Sharp 13V-TR100 13" TV/VCR Combo

Rating:
Summary: Beware of poor customer support!
Review: I used to have a SHARP 13VT-J100 (a nearly identical earlier model) which worked beautifully over a period of five years, and seemed very nicely designed. The remote control was well laid out; I never once hit REC or STOP at the wrong time. The menus and timer system were intuitive and easy to use.

It finally broke when I tried to play an old damaged video cassette (bad mistake!) and I had to look for a replacement. I searched for the latest SHARP model, and found this one. The 13VT-R100 is very similar to the older model from 1997, and seemed very satisfactory at first. There were a few minor design changes, I think slightly for the worse; and a few technical extras such as a V-chip for content-based parental control.

Unfortunately, I ran into a big problem. Sometimes on TIMER RECORD mode, the VCR would record the wrong station. I'd get back home expecting to watch one show, and I'd get something quite different.

There wasn't any obvious pattern to this. When I called SHARP they had no idea what was going on. "Maybe someone else is coming and changing the settings?" No. "Maybe you're setting the channel wrong?" No... And so on. They said they'd never heard of this problem before; but then they didn't seem particularly enthusiastic to write down my complaint either so that it would get into their records. Finally. they suggested a factory reset (unplug the whole set for a couple of hours, then start it up as if new). After I did this the problem disappeared, but several weeks later it has come back again. Meanwhile the original store won't take it back, and the 90 days labor warranty has expired.

My general comment is that customer support is extremely poor in situations like this. The people staffing the switchboards are not well enough informed to explain what might be going on except in the simplest cases. As for "authorised SHARP repair centers", the nearest ones are both twenty miles away; when I called one of them for help they were unwilling to let me talk to a repair engineer before bringing the set in.

The only real recourse is to take the item back to the vendor, as defective. This is where it *really helps* to buy your set from the store down the road, rather than a mail-order outlet on the other side of the country! I won't be making that mistake again.

Looking through the ... product reviews, it seems that a lot of people are having problems with TV/VCR combos, from all manufacturers. Has something changed? My 1997 model worked fine for over five years. Perhaps the manufacturers don't care any more; it's very sad.