A True Story: Try to stay away from Vizio.

At the start of February I needed a small and affordable HDTV for my apartment  (because the ML HQ’s doesn’t need something fancy… in the shower). I saw a good price on a Vizio 20inch VX20L and bought it after seeing a few but positive comments on the internets. It looked fine out of the box when I first turned it on. Things looked even nicer after I tweaked the settings & colors. Then the problems started, first sometimes you would have to enter a channel twice for the tuner to get the signal (from cable), then it started randomly resetting it self. I was annoyed only to become furious when the TV started randomly freezing with about a 150 decibel squeal, which the first time it occurred had me reaching for my (non-existent) piece (and jumping up out of my chair). 

No worries though, Vizio would surely fix this, right? My first call to the non-toll-free number I was disconnected while being “transferred”. Then when I finally got through to some guy, I was told I would need a $500 hold on my credit card to get sent a replacement. I refused (I didn’t really have a trusting feeling of the company at this point) so I was told I would have to ship my TV in first to get a replacement. I was smitten, to get the process started I would have to be called back later in the day by someone! Some man called me back a few hours later to setup a box to be shipped out to me so I could send them my lemon. This was a 20 minute process, lengthened by me constantly having to yell “What??” because the guy was calling me from what seemed like a busy warehouse. In the end he said the box would arrive in about a week.

3 Weeks passed, no box, my ears ringing on the daily from that damn squeal. Needless to say, I was at rising blood pressure/rioting status when I called Vizio again, I talked to a guy, Jose (I think) he was nice and apologized for everything I’ve been through. He said it looked like I was entered into their system “wrong” or something and he would expedite me a box, he also provided a personal number to call him at if I had anymore issues. The box came in about a week, the next day came another box, then the day after than one more (too bad they weren’t with TVs), needless to say my UPS Lady was giving me suspicious looks. I shipped out the TV the day before I went off to Noise Pop (that feature is still coming, I swear!) to minimize a TV-less life. I got a new TV back about 3 weeks later, which hasn’t had any issues so far.

So you ask why I’m writing this now, well this e-mail reminded me of the whole ordeal:

(Yup, the Shipping Notification e-mail was sent about 3 weeks AFTER the actual ship date.)

Watch this thing break the day the warranty ends.