Sometimes the little guy WINS!

Gee, this blog should be more about graphic design and art, huh? But lately my theme seems to revolve around consumer issues... perhaps because of the man I'm married to. He's quiet and thoughtful, but when his sense of unfairness or injustice is tapped he's quite tenacious! Case in point, our "fight" with Samsung.

After his bonus at the end of 2007, when the economy didn't seem so dire, Tim decided to reward himself for all his hard work by purchasing a big screen plasma TV. He bought a 58" Samsung model. It was great -- beautiful picture, a nice swivel stand so that it could be viewed from various points in the room. After initial suspicion and unease about the sheer size of the thing, I embraced it too. We even invited my Mom over to watch movies and SHE liked it.

But then, within less than a year, the burn-in set in. My husband noticed it first, and he tried to eradicate it with the programs on the TV to "clear the screen", leaving it on for periods of time with a white screen and gradated bars moving slowly across it. The cats were transfixed, I was slightly annoyed. I was willing to ignore this whole burn-in problem, but Tim was getting more and more annoyed. He'd spent a large sum of money for this "gadget" and it wasn't working right -- it just wasn't right!

First he called about the warranty, but was informed that burn-in wasn't covered. Then he tried the retailer he'd purchased it from, but they couldn't help. A "tech" was called in from the manufacturer, and pronounced that there was, indeed, burn-in on this less than year old product. But there was nothing to be done about it, if those "clear screen" programs didn't take care of it, well then we were just out of luck. Tim didn't like this answer. Escalating the fight further, he sent a letter to the attorney general of New Jersey where Samsung was incorporated. I thought nothing would come of this... a needle in a haystack for large faceless corporations like Samsung, but I was wrong.

Low and behold, within a week we got a call from a woman at Samsung who handled things like this. She was going to arrange for us to return this monster and get (most) of our money back! I was amazed! And skeptical, I didn't believe that this would actually happen. But Tim was convinced, convinced enough to have me help move this 100+ pound monster off the TV stand and out of the way -- and purchase a new LCD big screen TV from the same company! (apparently his research showed that their LCD product was they best in it's class) Ack!! "What if they never give us the refund?"... but they did. Several weeks ago two men came with a truck and took the offending plasma back to dead plasma land and handed me a check. I ran to the bank and deposited it. So far so good.

I really can't believe it, but sometimes the squeaky wheels does win!