Thank you to HD Tech and Samsung support!!! HD Tech was able to pull some strings for me and got me a one time service extended warranty for my TV since it was just out of warranty. Service repair person came out and ended up replacing the main PCB. I'm sure that would have cost me quite a bit, if it wasn't covered under the extended warranty.
Samsung support and HD Tech was there every step of the way, making sure the authorized service center scheduled an appointment, showed up on time, and that everything went ok and I was happy with the repair service. Everything was handled perfectly, and very quickly where my TV was back to working in no time. From when 1st submitted the repair ticket through Samsung's website to getting my TV back to working, it only took about 3 days total. Everything went smooth and was very painless.
I'm so happy, I want to share a previous warranty service experience to point out the drastic difference that I experienced with Samsung's support in comparison to one of their competitors. About 6 years ago, I bought my 1st large screen flat panel HD TV. I wanted a 50" or larger screen and preferred the Plasma technology over everything else at that time. My max set spending price was $2000 at that time. My top choices where the Samsung and Panasonic 50" Plasma TV's but both of those exceeded my $2K spending limit. At that time retail they came in between $2600-$2900. A new company with high value pricing by the name of Vizio came out with a 50" Plasma that fell right into my price. I spent weeks researching the specs and reading reviews. The Specs seemed great, but as I learned later, picture quality is not about the specs. I was never really happy with the picture quality of the Vizio and kept regretting my purchase every time I was in a retail store and saw the Samsung and Panasonic TVs. After owning the Vizio for just 3 months, I turned the TV on one day and the screen picture was purple. I had to call in for warranty service.
My Vizio warranty service experience. I contacted Vizio by their support phone and email. Someone finally got back to me after 1 and 1/2 weeks. They gave me a phone number to a local authorized service center, for me to contact them to schedule an appointment for service where Vizio support told me someone should be out within a week to fix my TV. I contacted that service center, no one picked up the phone, so I left a message with my service ticket#. I waited that week and heard nothing back. Contacted the service center again, left another message, still heard nothing back. I contacted Vizio and heard nothing back from them. 6 weeks had passed where I was stuck with a purple screen TV in my main living room with no feeling that it was actually going to get fixed although it was still in warranty. I got fed up and decided, I'm going to return this TV to the retail store (Sam's Club) where I purchased it. Over that 3 month period of owning the Vizio, the prices had dropped on the Panasonic and Samsung Plasma models. The Panasonic was now $2100, and the Samsung was $2400. I decided to buy the Panasonic based on the lower price. A month later after 1st contacting the Vizio authorized service center, someone finally calls me back to set up an appointment to come out and fix the Vizio TV. I asked them, why they never called me back after the 1st 2 times I tried to call them to schedule an appointment? They informed me, "we were waiting on Vizio to ship us the part and we just received it." Hmmm??? And no one could call me back, to let me know what was going on? They stated, the part is here now, would you like to set up an appointment for us to come out and fix the TV? With a smile, I told them, I no longer own that TV, so you can keep the part. It was an awful experience and I will never buy another Vizio TV. It would have been close to 2 months of living with a broken TV. On top of that, the picture quality looked awful, although the "specs" led me to believe otherwise and the warranty service was atrocious. I guess, you really do get what you paid for, but $2K for a TV was a big investment for me at that time. I was happy with the Panasonic 50" Plasma TV for the next 4+ years, until one day, I walked back into Sam's Club and saw the new Samsung LED TVs, where my jaw just dropped on the floor at how smooth, fluent, and vibrant the picture looked. I decided to hold off a bit and purchased the Samsung "3D" model. I liked the picture quality so much after I got it home, that I ended up buying 2 additional Samsung LED 3D models shortly after that because going into other rooms in my house, those TVs just looked bad in comparison to the Samsung LED.
Now just after a year of owning that Samsung TV, I had my 1st problem and the Samsung support I received exceeded my expectations at every step of the way. Well...it also probably helped a lot that Vizio set the bar pretty low. ;)~ To celebrate, I went out this past week and bought a new 22" Samsung LED TV/Monitor as a 2nd monitor for my laptop computer. Time to go register that under my account on the Samsung website.
Thank you Samsung!!!!
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