I won't be buying anything from Sony

In August of 2006 off my "merger consideration" from the JBoss acquisition, I bought a Sony KDS-R60XBR1. It was over $3000 when all was said and done. I expected it to last a few years. It had the best picture in the store of all of the big TVs. I wanted to watch boxing in HD!

I never had any problem with it until the last month or so, the picture started to turn green. Apparently this is called the "green blob" or "green haze" problem. Sony apparently designed a defective product and had a class action lawsuit. Sony settled this and extended the warranty until 6 months ago. Then they decided to allow customers who bought this defective TV to purchase a new TV for a fraction of the cost. And that would be reasonable except...the TVs they are willing to let you purchase (for $550) are 52" TVs. I went to the store and this is going to be a mighty step down (size matters most when your chair is across the room and it can only be there due to the room shape, etc). We tried to get them to let us pick a 55" TV that was actually cheaper than the 52", but they told us that they weren't going to customize this to "individual customer preferences" and that they would be "unable to escalate our call in the future". If they'd have let us do that I'd have been bummed (to shell out the cash right after we replaced the bulb not long ago), but relatively content. So either we pay $1000 (which the repair shop said they've done thousands of in Cary where their office is located alone) or get a smaller TV. This is on the heels of my Playstation 3 burning up and replacing that. So basically, you can imagine that I won't be buying Sony electronics. They seem to compound a serious quality problem that they've been having for the past few years with a customer service problem. I think it is clear why the Sony section at Best Buy is shrinking.