Amazon to the Rescue

This weekend, my father came to visit us in Massachusetts from New York. We spent hours playing Rock Band for the PS3. Rock Band combines singing, guitar, and drums into a great musical game. The karaoke and drum pad are my favorite because they are a more realistic approximation of actually performing. The guitar is more abstract since buttons take the place of strings. I wish Nyko or another after-market guitar controller company would create a real electric guitar for Rock Band, I would easily pay $200 for it.

I learned how to play acoustic guitar a long time ago, and I have been hoping one of the children would develop and interest in guitar and we could play together. Rock Band looks like it is helping them develop the interest, because they can better visualize the payoff. Let's face it, most people start playing as a teenager because they start going to concerts and want to be a part of the music, but younger children often just see practice as a time when everyone wants to leave the room :-)

Another great stepping stone is http://www.ivideosongs.com/ where you can watch free instructional videos on how to play guitar, and there is a large library of paid content for videos with either instructors, and in some cases the original artists who performed the song. Alex Lifeson has a video on how to play the guitar part of Rush's "The Spirit of the Radio", and John Oates shows you how to play "She's Gone". They also have videos for drums and piano.

The videos and the PS3 can be played on my Samsung LNT5271F 52" LCD HDTV, that I bought from Amazon last month. The family room in my house is getting heavier use these days, partially due to the social gaming and music enjoyment. Which brings me to my Amazon rescue story.

When I bought the TV in December, and I debated whether to buy it from Amazon or Circuit City. This hesitation was not typical, because I buy almost everything from either Amazon or eBay. It's just that for such a large purchase, there is some comfort in a local store.

For one thing, I was debating whether to buy the 120Hz model or the 60Hz model, since there is a significant price difference between the two. I was excited by the 120Hz, because my eyes resolve changes very quickly, and sometimes video motion looks stuttered to me, or I notice lights flickering when other people don't.

So I thought I should take a trip to Circuit City and compare the two side by side to decide which one to get, but since I wanted to buy it in time for Christmas, I would have to buy it there. When I noticed Amazon selling the 120Hz for less than Circuit City sold the 60Hz, I decided to read about the experiences other people had with Amazon in buying HDTVs. While there were some negative stories, they mostly concerned items damaged in shipping and the delays with getting a new one. In all, Amazon handled things well, so I was ready to take the plunge.

The low point of my weekend was when I noticed three large strips of bad pixels in the middle of the screen, which is $2500 worth of disappointment. These are over an inch long each, so definitely not something I could live with. So I wrote an email to Amazon customer service yesterday, and received an email today telling me to work with Samsung, and to contact Amazon if Samsung didn't make things right. I expect this is a stock response due to the number of times people call about one bad pixel, which is not considered a defect by some manufacturers.

I prefer working with retailers over manufacturers, so I decided to call Amazon customer service to accelerate the process. The customer service representative listened to what I had to say and scheduled the delivery of a new TV. So in a week or two a new one will be dropped off, and they will remove the old one. I couldn't believe it - they have made exchanging a defective HDTV even easier than at the local electronics store. They have raised the bar for value and service. Thanks Amazon.