Despite a pending lawsuit claiming it stole provider lists from rival service marketplace Angie’s List, Amazon announced today that it would expand its upstart Amazon Home Services to 15 new cities, offering consumers a place to find local service providers for repairs, installations and other jobs around the house. [More]
repairs
Takata Nixes Idea Of Airbag Victim Compensation Fund, For Now
By 7.10.15
Last month, in his first public address of the massive airbag defect linked to eight deaths and more than a hundred injuries, Takata CEO Shigehisa Takada announced the Japanese auto parts maker would consider the possibility of creating a victim compensation fund. Now, the company says such a fund is a no-go. [More]
FAA Once Again Fines Southwest Airlines For Maintenance Related Violations
By 4.1.15
For the second time in the last 12 months, Southwest Airlines is facing another fine from the Federal Aviation Administration because of safety issues; this time totaling $328,550. [More]
![Amazon Home Services' coverage area. [Click to enlarge]](../../../../consumermediallc.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/screen-shot-2015-03-30-at-10-57-27-am.png?w=300&h=225&crop=1)
Amazon Officially Launches Program Connecting Customers To Local Service Providers
By 3.30.15
Amazon’s quest to touch every aspect of consumers’ lives continued today as the company rebranded and officially launched a program connecting customers with local service providers for repairs, installations or other jobs around the house. [More]
Frontier Airlines Strands Passengers At The Gate For 18 Hours
By 3.25.15
Passengers awaiting a flight from St. Louis to Denver over the weekend could have driven to their destination in less time than it took for their Frontier Airlines flight to actually board. [More]
NHTSA Opens Investigation Into Nissan Airbag Sensor Recalls
By 3.23.15
Recalls are more or less a pain for everyone involved. As the owner, you’re inconvenienced because your car should be safe and when a recall occurs you have to take it to a dealer for repairs. Once those repairs – which can take months to occur depending on the availability of parts – are finished, drivers have a reasonable expectation that their car is fixed. But that apparently wasn’t the case for nearly a million Nissan and Infiniti vehicles now under investigation by federal regulators. [More]
Honda Starting New Campaign Urging Consumers To Repair Recalled Vehicles
By 3.12.15
After recalling 6.2 million vehicles for a Takata airbag defect that can spew pieces of shrapnel at passengers and drivers, Honda now plans to launch a multi-million dollar campaign urging consumers to take those recalled vehicles to a dealer for much-needed repairs. [More]
Mechanics Say American Airlines Pressured Them To Commit Maintenance Fraud
By 1.26.15
Six months after the Federal Aviation Administration levied a fine against Southwest Airlines for safety violations related to airplane repairs, the agency announced it was investigating similar issues with American Airlines Group after mechanics filed a series of whistleblower complaints and a lawsuit alleging managers for the airline breached FAA rules in order to aid its merger and get planes on the tarmac. [More]
U.S. Sues Southwest For Not Paying $12M Fine Levied Over Improper Repairs
By 11.4.14
Here’s the thing about being fined by the U.S. government –– they won’t stop until you pay them. At least that appears to be the case with Southwest Airlines, which is being sued by the Justice Department for failure to pay a $12 million civil penalty levied by the Federal Aviation Administration earlier this year. [More]
Now From Panasonic: The Disposable Plasma TV Set
By 7.11.13
Kevin spent a lot of money on a plasma TV from Panasonic just a few short years ago. Like many consumers, he assumed that the company would support a product that cost four figures for more than a year. Sure, someone who can afford a home 3D system can probably afford to hire a repair technician to come out with the capacitor needed to make the set actually turn on, but should they have to? Kevin doesn’t think so. [More]
Nintendo Scratches My 3DS And Loses Data During Repair, Shrugs
By 1.15.13
Initially, Shawn thought that Nintendo had done a really great job repairing his 3DS. The control pad was working nicely. Only something wasn’t right: the pouch was missing where the SD memory card should have been. There was also a scratch on the device that hadn’t been there before. Cards themselves are cheap: it’s the data that’s irreplaceable, and that’s already gone. So what’s Shawn so upset about? Mostly that no one at Nintendo will admit that anything went wrong. [More]
Maytag Repair Bumbling Leaves Us Without Fridge For Five Weeks
By 1.8.13
Kristine’s family has managed for a month without a refrigerator. Sure, if you’re a single person who subsists on takeout, that’s not so hard. Try being a family with small children and eating out of an ice chest for more than a month…starting just after Thanksgiving [More]
DirecTV’s Technicians Are Great, Their Scheduling System Is Not So Great
By 11.19.12
Karen thinks that the technicians who come to service her DirecTV system are competent, professional, and just great. She has no complaints. Her problem is with the system that schedules them and gets them to her house. Well, the system is supposed to get them to her house. In practice, it just tells her that they’re supposed to come to her house, and she sort of crosses her fingers and hopes that they show up. [More]
The Samsung Repairman, Like The Great Pumpkin, Never Came On Halloween
By 11.1.12
On Halloween night, the Samsung repairman rises out of the potato field and delivers working televisions to all of the couch potatoes of the world. He chooses only the most sincere couch potatoes; those who wait patiently for his arrival and keep the faith that he truly will come. Reader Joe, the most sincere couch potato of all, waited all night for the Samsung repairman to arrive and fix his television’s faulty capacitor. But the Samsung repairman never came. [More]
Yes, Televisions Are Pretty Much Disposable Now
By 2.24.12
It seems like an ancient, lost world now, but there was once a time when people bought electronics or appliances, and when they broke down, they hired someone to repair the item and kept using it. This may not sound weird and obsolete to you or to me or to reader Donna. Toshiba, on the other hand, certainly thinks that it’s not worthwhile to repair the television that she paid $1,800 for in 2007. She doesn’t want anything for free, and is willing to pay for parts and repair. Only the needed part isn’t available from Toshiba, or from anyone. [More]
Michael Dell Replaces High-End Laptop Previously "Fixed" With Black Marker, Crumbs
By 11.4.11
Jeremy’s 3D Alienware gaming laptop from Dell didn’t work right from its first bootup. It had blue screens of death and the video card needed swapping out. When he sent it in for repair, he got it back with crumbs in the keys, and a crack on the side someone tried to hide with black marker. When we posted his story on Consumerist, we gave him CEO Michael Dell’s email address to go tell his story. Now Jeremy writes that after he emailed Mr. Dell, the CEO intervened and made sure Jeremy got a brand-new laptop, along with a free memory and CPU upgrade. [More]
How To Beat HDTV "Customer Service"
By 10.27.11
If your HDTV set is malfunctioning you follow the advice most HDTV manufacturers put on their website, you can actually end up screwing yourself. Surprise, surprise. Here’s what you should do instead. [More]
Reader Saves $400 Using YouTube To Fix Her Washer
By 10.4.11
The fable goes that the nice white-haired appliance guys are a dying breed and they’re way better than their outsourced, van-driving, retail store counterparts. But sometimes the local guy is just as bad as the guy in the store wearing the official colored shirt. When her Kenmore model 417 front-loading washer went bust-o, Jane discovered she was able to save $400 in repair costs by learning how to fix it herself from Youtube videos. [More]
