Homeowner leaves 2-star review after appliance repairman refuses to return to finish the job, they update their review to include that the repairman was only willing to refund their $240 if they took the review down

This new-ish spin on the "AITA" format has customers specifically asking "AITK?" (Am I the Karen?) It provides a forum for customers to ask whether or not they are in the wrong for how they handled an interaction. Specifically, if they "acted like a Karen" when demanding a service provider adjust something about their service.

In a since-deleted post, this homeowner shared how a repair job that didn't work led to a conflict with the appliance repairman when the repairman ghosted them after they attempted to make contact to get him to come back and finish the repair.

After hearing nothing back, they posted a negative review, which got an immediate response. The repairman made an offer: A refund in exchange for removing the review.

Except the homeowner was already entitled to a refund if the repairman wasn't going to come back, so was that really a fair exchange?

AITK for updating my review with the refund they offered to delete it?

This homeowner hired a local appliance repairman.

I paid a local guy $240 in July to fix my dishwasher (it wasn't draining). It's a 2 man operation and he came recommended in a neighborhood group. That's honestly why I went with him over the big company.

He was highly recommended on a local neighborhood group.

The homeowner paid him $240 to fix the dishwasher.

It worked for 9 days and then did exactly the same thing again. I messaged him 4 times across 2 weeks. He read all 4 of them and answered NONE.

After only 9 days, the issue returned.

So I left a 2 star review. I did not call him a scammer or anything like that, I just put the date, what I paid, what it was supposed to fix, how long it actually lasted and the fact that he'd stopped replying to me altogether.

But he got no response to any of his messages until he left a 2-star review.

He replied to the messages 40 minutes after the review went up. He offered me the full $240 back on the condition that I take the review down first.

The repairman offered a refund in exchange for removing the review.

I said I'd happily take the refund and that the review was staying up, because it's about what actually happened. He said that wasn't the deal and it had to come down first.

But when the repairman refused to give them the refund without taking the review down, they instead updated their review to include the exchange as well. 

So I edited it instead. I added a line saying he had offered me a full refund to delete the review, and I quoted his message word for word.

AITK?

This left the homeowner wondering whether or not they were in the wrong for the exchange.

Fixing people's things isn't easy. You can't always control the conditions or predict wear. And by the time you have to go and revisit a job that the customer isn't happy with, you've probably lost all of your margin on the job.

This is at least part of the reason why it's so hard to get a contractor or repairman to come back and fix something that wasn't done right, or didn't end up with the right result, the first time. Still, it's important for contractors and tradespeople to realize that simply ghosting isn't the right response. Customer testimonies and review scores online carry a lot of weight and could directly impact future earnings far beyond the cost of a lost job.

A lot of people like to think that they're good at fixing things. I, for example, am not half bad at working on my bicycles. Well, as long as they're my bicycles.

I know their specific components really well, and their manufacturing quirks. I know the full history of their repair and maintenance. I know how things come off and how much to tighten them. I know the quirks of the bikes themselves really well too.

It makes everything very predictable, and working on them is a pretty controlled situation.

It would be foolish for me, however, to think that I might be able to extend this and open a bicycle workshop and work on other people's bikes. It's a nice idea, and sometimes I daydream about moving away from sitting on a computer all day for work and moving back to something more satisfying.

Very quickly, that controlled environment spirals out of control. You don't know all the parts. You don't know how and where they can go wrong. The narrow scope of your knowledge starts to show, lacking a breadth of experience.

You're simply lacking the wider experience and knowledge to tackle a problem even if you haven't seen that specific one before. The ins and outs of everything that can go wrong, the likelihood that this noise means that, and when the owner says this, it means that.

Online reviews provide a valuable and essential way to gauge the reliability of a service. Especially in an age where even the most popular online marketplaces are rife with scammers.

I don't know about you, but I look at a business's and products' reviews pretty thoroughly before deciding.

For this consumer-shaping behavioral effect, reviews can dramatically affect a business's income. But as long as the review is true and honest, should you feel bad or responsible for the consequences?