However in my case the car lot was Best Buy and the car was my brand new LG 42LE5400 LED HDTV.
Originally this was going to be a great, fun, total geek out post about the splendedness of finally buying something nice for myself that would take my gaming experience to the next level, but, as in this audio sketch about the proper usage of the word “fuck” (Which is often falsely attributed to Monty Python. It is a historical recording by the “Voice of Disneyland”, Jack Wagner.)
I am instead going to tell you exactly WHY purchasing this particular model right now is just a GIANT SCAM and you should NOT do it.
I will begin this exaggerated, rage-quit rant with the happy side: The excitement leading up to the fateful event and the fun of unpacking a brand new, albeit expensive, toy.
Let’s begin at the beginning. After months of saving and weeks of debating and waiting for just the right sale, today it happened! The Lebanon, NH Best Buy got in a shipment of LG 42″ 1080p LED-HDTVs with 120Hz refresh rate and the online sale price of only $999.99 (A $400 savings from the full retail price) was an instant winner for me. The next closest option was a 40″ Samsung identical to one owned by my buddy Jesse Durona over at ABHR (Check out his great kids comics!!!) but cost $100 more and lacked the internet connectivity of the LG (which was it’s ultimate un-doing…read on!)
Anyway, with storms brewing in VT today (Producing some AWESOME looking clouds:)
I decided I should not wait any longer and go snag this deal up like the bandit I am. Hopped in my tiny 99′ Civic SI, sped over to Lebanon, NH to hit up the only Best Buy that’s not a 3 hour drive away and swipe this steal of a deal up. The thing BARELY fit in my car.
I celebrated briefly with some Taco Bell, then promptly drove home as the sky was getting darker again after a LARGE thunder head just missed nailing The Junc:
I beat the next round and began unpacking my bundle of joy. To give you a better idea of just how big this thing is boxed up, here it is in my living room just after pulling it out of the back seat of my car. (It obstructed my rear-view the entire drive…kinda nerve wracking trying to back out of parking spaces.)
Set up went very smoothly!
The storm came and went as fast as it took me to pull the TV out and attach the stand. The sun then burst through as the rain continued to pound down, producing both a super well defined rainbow (even tho my camera on my phone couldn’t pick it up well) and a etherial, creepy fog that rolled down the river.
The weather was awesome, the sun was shining and my new experience in visual stimuli was about to be underway! Everything about this TV was amazing; the picture quality, the ease of set up, the internet connectivity. One of the first things I had to do was update the firmware…3 separate times! (This is where the problem truly began…though I would not know it just yet.) Yes, a TV that UPDATES via the web. Amazing. Even the REMOTE had a WIDGETS button…seriously, a TV with Widgets?! Damn snazzy!
But this however, is where it all went wrong. After setting up a few core features, I began to explore said widgets. I could Flickr, check the weather, news…even TWEET from my TV…but then, it all went wrong. The Weather Widget menu suddenly froze up, a hangup as it was updating a location online…then the TV shut off ON ITS OWN. Okay…I thought about it for a second and figured it was a safety measure for when a menu gets hung up…like a certain failed safety measure that failed for a certain oil rig in the Gulf…but I digress. I turned the unit back on and…and…wait…what….what the FUCK?
LINES. Nothing but lines. The audio was fine, the channels changed, and I’ll even bet the menus came up when I hit the button, but my picture was replaced, at first, by staticky shifting lines, later becoming stationary.
NERD RAGE GO. I jump on LGs website immediately, almost every major company that manufactures anything HAS to have a Live Chat feature on their site for customer service. I was right and began chatting with (some out-sourced guy from the Middle East) a representative. Long story short, after supplying them with my model information and my trouble shoots they tell me it’s my Firmware….
…and they don’t have a fix for it yet. I straight up asked the guy if he was kidding. He said of course not. I dug further. I have come to found out that this problem began as soon as they released this firmware update at the BEGINNING of July. They’ve known about it for a full 2 weeks and “have engineers working on a solution.” Once one if found, so they claim, they will release a new firmware to fix the problem…firmware I will not be able to update to since I can’t see the menus used to update said firmware. In that case they say they’ll send out a Technician to do it manually. The next question on my mind of course is time table…again no idea of when.
By now I’m quite livid that such a thing would even be allowed to go on for 2 weeks without recalling or at LEAST pulling the defective items off the shelves OR, pulling the defective firmware update from their servers and sticking with the previous, stable version. Either way…I have a case number and will be emailing them DAILY for a week until the problem is either fixed or I go into BB for a refund/replacement of equal value.
To reiterate, this is a SCAM because the length of time they’ve known about the problems leads me to believe that is the reason the products are selling at such an enormous discount right now. I refused Best Buy’s “Black Tie” service…not that they could do anything about this, but I feel like that most people making this purchase with less tech-saviness than myself would go for something like that…only to discover the same problem I’ve had and be forced to make use of the Black Tie service…to get the same result.
Do NOT purchase this product from LG or Best Buy until AFTER a solution has been found. (and of course the price goes back up.) I’m not a very patient man and will probably go get that Samsung tomorrow. I do hope others learn from my mistake!
-RD
