 5 years for the corporate greed to get on par.
What made the story so captivating for me is how dystopian yet extremely close to present day reality it is.
Of course that's what he does: takes already existing situations and weaves them into something eye-opening.
it's really prescient - one of the stories is people terrorizing healthcare execs for their dead loved ones.
I'd have taken it back, done and dusted. Make them feel the pain.
That dishwasher runs perfectly fine without connecting to an app. Been using it that way for half a year.
People are so obsessed for nonsense features. Just set normal mode, auto air, start. Done. You know when it finished because the red light shining on the floor turns off, it beeps at you, and auto air opens the door so it can dry faster.
Guess what? You just had a machine wash dishes for you and you didn't even hear it running the whole time.
Check the trash filter occasionally, which is a physical part you can pull out from the bottom and wash in the sink. Clean the gaskets occasionally to keep a clean seal like any dishwasher.
I will probably open it up at some point and see if I can damage/remove the radio so it can't ever connect to anything.
It's a dishwasher, it doesn't have to massage your plates' backs. Nothingburger rant.
Rinse, delayed start and eco mode are unneeded features? Delay start is one of my most used features, many power companies charge less if you use electricity in the middle of the night. Rinse is incredibly useful for if water got stuck on/in some dishes, and eco mode saves power and water. How is a high-end dishwasher not having things that many people use daily "a nothingburger?"
I'm driving a 2007 Citroën. I hope I can find a car without OTA updates when it's time to upgrade.
I really don't want a bait-and-switch where I start to get ads on the dashboard at every intersection.
Just wait until AI enters production. We'll have "AI powered" dishwashers
LG has been selling "AI powered" washing machines for years. They are terminally indecisive and probably don't use AI.
I actually really like my Bosch dishwasher + home connect. You can hook it up with home assistant, and use that to run the dishwasher when solar is working.
Local access would be nice, but homeconnect isnt that bad, and has been improving.
As the video explains, if it was optional to add features, that's fine. But you can't access basic features like "rinse only" without connecting your dishwasher to their cloud service.
It's offensive. I got a Bosch last year because my other Bosch is good. I saw the cloud requirements and got enraged too. I should have sent it back. But I had the higher end version that has the time screen and put only the more obscure features behind their cloud revenue extraction.
Fuck Bosch.
The line between "optional add", and "base features" will differ per user, so personally, mine can do everything I need it to on the controls, and the cloud stuff is value add.
My only complaint with Bosch is that my washing machine from the same vintage doesn't have any remote start features, so i can't run it via homeassistant.
The point here is:
- not all functionality is available as-is. You need to install a cloud connected app.
- a cloud connection is not per se one direction. It is more than possible, the people operating this cloud (for Bosch) have the means (read: api) to connect back into your network via the hardware.
You might take a good look at this work.
As long as the firmware of the dishwasher isn't audited by third parties (or even better: open source), who knows what it is able to do in your network?
And all of this is not necessary, before the cloud, dishwashers worked fine too.
I will be looking for cheap dishwashers when we need a new one, that don't even know what the internet is.
Or making a shit appliances network, all the WiFi crap can live on that
Dishwashers worked fine as electromechanical devices too. This is all fucking nuts. Mine blew up recently (electromechanical and probably 30 at this point) and I'll be replacing it with one a family member no longer needs. When it gives up the ghost and if I've cleared some garage space by then, I'm minded to take it apart and see how hard it is to reverse engineer the damn thing.
Get the dump stove that's in the corner of many appliance stores. It looks like it fell out of the fifties but the simple design is much better.
yup. I hate the 'soft touch' capacitive sensors on everything now... utter garbage. give me solid chunks of plastic and metal opening and closing solenoids for that satisfying clunk that tells you the machine is going.
i wonder what price point you could hit with 1950's technology, but without the thick steel.. then i wonder about loss of efficiency and safety. im sure someone know of a brand threading this needle in like brazil or somewhere already.
Things like these are getting ridiculous and the most unreasonable of it all is that most people do not consider this as predatory and invasive behaviour from manufacturers.
I like my appliances dumb. Don't try to sell me a smart TV, a smart fridge or a smart anything. It does not need to connect to the internet. It needs to do one specific task and one only. I don't need my fridge to order groceries.
exactly, OP shouldn't have bought it to begin with.
It's a common occurence. People should know by now.I couldn't agree more with your stand about the need for devices to be smart.
It is all about data-mining and advertising.
Maybe this is just me (or wishful thinking), but I do notice more people being cautious about stuff that needs a cloud connection.
People around me create dummy accounts to register Android enabled televisions, prefer stuff by eufy over ring etc.
Maybe we -as a bunch of uncontrollable nerds- should educate people more or at least share stuff like the wiki by Louis.
People need to know, they are the product..
I can't say the same thing, sadly.
People around me get easily fascinated by convinience over security and privacy. Biometric phone unlocking, work-only-through-app accessories, smart tvs, connected refrigerators, kitchen robots and expresso machines, autonomous vaccuum cleaners or web enabled water heaters and ACs... convenience rules absolute.
I enjoy going to stores and have sales people throw their pitch at me. The look on their face is priceless as all the convenience functions don't ring any appeal to me; nothing against them, they are doing their job, but still.
I hope we can force change and push back on the ever growing invasive tactics of companies and markets.