I thought I’d never say that.
I have always recommended Sony brand for laptops, desktops, and televisions. As for TV’s, the picture was unreal on my past big screens and although I had issues with each one of them, Sony ended up replacing them. So, I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
However, their customer service has gone way downhill lately (as has just about every company’s customer service, it seems) and the latest issues I’ve been having with my Sony have simply been the last straw. I cannot in good conscience recommend Sony after my latest frustrations.
I have a Sony KDS–R60XBR1 and I chose it because of the spectacular picture and the intense brightness and quality. Even after a year or two, the picture it originally had cannot be easily beaten.
However, that picture is a distant memory for me.
Now, I see nothing by heavily yellowed images. I mean, EVERYTHING is yellow. It looks like the colors are all filtered to the yellow end of the spectrum. It is simply horrible. It started out as a couple of splotches here and there and got worse and worse. In the beginning, it was barely noticeable. My friends all told me I was imagining it.
Then, as the months went by… the entire picture began to yellow and it got worse. That’s when my friends started to see what I was talking about. I would adjust the visual settings and try to get rid of the yellow hue, and it seemed to work a bit. So, that bought me a few more months. However, it is now at a stage where no settings matter, and everything is VERY yellow.
What’s even worse is that now the picture is becoming fuzzy and the TV goes completely blank every few minutes and resets –as if you just turned it off and back on. This means, I am able to watch all of about 1-2 minutes of TV within a 5 minutes period. You can imagine how annoying that must be!
I performed quite a bit of research and found that this issue affects more than 80% of ALL TVs of this model. Sony was very reluctant to fix the issue for its customers -which is kind of crappy considering that the problem (the Optics Board or Light Engine) is more than $900 USD to repair! What’s worse is that an estimated 50% of the replacements go bad within the next year. That’s just pitiful. What a horrible engineering flaw.
In my case, I’ve got no recourse. I called Sony support and got a claim number. After going through 30 minutes of troubleshooting, they finally succumbed to the fact that my TV had the infamous “yellow screen optic board issue“. They then issued me a warranty ticket and said they would pay for the repairs (since the class action lawsuit is forcing them to do so).
“Great,” I thought. So, I called the local repair shop that Sony provided and began the process. However, I bought my TV off of Craigslist and have no receipt. Since I do not know the number under which it was purchased nor the place of purchase, it would seem that I am out of luck. This should serve as a warning when buying used TV’s online.
In the end, I was unable to get repair, and even if I could, there’s no telling how long before the next repair will be needed. And once the covered repairs would have gotten my TV to last long enough to be out of the mandatory service period, I would still be out of luck.
Suffice it to say, this is my last Sony big screen television.
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