long serial numbers on household appliances ?

[dcb]

I've just bought a fridge freezer built in Turkey. Very good, except I notice it has a *22* digit serial number.

Enough for everyone on the planet to have 1,250 billion appliances each ;->
What were they thinking of ?

Ok a few digits for model number, territory, manufactured date and a check digit,
but can can anyone beat that level of pointlessness ?

[CubanPete]

There's almost certainly serial numbers throughout the build. All the electronic boards, motors, sensors, etc.

There's also probably huge numbers of combinations that don't exist.

[Griffith4ever]

dcb said:

but can can anyone beat that level of pointlessness ?

This thread? :-)

[mattyprice4004]

It could be like a VIN, where different chunks of the number actually represent different things - so not quite that many combinations.
Also remember manufacturers share suppliers, so I imagine the brands all made under one roof share the same format / number combinations.

Take Arcelik (stop that giggling at the back!) who make 12 fairly common brands - https://www.arcelikglobal.com/en/brands/
They'll likely use the same coding across their products, but with some of the numbers indicating the brand, another few could be a date code - leaving the serial number itself a lot smaller than 22 digits.

[808 Estate]

I had an authorisation code from Southern Water after paying the bill that was 28 charcters long.

[dcb]

808 Estate said:

I had an authorisation code from Southern Water after paying the bill that was 28 charcters long.

Crikey. You are winning so far.

Just digits or multi-case letters and digits ?

[andygo]

808 Estate said:

I had an authorisation code from Southern Water after paying the bill that was 28 charcters long.

Southern Water haven't got much water to play about with at the moment, so to occupy themselves they generate stupidly long numbers to keep themselves looking busy.