RCA's Bogus Warranty

A friend got a RCA DirecTV satellite receiver which died after 7 months or so. It has a warranty for 1 year, but that is for parts only. The warranty for parts and labor is 90 days. RCA (or the company which actually does the warranty work) will not send the parts out and instead forces you to exchange the unit and pay a fixed fee for labor, which is around $74. The interesting thing is that the MSRP is listed at $49.00 on RCA DRD430RG, so it costs you more to have it repaired than to buy a brand new unit, although they do not sell it directly. There is only one main part inside the unit, they swap that out and I am sure that the "labor" cost covers all the parts as well, especially based on the listed MSRP. All the fuses are also inside and soldered in, so even if it is the fuse it is not possible for the user to replace it unless they have the skills needed and a soldering iron. They won't even say anything about the fuses because it is so dangerous to open the case. Even if you are a trained technician, they will not send you the parts, because it is so dangerous to open the case. In other words there really is not a 1 year warranty on parts.

I found this web site after doing a web search which has more information on RCA and issues with their products: http://www.netnoise.com/boycott_rca/ , specifically: Read other contributions

Another web site with RCA Warranty information: http://www.warrantyinfoonline.com/directory/warranty/rca_warranty . This is the site in which I found the above boycott site.