Originally Posted by robb
You wanted Sony quality at Sorny prices, and you should actually be grateful that you learned of the quality in time to return it or dispute the charge. It would be much worse to learn of it in 91 days when your purchase protection ran out and you find that those pixels start dying out quickly.
My $.02 - Amazon as a vendor/dealer sold you the television you ordered as represented by the manufacturer/brand. The television received DID have this feature, correct? It just didn't work because of the faulty implementation by the manufacturer. Amazon sold you the product you ordered with the feature you wanted; however, the manufacturer failed to deliver on the promise of the utility of that feature.
As for the mp3 player example, I think it is slightly different...
in my scenario, the mp3 player will play mp3s, but they just sound like they're under water, or maybe it only accepts 32kbit encoding (real low quality). You got the MP3 player. It plays MP3s. It just doesn't live up to your expectations.
That is why we have all these reviews and message boards to refer to when we're making an investment.
Now, don't let me sound like I'm jumping on the "you shoulda got a sony" bandwagon... My family is in retail (not me, yet, though) and we got one of the new sony dlp televisions and it had the strangest problem, not decoding video signals other than 480i intermittently. Ultimately, as it was a problem with Sony's implementation of their feature, Sony was responsible for the problem, repair, and replacement. Sony has a better reputation because they tend to offer better support for their customers when there are issues.