Panasonic 42C10 service centre issues

[ittiam]

Hello guys,

This forum is amazing. There is so much of useful info here. You guys are awesome.

Here is my saga so far,
I'm Bangalore and I picked up this Panasonic 42C10 from e-zone Indiranagar. After using for about 10 days I realized that there is lot of vibration in the TV set when I increase the volume. So, I promptly logged a case with Panasonic. The technician admitted that there is some issue and said he'd replace the speakers. I immediately called up ezone and asked for replacement since it was a new TV. Thye said it had to be done from Panasonic. The Panasonic folks replaced the speakers with no avail. The vibration continued and I insisted on replacement. They finally agreed and took away my TV giving me a stand by. They made yet another attempt to give back repaired TV. I insisted on replacement. They finally sent me a different C10 (supposedly new one). I turned on the TV and did not give any i/p. In the darkness I could see "Colors" channel burnt in in the
panel. The service head insisted that it was a new set and they had turned it on for testing and it could be the result of that and next day everything would be fine.

I made the remark on the job sheet and sent away the service guy after accepting the set.
I asked him to show the usage in service menu and he said he'd not know.

Now, after 3hrs they have left, I figured out that the usage hours shown is 195 and number of times tv was turned on was around 200.

So, guys is this normal for a new TV? I am thinking of proceeding with a consumer complaint because the vibration is still present and I'm being cheated.

Any inputs?

 

[Dushie]

200 times is not normal for a new tv. 195 usage hours is very high and they would not run it for so many hours for quality testing. Most probably they have given a refurbished set. Which is not that old.

 

[gadgetcrazy]

195 hours would still be OK I guess, since I read somewhere that they break in the plasma before they ship it to the consumer. However it does not make any sense that it has been turned on 200 times.
Did you check for other markers to see if it has been used as a display in a showroom?

 

[Dushie]

gadget i disagree with you on the same, no company breaks in the plasma set before shipping. Even in US they ship itjust like that and the end users themselves do the break in. Also if you read the manuals that come with most of the current generation plasmas it says that no beak in period is needed.

ittiam : if the set is working fine and looks as good as new you can continue to use the same as i don't foresee any issues.
Otherwise escalate it high up with panasonic and ask them to give u a brand new box piece.

Personally i will never recommend to buy from ezone as they have many times sold display pieces claiming that they are new out of the box with discounts.

 

[ittiam]

Thanks guys.

There are no markers as such (cuts/scratches). But, the TV certainly doesn't look that shiny etc. (esp. the bezel) It works fine and I somehow feel that image quality is worse than my original set (now, that could be a hallucination, but, i don't have anything else to compare it against).

I've escalated it to regional head and other channels and waiting for their reply. I'm demanding my money back. Lets see if I need a consumer complaint.

Does anyone have any experience with consumer forums? I'd like to know more about how to go about it before vising a consumer court myself (in Bangalore). Does it have to be filed at Panasonic HQ city? I'm also planning to file the suite against e-zone for their lack of responsibility in this issue. Can I do it in Bangalore.

Thanks again for your ip guys.

 

[thevortex]

ittiam - for what it is worth, I am aware of the vibration issue with the speakers on the C10. I think it is just that the speakers are so poor that they cannot produce low bass notes (not talking real low here). In trying to though, the speakers vibrate. They are fine with normal speech output.

I get around this because I rarely if ever use the TV audio output.

 

[Dushie]

vortex its a good point to consider about, most of the plasma tv owners, including myself hardly use the tv inbuilt speakers, they will have it connect to home theater or external speakers hence we would never get to know of any such issues, but users using the inbuilt speakers can face such issues and problems like these can come up.

Maybe other C10 users in the forum can try out the same and shed some light on this.