Conn's
52 Inch LCD TV Flickering, Store Refused Exchange, Repair Took Five Weeks

In early December our old TV finally died during a move so we went in search of a replacement. We purchased a 52" HD LCD Samsung from Conn's on Hwy 6 in Houston.

The next day the picture flickered and eventually went to test color patterns. Since we were also having problems establishing our cable it took us a couple days of trouble shooting to determine that the problem was the television.

When the tech came out he hit a couple buttons on the remote and the picture cleared up. (Boy did I feel silly...) He suggested that some of the newer HDTV's had compatibility issues with non-HD equipment and said if I continued to have problems to upgrade to HD equipment.

The video problems returned 3 days later. We upgraded to a HD cable box and Tivo. Both these resulted in a day of clear picture.

So... Call the service department the 2nd time and schedule repair visit. On the day scheduled the TV was perfectly clear. The tech (who was genuinely nice, told us to take pictures of the problem and unplug the television for 24 hours to see if that would reboot the system). When the picture flicker came back 2 hrs later, we did as instructed to no avail.

3rd call to service. Tech comes out, finds loose connection on one of the cards. Plugging it in securely did nothing to fix problem. Tech says that new parts will need to be ordered. Ah-ha! Now we can exchange the item since we have done everything possible to fix it, right? Wrong.

After many hours on hold with customer service and a laundry list of people we've talked with (including president Tom Franks), we've essentially been told that they will not exchange a defective product. They are perfectly willing to come out and fix it, but will not exchange it, period.

Now in my mind, when you start replacing parts, an item is no longer new, it's refurbished. After much stomping up and down, they 'expedited' the part order. On the other hand, it will be 6 days before they can send a tech out to install it. It will be 5 wks from purchase date to hopefully have a functional television. In the mean time, we have bought a smaller flatscreen from Circuit City.

Bottom line, if you buy from Conn's hope like heck that it works out of the box, because they're not gonna let you exchange it.

Company: Conn's
Country: USA
State: Texas
City: Beaumont
Address: 3295 College St
Phone: 4098321696

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