I owned a Nexus 6P since near launch. It was great when it worked but it went through 4 RMAs. After that the next time I had issues I asked for a refund from Google Play and they gave it to me. Paid for (some of) my new Galaxy S8+
Lucky that you live in a country with strong consumer protection culture and had to deal directly with google.
Well that's one way to guarantee the customer upgrades to a new phone. I wonder if it'll be possible to brick a device via OS update when Oreo's hardware abstraction layer goes into place.