OK, so it doesn’t appear to draw as much traffic as when one of my posts was dugg, but apparently my post about the stupidity of car alarms amused the folks over at Inc. Magazine and Inc.com. Thanks for the props, Inc!

Warning: long rant ahead, but I just concluded the worst and most protracted customer-service nightmare of my life and feel compelled to share it, since my experience was just preposterous. The subtitle of this post should be why you shouldn’t buy a big-screen TV online, even though it is so much cheaper than at your favorite big-box electronics retailer. Over the past several years, I’ve attended CES on a regular basis and have always been impressed by Sharp’s Aquos LCD TVs on display. I am already a satisfied owner of a 42″ 1080p Sony Bravia XBR Series LCD TV, but when it came time to buy a new TV for the guest room, I thought of all those beautiful Sharp Aquos TVs arranged on the conference hall floor in a big pyramid at CES and decided to give Sharp a try. Plus, they had just come out with screens with a 120Hz refresh rate, and they were a bit cheaper than the equivalent Sony models. After shopping in-person at a few bricks-and-mortar retailers, I determined online prices were nearly one thousand dollars less for the same TV. So I took the plunge and bought a 52″ Sharp Aquos LC-52D92U via Amazon. Little did I know, it would take more than four months of phone calls and repair service visits to my house after I received the TV I ordered before it would be functional. Here’s the timeline:

February 9th, 2008. Order TV on Amazon, but using one of their affiliate merchants, Butterfly Photo. TV arrives the following week.

February 26, 2008. Finally set up the TV, only to discover that the lower-right quadrant of the screen is non-functional. (See my picture at the head of this post.)

February 27, 2008. Contact Amazon. Amazon sends me to their affiliate, Butterfly Photo. Butterfly advises I must deal directly with Sharp for warranty service.

February 28, 2008. Call Sharp Aquos Advantage Support. They ask for pictures of the problem. I send pictures, and ask for a replacement unit. Turns out warranty is for repair only, not a replacement unit. They put me in touch with the only Sharp-authorized service center in the greater Denver area, Downtown Radio/DTR.

February 29, 2008. Call DTR to arrange in-home repair. They only visit Boulder once or twice a week, with the typical customer-hostile four-hour arrival window. Given my travel schedule, the first appointment I can schedule is for April 11th.

April 11th, 2008. DTR technician arrives, and brings along a new motherboard for the TV. Finally, the whole screen works, and the dead lower-right-quadrant is now functional. Repairman leaves. I fire up a Blu-ray, Galapagos. Now that the screen works, I notice a new problem. The display quality is terrible, with massive solarization of colors and pixels that change color even on a still image.

April 11th, 2008. Call DTR to report the new problem. They send me back to Sharp support. Call Sharp. They ask me to send more pictures. But the problem only happens now with moving images, so I have to arrange alternate means (yousendit.com) to send them a large video file so they can diagnose the problem. They confirm there is an issue (duh) and tell me to schedule an appointment with DTR. I call DTR. Next appointment I can make isn’t until May 13th. Same convenient four-hour arrival window.

May 13th, 2008. DTR technician arrives, with yet another motherboard in hand. Replaces motherboard. Now my TV won’t even turn on. Technician tells me that at least a third of the motherboards he gets from Sharp to use for repairs fail. Technician orders a third replacement motherboard for my TV. Must wait 10 days for it to arrive before new appointment can be scheduled.

May 23rd, 2008. DTR calls me to tell me new motherboard has arrived and to schedule a new appointment. I get one for May 30th.

May 30th, 2008. DTR technician arrives. Replaces motherboard. Now TV turns on, but video problem persists. This technician seems to have more of clue and looks at the video and determines that the new problem is, in fact, not with the motherboard at all, but rather with the LCD controller board. He calls Sharp to order a new motherboard and a new LCD board. Now I have to wait another 10 days.

June 10th, 2008. DTR calls to confirm new parts are in, schedules repair for June 20th.

June 20th, 2008. DTR technician arrives, replaces motherboard and LCD controller. TV (effin’ finally) works. Video quality problem appears to be solved, or at least drastically improved. I’m still not convinced that the display quality on my TV (now a frankenstein full of refurbished parts) matches the Sharp TVs I saw at CES, but I’ve wasted many hours and over four months have elapsed since I made the purchase, so I am going to declare it good enough and move on with my life.

Whew. Tired yet? Clearly, had I known in advance the bad luck I was going to have with this TV, I would have just bought it at a local retailer, who would have happily taken the defective unit back and replaced it with a new one. I admit I thought twice about ordering it online when I read the retailer’s policy that they won’t exchange or replace TVs over 20″ (who buys a TV smaller than 20″ these days anyway?), but the price difference was too large not to buy it online. Besides, I had never had a problem with an online purchase before.

I will say, to Sharp’s credit, that every time I dealt with Sharp support and DTR, the people I interacted with were unfailingly professional and friendly, so I can’t fault the quality of the people performing the service, though the end result of their network of third party vendors is a bad customer experience. The warranty repair system that Sharp has set up forces already unhappy customers who have the misfortune of receiving a defective item to endure a time-consuming and painful process to restore their item to working order.

It also seems apparent that Sharp supplies their warranty service partners with B-grade or refurbished parts to repair their TVs. The fact that my TV’s original motherboard and two of the replacement motherboards were defective and a second LCD controller had to be installed points to some serious quality problems with the parts they use to “repair” malfunctioning equipment. I don’t really feel like I have a new or A-grade TV anymore. By the time my TV was working, I had lost hours of my own time that was way more valuable than the money I saved looking for a bargain. And given it took four truck-rolls to my home and four orders of replacement parts to get the unit working, I have to think that Sharp also lost money on my TV and would have been better served just sending me a new unit after the first (or even second) repair attempt failed. Sharp, are you listening? Needless to say, I will buy my next big-screen TV at a local retailer.

I’ve been on a bit of a history kick lately and recently read great biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, men whose actions in large part helped birth our country and define the structure of our government and free-market economy. As our nation struggles today with the consequences of the last eight years under the “leadership” of what I believe to be the worst and most damaging presidency and administration to come along in at least a century, I suppose I’m looking to the past for the roots of what is good and noble about my country. And I’m searching for examples of the leadership and principles (mythologized as they may be in the case of the Founding Fathers) the United States needs to regain its way in the world today.

As far as modern voices go, I often find myself in violent agreement with Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria. And closer to home, within the universe of high-tech that I inhabit, I just read the text of a speech Roger McNamee gave at Glide Memorial Church, where he lays out a prescription for the United States to regain its footing going forward. And I couldn’t agree more with what he has to say.

On the Fourth of July, the New York Times published an image of the original Declaration of Independence on the back page of one of the sections — It was hard to read the old-school handwriting, but I soldiered through it. I don’t think I’d sat down and read the full text since college; it is well worth reading again. Here it is in kinder and gentler typeface, courtesy of USHistory.org:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.