lopresti@tilt.FUN (Dan Lopresti) (09/06/85)
Might I add some fuel to the fire: I think "don't buy brand x because ..." type of advice is quite valuable. None of the electronic/consumer magazines I know of keeps a component long enough to know anything about its reliability, let alone the quality of its manufacturer's service (even if they did, I'm sure most of them wouldn't print anything highly critical of a major advertiser). Anyway, I've had four major consumer electronics products fail on me in the last year, so I for one am very interested in what other people have to say about which companys are good and which are schmucks (of course, any such observations must be taken in context and not as absolute truth). As for me, I bought a Technics SL-P8 CD player about a year ago. Four months later it stopped working, so I shipped it to their Secaucus factory service center. They kept it for three months, ignored my letters (sent me a grand total of one postcard), refused to return my phone calls (when I could get through to them), and were not even swayed by letters from the New Jersey Office of Consumer Protection and the Regional Postal Inspector. So I sued them in New Jersey small claims court. They finally coughed up a refund two days before the trial date. From what I've read recently on the net, my experience with this company does not appear to be an isolated incident. I won't draw conclusions for anyone else, but I sure will think twice before I buy anything made by Matsushita (Technics, Paasonic, Quasar) again. (I should probably add here that I eventually bought a Magnavox CD player--the first one I brought home had been dropped (at the factory?), but the store replaced it immediately and the new one has been reliable for five months (I've got my fingers crossed)). Anyway, that's what I think. Daniel Lopresti