Television repair. Have I been scammed? (Long)

In My Humble Opinion
1

Last week while putting our TV back on its stand I noticed that the RF input was extremely loose. It occurred to me that our picture had been a bit fuzzy of late and that this was probably the cause. I tightened the nut that keeps it in place but instead of fixing the problem, the input fell off the TV!

The television is about 5 years old and I told my wife that it would probably be more expensive to fix it than it was worth but she said we should find out anyway. I called a relatively large scale retailer who did TV repair and he echoed my sentiment and suggested that I bring it to a mom and pop store who may charge less. I called a little repair store and was quoted a price of $45 - $79 for the repair. $45 would be the estimate cost and would be added into the full cost of the repair. I know for a fact that he said $45 because I wrote it down as he told me over the phone.

On Thursday I brought the TV in for repair. Mr. Repair guy asked me for $55 up front. I assumed (we all know what happens) that after looking at the TV he had decided that $55 is what the full charge would be, so I paid him. He told me that it would be done that afternoon. He did not even work on it until Friday afternoon. He called me at about 4pm to tell me there was a problem. He claims that he put the RF input back on the TV and went to plug in the set but got no power. Before I brought the TV in, I plugged it in and got static on the screen. Now he says that he doesn’t. He explained that to get to the input he had to remove the chassis and it’s possible something came loose. He also claims that the TV was not brand new when we purchased it but rather refurbished because he says someone has worked on it before. Therefore he isn’t really responsible that something went wrong while fixing the input. Also, he now tells me that the $55 was the estimate cost only, not $45. This guy is starting to seem kind of shady to me.

Here is where the “scam” comes in. He quoted me a new price of $180 for all of the work, more than the cost of the TV. I told him I would call back after discussing it with my wife. This is when it dawned on me. I told my wife that we owed a balance of $24 for the input that he replaced and that I was willing to bet that when I called him back he would say that if we did not continue with the repairs, he would cancel the balance and keep the “broken” TV if we liked. In essence we would be paying him to $55 to take it off our hands! Sure enough this is what he did.

I have the following options.
A) Pick up the TV (which he has probably rigged if it wasn’t broken to begin with), pay him $79 and go home with a completely worthless TV

B) Leave the TV with him after paying him $55. He will fix the TV anyway and then sell it.

C) Have you fine people tell me your opinions/experiences so I can see if I have other options.

So what do you think?

2

Well, you had a bit of a miscommunication at the beginning, by not clarifying what the $55 was for.

Leave him the TV and get yourself a new one, and take this as a lesson learned.

If you want, you can get the serial number of your tv, go back in to “buy” it and say, “Hey, you said it was beyond repair!”

3

He never said beyond repair. Just expensive for me to have him repair. As for the $55, I agree. I should have clairfied I’m just saying that I feel he wasn’t on the up and up from the get go.

As for the new TV we bought one already but were repairing that one to use in another room.

I think we will leave the TV but wanted to see if others had a similiar experience.

4

I think it depends on the contract you signed. It should state how much the estimate is, etc. I would just get a new tv & not from him. Maybe a tv with more than one input …

Was it a nice big tv? Like a Sony Wega 32" ?

One time I took a vcr in. A YEAR later the guy said he couldn’t do anything with it & no charge for his time.

5

Unless the TV is fairly nice dump it and let him have it. New flatscreen CRTs are inexpensive and will give a better picture anyway and will have a new warranty.

6

That brings back memories of those televisions we had when I was a kid. Back then, you paid a lot of money for televisions, and you them repaired. My dads friend was a television repairman, and I remember times when he would come over to the house, take the back off of the television, and replace the tubes inside.

Nowadays, with televisions being so damn cheap, I just throw mine out and replace them when they break.

7

When you get a quote for a repair it is usually on site, certainly for something as simple as the fault you mention.Taking the tv away is usually for something like an intermittant fault for bench testing or for a blown component not usually carried in the van.

Go down there, collect the tv yourself and check to see what has been done, and if it does the same thing as when you handed to him, or maybe ask him to demonstrate the lack of working in the premises.

You don’t mention the tv type, but removing the chassis is dead easy, you have a handful of connectors to remove and nowadays there are quick release clips to slide the mainboard out.

I’m a bit surprised he had to take the chassis out to replace the R.F socket since these are usually mounted on a subframe that stays in place when the back is removed, you usually have to remove the subframe(if at all) to get the chassis out, not the other way around.

Fact is that if he admits that he may have caused another fault whilst repairing the original, then he is liable for that remedial work, this is SOP in the tv repair game.
You could try and trap him into admitting that, it would help if someone was with you to hear this.

You could take the tv somewhere else, get it repaired and then take him to small claims and recover that cost from him, the threat might have some effect.

Point being, he claimed he would have it done by a certain time, it was not, he did not call you to explain this, I assume you do not have a reasonable explanation from him why he was so poor in his time estimation, all makes good background for a small claims tribunal.

…is it worth it, well how many others has he done this to ?.. and how many more will he do this to?

8

It would be worth the extra $24 to me to get it back, for no other reason than to deprive this hack of “fixing” it and selling it to someone else. My father has repaired televisions for about 30 years, and we used to get many customers that had been treated this way by other shops.

Lots of TVs I’ve seen have the RF input mounted directly in the tuner itself. This can be a very expensive repair. BUT, the inputs that are mounted this way are harder to damage in the first place, so I guess it’s a tradeoff.