Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights
That, I think, is what I'm really getting at. At one time, I could be reasonably assured that any product bearing a certain "brand name" was going to be quality. Therefore, I could gravitate toward that brand when shopping for a given item. I wasn't buying the label, per se, but I was buying what that label stood for.
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There are other post's I want to respond too in this thread, but I'm tired so this by BOR is the closest to what I have to say. In 1990 Hubby and I bought a 27" Sony Trinitron (crt) for about $700. Hubby was loyal to Sony, because his Dad was, for all electronic component's for years, despite receiver's, disk player's, vcr's all dying early death's. I didn't fault him because most of those were in the late 90's or early 2000's and our Trinitron was still running strong and trusty.
Fast forward to 2007 when our beloved 17 yr. old Trinitron started to have trouble (a line about 6" from the top made everyone look like a Conehead). We bit the bullet and bought the modern day equivilent, a Sony Trinitron Wega (34") which cost us $650, nearly as much as we'd paid for our original 27" 17 yrs. before.
Now to my point, we enjoyed our new Trinitron for all of 8 mths. before the fucker started going psychedelic on us (purplish screen with pixelated bits flashing here and there). Our original Trinitron lasted for 17 damn years before we had any problem so we felt confident in choosing the same brand as a replacement, yeah right!!!. Our warrenty didn't cover labor, just parts. The only service center we had near us was an hour drive away. It would've cost nearly $200 in S&H to send it to them, so we borrowed my Dad's truck and drove it to them (after killing our back's manhandling the thing into the original box, that we still had).
They kept the TV for 2 damn weeks before they even responded to our calls or email's. In the end, we had to insist that they pack the TV back into the box as we had delivered it to them. We paid $200+ for the non-warrenty repairs and we ended up with a 1 1/2" scratch on the screen.
The not quite but kinda funny aspect is that their 70-80 yr.old receptionist said that Sony's; Wega's and other's, are at their top of the list for repairs and "they just don't make them like they used to". Dur!!!
We ended up within 8 mths. paying over $900 for a stupid 34" CRT TV when we could have put that money toward's a "flat screen" "plasma" or "insert another TV here". Thankfully the thing hasn't acted up since then and believe it or not, the old Trinitron in the basement no longer does the conehead thing and still has a pretty decent picture!