Repair or buy new ? (My tv is broken)
Having an electronic home appliance like that state-of-the-art flat screen television suddenly die on you is not really an event we always prepare for. Our five year plans, after all, does not usually include an electronic device. Neither do we, as a norm, keep spare LCD or plasma TVs inside the store room. However, whenever such things happen, it always bring about that hair-pulling dilemma that I think most us go through. That is, the dilemma to either have the appliance repaired or to junk it and buy something new.
The answer to the question of whether to buy or to have your LCD tv repaired, as you would expect, is not easy as it depends on the situation. For example, with the older generation televisions like the cathode-ray tube (CRT) TV, a malfunction would most likely signal the owner to put more weight on the “buy new” scenario instead of repair scenario. This is because the prices of its more advanced descendants, the flat screen LCD and Plasma televisions, has gone down so dramatically in last few years. And with the modern flat screen’s relative advantage in picture quality, reliability and energy efficiency, the argument for the “buy new TV” option seems more convincing than having an aging, bulky and power hungry CRT TV under go repair.
But what if the TV that is breaking down is a high-tech LCD or plasma TV? The answer to this also depends on a number of considerations but the difference here is that the decision will not be as easy to arrive at since new flat screen TVs are not as inexpensive as CRTs and hence throwing away that flat screen in the living room will not be as easy as throwing away that 10 year old tube.
Buying a new TV certainly does have its advantages though. The flat screen TV technology is evolving on a monthly basis and hence, the newer ones will have already incorporated more advance and convenient features than the ones they sold just a couple of months before. The newer ones will also most likely be more energy efficient than its predecessors and so will be more environmentally friendly. New TVs will also have a warranty and that should give anyone piece of mind for one year at the very least.
The other option, the TV repair option, likewise, has its advantages (and it seems it has more advantages compared to the buy new option). Over the next four days I will cover those advantages.