technicians

Sears’ Pricey House-call

Sears’ Pricey House-call

Dan and Marguerite found out the hard way that Sears uses a “minimum charge” to extort repair fees from their customers.

Happy Day of Labor!

Happy Day of Labor!

Today is a bank holiday for the Gawker Media Network but that doesn’t mean that the fickle wheel of commerce stops keep spinning round. Here’s some updates on consumer’s stories we reported on last week.

UPDATE: Time Warner Pays Inexplicable House Call

UPDATE: Time Warner Pays Inexplicable House Call

Dan Edelman gives us an exciting update on the mysterious, TWC tech that visited his house two days ago, without notice and for no apparent reason.

TWC Tells Customer To Shove ‘A Pack Of Matches’ Under Broken Router

TWC Tells Customer To Shove ‘A Pack Of Matches’ Under Broken Router

Short version: Mark got high-speed wireless with Time Warner Cable. They gave him a dirty, fidgety router that if you touch the power supply, it resets. When he got a tech to come back, the tech told him to shove a pack of matches and a bottle cap under the router to keep it from moving.

Time Warner Pays Inexplicable House Call, Consumerist Helps

Time Warner Pays Inexplicable House Call, Consumerist Helps

Dan Edelman, a loyal Consumerist reader, was shocked to hear a Time Warner Cable tech visited his apartment yesterday. Odder than the difficulty in getting one to show up in the first place was that the tech wasn’t asked for. No service call was put in. His cheetos slathered roommate let the guy in without an explanation. The tech puttered around for 20 minutes and left.

UPDATE: Comcast Tech Fails Installing Cable to Customer’s Heart

UPDATE: Comcast Tech Fails Installing Cable to Customer’s Heart

Eager to prevent another snakesonablog style sleepy tech debacle, a Comcast rep contacted us about the unwelcomlingly amorous cable installer. She says:

Sleepy Comcast Denouement

Sleepy Comcast Denouement

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

Sleepy Comcast Tech Fired

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.

Comcast Tech Falls Asleep on Customer’s Couch

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.