Call me Craig the TV Dude. I have been involved in TV and big screen repairs since 1982. My mission is to educate and inform the consumer, and needless to say, there are many changes happening in the consumer electronics field today. Thus service issues are my main concern and interest. Many of the big box stores are cutting staff and services for big screen television repair; however there are still viable companies with access to tech data and spare parts.
Some questions to ask before hiring a service company would include:
1. Do they warranty their work, and for how long?
2. What's the minimum service fee?
3. Can repairs be performed in home?
4. Will the unit be usable in 2009 with the HD timetable?
All of these questions are important because you could be looking at a repair bill between $200 and $400. Some companies only warranty their work for 30 days, others up to six months to a year, depending on parts used (DLP lamps can carry a one-year warranty).
Some companies are charging as much as $150 just for a service call. You can believe you will probably get an estimate for repair in excess of $500, thus overpricing the repair and you just threw $150 down the drain. There are companies that only do this. They ride around town all day and give high estimates and collect service fees, and have no intention of repairing the set.
Then others have no intention of repairing in home. They will quote really low fees and then send two big guys and a truck and simply rip the unit out of your home. Once the TV is in their possession, they can quote any price they want, and good luck getting it back intact, if at all.
Article comments
1 - Eric
How many companies offer to repair in home? Is this common? But really how many repairs can be done at my house?
thanks for the article.
2 - Craig Siplin
Yes, there are many companies who still perform bigscreen repair inhome. Now, as I mentioned in the article above, you will need to do due dilegence to find a respected servicer in your area and please take the tips that was mentioned above.
Some units cannot be repaired inhome and feel free to contact me on any issue you may have. The main focus of the article is to say, you may not have to throw out your 5-10 year old,$1500 to 5000.00 bigscreen due to failure or the upcoming HD deadline.
Thanks for reading at Blogcritics.com
3 - John
Hi Craig,
As a TV engineer myself, I feel there are a lot of unscrupulous "engineers" out there, making it very difficult for customers to decide where to go with their repair. Personally, I would like to see an independent body that customers could go to when looking for a good engineer. Engineers and repair centres that register could be regulated and monitored. This would sort out the cowboys.
To add to your list of questions above, I think Q6 should be, "what is your repair rate". The cowboys that are ripping of the public will have a very low rate, profiting on investigation fees. The experienced professionals will have considerably higher repair rates, profiting from repair charges.
We say to our customers that we have no investigation fee, if we don't repair we don't charge, this puts the incentive on us to repair. Engineers that charge investigation fees have no incentive to repair.
More importantly, the engineer that has the incentive to fault find and repair learns and improves his skills.
Regards, John