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Appliance firm loses small claims case after its AI gave conflicting warranty answers

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A regional appliance repair company with six vans and an AI-first support inbox settled a small-claims case over a $740 compressor replacement last spring. A customer's 22-message, nine-day chat showed the AI giving four different warranty terms when she asked the same question repeatedly, including 12 months, 24 months, and a lifetime compressor warranty. The company argued its policy was 12 months, but the judge accepted the customer's reliance on the conflicting written statements. The article attributes the inconsistency to retrieval from different documents, including an outdated 2023 promo page and a manufacturer's parts sheet, rather than to the model simply making things up. Across one quarter, the company found 33% of threads where a repeated question produced at least two different answers.

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