So last night while watching tv a vertical red line appeared down the middle of my 2mo old Toshiba 42HL167. I called sears and the tech came out today and verified that the panel is toast so they have to order a new one. Upon talking to the service dept. he found out that a replacement panel would cost $3400!!! (over twice the price of the tv). He then told us to call the sears we bought it from to see if we can get a replacement altogether seeing as the repair cost would be insane.
I called the Sears and talked to their tv dept. manager and he said that they would red flag the repair so that we can get a new tv altogether.
My dilemma is I no longer trust the new TV to work good. I mean having a tv for 2mos and then breaking doesn't give me much confidence in Toshiba anymore. Do you guys think Sears will let me exchange the LCD for a Panasonic 42PZ77U plasma instead? The plasma is actually cheaper than the toshiba but I don't care for a refund of the difference, I just want to go with a totally different TV. What are the chances of them letting us take home the Panny instead of another Toshiba?