LG 42LD550 tuner problem

Bill Jardine

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While watching a channel the picture suddenly froze then the "no signal" icon appeared. Attempted a rescan but no channels found. Have tried switching off at the plug several times and a factory reset, but the antenna symbol is now greyed out in the input window and the time is no longer displayed. All I get is "not programmed".
To check the aerial cable I pulled it out of the TV's coaxial socket and plugged it into a smaller 10" LCD tv. Picture was perfect.
TV is just over two years old.
Is this a tuner failure and if so how common is this type of failure and what's involved in a repair?
 
I bought the tv from Pixmania so I'll start with them.
I feel that for the price paid I should expect more than 25 months without component failure.
Does anyone have any experience in dealing with LG on out of warranty issues?
 
Update, decided to contact LG customer support instead and received the reply below.
I'll phone the contact number tomorrow and ask whether LG will reimburse me for the report if it confirms that the television tuner has failed.



Thank you for your email regarding your 42LD550,

Based on the information you have provided me with and reading through your query, I can advise you that in order for LG to be able to offer any kind of percentage off of a repair or for a free repair service, we will need you to obtain an aerial engineers report stating that the aeriel is fully functional and the tv is at fault. Otherwise a registered tv engineer will need to provide a report stating the television is faulty and this a manufacturers fault. We would then require you to contact us on 0844 847 5454 where we can create a profile for yourself and give you a reference number and the relevant email address to send the report to. We will then escalate this to our head office. We apologise for any inconvenience.

I hope this has been of assistance to you. However, if the information I have provided does not help you or if you have any further questions please email again or contact our Customer Service Team again on 0844 8475454 or via the Web Chat facility on our website and we will endeavour to do our best to resolve your query.
 
Further update.
Contacted LG head office who weren't interested, the Sale of Goods Act applied to the retailer. They also stated that "electronic appliances faults can occur at any given time".

Phoned Pixmania who were very helpful. They asked me to get an engineer's report confirming that there was a fault (not fit for purpose) and send to them. Once they had the report they would pay for the repair of the fault and the cost of the engineer's report.

Television gets picked up next week and taken to the workshop to be checked out.
Will update over the next few weeks.
 
Worth cosidering splashing out £20 (plus an HDMI lead) for a Freeview HD box as your TV currently only has an SD tuner. You will certainly notice the difference watching the HD channels on a 42inch screen
 
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I realise that the TV can be "fixed" by using an external tuner. I'm chasing the supplier/manufacturer because I'm annoyed about an expensive (quality?) TV barely over two years old developing this kind of fault. I'm also annoyed by the response of LG who seem to think that a 12 month parts and warranty for a TV is acceptable.
 
I'm also annoyed by the response of LG who seem to think that a 12 month parts and warranty for a TV is acceptable.

But the LG warranty is in addition to your legal rights. They don't have to provide it at all.
Your legal rights are covered by the retailer not LG.
 
Do you think that the warranty period on a television should be the same as an electric kettle?
 
Final update.
Left this till now because I decided to take out a small claims summons against Pixmania.

After endless emails to and from Pixmania customer services I was getting nowhere. I had forwarded an initial repair estimate to them from a nationwide authorised repair centre. This was followed up by an inspection / invoice report stating that "We would consider this failure to be a manufacturing defect in this particular set since it would be unusual to experience failure in this timeframe." The report was completed on company headed paper and signed by a representative of the repair centre.

Pixmania's response to this was that the inspection report must contain the words "not fit for purpose" and that the report must bear a company stamp. I dissagreed with this and told them why. Finally I was told by Pixmania that I would be contacted to arrange verbal communication with one of their representatives to help resolve the matter. It never happened.

That was the final straw. I decided to pay for the repair of the television myself and raise a small claims summons against Pixmania. This was issued in late October.

I was contacted in early December by Pixmania's European Mediation Manager. They acknowledged the summons and apologised for the trouble I'd had and the resolution timeframe. They wanted to resolve the matter ASAP and were prepared to cover the full cost. This included the cost of raising the summons plus interest on the sum being claimed for. I have now, at last, had the money paid into my bank account.
 
That's fairly typical. Too much trouble simply to repair the tuner itself, I suppose. MCES near Manchester used to fix them and I've repaired truck loads of tuners in satellite TV receivers. Typical cost to the customer was probably no more than £25, representing about £24.50 clear profit but still a bargain (you pay for the expertise). But nowadays they simply can't be bothered or they don't have the expertise. ("The customer will pay, so who cares?")

I fixed a TV last week. Total cost to me was €8 plus a little petrol. Customer had originally been quoted €150 - €250 and paid me €50 because he was delighted that I fixed it within a day of his asking, in his own home (well, I took the board home to solder in the parts).
 
When the fault first occured and wasn't sure if I had a case against LG or Pixmania I did contemplate trying to fix myself.

I also have a Topfield PVR which had had problems related to the power supply. I'd found out (online) about the known capacitor quality issues on the secondary power supply so I sourced replacements on Ebay and soldered them in myself. This fixed the problem.

Unfortunately I couldn't find out anything about my LG TV. I didn't know if the tuner was a model specific or generic part, or even if it could be replaced on its own.
After being told by the repair company that the mainboard would need to be replaced I tried sourcing that but with no success.
This made me all the more determined to fight the cost of repair on something which I thought had failed prematurely.
 

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