It's very annoying, to be sure. That's quite an odyssey you went through with the blender!

Although I don't like to go down that route, I find that the "twitter/YouTube threat" tends to be fairly effective.

When someone with a warranty service starts balking, I pull out the "It's all right, don't worry about it... it'll make for some very interesting story telling to my twitter/trustpilot followers" and suddenly things start moving. Mrs. Denmarkguy is world champ at that... she's even friendly with someone who brings class action suits (and wins!) against bullshit scams. We don't do it because there's money, we do it because that kind of crap should not be permissed to go unchallenged.