Philips 32PF7320A Television

Cable Card Incompatibilities and Poor Customer Sup

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Oct 2, 2006 | 3 out of 3 found this Philips 32PF7320A review helpful

Pros: Video Quality id good

Cons: Incompatible with most Cable Cards

I purchased a 32” LCD television last month to hang on my wall in the bedroom and was excited since your 32PF7320A/37 product was advertised to support a cable card. I considered several other manufacturers, but chose Philips based on the fact that ...I could use this TV in the bedroom without a cable box. I received the TV and hooked it up and the picture was great. I was very happy with my purchase and even told some friends how good the quality was. I then had the cable company come out to install the cable card. The technician tried for about an hour to get the television to recognize the cable card to no avail. I figured we had a bad cable card and he would need to try another. I then remembered that the Samsung DLP TV I have in the family room accepts a cable card, so we tried it there and it worked fine. We then tried it again in the Philips TV and it still didn’t recognize the card. I told the cable company to take the card back since it looks like a problem with the TV. I did owe a $45 fee for the service call to install the cable card. Next I called Philips to get the TV fixed. They had me try some things and nothing worked, so they gave me two service center phone numbers. I called the first one and they said Philips had so many problems with cable cards that they wouldn’t want to accept the TV until I made further progress with Philips. I then called the second company who said they wouldn’t know how to fix this problem and were going to call Philips for support. They called me back stating that Philips was aware of the problem, and only suggested using a cable box instead of the cable card. This was totally unacceptable since the whole reason I purchased the TV was for the cable card functionality. I then called Philips tech support again to find that they knew about the problem and were not willing to do anything to fix it. They said I can wait to see if they ever come up with a firmware solution, but they were not even sure if the problem was actively being worked on. I thought this was horrible customer support and asked what other options I have. Would they swap the TV, refund my purchase price or pay for the cable company to attempt several cable cards in case one worked. The response was basically, that they scammed me and now I am stuck with this TV that I cannot use as advertised. Basically the TV was marketed as supporting a cable card and there was no mention that the TV was incompatible with the largest manufacturer of these cable cards. Philips now takes a position that they know they have an incompatibility, but choose to continue to deceive customers and offer no support to customers that fall victim to this scam. Luckily I was able to stop my friends from purchasing the Philip’s sets I recommended. I would hate to tarnish my reputation by recommending a faulty product with such poor customer support. I will continue to recommend against all Philips products in the future and am very disappointed in Philips stance in this matter. I hope Philips would reconsider doing the right thing and taking responsibility for their lack of information in the advertising material. At minimum, the product brochures should contain a note that not all cable cards are supported by this product and they should contact Philips for a list of known supported cable cards. Read more Less