Worth repairing?

Repair tv or not?

  • Yed

    Votes: 1 8.3%

  • No

    Votes: 11 91.7%
  • Total voters
    12
  • Poll closed .
flhrci

flhrci

Final Approach
Joined
Jan 26, 2007
Messages
5,932
Location
Groveport, OH
Display Name
Display name:
David
A Sony Bravia 32" LCD that I got for my mom 4.5 years ago has quit displaying any images today including built-in menu's. Already tried the factory reset. Sound and backlight still work.

Paid $1500 for the tv at the time. :cryin:

Do you all think it is worth getting repaired or buy a new one? There is supposed to be an authorized Sony tv repair center here in town.

David
 
Couldn't hurt to call and talk to the shop. I hate the disposable world we live in today but a new one is only around $400.
 
I'm getting alerts on my color laser printer to replace the imaging belt and imaging unit. Those parts will cost about $400. A new, comparable laser printer will cost $425.

Welcome to the throw-away society.
 
wsuffa said:
I'm getting alerts on my color laser printer to replace the imaging belt and imaging unit. Those parts will cost about $400. A new, comparable laser printer will cost $425.

Welcome to the throw-away society.
Click to expand...

They don't want to sell parts, they want to sell units.

Too bad, really.
 
Depends on the problem. Might be a $2 capacitor.
 
Cripes almighty. It's hard to believe an LCD TV is garbage. Didn't they just come out on the market, like, yesterday?????? Didn't Heathkit sell them???:confused::D
 
flyersfan31 said:
Cripes almighty. It's hard to believe an LCD TV is garbage. Didn't they just come out on the market, like, yesterday?????? Didn't Heathkit sell them???:confused::D
Click to expand...

No, Heathkit died long before LCD TVs came along. Drat. I miss building those kits. I'm still kicking myself for not buying the whole HW-9 series of radio and accessories when they were closing out. Oh well... :D
 
I replaced my five yr old JVC 36", then took the JVC to a repair shop and had it fixed for $150. I am watching it now in my den. Dave
 
If you can find an independent repair shop (rare as hens' teeth), maybe; a certified Sony shop will charge you better part of a C-note to "diagnose" it, and then, they'll tell you it needs a new (insert obscure circuit board name here), priced at (insert sum of money which is about 80% of cost of new comparable set).
 
Ddayle said:
I replaced my five yr old JVC 36", then took the JVC to a repair shop and had it fixed for $150. I am watching it now in my den. Dave
Click to expand...

I'm still using my 17 yr old JVC 36" as my main TV. The picture is as good as the new Samsung LCD in the bedroom. And my 25 yr old JVC still has a pretty good picture too.

Barb
 
SCCutler said:
If you can find an independent repair shop (rare as hens' teeth), maybe;
Click to expand...

We have one of those guys:

genes-tv-clinic-sign-a.jpg


Over the years, I brought two CRT TVs to him after they died the 'shrinking image' death. His diagnostic fee is $60. Once I paid $60.54 (dead capacitor) the other time $70 or so (blown line transformer). The shop is full of big-screen TVs and his lament was that everybody keeps throwing them out when the problems are usually fixable.

When I grew up, the mobile 'TV repairman' used to come by every other year to replace a couple of vacuum tubes. I think my parents still heat the house with that TV.
 
I was talking with a guy at the gas pumps a few weeks back who said he's turned repairing flat-screens of all sorts into a nice side-job. The shoddy capacitors from China topped his list of common failures.
 
weilke said:
When I grew up, the mobile 'TV repairman' used to come by every other year to replace a couple of vacuum tubes. I think my parents still heat the house with that TV.
Click to expand...

I remember when I was a kid the "Quick Shop" (predecessor to 7-11) on the corner had a Tube Tester. You just bring in all the tubes, plug them in one by one and it would tell you if they were good or bad and you could pull a new one out of the rack and buy it right there.
 
flhrci said:
Do you all think it is worth getting repaired or buy a new one? There is supposed to be an authorized Sony tv repair center here in town.
Click to expand...

Find a shop that has a relatively cheap diagnostic fee (if you can) and go from there. If it's less than, say, a $125.00 total bill then I'd go for the fix. Otherwise, buy new. 32 inch sets are really cheap.

I have a 4+ year old Samsung that recently developed a problem with the on-off switch (yup, capacitor related). It turned out to be a known common defect that the manufacturer was covering out to five years. It was fixed for free.
 
One Short said:
I'm still using my 17 yr old JVC 36" as my main TV. The picture is as good as the new Samsung LCD in the bedroom. And my 25 yr old JVC still has a pretty good picture too.
Click to expand...
I also have two TVs which are somewhere around 18 years old and still working fine. I don't watch enough TV to be able to justify replacing them with anything else.
 
SCCutler said:
If you can find an independent repair shop (rare as hens' teeth), maybe; a certified Sony shop will charge you better part of a C-note to "diagnose" it, and then, they'll tell you it needs a new (insert obscure circuit board name here), priced at (insert sum of money which is about 80% of cost of new comparable set).
Click to expand...

More precisely, when you walk into the factory service center you'll see the "Attention stoopid customers" sign on the wall that says:

If the list price is: The minimum flat rate repair is: (You paid) (You can buy a new one discounted for:)
$300 $120 $249 $175
$500 $180 $375 $275
$1000 $360 $675 $475
$1500 $499 $1175 $679
$2000 $699 $1775 $899

So do what you're supposed to do and take your piece o' crap to the dump and buy a new one of our pieces o' crap.
 
Henning said:
I remember when I was a kid the "Quick Shop" (predecessor to 7-11) on the corner had a Tube Tester. You just bring in all the tubes, plug them in one by one and it would tell you if they were good or bad and you could pull a new one out of the rack and buy it right there.
Click to expand...

A couple of years ago, the last producer of standard (as in not part of some $$$ HiFi equipment) vacuum tubes somewhere in Taiwan announced that they would stop making them. Dad has some 30s era radio that he is emotionally attached to, so he ordered several sets of tubes for it while he could still get his hands on them.
 
mikea said:
More precisely, when you walk into the factory service center you'll see the "Attention stoopid customers" sign on the wall that says:

If the list price is: The minimum flat rate repair is: (You paid) (You can buy a new one discounted for:)
$300 $120 $249 $175
$500 $180 $375 $275
$1000 $360 $675 $475
$1500 $499 $1175 $679
$2000 $699 $1775 $899

So do what you're supposed to do and take your piece o' crap to the dump and buy a new one of our pieces o' crap.
Click to expand...

Y'know, Mike, if they had done it this way at the places I've been, at least it would be honest. But here's an example of what I have experienced: I took an old Kenwood receiver to a Kenwood-authorized service center - it had a power supply problem -worked fine for about 15 minutes then started popping, think it's likely a shorting/arcing electrolytic cap, but I no longer possess troubleshooting skills.

So.

Guy tells me there's a "diagnostic fee" (something like $55.00), which will be credited against the repair if I have them fix it. They call me a couple of days later, say it cannot be repaired, so I got to pick it up. Turns out, the reason it "cannot be repaired" is they don't have the repair manual for that model.

But they still charged the $55.00. ! !!

I chatted with the manager about it, asked him if he felt like they had earned anything, since their diagnostic procedure was (1) plug in and observe failure; (2) look on shelf for repair manual / schematics; and (3) decide the ain't got it. He siad, "We charge what we charge."

I left, disgusted, and challenged the charge with the credit card company; charges were refunded.
 
Henning said:
I remember when I was a kid the "Quick Shop" (predecessor to 7-11) on the corner had a Tube Tester. You just bring in all the tubes, plug them in one by one and it would tell you if they were good or bad and you could pull a new one out of the rack and buy it right there.
Click to expand...

Yeah - I used to ride my bike over to Radio Shack with a bag of tubes to use their tester. Got an old TV working that way.
 
mikea said:
More precisely, when you walk into the factory service center you'll see the "Attention stoopid customers" sign on the wall that says:

If the list price is: The minimum flat rate repair is: (You paid) (You can buy a new one discounted for:)
$300 $120 $249 $175
$500 $180 $375 $275
$1000 $360 $675 $475
$1500 $499 $1175 $679
$2000 $699 $1775 $899

So do what you're supposed to do and take your piece o' crap to the dump and buy a new one of our pieces o' crap.
Click to expand...

You can do better at "Mugsie's out of the back of the U-haul discount TV store".... :hairraise:
 
Taking the tv in tomorrow morning for a $50 diagnostic which goes torward the repair of I get it repaired. The shop is a certified Sony shop and said anywhere from $100 to $300 dependent on what is wrong unless the LCD is bad. If LCD screen is bad, I already knew and they told me again it would e a total loss. Worth getting repaired to me since I have so much wrapped up in it rather than let a recycling center sell it for parts and profit, as long as it does not go over $300 at most.

David
 
rotorhead1026 said:
I have a 4+ year old Samsung that recently developed a problem with the on-off switch (yup, capacitor related). It turned out to be a known common defect that the manufacturer was covering out to five years. It was fixed for free.
Click to expand...

Samsung is really good about that. One of my co-workers went "recycle-bin diving" at work, typed the serial number of a huge flat panel monitor the company had tossed into their website, and found they had a recall on the thing. Samsung shipped him the box to put it in, and sent him back a fully-working unit.

And we both got a kick out of how retarded our engineers are who threw it out in the first place.

Now if they'd just update their darn Unix print drivers to use a modern version of the glibc libraries so the darn thing would not crash so often on any modern Unix system, that'd be grand. My two Samsung laser printers have been great, but the drivers make me insane when they brain-fart during a large document.
 
flhrci said:
Taking the tv in tomorrow morning for a $50 diagnostic which goes torward the repair of I get it repaired. The shop is a certified Sony shop and said anywhere from $100 to $300 dependent on what is wrong unless the LCD is bad. If LCD screen is bad, I already knew and they told me again it would e a total loss. Worth getting repaired to me since I have so much wrapped up in it rather than let a recycling center sell it for parts and profit, as long as it does not go over $300 at most.

David
Click to expand...


You may still be wasting money though. Often times you end up with "cascading failures", you fix one part and another goes bad because they were all designed with the same life limit.
 
flhrci said:
Taking the tv in tomorrow morning for a $50 diagnostic which goes torward the repair of I get it repaired. The shop is a certified Sony shop and said anywhere from $100 to $300 dependent on what is wrong unless the LCD is bad. If LCD screen is bad, I already knew and they told me again it would e a total loss. Worth getting repaired to me since I have so much wrapped up in it rather than let a recycling center sell it for parts and profit, as long as it does not go over $300 at most.

David
Click to expand...

I'm gonna vote no. A 4.5 years old 32" LCD TV is probably a 720p model. You can buy those new all day long for $300. From good vendors too like Samsung, LG, etc.

http://dealmac.com/Electronics/HDTVs/LCD-TVs/32-LCD-HDTV-Deals-503.html
 
The verdict is in!

The shop called and found a blown internal fuse on the timing and control board. The tech said he has had it on for the last 2.5 hours working just fine. Bill comes to around $123.

Woohoo! Saved a tv from the landfill and saved some moolah to.

Thanks for everyone's input!

David
 
flhrci said:
The verdict is in!

The shop called and found a blown internal fuse on the timing and control board. The tech said he has had it on for the last 2.5 hours working just fine. Bill comes to around $123.

Woohoo! Saved a tv from the landfill and saved some moolah to.

Thanks for everyone's input!

David
Click to expand...

Nice. :cheerswine:
 
flhrci said:
Woohoo! Saved a tv from the landfill and saved some moolah to.
Click to expand...

It's most excellent that you were able to avoid putting in the landfill.

I greatly prefer the option of buying things that are higher quality and are repairable. Sometimes you can get what you pay for.
 
Bob Noel said:
It's most excellent that you were able to avoid putting in the landfill.

I greatly prefer the option of buying things that are higher quality and are repairable. Sometimes you can get what you pay for.
Click to expand...


I do to. Dodged a bullet on this one so to speak. It was a risk and paid off.

David
 
$123.00 for a fuse...

...that guy oughta be in the avionics business!
 
SCCutler said:
$123.00 for a fuse...
Click to expand...

Nope. $0.35 for the fuse. $122.65 for finding out which fuse, and installing the replacement.

Remember when all the fuses were mounted in bayonet type holders, protruding from the back of the chassis?

-Skip
 
Skip Miller said:
Remember when all the fuses were mounted in bayonet type holders, protruding from the back of the chassis?
Click to expand...

Yup. Back then it would have been '35c for the fuse + 1/2 hr to bike to radio-shack' to fix the TV.
 
flhrci said:
The verdict is in!

The shop called and found a blown internal fuse on the timing and control board. The tech said he has had it on for the last 2.5 hours working just fine. Bill comes to around $123.

Woohoo! Saved a tv from the landfill and saved some moolah to.

Thanks for everyone's input!

David
Click to expand...

Did they fix whatever made the fuse blow? :D
 
Next time the fuse will save itself by allowing the most expensive part to blow, taking out everything near it!
 
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