Digital Home Thoughts: Circuit City - Never Again!

Tech Visit 3:
Then in December I remembered that my warranty was going to expire on January 1st 2004 and with pseudo renewed hope I called CC again. They really did not want to hear about reception problems but when I spoke to supervisors and managers, they decided to send over a third tech, and claimed that this was my last chance and after this tech they would consider the problem to be in my mind (wonderful). They also asked me to keep a TV diary to keep track of exactly when and how severe the problem was on each day which I dilligently did.

The third tech came in mid-December and again immediately saw the problem (how could they not), he did not even need the TV diary to see the problem, and immediately placed an order for parts they said would fix the problem. 2 weeks later, they installed the new chips but that did not fix it. So they decided to take the motherboard in the TV to the store. I was without a TV over Christmas and New Years. In early January, they came and plugged the 'fixed' motherboard but that did not solve the problem either. So they finally took the entire TV to the store to do some more stuff. 3 weeks later (late January and after my warranty had expired), they returned it but that didn't solve the problem either. They said that the TV worked fine in their store and that there was nothing wrong with it. When I asked them what they had been fixing all this while, there was no clear answer. They basically said that the problem has to be with the environment. This time they did not need for me to sign any receipt (surprising). I pretty much begged and pleaded them to write that the TV is broken in their report, but they said that they could not write that because there is no such thing as a problem in a TV that cannot be fixed.

So now I had a still broken TV, a warranty that had conveniently expired and no other options. When I called CC to ask if there was anything else I could do, they said that since my warranty had expired I could choose to buy another three years of extended warranty and they would re-issue three technicians to help solve it. When I asked them which three technicians they would send, they name the same three techs that had already been sent. I asked them if they did not find that answer a bit odd, i.e. that on the one hand they claimed that there was nothing wrong with the TV and yet they were willing to send out the three techs that had told them so in the fist place.


(800x533) (1600x1066)

Conclusion (sort of...)
Anyways, I went to the Sony store in Manhattan and explained my saga to them but to no avail. In desperation I wrote to the Sony President/CEO (yes, perhaps stupid move but I was desperate) and the next day I got a call from his people who then escalated the problem within Sony support. But the result was exactly the same as Sony support refused to do anything since I did not buy the TV or the extended support from Sony. So all in all, I was/am screwed. Note that this tale spans over 1.5 years, a lot of stress, inconcenience and despair and I have nothing to show for it. Ugh!