Same thing happened with brass instruments and old tools.

That burnt bottom ring is the worst, my old Zojirushi did the same thing and I kept telling myself it was "the good one" so the rice had to be fine. I was scraping and soaking that pot almost every night and tossing the crunchy layer without even adding up what it cost me. When it finally died I grabbed a $12 one at the grocery store just to get through the week, and it cooked better on the first try than the fancy one ever did. I get the receipt thing too, I think part of me wanted proof that the cheap one was somehow the mistake and not three years of bad rice. It stings because you trust the price tag to mean something and then it just doesn't. Sorry your fancy one strung you along that long.

Ugh, I saw a news story about this last year. Some DMV offices in other states started putting up signs right at the door that list all the forms you need for each service. Turns out the number of people getting turned away dropped a lot once they did that. Seems like such a simple fix and yet here we are, still playing guess the paperwork.