HL-R5067W hard to turn on

[Jason1976]

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[lcaillo]

RRAZ wrote:

I agree that low-price shopping can be its own 'reward'. However, there is a certain amount of deception on the part of the manufacturer too. I researched far and wide at the time I bought my set - as no doubt did many others. Reviewers were resoundingly in favor and I have yet to find a salesman in an electronics store that will tell me any stocked product is unreliable. Today one just has to type "Samsung DLP problem" into Google to be well warned.

As a consumer it is extremely difficult to sort through all the advertising chaff to make a sound choice. High price is no guarantee of high quality either. At least in my area, no one at all services what they sell. The retailers sell and the servicers service. Neither has any incentive to do differently in a race to the bottom.

The best answer I can think of is a regulatory minimum manufacturer warranty of 2 or 3 years. This forces all makers to up their game (and their prices). How else can you raise the bar?

Why should we mandate a warranty? Why should one not be able to choose to take a risk and buy a set with a lower cost. As it is right now, you can buy an extended warranty or not. The public wants high technology at low prices. This is why your salesmen do not know nor care about the quality of the products they sell, and why dealers do not provide significant service nor make hard decisions on what to carry. I you have mandated warranty for 3 years, what will you expect when something breaks at 3.5years? What do you think the added cost will be for vendors to cover products for that period? Why should everyone be required to pay that price?

The better way to raise the bar is to demand better products. Money talks and when people buy cheap consistently in large numbers it lowers the bar. If you want to buy cheap products and not have the risk, buy an extended warranty.

It is very clear to me that there is a significant difference between for instance, Sony and Samsung in terms of reliability and service support. I work on both and see occasional patterns of failure in Sony products. The difference is that they are far less common and when they are severe Sony had stepped up to extend warranties. The problems with the light engines in the SXRD and LCD RPTVs are a great example. They have replaced thousands of sets at no charge even though they were far out of warranty. Samsung has not done the same on many more patterns of high failure rate products, even when may have been catastrophic. The Japanese have been far more responsive to issues like this than the Korean and Chinese companies. I have administered many out of warranty repairs covered by Sony and Mitsubishi over the years. It just does not happen nearly as much with Samsung unless the product is within a few months of warranty.

The onus is on the consumer to be smart and be aware of the possibilities when making a purchase. No you will not get straight answers out of salesmen, manufacturers, nor reviewers. There are other ways to get an idea of the trends in various products, and forums like this are a good place to start. Another is to get to know the people who do the service. Much of this is explained in the stickies in the Service and Support forums.

[RRAZ]

lcaillo wrote:

Why should we mandate a warranty? Why should one not be able to choose to take a risk and buy a set with a lower cost. As it is right now, you can buy an extended warranty or not. The public wants high technology at low prices. This is why your salesmen do not know nor care about the quality of the products they sell, and why dealers do not provide significant service nor make hard decisions on what to carry.

Why does everyone provide a 1 yr warranty in the US and a 2 yr warranty in the EU? Why are electronics reasonably safe in all jurisdictions? Regulation. Arguably prices could be even lower if we freed manufacturers from the burden of any regulation at all!

It is extremely difficult (probably impossible) for the consumer to get enough information to make an informed decision on durability. Advertising is not "accurate consumer information" and in any case almost never addresses durability. By the time this product fails, perhaps two subsequent models have superseded it. Mass merchandisers have low prices because they buy and sell nationwide in volumes that a local service dealer can never match. Honestly, if I had miraculously found a local Samsung servicing dealer and paid MSRP - would my experience be any different? So, blaming the consumer for choosing low price is a bit like blaming the victim.

The better way to raise the bar is to demand better products. Money talks and when people buy cheap consistently in large numbers it lowers the bar. If you want to buy cheap products and not have the risk, buy an extended warranty.

An extended warranty is not a warranty - it is an insurance policy with zero feedback to the manufacturer to improve the product. Since the premiums are averaged over all products, the rates are of no use to consumers in choosing a brand.

It is very clear to me that there is a significant difference between for instance, Sony and Samsung in terms of reliability and service support.

This is good information - but hard to come by for average consumers, who ONLY find this out when their expensive purchase fails, and IF they are inquisitive enough to haunt forums like this. Maybe others jsut got dumb lucky and blundered in here, but I have spent dozens of hours trying to find solutions to this problem. (Reading between the lines, qualified persons such as yourself seem to flame out early under the deluge of raging consumer invective and are exceeding to hard to find on-line.)

... forums like this are a good place to start. Another is to get to know the people who do the service. Much of this is explained in the stickies in the Service and Support forums.

I can see the pristine logic of this from a technician's perspective. Your services here are invaluable and I take nothing away from them, but most of us, when quoted a repair that is 50% of the purchase price, never get to form a warm and fuzzy compact with a tech (and I say that with full understanding of the economics). As I said earlier - its a race to the bottom.

[lcaillo]

The point is that the race is run and driven by consumer demand. It is why we have walmart.

What is the problem with just buying an extended warranty?

I have no problem with modest regulation that really accomplishes something, but I cannot see a way to make a significant difference in this industry that makes sense from a regulatory or legislative perspective. Just requiring that companies have longer warranties will do little more than raise prices and create more short lived vendors who simply go out of business when their garbage products break too much for them to be able to afford to replace.

[RRAZ]

lcaillo wrote:

The point is that the race is run and driven by consumer demand. It is why we have walmart.

What is the problem with just buying an extended warranty?

Extended warranties don't stimulate the right economic incentives - it decouples the makers from standing behind their own products. The insurance industry does BETTER the WORSE the products are. A few years ago no-one bought "product insurance" because the products were durable. NOW its foolish not to. But if anything it provides incentives for the electronics industry to make LESS reliable products - its all up to the insurers now!

As it happens I bought a 2 yr extension - it wasn't enough. Folks like me were trained in the early days of consumer electronics ... when my Dad threw his TV out, it was still working!

Walmart has excelled in creating the lowest cost supply chain in the world. That in itself is not a bad thing.

Some electronics companies are exploiting the niche of countering a world of disposable products with their own durable product line. (I just bought a Gigabyte "Ultra Durable" motherboard as the platform for my latest computer. 3-yr manuf. warranty is standard) It can't come to appliances and TVs fast enough.