By Richard M. Sherwin, Deena Gross, Christine Bittar 

and Susan Davis

Think you have trouble reaching your phone company, an appliance maker or your Internet provider? Well, this is the most heinous outcome of bad customer support.

Alexander Kearns, a 20-year-old college student was dabbling with online trading using the Robinhood app. He ran into problems on June 11 when the app put a hold on his account, showed his account $730,000 in the red, and a payment of over $170,000 was due from him in the coming days. 

As it happens, Robinhood made a mistake. He did not owe $730,000, but he never found out–he was found dead the next day in Plainfield, Illinois. His death is being treated as a suicide, according to the family and Robinhood. 

His grief-stricken parents have filed a wrongful death lawsuit and are demanding answers from the millennial-focused trading app.

Like many online and even retail-oriented companies, Robinhood didn’t have live telephone or even online chat or email support. No support of any kind. Absolutely none. 

“He thought he blew up his life,” Alex’s dad, Dan Kearns, said in an interview with CBS. “He thought he screwed up beyond repair.”

According to multiple news sources, the tragedy has drawn attention to the potential dangers of the free-trading boom inspired by Robinhood, which has given young, first-time investors easy access to exotic financial instruments typically used by sophisticated investors. 

Many of DFA’s listeners and viewers have complained a refrigerator’s sudden leak ruined the kitchen, their computer suddenly crashed, their bank’s new “tech support” is a robot, or their car won’t start and reaching tech support has become impossible. Shucks, even Consumer Reports magazine has made it hard for consumers to reach its reporters and editors when there’s a serious problem or a mistake in the CR ratings.

The Biden administration has appointed new heads of the Federal Communication Commission for tech issues and FTC is again reviewing consumers’ issues under the care of veteran consumer watch dogs intended to reverse rollbacks in consumer protection instituted during the previous administration.

If you think that there are no companies offering support in North America, sources at Consumer Reports tells DFA that even the most security laden industries such as healthcare and banking have outsourced their tech support units to overseas companies—with inconsistent results. 

Most startling is that the U.S. phone companies and service providers including Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Comcast, Altice, Spectrum, have all switched to an 80:20 overseas to U.S. based customer support plan. As of now, the only phone company that’s still 100% based in the U.S. is Consumer Cellular.

A report due out by early this summer by the FTC and FCC will advise consumers to be patient and request a North American phone operator, which will be especially useful in an emergency.

For your reference, here are the best toll-free help support numbers:

Amazon Tech Support 1 (888) 280-4331

AOL Support  1 (800) 827-6364

Belkin 1 (800) 223-5546 and dial 2263.

BJs 1 (800) 257-2582

Brother:  1 (800) 284-4329

Canon USA: 1 (800) 828-4040

Costco 1 (800) 774-2678

Epson 1 (800) 533-3731

HBO MAX 1 (855) 442-6629

Hulu 1 (877) 485-8411 

Logitech 1 (646) 454-3200

Netflix 1 (888) 638-3549

Nikon 1 (800) 645-6678. 

Nintendo:  1 (800) 255-3700

Olympus 1 (888) 553-4448

Panasonic 1 (800) 211-7262

Philips 1 (888) 744-5477

Sony:  1(800-222-7669

Sharp:  1 (800) 237-4277

Showtime 1 (800) 746-9846

Toshiba: 1 (800) 457-7777

Google 1 (866) 246-6453

Microsoft 1 (800) 642-7676

Apple Corp 1 (800) 275-2273

Samsung 1 (800) 726-7864

T-Mobile 1 (800) T-MOBILE

Verizon 1 (800) 837-4966

AT&T 1 (855) 493 1001

Consumer Cellular 1 (888) 345-5509

Comcast 1 (800) XFINITY

LG  1 (800) 243-0000.

Lenovo 1 (866) 426-091

HP  1 (800) 474-6836 or 1 (800) HP-INVENT

ACER 1 (866) 695-2237

ASUS 1 (888) 678-3688

Dell 1 (800) 624-9897

Altice/Optimum 1 (888) 276-5255

Charter Communications/Time Warner/Spectrum : 1 (833) 267-6094; (888) 955-078

Frontier 1 (800) 921-8101

Cox Communications 1 (800) 234-3993

Direct TV 1 (800) 531-5000

Dish Network  1 (800) 333-3474

Walmart 1 (800) 925-6278