Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello.

My big telly just stopped working a while back. It won't switch on, and shows no signs of life when plugged in. I have tried different leads, so it's not a fuse problem. I suspect my cleaner broke it in some way, but that's by the by.

I want to get it repaired, but don't know what's the best way to go about this, having watched way too many 'these bastards ripped me off' TV shows. Yelp and Checkatrade don't seem particularly helpful.

Anyone have any recommendations?

What sort is it?

It's an LG 42LH3000

I remember when there was a TV repair shop in our local high street. We got our CRT fixed there, some soldered joint had dried out and cracked.

Nowadays, people just seem to "repair by replacement" as a friend keeps describing it. Seems a little wasteful to chuck the whole thing out and get a new one, but I reckon that's what you'll end up doing.

Or you could try putting bits of it in the oven. That works for PC components.

Nah. A new one would cost 300-500 quid. I'll find somewhere eventually, and if they quote me that much I'll buy a new one. Shame that I only had a 3 year guarantee on it; it's an automatic five years on equivalent models these days.

Who did you buy it from and did you use a credit card? There should be a strong argument that a TV should last for longer than 3 years, regardless of the supplied warranty.
Talk to the retailer first and if you get nowhere then try th credit card company. Sale of goods act and all that.

Yeah, good luck with that one! Try Radio Rentals or Rumbelows.

No doubt a PSU problem and, if Samsung TVs (and monitors) are anything to go by then an electrolytic cap has no doubt developed a leak. See if you can find somebody who tinkers with electronics to take a look or, better still, find a local TV repair person.

Call LG. You might get lucky and they offer to fix it for free, but at the very least they will have people on contract who can fix it. It's happened to me a couple of times with Toshiba - I called them, they sent a guy around and fixed it.

Tried this a while back with a 2 year old LG telly but they weren't having any of it. I ended up buying a new main board for it. I found that spares are a lot cheaper in Portugal for some reason. Got it from here for 61 Euros delivered compared to £161 from a UK supplier.

The TV will also have fuses in the power supply. One of them might have gone. It's also possible that the mains inlet socket is damaged. AFAIK there's usually only 2 or 3 circuit boards in modern TVs and they are generally easily replaced with a few screws and connectors.

I got lucky with a local electrical repair place with an Acer TV a few years ago. Even they were surprised they were able to fix it, though - normally it's something wrong on a board somewhere and nothing they can diagnose with newer tellies, so they told me, but they spotted a bit of solder that was awry and were able to fix that which totally fixed the problem (which was the picture squishing to a narrow band in the middle of the screen after a few minutes).

Have you tried your Yellow Pages?