Or you could end up like me. I had a friend who’s Toshiba external HD broke, and they made it so hard to fix, that it wasn’t worth it. They wanted more documentation than it takes to buy a house.  Anyway, here is my sad story below. I submitted it to the Consumerist.

I bought an return Toshiba 32 inch TV at Best Buy two months ago. When I got it home the HDMI port seemed a little loose, but since I had never had HDMI before, I wasn’t sure. So I didn’t take it back.

However increasingly over the past two months the signal from the PS3 that is plugged into the HDMI jack kept disappearing. The TV would go black meanwhile you could hear the sound playing and then a few seconds later the image would return. I tried the other HDMI port and reseated the cable, but still having the issue.

Now one of the two ports refuses to work. When I called Toshiba support, I was told to contact Best Buy. When I contacted Best Buy, I was told after 30 days it became the manufactures problem. So I spoke to Toshiba again. Or rather tried to speak to them. The first time I got hung up on, the second time I was told that I would have to speak to a manager and spoke to one. She explained that they would send someone out to check and if the problem was determined to be my fault, that I would pay for it. Fine.

The next day the manager who promised me a visit said that she could not send me someone because they determined (without seeing it) that the part isn’t covered under the warranty. She said that Toshiba has no way of knowing that I didn’t break or abuse the part. She suggested a local repair shop.

The local repair shop costs $80 to look at the issue, and then will give a report. Since I spent $225 on the TV it doesn’t make sense to spend money to repair it so soon.

So Toshiba, I am going to write a post on my blog about this and let people know that they better not buy a TV from you. This is the last Toshiba thing I will ever buy.