Matt
- Comment
Well, this certainly started out as a 5-star TV. Great price, and our family is a big fan of Roku boxes, having owned two already. Setup was easy and the picture was surprisingly good! All in all, I was very pleased. Until about a week in, I look up while my son is watching a show and theres a vertical line of dead, blue pixels about 7" long running through the middle of the screen, about 5" from the left side. I was hoping it was just a streaming issue with his show, but nope- it was the screen. Really disappointed as a return of a 43" TV, even if they foot the bill (and they should), is going to be a pain. I was hesitant to buy what I consider to be an off-brand, and now Im wishing I had followed my gut and bought an LG or Samsung. In all fairness to TCL, minus the vertical line its a really nice TV, and I will update my review accordingly when I hear back from their warranty/service department. UPDATE: TCL tried to pawn the warranty return off on Amazon after I had already started the process with TCL. I told them to stay the course of getting this TV repaired or replaced, and two weeks after the last conversation, NOTHING. Zero communication from TCL. Im going to give them a couple of more days and then start the process with Amazon to get this replaced. What a hassle. If they turn a corner and make this right I will update this review but as of now I HIGHLY recommend you consider another brand of TV given the quality of this set and, more importantly, the lack of good customer service from TCL. UPDATE #2: I finally emailed TCL at another address and, to their credit, a US-based rep (Larry) showed some interest in making this right. He shipped me a replacement unit and said I could ship the original/defective unit back. After setting up the SECOND unit (wall-mount), updating the software, etc., sat down to watch a movie...more dead pixels. Yep. On the replacement unit, in approximately the same location, there were two lines of dead pixels not unlike the first unit. So again I emailed Larry, and we agreed at this point TCL would just take both units back (on their dime) and refund me my full purchase price. Which they did, and very promptly at that. Before anyone accuses me of sour grapes, TCL-bashing, blah blah blah: Listen, its a NICE TV! I really wanted to like it! I ended up getting an LG and frankly I like the user interface better on the TCL. But to send me two similarly defective units? Something is horribly wrong with their quality control. Also in fairness to them, their customer service really picked up when Larry got involved (out of CA, I believe). So if you have the time and patience to navigate a return if something goes wrong, I say go for it. Its a nice TV for the price. I just dont have the time to be messing around with returning multiple televisions.