Troubleshooter.com - Consumer Advocate Tom Martino

Here’s an experience we can all relate to: you have a plumbing problem and are just too terrified to call somebody over to fix it, as the last time they got it all wrong and left the house in a huge mess. Or you spend a discrete fortune in some appliance, and it gets damaged in the process of being delivered, only to discover that the post sale service is the second most useless thing in the world, the first one being your broken antenna or non-functional espresso machine. We’re probably as far away from vanishing these problems of earth as we are from finding the fountain of eternal youth, but there are some steps we can do to ease the horror, and one of them is joining a site of consumer advocacy like this one, where you can research your contractors and the companies you buy from to take advantage of roads that have been paved by the bad experiences of others. Tom Martino is a very popular radio show host in Colorado, who discusses customer-related issues on his show (which you can listen online or download in podcast format), and puts together his savvy on this site by presenting a variety of news and forums where you can join other people and learn from them. The core of the site, really, is the Referral List, a directory of recommended providers of services and products in a variety of fields; these companies only make it to the site after a careful screening process, so you can be sure it’s a good tip you’re getting. Also interesting about Troubleshooter.com is what you’ll find under that ‘Sleaze Brigade’ tag, namely a list of particularly untrustworthy business with exceptionally bad customer service or products, and also a national list of parents who haven’t paid for their child maintenance fees.