Am I Getting Hustled? TV Repair Version

[JonDuke]

Debated Tech Talk...but posting here

I have a 5 year old Samsung LCD TV.
For the past few months, it's taken about 13 minutes to turn on and display a picture after pressing the power button.

I did some research and found this was a common fault with models that year and Samsung would cover the repair. I called, and they sent out a local repair shop the next day.

Repair guy comes, and replaces the capacitors (the known faulty part)
Puts it back together, and it "doesn't work". (tv won't turn on at all now)
He says that although the capacitor has been replaced, the "power supply" is the culprit, and can be replaced for $193. Fishy, I think.
I decline and just ask him to get my TV back to working order, even with delay start up.
He has other calls to go to, so I tell him to come back later that day.
When he does, he opens the TV and knows right away that he forgot to turn on the back light switch. TV works right away. Fishy, again. He then tells me the price for the power supply, if I choose to go ahead, would be marked down to $156.

The TV goes back to the way it was, and still takes 13 minutes to turn on, but it works, and I'm ok with not having to buy another TV right now.

Today, 2 days later...the TV doesn't turn on at all. I understand that this could be completely coincidental, but believe they messed it up.

I'll call, but they're not open yet. What would you do?

[ken0042]

Call Samsung back and explain all of this to them. If they were going to cover the repairs on a 5 year old TV for a known defect, I can't see them being happy about this. They wanted to do the right thing to keep you as a customer; not lose you as a customer.

[Calgary14]

Sounds pretty shady. The problem there is that if you get one part fixed, whats to say 3 months from now another issue wont come up and need fixing?

If that specific model and year were really that bad I would be tempted to trash it (or sell for a discounted price), cut your losses and get a new one. Im willing to bet you can get a bigger, better TV now for less than what you originally paid.

For what it's worth we have a Samsung LED (almost 3 yrs old) and it has been great

First step should be to call Samsung and explain the situation (as someone mentioned above). They'd probably be able to tell whether the suggested repairs are legitimate or not

[GoinAllTheWay]

Interesting. I have a Samsung of the same age doing the same thing. That's where it just clicks and clicks and clicks until it finally powers up?

[JonDuke]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

Interesting. I have a Samsung of the same age doing the same thing. That's where it just clicks and clicks and clicks until it finally powers up?

Yeah...some click until finally turning on. Our light just blinks on and off.

Apparently, one guy with too much money just filed a class action lawsuit instead of paying the $200 to fix his TV. That resulted in a huge win for people like us and Samsung covers all those certain models with the faulty capacitor. The repair guy that came here said it keeps them pretty busy.

[Brannigans Law]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Call Samsung back and explain all of this to them. If they were going to cover the repairs on a 5 year old TV for a known defect, I can't see them being happy about this. They wanted to do the right thing to keep you as a customer; not lose you as a customer.

Hmm. i dunno seems fishy to me. a company wanting to the right thing?...

Originally Posted by JonDuke

Apparently, one guy with too much money just filed a class action lawsuit instead of paying the $200 to fix his TV. That resulted in a huge win for people like us and Samsung covers all those certain models with the faulty capacitor. The repair guy that came here said it keeps them pretty busy.

Oh. Now it makes sense

[prarieboy]

I had a TV do the same thing. A guy came out and fixed it. It worked fine for over a year after that. One day we decided to paint the Living Room and took the TV down from it's wall mount. When we put it back it would power on but it would not change channels, video source or volume.

We decided to get a new one. The best part is that our old one was 55" but because the Bezel on the new TV is so much slimmer we now have a 60" in that spot.
It is a Samsung as well.

[smoothpops]

What ended up happening?

[STeeLy]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

Interesting. I have a Samsung of the same age doing the same thing. That's where it just clicks and clicks and clicks until it finally powers up?

We had a TV like that at work too... instead of sending it out to get repaired, we just fixed it ourselves. Opened her up, find the capacitors, replaced them, and it's working fine now.

[DuffMan]

There is such a job as tv repairman in this day and age?

[puckluck2]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

There is such a job as tv repairman in this day and age?

Not sure what this is supposed to mean? The TV's these days still wreck and someone has to fix it. Unless you're from CP where we all make 250K and would just go fork out another thousand bucks for a new one.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

There is such a job as tv repairman in this day and age?

Why wouldn't there be?

[ken0042]

I think the question is somewhat valid. A decent quality 32" can be bought for around $300. If you had a faulty TV would you pay somebody $100 to come into your house to look at it? Or even a minimum fee of $75 if you dropped it off at a shop?

Whereas 15 years ago when a 32" TV was over $1000, and somebody could come look at it for $50.

Then how integrated the parts are. I don't know as much about TVs, but with computers so much is attached to the motherboard. So a bad network card can be a MB replacement. Maybe the same with a lot of TVs.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by ken0042

I think the question is somewhat valid. A decent quality 32" can be bought for around $300. If you had a faulty TV would you pay somebody $100 to come into your house to look at it? Or even a minimum fee of $75 if you dropped it off at a shop?

Whereas 15 years ago when a 32" TV was over $1000, and somebody could come look at it for $50.

Then how integrated the parts are. I don't know as much about TVs, but with computers so much is attached to the motherboard. So a bad network card can be a MB replacement. Maybe the same with a lot of TVs.

Yeah, fair points, I guess my confusion at his assertion is that I used to work for a company who worked with TV repair companies, and it seems to be business as usual for most of those guys.

I'm not sure if agree with your theory that TV's used to be really expensive and now they're cheap (part of that could be ignorance as I was a young lad when CRT TV's were still common.

As I remember in the late 90's, the most common TV you saw at everyone's house were the 27 - 32" JVC/Toshiba's etc. Which as I recall were anywhere from $250 - $800.

Now a days, the most common TV's you see are the 42-55" LG/Samsung's etc. Which are anywhere from $450 - $1500.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by puckluck2

Not sure what this is supposed to mean? The TV's these days still wreck and someone has to fix it. Unless you're from CP where we all make 250K and would just go fork out another thousand bucks for a new one.

No but this is CP where 99% of the people tell the future shops etc. to take their warranties and shove them. So if their tv goes, how many people are willing to take their 2 year old tv and have a repairman work on it. I mean, last time I actually did this was about 8 years ago with a huge to me 37" regular tv. I could only find 1 electronic place in town, and it was I think $80 for diagnosis which goes towards payment if you go for it. I just didn't think there was a big market for this outside of warranty work, and I always thought you had to drop it off.

Thought this job went the way of computer bench techs.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

No but this is CP where 99% of the people tell the future shops etc. to take their warranties and shove them. So if their tv goes, how many people are willing to take their 2 year old tv and have a repairman work on it. I mean, last time I actually did this was about 8 years ago with a huge to me 37" regular tv. I could only find 1 electronic place in town, and it was I think $80 for diagnosis which goes towards payment if you go for it. I just didn't think there was a big market for this outside of warranty work, and I always thought you had to drop it off.

Thought this job went the way of computer bench techs.

I can't really make a comparison as I was too young to know anything about TV repair company success back in the day, but I know a couple of companies in Calgary that are thriving with flatscreen TV repair.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by flameswin

I can't really make a comparison as I was too young to know anything about TV repair company success back in the day, but I know a couple of companies in Calgary that are thriving with flatscreen TV repair.

Well then, I learned something new today.

[GGG]

For me unless it is in the first three years of life or a known problem with a value to get fixed I wouldnt take it in.

For example if a TV is 5 years old and you paid 1k for it you pay roughly $200 per year for a TV. A repair is going to cost $100 to look at and a minimum of $200 to fix or be not fixable. So how much time do you get out of a repaired TV?

1 year, 2 years. You need at least a year to make he cheapest repair worthwhile. And that assumes you gvalue a new TVs quality equally to an old TVs quality and it neglects the risk of your tv being a total lost. Taking into account those two factors you would need at least 2 years out of the repaired tv which to me is a marginal value at best.

Now say in year 3 your 3k TV goes then I probably look at repair. But if Iam buying a commodity TV I dont expect much from it.

[Clarkey]

When 5 year old tv bites the dust it's secretly a good day. That means you get to go to the store and pick out a new one that is 20% bigger, has a better picture and more bells and whistles for less than you paid 5 years ago without getting flak from the wife.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Originally Posted by STeeLy

We had a TV like that at work too... instead of sending it out to get repaired, we just fixed it ourselves. Opened her up, find the capacitors, replaced them, and it's working fine now.

I'd be more than willing to try myself. If I wind up blowing the thing up, perfect reason to get a new one and I get to say "I tried to fix it!" Mind you, my s/o has no issues buying a new one.

Where did you get the capacitors? How long does it take? Is it just as simple as pulling out the old ones and pushing in new ones? How do they connect?