Hopefully a member of Best Buy staff can answer this question or perhaps someone who has had an almost identical experience. For the most part I will leave pricing out of this because it may skew the responses a bit.
Here is my situation. I have a 52" RCA Rear Projection 1080i HDTV that is about 3 1/2 years old. I have had intermittent convergence issues for about 9 months. Something I was willing to deal with due to the rarity of the event. In August of this past year I had a technician come out to clean the bulbs, screen and blow out all the dust that had been collecting over the past few years. I asked him about these random convergence issues and he chalked it up to spiderwebs and dust throwing off the sensors. He explained that power cycling the TV would reset the sensors and correct the issue. Surprisingly for the next 3 1/2 months after the cleaning, I had no instances of convergence problems. Then in early December I was getting the convergence issues frequently (about 15 times within 3 or 4 hours). There was no pattern to them either. This happened for about 3 days and then it permanently stayed like that even after numerous power cycles. The same tech that cleaned my tv back in August showed up and ran a few diagnostic checks on it. He said that he thought the main board needed to be replaced, but wanted to try a different fix first. He ended up replacing a fuse in the TV and the picture was back to normal when he left. A few hours after his departure the TV started acting up again, albeit less frequently and instead of having to power cycle the Tv the problem would resolve itself after about 15 -20 seconds. I called back the next morning, and scheduled another house call. The earliest available was a week and a half later. Again the same tech arrived and recognizing me and the TV he said he would order the new board. He said that due to the Christmas holiday they wouldnt be able to come back out until the 30th. I accepted the appointment date and he left. On the 29th I received a call from a representative stating they were having issues getting the part from their current vendor, they wanted to try a different vendor and re-scheduled me for a Jan 9th appointment. It was at this time that I asked the representative to call me and keep me updated on the status of the part. I explained to her that I didnt want the 9th to come and go without some bit of communication. I told her that if the part was not available by the 9th, then what the next step would be. I told her that waiting longer for them to figure out what they were going to do would not be acceptable. She said she would call me back in a few days. Well yesterday I called back into the Service Plan hotline and spoke to an representative. She stated that as of the 5th they still did not have the part and that they would authorize a replacement of the TV. I asked her what that meant and she that I would most likely be offered the amount I paid for the TV plus a pro-rated amount for the remaining amount of time left on the PSP. I asked her what "most likely" meant. She didnt have a really good answer. I mentioned that the PSP stated a comparable replacement would be given, not cash value.
Here is where my question lies. My TV is a 52" 1080i TV. I would consider the two biggest features are the size (52") and the resolution (1080i). Best Buy does not have any 1080i TV's on their website or in stores. They currently only offer 1080p and 720p. They also do not offer any old school Rear Projection TV's. So what is comparable to my TV? My personal opinion would be a 50" - 52" AND 1080p, but there isn't anything with those specs at the same price point. There are both 46" 1080p's, and 52" 720p's at the same price point but those only meet 1/2 of the original specs. There are however several TV's that meet the above mentioned specs but are about $50 to $150 more than the original
What is the possibility that BB would work around the slight difference in prices?.
Dorothy-BBY
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