Hey everyone, don't buy Samsung

I’m sorry I know this is lame but I’m so pissed right now I have to vent and do my tiny little bit to wreak my revenge.

I bought a 61" Samsung DLP TV earlier this year and have had nothing but trouble with it ever since. First off it was making an incredibly loud vibrating noise that sounded like the TV was going to explode any minute. I called it in and after about a week the service people came out and replaced a component.

That didn’t fix the problem, so they came back out a week later and took it away for repairs, replacing the entire light engine (the main component in the set). That repair took about two weeks.

They just brought it back and since they left I’ve discovered that there’s a whole new problem with a big dark smear on the screen (something inside, not cleanable). WTF. Don’t they fucking test these things before returning them?

So anyway yeah I’ve had this TV for about three months and it’s barely worked at all during that time. I just complained to Samsung and the guy calmly read off a script explaining how I can’t just get an entire replacement until the TV has been deemed “unrepairable.”

So now I wait for the TV techs to come back out sometime next week and take it away AGAIN for God only knows how long this time.

Not to get all Tom Tancredo here, but a small part of the problem is that everybody at the local TV repair contractor assigned to me by Samsung can barely speak English and so communicating with them has been a nightmare and slowed down the process even more.

So yeah, I’m deeply unsatisfied. Don’t expect to see any smug pictures of me holding up a Samsung product any time soon. And don’t buy Samsung. They are shit. I should have paid more attention to the Amazon.com buyer reviews, many of whom seem to have had similar repair nightmares. The Samsung rep himself admitted that he’s seen some TVs returned SEVEN TIMES for repair.

[/rant]

It must be, uh, ‘rubbish’ to have people, um, ‘taking the piss’ that way?

Add me to the list of anti-Samsung (too many failed devices), but add Toshiba to that list as well.

My company worked for Samsung’s for a bit and when we won the business, we stocked up on Samsung TVs around the office. The LCDs always ended up looking bad, the plasmas had weird red lines running through them…

I’ve had a number of Samsung cell phones, they all broke. One was my fault, the other three just didn’t last as at all. Add me to the list of people wary of the Samsung brand.

Credit card purchase? Is it too late to just reverse the damn thing?

I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal evidence over on the AVSForum that Samsungs are not particularly reliable. It was enough for me to avoid them when I was TV shopping about a year and a half ago, and I tend to steer people away from Samsungs when I can.

Of course, I ended up buying an HP DLP, which, based upon the anecdotal evidence floating out there now, should have killed my firstborn, crushed my pets, and set fire to my living room while simultaneously deafening me with either fan noise or speaker hum and defecating on everything I hold dear. My set, however, works perfectly.

Wow. Sounds a lot like my experience with my Samsung 61" DLP. Though, it looks like I had better repair luck than you. In the four repairs I had done, including two light engine replacements, the TV never left my house. It never even left my TV stand. The repair guys did an outstanding job each time given what they had to work with. Samsung did tell me that if I had one more issue before the warranty expired, they would replace the entire set with a new one. I was tempted to just break it outright to see if I get a new model or not.

Knowing what I know now, if I had the purchase to do over again, I would have bought the Sony 3LCD unit.

So what’s the answer, then? Pay a 15% markup for the Sony? Because I’m still pissed about my dead PS2 in 04.

Actually, Sony SXRD units don’t seem to be priced all that much higher, unless you go for the “elite” XBR units.

I’ve got a Sony KDS-55A2020 on loan right now, and it’s certainly a sweet unit. 1080p, great color, two HDMI’s in and true 3-chip LCoS – no color wheel. You can find them for under $2K.

Ditto on Toshiba… check their BBB record if its still listed.

I love mine, except the VGA input is a bit wonky.

Gary, did you buy an extended warranty or replacement plan? If not, you might still have time to get one from your retailer and have the damn thing swapped out.

I’ve got two Sammy TVs at my place right now, and have never had a problem with them.

I’ll agree that the picture isn’t the greatest before doing calibration, but I’m pretty happy with them so far.

I still absolutely love my Westinghouse 1080p LCD.

Caveat: Never had to deal with their support, so maybe it sucks?

I’ve had great experiences with Samsung products. I’ve had multiple Samsung LCD computer monitors, Samsung printers, Samsung hard drives, etc, and all have worked flawlessly. (I don’t think I’ve bought a non-Samsung monitor for 5+ years.)

I don’t know anything about their TV division, but I wouldn’t swear off the entire brand because the TVs appear to have problems.

My buddy bought his younger sister a Samsung 19" wide LCD monitor for Christmas. It stopped working in February, and without knowing what to do (he had bought it cheap from a computer store that doesn’t have Best Buy-type warrenties), we took it to the Samsung offices in Markham. We left it with them for three days, and then they had him pick it up. Worked fine. They said if you call they’ll usually send it somewhere else, but not many people figure to bring in items to the offices. Pretty cool.

I’ve got a pair of Samsung LCD computer monitors. So far, I’ve been really happy with them. I think one’s about 4-years old and the other one is probably about 2-3 years old.

I have a Samsung 226BW. Works fine and is a badass monitor. Though this is pretty much the first Samsung product that I can remember that I own.

— Alan

I like samsung PC components, they all work fine. The company makes cars, ram, optical media, monitors, tv’s, heavy equipment, household goods, and probably ships and food.

Panasonic is the new Sony. The fans in the AC’s are superior, their plasmas were half the price of the slighly better Pioneers. However, I had problems with an MP3 player because it insisted on DRM’ing everything with a crappy piece of software. No drag and drop. Freaking lawyers. It’s still a superior piece of hardware. A tiny 1.5" square with an internal 10 hour battery. Add the case and get 50 hours playback from a AAA. Best for traveling, no need to mess with electrical converters and compete for limited AC slots.

And Panasonic doesn’t try to make you buy weird memory.

About the only thing samsung I’d trust these days is their lcds but I’m still wary of buying one.

I bought a samsung 27’’ crt about 3 years ago. It lasted a little over a year before it started having a ringing/humming sound on startup, that fades after warmup and sometimes returns after being on for a few hours. The best part was a day after I had ordered a new 32’’ lcd tv I went to watch a dvd on the samsung only to find out it had decided that it didnt feel like playing anything in color on the svideo or component inputs. I guess it felt insulted or something. :)

Gary, it’s common for RPTVs to have “smears,” which has something to do with the screen warping due to temperature changes or something. It should go away a few minutes after the set is turned on and heats up a bit, though.