Home Depot claims you won’t have to deal with subcontractors, but they do use subcontractors. When something goes wrong, and consumers complain, Home Depot avoids or ignores their repeated phone calls and letters.
repairs
Ask The Consumerists: Can Hyundai Drive Over My Warranty?
By 10.20.06
Dennis wonders, (we’re paraphrasing here):
Deja Vu: Geek Squad Gives Elderly Couple’s Hard Drive to Flea Market
By 10.9.06
For some reason, we never really pieced it together when we posted about Best Buy’s gremlin-like pilfering of a reader hard drive chock full of personal information, but we’ve previously reported on Best Buy’s practice of selling these reclaimed hard drives.
Sony Reverses Decision To Deny Repairs After Reader Threatens Writing The Consumerist
By 10.6.06
A reader claims he got Sony to change its mind about not honoring his warranty. All he had to do was namedrop The Consumerist.com.
Microsoft: We’ll Fix Your Damn Xbox
By 9.22.06
It freezes. It crashes. It gives you the red light of death. Well, you’re not alone. Microsoft has admitted it. Early Xbox 360s are defective and will be repaired free of charge...providing that you purchased yours before January 1, 2006.
iPod Mechanic Emerges From Repairs
By 8.31.06
In response to our request for a statement on what iPod Mechanic did to rectify its customer service issues, owner Nick Woodhams says:
iPod Mechanic Bristles Over Post
By 8.31.06
Two months after we posted a negative user review, the owner of iPodMechanic.com sent us this note:
Geek Squad Gouges
By 8.29.06
The number one rule of responsible consumerism: know more about what you’re buying than the guy selling it to you. But it’s a counterintuitive one. After all, you buy based on someone’s pitch to you, that you need what he’s selling. You get something repaired with the understanding that you don’t have the knowledge to fix a problem yourself. But it’s the number one rule of consumerism for a reason: you just can’t trust the guy taking your money to be honest.
Don’t Chuck That Busted iPod
By 8.16.06
People on their third or fourth iPod well know how prone the device is to breaking. If you neglected to opt for a replacement plan, instead of smashing the pod with a brick, give Matt Bremmer a call. Treehugger pointed us to his ipod refurb services and we think it’s fantastic stuff.
Best Buy Repair STILL Melts Meat, Not Hearts
By 7.7.06
Last month, Nikki wrote in complaining about her refrigerator, and Best Buy’s, failings. After finally getting her frigo fixed, it went out again (we think you have a bum frigo, Nikki) and all her food, especially 4th of July meats, was spoiled. Subsequently, she squeezed the Best Buy and Frigidarie people until ekking out food gift cards as reimbursement, though we’ve seen bloodier stones. Nikki writes:
Sleepy Comcast Denouement
By 6.27.06
Once again, the guy who took a video of the Comcast technician asleep on his couch, is dissatisfied. Oh, his internet works fine and everything. No outages, no malfunctioning routers, no snakes crawling out of his cable box.
Sleepy Comcast Tech Fired
By 6.23.06
Plenty of rock a bye babies and sweet dreams await Brian’s Comcast tech, now that he has no job to get up for. The Comcast rep who fell asleep on a customer’s couch while lamely attempting to fix his router has been fired, Comcast said. Brian grabbed a camera and uploaded the proceedings to YouTube, where it got 200,00+ hits and ended up on Countdown on MSNBC. That was Tuesday.
iPodMechanic.com Takes Broken iPod, Runs
By 6.22.06
With the meaty heel of a palm resounding against the center of your forehead with a leathery slap, this might strike many of you as particularly astounding advice, but we think it needs to be said: please, please do not mail your $400 iPod to some random Internet stranger proclaiming himself to be an iPod Mechanic. Especially if there isn’t even a phone number on the website.
Comcast Tech Falls Asleep on Customer’s Couch
By 6.21.06
Brian had a Comcast tech come to his house to replace a router, one of two broken ones they provided. The operation shouldn’t have taken but a moment. Instead the tech was on hold with Comcast for 90 minutes. And he fell asleep. Brian made a video documenting the affair.
