I have a 65" Tosheba HD TV. It's around 5 years old (as of feb 2008). It's a great TV and our family has
enjoyed it. Ironically of course I purchased a 5 year warranty and sure enough at 5 years and about 4 months I
had a problem with it. We believe the problem may have been caused by electrical dmg from a significant storm
that had come through.
It started out as the lower area showed the green color seperating from the blue/red. It gradually got worse
over a few days. I called the store we purcahsed from and they referred me to the company that does their service. That company told me it would be $210.00 to walk in the door. At that point if the problem was just an adj it might be
resolved for a total of $250. If they had to replace some certain part it might go upwards of $850. Ouch..so I
could almost buy a new TV..no surprise there in today's day and age of throw away electronics. But to get
something as good as I had I would have to spend at least $2000.
I have been leery of small appliance/plumbing service companies. There are so many horror stories but I figured
I'd at least check. I came upon AAPCO. The gentleman that answered seemed nice. He had problems with his cell
line as it kept dropping but in the end we got to talk. He told me it would be $65 to come out and look at it
and from what I described he could possibly fix it for $350 with the $65 being applied to my price if I decided
to go forward.
Sounded too good to be true but I figured I'll at least spend $65 to have him take a look. It was clear to me he
was a single individual who did his own work and also farmed out some work to technicians he paid to help. No
problem there.
First he was able to come the next day. That was nice as a lot of places you have a wait a while. He was prompt
which I appreciate as well. We had to get my massive TV away from the wall along with the huge, most he'd ever
seen he said, jumble of wires :)
He took the back off and I watched him out of curiosity. I'm a software engineer and enjoy seeing how things
work. It was a large circuit board with alot of doohickies (technical term :)) on it. As he had suspected he
would need to replace two of those doohickies.
It took him about 2.5 hours to do the work. He said he could have shaved an hour off the time had he gone about
it in a different way but some of the doohickies can be sensitive and can be damaged. As far as I was concerned
that was no problem..take the time needed.
To be clear here this was not a pull a part out and plug a new one in. He had to pull parts off of a circuit
board and solder new ones in so this was not trivial. When he was done and we put everyting back together we turned it on and it was all better. He gave me a 90 day warranty.
Needless to say I was EXTREMELY PLEASED!!! He gave me an estimate, came promply, did what I would call
significant work, provided new parts and stayed within his estimate.
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