[George Prentice]

I have an Sony Bravia Master Series XBR A9G... a 77” one. Is OJ different? We bought it at the same time as our bedroom Sony XBR 850 65” LED 14 months ago.. Our primary interest was reliability, then high quality picture. The upsampling feature is amazing and actually works... depending on content of course... digital up samples better that old analog. The remotes are not backlite... I cannot ever begin to understand why not. There is no excuse for it. They have good pictures... we are happy... but i’m not about to post on it.

However, the reliability has not been good. Both failed. The first the LED. I can’t tell you how horrible Sony service is. My partner is disabled, and the bedroom TV is her sole entertainment. The tv just started rebooting, over and over. It took usage usual useless hours on the phone... finally got a ticket in for repair. They said it would be two weeks. After a couple weeks I checked in, they had closed the ticket for no reason. Then two more weeks to send the part.. another week to install. Nice guy, it then worked again. Left me cursing and swearing never to buy Sony again. (But they are the highest rated for reliability).

At 14 months our OLED TV developed a black line. Then the whole TV went black after a week. We called service... this time since it was a Master series, he said we will replace it at a cost and sent me to the Concierge group. They asked for all sorts of info... but to my surprise said they would send a new one. But I would have to unpack and track. I asked if I could pay for them to swap, since I am nearly 70 and my partner is disabled. She was really nice, arranged white glove (gray... these guys were not gentle and I am surprised they didn’t damage the new TV... but the got the heavy stuff done... leaving parts to be added...) and at no charge. It took about two weeks. Normal Sony TVs are covered for 12 months, the Master series 18 months... the 18 months warenntee saved us about $4,500 (we originally paid $6,500)

Conclusion:
Mass market product service at Sony is Terrible. Top-of-the line Sony is adequate. Always buy the highest end products from Sony provided they continue to be rated highly on reliability. Hope you are lucker than I was. 2 out of 2 is terrible. If confronted with another failure, I’ll have another TV delivered the next day from Best Buy and then work on servicing to other one.