He said, I said, but he said and then I said...a look at the facts again

This post is a response to a buyer's review on eBay that we blamed everything but our own parts for his problems.

I've said it before and I'll repeat once again that people take the freedom of speech waaaay to far.

So instead of exercising in a free speech like many customers tend to do I'll yet again refer to the actual fact as they can be verified with an independent party, in this case - the eBay messaging:

You judge for yourself.

Customer review:
Went bad. Seller Blamed everything but his part. Ive repaired tv's for 10 years

 (author's note: why do so many people write "tv's" as opposed to "TVs"? Is it really incorrect as I think it is or is it just me? Not picking on this particular buyer, I often see it written that way especially by customers claiming to be 10 or more years in the business. Either English has a set of rules that I don't know of or...well, anyway, back to the point...)

Customer correspondence as fetched from the eBay history:

From: mainstreetpc
To: coppelltvrepair
Subject: Other: mainstreetpc sent a message about 6871QZH056B 6870QZH004B ZSUS BOARD *** REPAIR KIT *** #110623320783
Sent Date: Jul-23-11 09:28:53 PDT

Dear coppelltvrepair, Hi, I just wanted to let you know that this repair kit worked for about 2 days after it was installed and then blew again. Thanks Micky

---

 

Dear mainstreetpc, It does happen sometimes. Sometimes it's because of the IC in the kit - it may be just bad. People tend to presume this as the only possible reason. Sometimes it's the way it is being installed. I know because I've done hundreds of these myself. How do you apply the heat transfer compound. How do you fasten and what bolts do you use to fasten the heat sink. How do you solder. Sometimes it's other components on the board that were hit during the initial shock when the first IC failed or just components (particularily the second FET) that are so worn out they just give up and damage the IPM in the aftermath of their own failure. I've seen that too and I've seen it enough times to be certain it's a failure cause on its own that has nothing to do with the IPM. And sometimes - quite often actually after a few days pass with the baord working - it's actually the OTHER sustain board that fails and people call us and tell us that the one we repaired for them failed. I know that for a fact too since we do lots of those repairs and you can't really argue with numbers. So yes, it can be any of the above. if I had a firm way knowing which one it was I'd told you in advance and if I knew an IC would fail I would not have sold it. What would you do in my place, with so many possibilities and no engineering strict way to narrow down and avoid the problem? - coppelltvrepair

Dell W5001C power issues, sound without picture problem and some other thoughts

Below is a request from a potential customer and my response to it.

This time it is not the usual customer complains, I promise.

The email, I take it, points to an earlier post in this blog, where the issue is also mentioned...but I figured I'd post the question and the answer anyway.

After all other professionals deserve to know what we think about them...and maybe even that we tend to sometimes admit we might be wrong...

Question:  How much to send in what ever boards for you guys to fix?  I turn the power on, and it takes 3...4...5  8 mins for it to boot up.  Then the tv is fine for hours and hours.

The Caps look good, but like you said maybe they are out.  I read a few ppl that posted after they did the fix you told them they get no picture now but sound and high pitch sound.

So how much and what are the odds you can fix my issues.

Thanks,

Another DELL Suckka

Kevin

Answer:

First off, Dell has very little to do with all this.

Like most American brands these days it's just a hat over an Asian company. In this case - Samsung.

The few ppl who have picture but no sound have a completely different problem (probably this one), which is the actually the even more common issue with those TVs and is more expensive to fix too; it is completely unrelated to the delayed power on.

What you describe sounds 100% like bad capacitors. It may be the ones from the post, it may be different ones...it may even be capacitors not on the power board, but on the main board...because there are ones in both places and they actually even do the same things...so there's always chance that it may be the other ones that have gone bad...and there are quite a few of them too.

But, statistically speaking, you can't go wrong starting with the ones the article talks about.

I know that's what I'd do before investigating anything else.

Working in TV repair industry for a while made me rethink my opinion of doctors who tell you bunch of seemingly useless stuff to do whenever they see you.

I mean if you see 50:1 ratio of problems with certain syndromes it is only natural - a sign of intelligence, in fact - to expect that the every new case with such symptoms will carry the same cause and therefore be treated the same way...especially if there's no big hurt doing it anyway.

Seriously, doctors are maybe not such a morons after all :-)