Tuesday, March 27, 2007

To tell a vision...

So my TV finally died. Ish. Which is to say it was well on its way to an untimely death.

It has this power issue that I could try to explain poorly. Suffice it to say, the tube was going to go out, and until that point the picture would shrink and expand horizontally and there was a lot of digital noise all over. But only when there were bright colors on the screen.

Imagine trying to play Zelda with Link constantly getting fatter then skinnier.

Oddly enough, I had a five-year warranty on my four-year-old television. That’s akin to winning, I think.

Which brings up my next point. Warranty departments suck. And the warranty department at RC Willey’s excels at sucking.

It took more than two weeks from the day I called the store to find out if I had a warranty until the day they finally agree to give me an undervalued store credit.

Why?

Well, unfortunately for me, RC Willey is phasing out old-fashioned tube TVs. Also unfortunately for me, they wouldn’t simply give me an upgrade to the comparable model they had in stock because I had a 27” and that was a 30”. Oh and unfortunately for me the only “comparable” TV they did have was a piece of crap, $300 STANDARD DEFINITION TV. Also unfortunate for me, the subtle differences between HDTV and SDTV are lost on the RC Willey warranty department.

So after a few days of back and forth where I tell them that the $300 Toshiba isn’t the same as my TV, the service agent (who was nice, but powerless) tells me that I’ll just need to go and talk to a sales person at a store to find a TV that’s comparable.

Well I do. But RC Willey doesn’t carry that model anymore. And they agree to credit me the amount of that TV, but only at the clearance price: $450. (That TV is selling for $550 at BestBuy.)

What this blog post doesn’t get across is that all of this took hours and hours on the phone, on hold, and just waiting. All while my TV is dying and driving me crazy.

The conclusion: I took the $450 credit. Bought the 30” TV. Paid the $200 difference. And now I have it in my home. And I like it too.

And yes, I did spend the extra $100 to buy the 5 year warranty.

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4 Comments:

Blogger M S Martinez said...

For the curious, I bought this TV.

Wed Mar 28, 10:06:00 AM GMT-7  
Blogger d l wright said...

Looking pretty good there Mark.

Have you tried Warioware yet?

Wed Mar 28, 11:33:00 PM GMT-7  
Blogger M S Martinez said...

No... I have yet to play Wario Ware. I just barely finished Zelda two days ago, so I really haven't had the desire to play anything else since then.

Thu Mar 29, 09:43:00 AM GMT-7  
Blogger M S Martinez said...

Err... by which I mean while I was playing Zelda I had no desire to play other games.

I could give Wario Ware a chance, but then Super Paper Mario is coming out next week. I'm much more excited about that.

Thu Mar 29, 09:49:00 AM GMT-7  

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