Earlier this month I wrote about the problems we were having with flat screen televisions. As I had mentioned, were we unhappy as these TV were breaking and in need of repair long before any of the old standard TV’s did. I told about one TV that lasted 18 months then cost us $200 to fix the power circuit and then our newest TV refusing to work after 2 months. We were having a power issue with the flat screen TV in our hotel as well.
I conjectured that the problem was with the Charter cable box that seemed to run hot, but I did find out differently. Having these problems with our TV led me to try to diagnose the problems online. This led me to forums with hundreds of people having the same issues. There was definitely a problem with my two Samsung TV’s and other brands were having similar issues.
Fortunately for us (I guess) the second TV stopped working while the manufacturers warranty was in effect. Someone came out this past Friday morning and repaired the TV. According to the technician, Samsung TV’s had a large batch of faulty power circuits which the company is working to fix faulty TVs. Any new TV’s should not have this problem.
I suspect that other brand TV’s have used the same faulty circuits. No one is offering to refund me the $200.00 for the 18 month old tv I had to get fixed. From what I can tell, the company is telling anyone whose TV is out of warranty that they need to call the service company and pay to get it fixed themselves. This is not what you want to hear when you have paid $1000 to $3000 for a TV. Even some people with extended warranties are being turned away. It is time Samsung issued a recall and fixed all of these faulty TV’s.
These letters from consumer affairs will give you a full look at how angry some customers are.
I guess the fact that the bad power circuits are discontinued is good news for people who haven’t purchased flat screen TV’s yet. This is probably the price you pay for buying brand new technology. Someone has to help work out all of the bugs.
I guess you could compare this issue to the GPS system we purchased 6 years ago. We enjoyed have enjoyed it thoroughly even though it tended to get lost in mountainous areas and would get some directions reversed and send me in circles. It definitely had problems but we took a risk on purchasing the new technology. A new one purchased this year after the technology was perfected gave a unit 1/8 the size of the old one that had the entire country already downloaded on it. On our old unit we could only have a handful of cities downloaded on it at one time.
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