At the risk of sounding older than my tender 43 years: They don’t make ’em like they used to. Consumer electronics, that is. Last month my TV finally packed up (and within a month of getting my surround-sound in place, FFS!). This is a Toshiba 50″ plasma flat screen, which I bought for the not inconsiderable sum of $2,000 three years ago (actually as a 10-year anniversary present for the wife – ever the romantic, eh?). About a year ago one of the HDMI ports stopped working, which was irritating but not the end of the world (it has a couple of others, composite video, etc.). Then it started getting an intermittent one-pixel-wide line down the center of it. You could only see it on some colors, and it would disappear again after a day or two, so I let it go. But eventually the whole TV just gave up and wouldn’t even power on any more. Actually, the ‘standby’ light lit up, but $2,000 is kind of a lot to pay for something that just tells you that your electricity hasn’t been cut off.
So I called up Best Buy (where I bought it from) who were kind enough to tell me that had I purchased their Extended Warranty they would have replaced it for free, but I hadn’t, so they wouldn’t. I’ve always thought of extended warranties as a scam (I have one on the wife’s car – for her peace of mind – that hasn’t been used, so that’s just money down the drain), but now I’m thinking that the manufacturers and the retailers are in cahoots – the manufacturers make something that doesn’t last, so you have to buy the extended warranty and get a new one that won’t last, and so on…
Anyway, Best Buy sent someone round who looked at it (literally – they looked at it, not touched; it’s mounted on the wall, and they didn’t even take it down, poke around in the back, or anything) and then announced “Yep, it’s your Y-Sustain board. Common problem in these models.” I did some research and indeed, this model of Toshiba, plus some other models and other brands that share the same shitty (Korean) components, are well known for this problem. Despite charging me $150 for this valuable information (which would have been nice had it been brought to my attention before I bought the damn thing), the ‘technician’ told me that Best Buy couldn’t get the part for me, but I could probably find one on EBay, and if I bought it myself they could install it for me, for another $200 plus the cost of getting the TV down off the wall. I declined.
Next time I was in Best Buy (some people never learn!) I checked out the price of TVs. I can now get a 50″ plasma for $700. Nice price drop in 3 years. (Probably because these are risible 2D screens, and they are trying to push the ‘new’ 3D models – like I want to sit around in a pair of plastic glasses looking like a complete dick…). So effectively my TV is uneconomical to repair. Brilliant. Actually, this does give me the opportunity to upgrade to a 60″, if I want to fork out another couple of grand, but I may need to wait until our next wedding anniversary for that…
But paying out a couple of grand every 3 years seems a little excessive. Unfortunately it really does seem that things just aren’t built to last. A couple of weeks after my TV died, my PlayStation 3 also gave up the ghost and wouldn’t power on any more. This is a problem I’ve had before (it is an extremely common problem with PS3s – I have 2 friends who have had exactly the same problem -where something gets too hot and kills the whole machine). Last time was about 18 months after I bought it (for $400, being an early adopter…), and they got it repaired and back to me pretty quickly (just swapped out the blown circuit board, I guess). That was about 18 months ago, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when it went out again. I called Sony who said they would repair it for $180. I coughed. (If only I’d had that Extended Warranty!) They then said they could send me a ‘refurbished’ (i.e. faulty but repaired) new, slim model for only $150 in part exchange, which sounded like a reasonable deal until I discovered that the new PS3s can’t play the old PS2 games (which the ‘fat’ model can – so now you know what that extra inch is doing…), which is no good as Gil wouldn’t be able to play Destroy All Humans, which is his favorite game as you get to electrocute cops (I do worry about that boy…). So I plumped for the repair option.
But when I got my PS3 back, I found out that they didn’t repair it, they just gave me a brand new unit (obviously they have plenty of back inventory now that everyone is buying the new model). Which would normally be a bonus, were it not for the fact that all of my gaming progress was stored on my old machine, so I have now lost that. All of it. Three years’ of progress, for all of the family, gone. Luckily I had finished Resistance 1 and not got far through Resistance 2, but the wife was a good way through the latest Tomb Raider, as a family we had completed almost all of Lego Batman (another fave of Gil’s), and – worst of all – our family Rock Band band – Manuelvis – is no more. All of that hard-earned progress and 5* ratings on Hard is gone. Forever. Actually, my (lesser) ‘on-line tour’ was saved, but I can’t work out how to get to it, and when I try to re-register, the Sony Network tells me that that name is taken already. Yeah, by me!! Bastards! Anyone touches my band, I kill them.
The instructions Sony send you before you send in your unit do clearly state that you should back up your data before sending it in, but if you can’t even power it up, how the hell are you supposed to do that?? Sony should at least do an imagecopy for you, for the $180 they charge (and the UPS tracking showed that the new unit went out within hours of them receiving the old unit, so they actually did nothing to earn that $180…), but no. Again, the consumer is screwed. I assume I’m just supposed to be grateful I have a new, working unit (at least for next 18 months, before this one dies on me…).
So, I guess I really just need to resign myself to the fact that nothing is going to last more than a couple of years. I still refuse to buy the extended warranties, but maybe I’ll start building up an ‘electronics fund’ of a couple of grand every 2 or 3 years that I can use for the inevitable replacement costs. Damn these consumer electronics and their short lifespans. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and back up my almost-three-years-old PC before that dies on me. Still, if it does, at least I’ll have plenty of spare time to get Manuelvis back in the game. Or at least I would do if I had a TV to connect the Playstation to…
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