GRRRrrrrrr, tv service repair man rant

The BBQ Pit
1

Hey All,

This is my first thread in the pit, but MAN! Where do they find these people! I’m your average guy or so, I buy a high end TV, sony 32 inch flat screen WEGA, I know of other people that have had problems with big TV’s, color shifts, etc., so I spring for the extended 5 year, in home repair, warranty. TV costs around 1.3k$, warrenty costs like 250$ or so. I bought the TV from a major department store whose name ryhmes with pears.

I get the set home, and everything works well for about 15-16 months. Then the flyback transformer comes loose or whatever it does to start making that highly annoying whine that only I can hear. I call up the repair service and they acknowledge the extended warranty coverage and arrange an appointment. The person who is supposed to come out to the house calls me up and says that shifting the set around might cause the noise to go away, and if he comes out, moves the set to work on it, and then can’t hear the sound, he can only put it back and wait for me to call when the sound comes back.

I smack the TV, the sound goes away, fine, I cancel the service call.

For the next 7 months I hear the sound, smack the TV, sound goes away, comes back, smack the TV, wife is shooting me nasty looks (cause she can’t hear the sound). 8 months later the sound is back, and won’t go away with smacking or moving the TV around. Now I’m really upset at myself, that I let the guy talk me out of fixing the TV. I call for another appointment. I don’t want to deal with the repair man, but I don’t want to deal with the TV making the sound even more.

The person was scheduled to show up today between 8 AM and noon. At 9:15 I get a phone call that he is on his way. I could barely understand what he said and asked him to repeat himself. I sense he gave me attitude about having to repeat himself. “I’m the Teee VEEEE repair man and I’M ON my WAY to YOUR House!” He shows up about 10 minutes later and he has some lozenge in he mouth. The whole time he is here he is sucking on it loudly. I don’t want to be rude, but MAN, can’t you eat your candy on your time?!?! Maybe it’s a morphine lozenge to hide the pain of his terminal cancer or some bizarre reason that he needs to continuosly and loudly suck on a lozenge.

That’s why I couldn’t understand him on the phone, he was talking on a cell phone, while in traffic, sucking on a 1 inch jaw breaker. Obviously, I’m the one haveing a problem.

So instead of fixing the set, he ordered a part, joking/flirting with the person on the other end of his cell phone. Not very professional if you ask me. At this point I’m not impressed with the level of service. Why didn’t he just bring the part? Maybe he wasn’t sure what the problem was, but when he was ordering the part he knew the part number by heart. Based on that fact I figure he must have had to replace the part on other sets, or it’s a universal part that many sets use.

Either way he could have one in the van, just in case, it’s the part on that particular TV that he has memorized that usally goes.

Now I’m going to have to waste another 1/2 day sitting around waiting for the lozenge sucker to come back and put the part in.

MAN! I’m so f"slurp"ing annoyed! “slurp”
-Sandwriter

p.s. How’d I do, should I swear more?
p.p.s. I’m I supposed to tip this guy? (just kidding!) (like I want 10 pages of "well, when I was a service employee…)

2

Yes, you should swear more.

Swearing in general is actually a good thing. Especially the word form “fuck.”

It can be used as noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. In any tense…

Just notice all the variations of fuck used at SDMB. Fuckity, fuck, fuck. Fuck’n A. Fuck hole. Fuckinator. My newest fave: Fuckwit (thank you Sleestack )

I find it useful in so many aspects of life.

“Fuck you, Dad! I’ll call Mom when I fuck’n feel like it!”

“Get the fuck out of my way!”

“Fuck’n A… I can’t believe you actually posted such a dumbshit statement. Do the people at that other board you post to fall down and worship the keys you type this vomitous drivel on? 'Cause I don’t. (Fuckwit)”

See how it adds weight to any statement?

FTR, I probably would call the TV guy a fuckwit to his face. I don’t need that kind of shit. Then I would call the service dept and register a complaint (Without using any swear words). But, that’s the kind of Fuck I am.

Hope the TV gets better.

3

Don’t get me wrong; it’s a fine rant. However, your three main points of contention seem to be:

  1. The TV repairman was eating candy while he worked on your TV.

  2. He didn’t magically know which part he was going to need and have it in the van already BEFORE he came to your house.

  3. He had a slight attitude about having to repeat himself on the phone.

Did I miss something, 'cuz those three things don’t seem all that rant-worthy. Maybe you had to be there.

4

Hey NoClue, Blowero,

Thanks for the great comments.

  1. The TV repairman didn’t work on the fucking TV. He just turned it on, verified that it was a problem with the flyback transformer, ordered the fucking part, and left.

  2. He actually did know the fucking part number he was going to need. When he called in the fucking part, he GAVE the fucking part number to the person on the other end. So how did he know the fucking part number? Either it is common to many TV sets, so he should have one or two in the fucking van, or it is the part that commonly goes out on my particular set, so since he knew what the symptoms and the model were, he should have one or two in the van.

How could he know the part fucking number by heart and not have one in the van. That’s what is killing me.

  1. He had more than a slight attitude about having to repeat himself. He gave me attitude about having to repeat himself WHEN IT WAS HIS fucking fault I couldn’t understand him. If you are going to fucking call someone on a cell phone while you are driving in traffic and sucking on a huge ass fucking jaw breaker, so big that being understood is a fucking problem, don’t lay it on me.

L8r,
-Sandwriter

5

Fuck that “smacking the TV” bullshit. If I had spent that much on a TV, I would have fuckin’ PRETENDED to do that and told ‘em it fuckin’ didn’t work. You NEVER fuckin’ smack anything to fix it until the warranty is void.
And I’d tell the repair guy that he doesn’t need no fuckin’ lozenge. Fix the TV or you can SUCK ON THIS.

My 2 cents, anyway.

6

You’re welcome. :wink:

Maybe the guy has a lot of experience and knows how to quickly diagnose a problem. Maybe he knows a LOT of part numbers by heart. If you work on TVs all day, it’s not inconceivable that you might memorize the part numbers. And do you honestly expect the guy to carry a bunch of spare Sony 32 inch flat screen WEGA flyback transformers in his van? Do you think the guy just works on Sony 32 inch flat screen WEGA TVs all day; or do you think he should cram his van with the thousands of parts he might conceivably need for every different model he works on during the day? He’s a repairman, not a warehouse. Sorry, but it just seems like an unreasonable expectation on your part.

O.K., I can see how that might be annoying. But the big question is, was his butt-crack showing while he was looking at the TV? Now THAT would be inexcusable.

7

This is how I think it fucking works, I may be wrong. He shows up to work, gets a call sheet. The call sheet contains the make and model of each TV at what location with a description of the user reported symptom. He looks at the sheet and based on his vast experience he sees, hmmm Sony WEGA, high pitched whine, that’s probably one of three things. I’ll load up the truck with those three fucking parts, so if it is one of the three things that I know that could be wrong, I will have the part and give excellent customer service. If it isn’t one of those three things then I’ll have to order a fucking part and come back.

I might be living in fucking dreamland, but If I was a TV repairman, I would want to be the best fucking TV repairman I could be.

I have a feeling this fucking guy showed up to work late, grabbed the call sheet, without reading it, and arrived at my house un-prepared.

Who the fuck knows?
-Sandwriter

8

And no, I didn’t see his fucking butt crack, he didn’t do any fucking work to give me the opportunity.

9

Superglue solves problems of noisy flyback tranformers, there isn’t really any need to replace it anyway.

10

Seal_Clubber - seems with a handle like that, that you would like to smack things. Anyway, the extended warranty is for 5 years, so I have 3 years left.

Casdave - at the end of three years I’ll be pouring bottles of superglue on the flyback. I’ll have probably have to tap you to find out how to identify it and the proper superglue appliction procedure.

11

All that is happening is that the varnish between the laminations of the core of the flyback tx ages with heat quite rapidly, this hardens, becomes brittle, and then the layers move apart, only by a few tenths of a thou but it can be enough.

All you do is get the thinnest liquid superglue you can find, and pour it on, whilst the tv is cold or the glue will set before it has penetrated deep enough.
Chances are…
As far as a warranty repair is concerned, he will get paid more for claiming from Sony for a warranty repair, but this will have to be justified by sending back the errant part to their depot.
Once it is out of warranty he has a choice, charge you megabucks for a replacement, or use superglue and just charge a call-out fee.

Sony and other manufacturers learn quite a lot from returned parts to improve their quality, so it is in their interest to have even a minor niggle like this brought to their attention, the repair man gets more money, so it is in his interest, and you get the new part(eventually)