[craz8]

I have a $4500 LG OLED thin TV that is 2 years old and broken

The screen has had lines for a while, annoying, but not critical. Now there’s a power issue where it powers off in a few minutes

Now, this is out of warranty, and, it turns out, the 2 LG repair locations in the Seattle area no longer do TVs

LG know this is a problem - they are currently sending parts, and there’s a West Coast LG repair guy who will come and fix it when the parts arrive

A 4K $4k TV that isn’t that old and is almost un repairable is crazy

Anything with some exotic screen is going to cost more money and be harder to fix - pay for the extended warranty!

Note - my credit card has automatic extended warranty, but I need a quote for fixing the item, and there are absolutely no authorized repair people within 500 miles of Seattle to even get that!

[ssl-3]

Adjusted for inflation, I once spent nearly that much on a big (for the time), nice 1080P LCD TV.

I paid extra for an extended warranty.

After a couple of years the power supply started to fail, and the company that sold me the warranty had gone bankrupt.

You're not describing a new problem, I don't think.

(Next, can we talk about the reliability of exotic cars?)

[JoeAltmaier]

Ha! I paid for one on a pickup truck. When it needed something, I sent in the 12 documents required to make a claim. They returned it, with a letter saying 'you forgot the thirteenth double-secret document we didn't say you needed to send'. I gave up.

[mopenstein]

I bought the last dumb Vizio 55" TV over a decade ago at Walmart for around $600 and the dang thing won't die.

I want a bigger TV but I can't justify throwing this perfectly functioning television out.

Sucks to be me.

[dr_orpheus]

I've got a dumb Insignia TV that I think is getting ready to celebrate it's sweet 16! It's old, its heavy (I had to buy the TV mount that is typically for much larger TV's) but it survives and because its big they actually put larger audio drivers in there and it sounds fine without a sound bar.

Meanwhile another Insignia TV I bought more recently started getting dead pixels a couple days after the warranty expired...

[JoeAltmaier]

Idea: keep a croquet ball by your chair. When some favorite athlete performs badly at some Olympic event, throw the croquet ball at the screen!

Voila, you need a new TV.

[fuzzfactor]

There's no hiding the need for companies to condition consumers to understand that purchasing a top-shelf item is not supposed to be about investing in long-lasting quality any more. That's so 20th century.

To consume as directed you need to enjoy the most luxurious product you can get for your top-dollar, if you can afford it, with confidence that the features are at least on par with the modern bargain alternatives. That's a fairly definite bar when it comes to disposability/non-repairability, but engineering-to-specifications can adapt by being informed from experience with lesser models.

Don't worry, they really are intended to last as long as the cheapest crummiest models on the average.

[sqeaky]

"authorized repair people"

What is shit concept. As tech becomes more varied repairs will become more of a project instead of a process. I mean repairs will be more expensive and less likely to succeed (I think this will be offset by decreasing prices and wider parts availability).

Think about how many fields are already screwed over to the point of demanding legal protections for repairing their own stuff. Somehow Nebraska farmers and New York smartphone repair companies teamed up to push right to repair.

Somehow we need to bake this decentralized model of repair into our culture. If you can find "authorized repair people" in Seattle, then I certainly won't find them in Omaha. If parts are available I would certainly try repairs on my own. I recently fixed a kindle, and replaced a few phone screens, I built a 3d printer from parts, maybe I could fix a TV if the manufacturer doesn't actively stand in the way.