I feel a very similar sentiment in Australia. Everything is poorly made and full of anti-features. It breaks prematurely, and software updates make it worse by disabling features, adding things I don't want, or holding functionality I already paid for to ransom as a subscription.

Warranties aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Every warranty claim I've made in the past 5 years (a fair few) has been a Kafka-esque nightmare of bouncing back and forth between reps who don't understand the issue, callbacks at inopportune times because of failure to understand timezones, and waiting for things to ship back and forth between repair centres across the country or overseas. Customer support is carefully crafted to be set up to fail, while still maintaining the plausible deniability of Hanlon's Razor. You may eventually get your widget repaired or replaced, but it'll cost you as much in time, effort, and frustration as it would have to just buy a new one. This is of course deliberate, but you'll never prove it. Companies exploit people's politeness and aversion to conflict by telling polite customers that there's nothing that can be done. You get nothing unless you dig your heels in and get combative with the rep who is just doing their job. And the consumer protection agencies are toothless tigers.

So now I don't buy new products unless there's no other option. Previously, buying new meant a product you could trust, and an assurance that they'd take care of you if something went wrong. Since that contract is broken, I see no point buying new. Especially not when last year's model often has more features, fewer anti-features, and better repairability than the current one. I'm not the only one responding like this: The snake cannot eat its own tail forever, and these companies will eventually discover that if they keep making their products shittier and shittier then people will just stop buying them. Especially once new competitors who need to build a reputation start to eat the established brands' lunches.

Australia's consumer guarantees cannot be replaced or excluded by warranties and offer huge protections for consumers who know how to exercise their rights. Companies try to apply friction to the process and I suspect that frustrates a lot of people to the point of giving up.

I don't mind paying a little more in exchange for good customer support. My internet provider has gone from having support in Arabic countries, that speak French good enough but don't really care about you, to support in France and it makes all the difference in the world.

I was astonished when I asked a question and the guy did actual research, called back and told me things that a simple Google search on my end wouldn't have find.

Usually it's very different, they either don't know/don't care or say things that are obviously false.

I believe it's also why Amazon took so much in popularity. If I got an issue with Amazon product, I know it well be dealt with swiftly, as long as it's sent by Amazon and not by a third party.

The key in Australia is to buy from a physical retailer. They often cannot give you the runaround as under consumer law, they're responsible for the resolution.