My wife recently purchased a 27-inch HDTV from a Craigslist posting (like an online classified ad…the seller was a private individual). I think it’s a somewhat older CRT-style HiDef TV.
The TV seemed fine, nice picture and everything, but after about half an hour it suddenly emitted a very high frequency whine at the edge of hearing.
This whine is very annoying. Turning the TV off and back on seems to get rid of it for a while, but it comes back after a few minutes of operation.
Both my wife and I hear this sound.
The seller claims not to have been aware of any problems.
A TV repair place told us (over the phone) that such a whine is usually produced by a loose coil vibrating at high frequency. It seems possible that a coil could have become loose when we transported the TV, although we were quite careful; but it sounds possible that the sound was caused by damage and thus not necessarily the seller’s fault.
Is it worth paying “under $150” in labor plus unknown parts charges (I don’t know if a coil is expensive or not, assuming that’s the problem) to have it repaired? Is Craigslist essentially “buyer beware”? The seller has offered somewhat reluctantly to take it back, but we want to be fair.
Or should we just eat the loss, consider it a lesson learned, and buy a new TV from a reputable dealer who accepts returns?
Opinions or anecotes invited.
Sailboat
It’s possible that the original owner did not hear the whine. I hear monitor/TV whines when a lot of other people don’t. When I was a teenager I worked in a computer store and I could tell at the end of the day if we’d mistakenly left any monitor on because I could hear it.
Nobody else could hear a thing, and thought I was some kind of kook for pointing it out.
As far as what you should do - well, buyer beware when you buy used stuff. I can’t imagine that it would be anything less than a headache to get the original owners to do anything.
Did you try whacking the side of it?
The Arthur Fonzarelli School of Electronic Repair. 
If the image is very good and it is not too old, I’d take it to a very reputable repair place. Likely the coil is either loose or failing.
I know a CRT is failing when I hear a hissing sound when it fires up.
You don’t mention how old the TV might be, but I’d be leary about paying for parts and $100+ to repair a TV you don’t really know anything about.
With no real effort, you can get a new 27" LCD HDTV for under $500, and with some looking, for under $400.
I personally consider craigslist to be buyer beware, so I think it would be unfair to ask for the money back, especially given that you can’t actually be certain that this guy was dishonest. This is just one of the the risks of buying on craigslist, and also the reason prices are so cheap. If craigslist sales implied money-back guarentee, then the prices would be higher and scavengers like me couldn’t outfit their entire apartment .
If you don’t fix the TV, then I might suggest just putting it back up on craigslist and include an honest disclosure of the problem. Just say what the repair store told you, and say that you’re not interested in fixing it yourself. Of course, you’ll probably only get a few dollars, if anything, but there may be some poor student out there who doesn’t care about the noise, and you’ve saved the trouble of hauling it out to the curb.