May 6, 2009

• No More Samsung

  i tried to be a good little korean, but i am now declaring that under all normal circumstances i will never buy another Samsung A/V product ever again.  not another fucking penny. 

  Samsung 19″ CRT monitor ($190 at the time of purchase) – dead after two years.
  Samsung DVD Home Theater in a Box ($300 at the time of purchase) – the dvd player died after one year.  i still use the sound components. 
  Samsung 46″ DLP television ($1,100 at the time of purchase) – after two years there are white spots scattered all over the screen.  i lost count after 40 spots.  it’s like Starry Night on my screen.

  regarding the CRT monitor:  considering the fact that most CRT televisions last forever, i find two years to be a fucking joke.  since childhood, i’ve never had a CRT tv that didn’t last over ten years.  this was my first samsung failure though so i considered it a fluke. 

  regarding the DVD player:  i watch a lot of movies but still….  a year?  my current Panasonic player that replaced the samsung has been going strong for over four years now and if anything i watch more movies now than i did back then. 

  regarding the DLP tv:  this is the biggest insult.  i spent over $1000 on this thing two years ago and thought i was set for the next ten years or so as far as the tv went.  FAIL!  it’s slowly dying and is being incredibly annoying to view in the meantime.  i did some research and apparently a lot of people that bought my type of tv (DLP version PB02) around the same time i did (Fall ’06/Winter’07), are now developing the same exact problem.  a single defective part is dying, as if on schedule, about a year after the warranty expires.  samsung is denying any sort of pattern and is only replacing the part, not the labor, and even then only after a complaint is filed with the BBB.  the part is $180, btw, which sounds like a nice chunk of change that samsung is paying for until you look at the labor costs: almost $300, including the repair estimate.  so after two years, i’d have to pay $300 to fix my television because it is now known –by everyone except samsung– to contain a defective part.  that plus the $130 regularly schedule maintenance cost of replacing the lamp every two years or so makes this an extremely costly and high-maintenance television, not to mention unreliable… just like every other Samsung entertainment item i’ve purchased.   

  Samsung A/V?  never again.

  • 10:20 am
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