Boy, I'm glad I got that Extended Warranty now

[Stoudman]

My Viewsonic 32" HD display just died on me last week, about a year and three months after I got it. That is of course 3 months past the manufacturer's warranty, so it's a good thing I got an extended warranty!

I've had a bad experience with Viewsonic in general.

The first HD Display I got from them worked for about 2 weeks and then died on me, so I had to deal with the people at Viewsonic who are considerably more of a pain in the bum than the extended warranty people.

After I finally got it back, it worked for about 6 months until screen burn in became apparent in the top right corner. Screen burn in on an LCD. Yep.Viewsonic RULES!!!!

Then last week I was watching a movie and the image flipped off, but the light for the power showed it was still on. I figured maybe the cable had gone out or screwed up while erasing data from the cable box, but then the power light went out and the TV hasn't turned on since.

Called the extended warranty people, 5 minutes later they set up a claim for me. Today I got the call telling me they located a repair place close by and would pay to ship the shipping stuff for the TV to me, all expenses taken care of, and that the whole process would take about 1-2 weeks.

When you buy an Extended Warranty, you do it hoping it will be wasted money, but when this stuff happens you're all of a sudden glad that you have it! Especially since they're so much easier to deal with than the freakin manufacturers, who will do anything they can to avoid paying for their own shoddy products.

In retrospect, I should have waited and gone with a better television from a better brand name. I was told by friends that Viewsonic was pretty good with displays, but I still wasn't totally sure, so I got the Extended Warranty, and boy oh boy....it has not been money wasted.

All in all, the picture quality from Viewsonic's products looks nice...it just doesn't really last like it should. If anyone's ever considering getting anything from them, consider an extended warranty with it.

[TVguy86]

Just wondered.

How much was your extended warranty

How much would it have been to fix your tv had you not had the warranty??

Just want to do a comparison

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by Stoudman

Screen burn in on an LCD.

How'd you manage to do that?

[maygit]

i've only seen that once on an LCD and that was at college in a PC lab that no one uses. The monitors were probably displaying the same log in screen for so long that it just may have caused the pixels to become slightly stuck allowing the same light to consistently shine thru.

[Stoudman]

Originally Posted by Ernest Rister

How'd you manage to do that?

Not sure. I just noticed one day one area of the screen was darker than another. After a while the dark spaces got a little bigger, and when I played a video game that used one display in that particular area for too long, the image would burn in. For example, if I left my PS3 on for 30+ minutes, the clock in the right corner would get burned in. It wasn't permanent, but it was ugly!

I dunno man, all I can say is DON'T TRUST VIEWSONIC!

As for TV's question, I'm not sure what repairs would have cost because I don't know how to do them. I can imagine screen burn in would have been relatively simple to fix, which is why I didn't bother with it since I've been too busy with school. As for the TV not powering up, I wouldn't even know where to start in looking for the problem there, and that could cost more to repair.

I paid $119 for a 3 year extended warranty. Worth it just to have it taken care of without the hassle.

Oh, another point I wanted to make although I'm sure it makes little difference, is that I never had the backlight on, really, I always turned the backlight feature down to it's lowest setting because it wasn't really necessary in the first place.

[brett_day]

screen burn in on an lcd is not as uncommon as most people think! Burn in is not just an issue that can be a problem for plasma's. Although rare these days on either technology, it can happen on both lcd and plasma

[liquidice]

please don't start a "burn in" discussion, I can't handle it anymore!!!

[bhampton]

Burnt out on Burn in?

I have a 3 year warranty on my PS3 that will end in Nov... However... I'm hoping it doesn't fail till after the warranty runs out. I got the warranty through Walmart and don't trust them to monkey with my PS3.

If my PS3 fails it will likely be the laser assembly and I would rather fix it myself.

-Brian

[ObiTrentKenobi]

Originally Posted by Ernest Rister

How'd you manage to do that?

i got screen burn-in with my old 32" westinghouse LCD after only 2 years... not as a single image, but all the colors were super washed out and you could see ghosts of images in a few spots

i never even had any gaming systems or a pc hooked up to it