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JVC Repair Service Nightmare
Hello all,
I just wanted to document a horror story about trying to get my 20″ JVC HD/SD monitor repaired. Hopefully some of you will heed my warning and think twice about buying a JVC product in the future.
First of all, when the monitor went down and you call JVC customer service, there is no one at JVC you can talk to that is directly involved at the repair factory. It is blatantly obvious that their phone tree is designed to prevent you from talking to a real person. After a 1/2 hour of getting disconnected, pushing option numbers, being put on-hold and punching in personal info, I landed at a message that gives you an address to mail in your repair. . . . That’s it. No one actually talks to you. No RMA number. You aren’t given even a contact name and number that you can put on the shipping label. Just an address. Well considering I was mailing off a $6k piece of hardware I wasn’t going to mail it blind. Who the hell would you call if it didn’t show up or even if it did? Finally, after bitching to customer service for literally 3 days I got someone at their repair shop to call me – they wouldn’t let me call them directly because they didn’t want to reveal the number. They said the repair shop didn’t take incoming calls. When I talked to the guy, he was kind enough to give me his phone number and email. Looks like they do have a phone system.
Two weeks after they received the monitor I had yet to be contacted about the repair so I called the man whose number I had to fight to get and he told me that it was going to cost $585 to repair and that a replacement circuit board had to be shipped in from Japan. He had no idea how long it would take to receive the board or do the repair. He assured me that “someone at JVC would contact me when the repair was finished”.
It’s been a month now, no contact from anyone. I have no idea how much longer I’ll have to wait. I edit with my little 9″ field monitor and it’s a serious pain in the ass.
Now I could understand this kind of customer service if we were talking about a $400 consumer VCR- mass production, mass repairs but this monitor with input cards retails for over $6,000! It’s a broadcast product for use in a professional environment. Minimal turn-around time on repairs is crucial in our industry. Sony knows it. So does Panasonic. These companies have systems in place to deal with broadcast product repairs. Obviously JVC doesn’t.
I own over $100,000 in broadcast equipment. I’m planning to spend another $40,000 on new gear in the next 6 months. I WILL NEVER, NEVER BUY ANOTHER PRODUCT FROM JVC AGAIN.
Tim
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3 Replies
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I had some of the same years ago. i should say I live about 12 miles from their facility here in Illinois. anyway I had an old X2 acting up took it in. Upon getting the camera back I notice some black tape holding the back focus on the lens. ” Oh it was broken when we got it ” Not ! argue and argue, they could care less. My question to the liars was why didn’t you tell me it was broken when you put the tape on it ? I too never again would do busines with them. i have one of their mini dv decks that needs service and I can just imagine the story they are going to tell me about it.
Good luck
Tom
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Tim,
FWIW, I have a JVC BR600 DV deck which went back to them a couple of times, it needed a new LED an a new transport mechanism, and I experienced similar hazy communication with them, but I do remember they have a stringer in LA who I did talk to on the phone. Somehow I found a JVC dealer here in Phoenix who knew the lines of communication better and handled it for me, I think it took about two weeks each time, but it got fixed. Never mind that it broke again! Now I only use it to pass a component signal to my monitor from my laptop.
So, you night try and find a local dealer or try the one you bought it from. Good luck!
Have a wonderful day.
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Well guys,
It’s been a month, I finally got the monitor back from JVC. When I received it (I personally picked it up in California, I was on a job in LA) the tech said; ‘your tube is getting kind of old. It might fail soon and it’s not as sharp as some of our LCDs. We don’t have any replacements tubes so once it goes . . . .’ Well after having just been charged over $550 for the repair I was concerned and I asked the guy; ‘Well is it usable? Does it display accurate color, hue, contrast and brightness?’ ‘Oh yeah. That’s all fine. It’s just not too sharp.’; he says.
I travel back to Salt Lake, hook it up to an SDI source out of my Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme card and low and behold it looks like utter crap. Think bad VHS. There are no true Blacks just dark slate greys. The whites blow out, smearing into the rest of the video if you try to raise the brightness or contrast just below detent so the overall value of everything is a low-contrast under-exposed image. I have a Sony 10″ HD CRT field monitor and I looped through that to see the difference and the comparison makes it obvious that the 19″ JVC has at best not been adjusted properly and at worst, serious issues. How anyone could let it be called “repaired” and charge a customer over 1/2 a grand . . . . .
So there we go guys! After over two months since the monitor went down it still doesn’t work. I’m out another $585 and I have to edit with a little 10″ HD monitor. I have the JVC monitor with a local tech to see what he can do . . .
Thanks JVC. You guys are an utter joke. . . . on the level of snake oil salesmen.
Tim Gibbons
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