Hi Darren,
Yes and no. For the recall part (which is only 10% of the info in the report) it’s sort of what you describe, except we don’t do it once, we do it every minute. So even if you searched it today and it got recalled tomorrow, you’ll still be alerted.
We’ve built our own database from the information from the CPSC and continue to ingest data from there. We’re also working on integrating with the NHTSA, because some consumer products are covered by them rather than the CPSC.
There’s much more to it than that though, and it’s one of the things we are wondering if we should change: we named it the Recall Report, but it’s only one of 12 data points we have on most items. So maybe it should be called the Product Insights Report or Product Intelligence Report.
Here’s an example of what’s in it:
This is a recalled clothes washer from Samsung, there is a page full of details on that recall later in the report. The manufacturing date was not on the product label photo, but we extracted it by decoding the serial number. We have those decoding keys for about 50 major brands today, and we keep reverse engineering these for other brands.
With a manufacturing date, we know the age of this washer. And we know how many years roughly a washer is good for, so we can predict an approximate remaining useful life. This, in my opinion, is just as valuable as the recalled status, because it helps plan replacement expenses, and helps decide when something is broken if it’s worth investing to fix, or if you’re better of just replacing it.
And then we’ve looked up the typical warranty for the different appliance types for the major manufacturers. This way, with the age, we can see if the appliance is still under warranty or not.
Finally, and in my opinion this is where the real magic is, in the right column you see what information is available in our free app. In this case there are 3 how-to videos, 4 manuals and documents, and 273 parts.
No more junk drawer filled with manuals and booklets and warranty cards, just one app with everything you need to maintain your home.
I could go on about the features of the app, like maintenance reminders, and storing receipts, and direct links for parts on Amazon, and having more parts than you’ll find at Home Depot, but you get the idea.
Try it out and let me know what you think of it!
