In May 1997 I purchased a Philips/Magnavox 4-head VCR from Best Buy for $159.95. I also, in a rare instance, bought the $39.95 4-year extended “Performance Service Plan”. These are sometimes a rip-off, but it has worked in my favor this time.
BTW, I am in no way abusive to my electronics. They’re too expensive to beat to death.
From day one the vcr exhibited odd behavior. When I would tape something and play it back, the speed would “slip”. Imagine walking on a sidewalk and hitting a patch of ice, but not actually falling down.
I took it back, but it wasn’t fixed. The service center said they found nothing wrong!
A few months later, it developed a new problem: After turning the unit on after a timer recording, the vcr would not rewind, but instead turn itself off when the rewind button was pushed. When I turned it back on, the tape would and eject, partially eaten.
I took it back and they claimed to have fixed it, but within days it doing it again.
A few days prior to its return, a power surge cooked the tuner pack. They replaced the tuner pack and fixed the “slipping” problem, but the no-rewind-eat-and-eject-the-tape thing persisted and recently, the audio in/out jacks have stopped working.
According to the warranty, and I quote:
“Best Buy’s No Lemon Policy: If your product requires more than three repairs during the Performance Service Plan period, Best Buy will replace it free with a product of like kind and quality.”
When I tried to get the manager to honor this, she said it was “company policy” to send the unit to the service center for approval. I noted that does not appear in the warranty and that I should get a new vcr. (I don’t want to have to wait 12-14 days for “approval”, the damned thing doesn’t work!!) After several minutes of discussion, she agreed to call the service center (they were closed) tomorrow and get approval.
Anybody else with a similar tale?
P.S. I hate using “that that” in a sentence.