Service Support and Parts Supplies

[lcaillo]

The recent trend among consumer electronics manufacturers to not supply
parts and service support for even large expensive products is of great
concern to me. As a servicer, it makes it very difficult to provide
service. As a consumer, it angers me that manufacturers will not support
products beyond the warranty period. As a conservationist, the tendency to
dispose of products rather than repair them seems foolish and shortsighted.
From an economic perspective, it makes no sense to allow an entire service
industry to disapear. My comments are with respect to my experience in the
USA, but I am sure are applicable in other markets.

I will begin collecting information regarding service support policies from
various manufacturers and vendors in the USA. I will post here and in other
forums so that servicers and consumers can become more aware of the
policies.

Vendors should either have local service available through authorized
service centers or be willing to provide service literature and parts to
individuals or at least to qualified servicers. It is reasonable to expect
service literature and training materials to be available for a fee, but the
fee should be affordable and should not make repairs prohibitive.

Parts should be available to anyone who wants to buy them through a
reasonable life expectancy for the product. Components should be available
for circuit boards that are reasonable to field repair.

Manufacturers who provide good support should be acknowledged and supported.
The best CE company in this regard is, IMO, Hitachi. Their support and
documentation is free to any service shop that signs up with them. They
sell parts through many distributors and parts are reasonable and readily
available in most cases.

Organizations such as NESDA should be lobbying on behalf of the service
industry to change policies that are damaging to servicers and consumers.
We all need to be very vocal and get the press involved. A few national
news stories can go a long way to pressuring some vendors. Legislation is a
last resort, but perhaps the threat of such will cause the industry to move
in the right direction.

Some examples of companies that I have querried about service policies are
below. I will add more as I accumulate them. I others would do the same we
could get a good picture of what various companies are doing.


NEC - queried by email regarding service available for a new large PDP. The
response was that there are no service centers in our area and that NEC will
only sell parts and manuals to authorized service centers.

JVC - querried by phone for support on a television. No tech support is
available at all for non-authorized service centers even though the nearest
ASC is 90 miles away. Parts and manuals are available through distributors
at mostly reasonable prices.

Sceptre - querried by email regarding support for a 42" monitor. No service
support is available other than to send the unit to them. No parts nor
service literature is available at all.

BenQ - querried by phone and email for tech support on a 40" PDP. No parts
nor service literature is available. No service available other than to
send the unit to them.

[Richard]

LG - no parts or service literature available to non-authorized service centers.

Gateway - no parts or service literature available to non-authorized service centers or consumers. In fact no parts have been available for over a year if not longer and there is now litigation for a civil lawsuit in California.

InFocus - no parts or service literature available. Return to InFocus.

Sharp Aquas line - no parts or service literature available to non-authorized service centers.

[lcaillo]

I new about the others, but I thought Sharp sold parts through distributors and would supply access to their web site for a fee of about $100 per year. We were once a service center but stopped selling most of the products after they would only sell entire chassis for the HD crt sets, not even individual boards. We could still buy them from distributors. Maybe the aquos line is different? Regardless, their attitude and policies stink and people should know.

Do you agree that it is a worthwhile endeavor to accumulate the policies of various vendors and publish the info for dealers and consumers to better understand what they may face in terms of service support?

I tried to start a thread on the matter on AVS and they said that they did not want to start it because it would turn into a brand bashing. That is not my point, but I do think people should know what kind of policies they will be dealing with when things break.

[Richard]

I really had to give this a lot of thought since your post.

Do you agree that it is a worthwhile endeavor to accumulate the policies of various vendors and publish the info for dealers and consumers to better understand what they may face in terms of service support?

I understand your reasons behind this being a service center myself and applaud you for your efforts. The manufacturer is perfectly within their rights to decline parts, service literature and support as they see fit. This has been going on in the Hi-End audio market for decades.

I think my best answer is the market has spoken. From those providing the level of service they do to the customer wanting better and faster. The manufacturer is simply doing what they think is in the best interest of their relationship with the customer and their expectations. The customer expectation in our instant gratification society is a professional plugs in a part that you already have in stock; it is fixed.

Some of these companies that have shut off service also have the ability to turn over a problem quickly. Mitsubishi front projectors have an exchange program under warranty. Your problem is fixed within a few days by simply exchanging the product.

I think to have integrity with the manufacturers and the members we really need to break down what this all means and that is likely more effort than either of us care to put forward. Mits may not provide parts or service lit for their FPTV line but under warranty they are exchanged within days; A+. What if out of warranty takes 4 weeks? That would suck. What if it takes 1 week? That�s pretty good turn over. Without figuring all that out it would not be fair to the manufacturer or consumer to create such a list.

All that said I did add my own based on the parameters I thought you were concentrating on; parts and service literature being available. Unfortunately that is only half the story in our Mits front projection example.

I could see listing those brands that provide parts and service literature to any servicer leaving those that don�t open ended for the consumer to investigate. This would not be difficult or full of research for us and greatly reduces how many listings there would be.

Another potential topic is the viability of repairing some of these new technologies out of warranty like LCD flat panel and Plasma which so far is not going so good. It sure seems if one is going to buy one of these an extended warranty is clearly in your best interest.

I tried to start a thread on the matter on AVS and they said that they did not want to start it because it would turn into a brand bashing.

Well, regardless of the great info that can be found if you are willing to dig deep enough AVS can be an unruly place chock full of opinions...

So members, what say you? Would such a list be worthwhile to find out if free choice of local service is possible when it is out of manufacturers warranty versus being stuck with a particular manufacturers representative or having to ship your product to a repair depot ?

[mjm76]

It seems to me that this would be useful information for our forum.

[lcaillo]

Sent a few emails to Epson. Looks like there will be no service parts available and they have no idea who they will be using for local service support, if any at all. Sounds like they need some encouragement to get a service network set up or we might have another Dell-like service situation.

[HD Library]

I'm very happy with my HP as it has the finest picture I've ever seen on any display. I can't see how it could possibly be rated as just "very good" by any objective standard unless the reviewer is one who suffers from Rainbow Effects with DLPs (I don't). However, I can't recommend HP service as a viable support structure. Absolutely abysmal. You better know about TVs or you are in for a bumpy ride if you happen to get a lemon. Rodolfo had some kind words about my HT web site. For those who wish to learn more about my Jekyll & Hyde HP ride you might wish to check it out at my HT web site

http://www.rfowkes.com/html/hp_odyssey.html