FixYa, the Q&A site for products where where amateur product experts give repair advice to consumers, is debuting a new app today that allows people to shoot a video of a product problem with their iPhone and get a real product fix from one of FixYa’s 700,000 product experts.
FixYa, which says it has an online community of 25 million users and 700,000 experts, essentially crowdsources product troubleshooting from consumers. The idea is that consumers can get better help from fellow users than from spending time with manufacturer call centers or from paying support fees. To date, FixYa’s community has answered 15 million questions across eight million products.
In the new iOS app, you can choose the product category from 36 general groupings, shoot a video from your smartphone explaining the issue, and receive a response from a FixYa expert on how to solve the issue. FixYa’s product categories span from cell phones, to coffee makers, and from cars to motherboards.
While the site has been able to create a significant and engaged community of product experts, the hope is that retail and product manufacturers could eventually provide their own fixes directly through FixYa.