Hitachi > Reviews (1)

We purchased a Hitachi 28" Pure Flat Screen TV in the January 2003 sales. A bargain reduced from £600 to £389.

Unfortunately by February 2004 we had a problem with it. A grey screen with wavey diagonal lines and it kept turning itself off after about 5 seconds.

Anyway - stupid like we didnt take the extended guarantee - which i would advise everyone to do - if you can afford it obviously.

The TV was taken away by a local engineer and basically needed some extensive welding and it cost us £170 and we were left without the TV for 3 weeks.

Well we werent happy as you can imagine so we tried to contact Hitachi.

We telephoned our local Miller Brothers store who supplied it and they only had a fax number for Hitachi - nothing else !!!

So I searched the web and found a few addresses and forward the original reciept and a copy of the engineers report to them asking for some kind of reimbursement.

That was on the 9 March 2004.

On the 12th of March we recieved a letter from Hitachi which thanked us for our letter. They were very sorry about the problems we had encountered and apologised.

And then the wording "Whilst I realise it is of little consolation to you, I can assure you that all Hitachi products are manufactured under the most stringent quality control procedures .................blardy blah blardy blah.......

Basically I was told that the electronic components can fail at anytime, regardless of age or usage and are only covered for 12 months -so if you buy a telly and only watch it for a few hours every day and after 12 months it goes wrong ITS TOUGH- because at any point it is liable to blow up!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1 day or 1 year - it makes no difference :(

Then came the laughable bit - "Hitachi does try to maintain a flexible attitude towards the guarantee providing failure has not occurred too far outside the expiry date" - Pardon me! - It was less than one month outside the expiry date!!!

What they then continued to say was that since the repairs had already been carried out they were unable to offer any assistance towards any cost incurred.

THE LESSON

If your telly breaks down just outside of your guarantee dont have it mended - contact the manufacturer first and see what they can do - once repairs have been carried out you have little chance of getting any compensation.

VERY VERY SAD :(:(