Archives June 2012

So I called up Best Buy on Friday to find out how to go about getting my 73″ inch Mitsubishi TV fixed under the $400, four year extended warranty I bought with the TV in 2008.  I explained the problem and then gave the woman on the phone the contract number.

After punching it in she says, I’m sorry, your warranty expired on May 6th.  I was immediately confused.  I explained to the woman that when I bought the tv I was told the warranty is tacked on to the factory one year warranty, giving me five years of coverage.  She explained that is not the case, the extended warranty overlaps the first year of factory coverage, her explanation being that it covers items the factory warranty does not.

Well of course I was quite annoyed being that I am 25 days outside of that 4 year period and that the warranty was misrepresented to me up front.  I expressed this to the phone rep multiple times and asked repeatedly for Best Buy to do something for me to remediate the problem.  She apologized and said there was nothing she could do.  Her only advice was I could go to the local store and talk to the manager there to see if I could get anywhere.  Well that is the last thing I felt like doing.

You see I already knew that I had the back up plan of getting the repair done by Mitsubishi at a reduced rate.  If I was looking at a $1000 repair I might have been more tenacious in my fight. So I hung up, called Mitsubishi and made arrangements to have the tv fixed for a flat rate of $200, including parts and labor, not a bad deal for a tv that is 3 years out of factory warranty.

So on Saturday I got busy around the house in the morning, hoping to knock out most of the housework before picking up the dogs, whom were doing a sleepover Saturday night.  The reason I wanted to get stuff done was to clear the slate to finish up the castle stone border around the pool landscape area.

I planned to pick up the remaining 25 stones I needed from Lowe’s since that is where I got the first 75 from.  I was annoyed that they just happened to be sold out of 12″ sand colored castle stones on Saturday afternoon.

So I hopped back in the truck and went over to Home Depot, luckily they had them and they were the exact same price.

As the dogs sat outside in the shade with me, I worked on getting the remaining stones in place.  Overall I think they look ok although there is a height change between the two side halves of the border that I am not thrilled with.  At least that is a job I should not have to revisit anytime again in my lifetime.  Once cool weather returns I will rip up the border around the pond and do the same thing.  All the pics from the project are here.

Saturday night I finished up season 2 of Boardwalk Empire. It was a surprising ending, it seems like half of the original cast is dead.  Season 2 definitely had more action and was better than season one.

While I was driving my SSR over the weekend I had noticed I was getting a clicking noise when I pushed in the clutch.  Well on an on ramp when I was stomping on it hard after shifting from 2nd to 3rd instead of a click, I heard a snap and something metal falling off.  I looked down in the foot well and saw a large spring that looks like it snapped.  Well the clicking noise was gone but the odd thing was everything still felt normal with the clutch.  I have not yet determined where the spring goes to, something else to fix. Yay.

The party van has a problem as well with the HVAC fan.  If you turn the fan speed to high it sounds like it is going to come through the dash, vibrating terribly.  If I keep the fan on the first two speed settings it seems ok.  So until I get inspired to look further into that repair I keep the fan dial turned to the left and just max out the secondary fan that blows cool air out the ceiling vents in the rear.

I had a nice Sunday with the girls.  After doing a bike/swim brick at the water park I was outside with them quite a bit.  They had dog smiles for most of the weekend.  They were especially big when I made them burgers for lunch on Sunday.

The reason I had them overnight was because Ali was doing the Naples Tri on Sunday morning.  She had a good showing, knocking somewhere around 10 minutes off her time from last year.  She was exhausted afterward.  I didn’t wind up bringing the girls back until dinner time.

Last night as I was watching Boardwalk Empire on the 73 incher I noticed a small white dot near the top of the screen.  Hmm that’s odd, I wonder how long that had been there, I don’t recall ever seeing it before.  Of course once I saw it, it stuck out like a sore thumb.  I was annoyed my monster tv had a flaw.

Well as I was finishing up my second episode I noticed a SECOND dot had shown up, lower and to the right.  WTF?? This can’t be good.

So after I finished up the show I jumped on my computer and punched in “white dots mitsubishi dlp” My screen filled with a ton of hits, evidently this is a common issue.

The problem apparently starts as a few dots and grows over time, in some situations people reported having as many as 1000 dots on their sets.  Some people also reported having this issue happen rather early in the TV’s lifespan, less than two years in some cases. Well my tv was bought in May of 08, just now passing it’s 4th birthday.

As I read more I encountered outrageous repair costs for the problem which appears to be in the light engine or more specifically a chip in the light engine.  Some people were quoted outrageous estimates of more than $1000 to fix their sets.  The problem is so prevalent that there is a Facebook group dedicated to it.

Well when I bought my tv from Best Buy in 08 I decided to tack on an extended warranty, something I almost NEVER do.  It was an extra $400, not cheap at all.  I began a search through my files to find all my paperwork.

At first I couldn’t find my receipts but luckily they were in the third location I checked.  On the receipt it showed I purchased a 4 year extended warranty which when tacked on to the 1 year manufacturer warranty should still put me inside the coverage window.

I have no doubt that the process of actually getting the tv fixed under the extended warranty will be a pain in the ass.  It seems that anything at Best Buy outside of swiping your credit card at the register is a pain in the ass with them.  Boy it would be awesome if they said it was too expensive to fix and just gave me one of the newer models that has the upgraded 3D engine.  I could only be so lucky.

Yesterday I resumed production on the Jmo’s World cartoon series.  Unfortunately most of the humor in them are inside jokes that are most funny to a small inner circle that knows us personally.

I also discovered that Xtranormal has released a new desktop app that allows you to create the movies on your own pc instead of doing so via their rather slow and somewhat limited web site interface.

I played with the app a bit.  It is great, allowing me much more flexibility in character control as well as lifting the online 2 character limit.  The rendering happens nearly instantly instead of taking several minutes.  It should open the creative doors even further in the future.

Well I had plans for a fun weekend laid out with Randall coming over to play in a rare near by volleyball tournament in Fort Myers.  Unfortunately he wound up hurting himself doing some recreational activities over the Memorial Day weekend and had to bow out.

I tried to get some last minute replacements(Jeremy/Tabby) but was unsuccessful in doing so.

Tabby said that he was available the following weekend for a tournament that takes place in Siesta Key, a lot farther away but a beautiful beach.  It just happens to be the location I played with Tabby last year, winning the BB division in some of my very limited volleyball play.

So it looks like I will be heading 90 minutes north next Saturday for my first volleyball action of 2012.

This weekend I will be having a dog sleepover Saturday night as Ali has a local triathlon Sunday morning.  It will be nice to have the girls around for an extended period of time.

I also hope to buy and place the 25 landscape castle stones needed to finish the pool border.  That will leave the border around the pond to do at some point but I think that is going to be relegated as a winter project.  For the summer I will refocus on indoor projects like painting the master bedroom and bathroom. AC is my friend.