RCA Products Are On My S**t List

I don’t hold many grudges. But RCA is one company that I absolutely don’t patronize.


Back in the late ‘60s, when we were just starting out married life, the wife and I went to the discount chain White Front in Southern California and bought a 21-inch RCA black and white TV set, one of our first major purchases.


After a week or so, the trouble started – the picture would collapse into one little horizontal line in the middle of the screen. So I hauled the set down to the nearest RCA for its warranted repair. A couple of days later, they called me and said the set was fixed.


Yeah, right. Back home, I turned it on and in a few minutes, the picture collapsd again. The next day, back it went to the repair shop. A day later, they called, I picked it up, took it home, plugged it in and turned it on …You guessed it, big ol’ horizontal line again.


Repeat the entire exercise (back to repair shop, etc.) … and then repeat again. I quit. I wrote a seething letter to RCA, sending a copy to the White Front store.


Never heard back from RCA, but the White Front manager called a couple of days later, told me to bring the set back to the store, and he’d give me a replacement. I took him up on the offer, picking out a nice set with a comparable price. He told me to pick a different one, one that cost about 50% more than the original. Now THAT was customer service.


I went back to that White Front many times, even when we moved and going there was really out of our way.


Since that time, I’ve refused to buy Whirlpool appliances because Whirlpool was owned by RCA; I’ve told TV repairmen not to use the RCA tubes they were going to use; and I’ve gone out of my way to say “no” to RCA, no matter how inconvenient it became.


Just the other day, I had to buy a universal TV remote control to replace one I’d lost. The ones with the best features and prices at the store were made by RCA. I passed those up and got a Sony remote.


I don’t hold grudges … just one.