We had a guy bring in a 3-year old Philips TV, claiming that the set had suddenly stopped working and that it was under warranty.

Fair enough.

I was the muggins who was allocated to fix the set. When I switched it on, it was dead. I removed the back and found that the cause was pretty obvious – there was a 130mm crack in the main PC board around the flyback transformer.

This crack was open by over 5mm in some sections and the set had obviously been dropped from quite a height. There were also several cracks and scratches in the case, again consistent with the set being dropped. In view of this, it was quite likely that the 51cm flat picture tube had also been damaged internally – especially the shadow mask which is easily dislodged and gives major uncorrectable colour purity errors.

We had a little meeting and it was decided to confront the client. After all, the purpose of a warranty is to guarantee that the product is fit for its purpose and free of any manufacturer’s defects. It is not there for people to claim free repairs if they damage the product through their own negligence! After all, a TV set is not a football.

Well, despite the overwhelming evidence that this set had been dropped from a considerable height, possibly from a wall stand, the client insisted that the set had failed all by itself and that we were negligent and had probably dropped it afterwards! We couldn’t get through to him that the only course of events consistent with the facts was that the set was working and that it had stopped working only after it was dropped.

I even repaired the crack to show him that that was the only electrical fault with the set, apart from the damaged picture tube which indeed had horrendous purity errors.

A Philips insurance company assessor was called in and, even more amazingly, decided to give the client the benefit of the doubt. And as the 3-year old set was beyond economic repair, it was written off and the client given a new one!