Our sony 52" projection tv went out. We had no pic, but had sound. We called them to come out to look at it. The price for the onsite service call was 110.00. Once here, he took the tv apart and said that he thought it might need new soldering on some of the circuits on the main board. He stated at that point that if it fixed it, it would be 450.00 more.
At that point, we said " do it". He did, (took him all of 2-minutes) in which it still did not fix it. He then stated that it could be the jungle ic has gone bad and went out to check his truck for parts (stayed on the phone for approx. 20minutes) came back in and said that they would have to order it. Which would take about 1-2 weeks. The price for this would be 634.67.
The jungle ic part only cost 50.00. The rest was labor! I asked him that if we pay this amount, will this fix it for sure? He said "no" he was not sure that this was the problem. It may be something else and if it were then the bill would reflect that amount.
In other words, I still do not have any idea what is wrong with my tv, repair fees are up in the air, it could be 1,000's according to him and I paid 110.00 for what? In my mind, when you pay for a service, you get some kind of result. I did not receive a repair, a written estimate of repair or a true diagnosis.
After he couldn't give me an exact figure or tell me what was wrong with the tv, I called another repair center. When he arrived, he found that 3 out of 4 screws that held the back of my tv on were gone (it had never been opened prior) Once inside, he found a bag of parts (broken board clips, screws etc.) that went to my tv! The guy broke more parts in my tv and charged me 110.00 too!
Needless to say, my tv is still not fixed (parts supposedly on order) but the repair estimate from this person was 1/2 of what the other guy had mentioned. I feel like I was used to make a quick paycheck for the service technician and that he had no real plans of repairing my tv or he would have not given me such a ridiculously high repair estimate (verbal) with no guarantees!
At this point if the other center cannot repair it, then I will learn to do tv repair myself! I have located this part that is so hard for the repair technicians to find online. Price ranged from 19.00-50.00. I would be embarrassed if I were a service technician and quoted that kind of money for my time.
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