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Review NaN of
Price Paid:
$800.00
from Kromer Radio, Toront Summary:
As with so many others, my Panasonic DVD A110 started breaking down after 4 years of regular use. Prior to that, it worked beautifully. At first whenever the picture would pixellate I thought it was the DVD disc that was faulty, but when I tested it on other DVD players (Sony, Toshiba), they played back just fine. This problem only happened once in a while so my tendency was to just ignore it. However in it's 5th year, things got a lot worse and it would often pixellate, freeze and hang on almost anything I played. Finally, last week the death knell sounded when I got the dreaded NO DISC error message. I tried everything from unplugging it overnight, to re-initializing it all to no avail.
Since I paid so much for it, I wasn't about to give up on it without a fight, so I did some investigating and found this AMAZING site! Long story short, I called Panasonic Canada and spoke to the Customer Service Manager and told him about the problems I was having with my player. I also told him about this site which has documented literally hundreds of complaints throughout North America about this particular DVD player. I was expecting to get a lot of resistance and denial since it was 5 years old and long past its warranty, but surprisingly and fortunately he knew about the problems with this model and the notoriously faulty optical laser pick up. In fact, he mentioned to me that there was actually a lawsuit against Panasonic in the US over the DVD A110, but that apparently not a lot of the faulty players made it into Canada. Not sure how accurate that statement is, since I am obviously not the only Canadian who's had a lemon like this. He told me to bring it in to their service centre (no receipt necessary) for a free analysis and if the problem was indeed a faulty optical laser pick up, the protocol was to replace the player with a brand new one at no cost to me. There was no option to repair the old player since the replacement parts are apparently no longer being manufactured.
I brought my player in last Friday afternoon, and on Monday morning I received a call back telling me to come in and pick up my new DVD player (Panasonic DVD-S35)! There is even a one year warranty on the new machine, which I thought was really decent of them. I was astounded at the speed of their response and the professionalism and honesty of the Customer Service Manager.
So, despite the problems with this player, Panasonic has redeemed themselves in my eyes by responding as well as they did. If you're having the same problems with this player -- DON'T GIVE UP! Call Panasonic and try to get them to replace your faulty player! It's definitely worth a shot and you really have nothing to lose. We all paid good $$ for this player and simply want what we paid for - no more, no less.
I'm not sure if I would have gotten my DVD player replaced if it had broken down, say, 2 years ago, but since that time the complaints have been mounting so I think all the evidence definitely helped me in my situation (since I printed out a good chunk of the complaints from this site and included them in the box when I dropped off my player for analysis.) Thanks to all the people who took the time to post their experiences -- this is a great example of what strong consumer advocacy can do! Strengths:
Played beautifully for the first 4 years. In my overall rating, I am giving Panasonic a 3, given their good response to my faulty DVD player. Weaknesses:
Started breaking down, pixellating, hanging, freezing and finally dying (NO DISC error) in its 5th year. Similar Products Used:
Sony and Toshiba DVD players, but can't remember the model #'s!
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