What's the position (with regard to the Philips attitude) on a product (DVDR70) that is only just outside the 12-month warranty and starts going badly wrong?
I notice a couple of earlier posts mentioned contacting Philips MD directly by post.
Did anybody get anywhere with this course of action?

Some time ago Phillips did infact make good products backed up well and made rightly made themselfs a good reputation.

Sadly the content of this thred alone is proof that they have ruined their reputation. Phillips have been using poor power supplies in there TV's for a while and that has put me off buying what was otherwise an excelent product.

Mine and my m8's old phillips cd writers( PC drives) all of them from the 2x era and all knackered within 2 years. which makes it no supprise that there are major problems with dvd recorders/players not lasting a reasonable amount of time. Yea sometimes things do break unexpectedly, but with Phillips these days it's no supprise when you hear about things going wrong. it's as if they are designing things to break so people will buy again in 12+ months time.

In this modern era of outsourcing (buying cheep made in chine OEM products and rebadging them as there own)build things as cheeply as posable brand loyalty gets you nothing.

Every Philips-branded product that I've ever owned, has always either not worked from the start, or broken down soon after. I got 2x CD-ReWriters, both died within 6 months. I got 2 DVD players, both never worked right from the start, with the problem getting progressively worse, freezing several times during DVD playback. There was something else, but I don't recall what it was right now.

Nowadays, I avoid all Philips products, as a general rule.

my fm gave me his philips portable tv/dvd. it was his 2nd set
the 1st developed a fault and wouldn't play dvds properly..
so he took it back..got a replacement..the 2nd lasted 2 wks
we just couldn't be bothered to take it back for a third set..

Same here.
Washer/dryer;video;dvdr,iron,kettle ;shaver
In fact in 25 years of buying electrical gear,the only Philips product we had that lasted a decent length of time was a mobile phone.

Yup, same hear.

I had a phillips hifi a few years ago. I had it replaced 4 times in 3 months!! and on the fifth time i just gave up!

I hear everybody's pain.

My first OnDigital box was a Philips. I kept going wrong and in the end I managed to get Obdigital to swap it for a Nokia 9850T which, whilst ocassionally locking up, is a lot better (it's 5 years old).

I brought a Philips DVD player (Chinese sourced) because it claimed to be Mp3 compatible. The Picture quality was pretty good but it can't handle ID3 Tagged disks and seems to run out of title capacity if you have more than 8 letters in the Artists name and titles - I won't recognize them and only plays a few of your tracks.

No, I'm not buying Philips again too.

Regards Ches.

Both me and my Father in law have had the same issue (Both bought DVDR70's , Both experiencing these problems) When contacting Watchdog it may be worth telling them of the number of people affected as they will take more interest. I would suggest contacting them by email and posting a link to this thread.

Same thing with the UK Managing Director of Philips

should have read down the forum a bit before I posted this. http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/...d.php?t=352124

I am absolutely amazed at how many people are having similar issues. I suppose the only thing left to say about Phillips is NEVER GO NEAR THEM. As a few have mentioned above I will be taking the matter up by writing to the MD and the OFT etc.

Well I wrote to the Philips MD about the problems my parents are having with the DVDR70 and got a 'let me apologise on behalf of Philips for the problems..........but as the equipment is out of warranty'...and so on.
Has anybody else had any luck or tried another approach?
What of Watchdog or the OFT? Anybody tried that and had any success?

Cheers.

I have never owned a Philips product, and I have never liked them. In the late 70's/early 80's they were the only mainstream European company against all the Japanese companies. I expect quite a few people bought Philips back then as European partriots. I always found their TV's and videos a bit strange to set up and use (if I ever set one up for a friend silly enough to buy one in the first place) and hence got drawn to Sony, Panasonic etc.

I remember a neighbour complaining about their Philips video a few years ago. He was pleased with the actual video and features, but the clock gained 5 minutes or so a week, and this was before PDC was widely available. I mean, what use is a video that does not know the time?

I bought some Philips noise cancelling earphones that didn't cancel any noise, produced crap quality sound, and just made an evil evil hissing noise. They went straight back to Dixons.

Just to add to the list, my 2 year old DVDR80 is playing up now. Constant disc errors while recording and often loss of sound on recordings.

Also had to send it back twice in the first 6 months for repair as it kept locking up. So I'm with the original poster, no more Philips for me. I must have been an idiot to pay £400 for the thing.

Got a recorder from Tescos to replace it. £68 and it plays divx too.

PS Just bought a Samsung 50in DLP TV can't wait for delivery

Philips are just an awful company.

Thier products are awful, their customer services is, well, im speechless.

A lot of people know my hate for the company and Christmas I was given a senso coffee maker, lets just say, it spent 2 days in the car till the shops opened and it went right back!

I dont care if it worked or not, I will never have anything philips in my house for as long as I live!

We've had a Philips TV for 7-8 years which still works, only having to have the on switch button electronics changed once, another 2 Philips TVs for a couple of years which still work and I've got a portable Digital Radio (the first one wouldn't turn on or off after a couple of days, the replacement worked fine-to be fair Dixons would only swap it for the Ministry Of Sound one, so I ended up having the Philips display model one)

I must be lucky, but I wouldn't buy any more of their products, as I now buy Sony, or in the case of my last DVD player - JVC

Philips are dodgy,I had a dvdr70 bought from argos(another dodgy shop)had three before I gave up and got my money back,philips told me the a fault was caused by"static",I am starting to get worried becouse bt new tv service,the boxes are made by philips

Yeah - I agree 100%

I got a 3305 DVD recorder from then last october. The first one crashed randomly for no reason, and missed timer recordings.
Took it back to Dixons, got another one. It was meant to be dual format, but when I tried recording stuff to a DVD-RW, my other DVD player refused to play it. (It plays DVD-RWs from my laptop fine). Called the customer support, who were as much use as a chocolate teapot. After searching around, I realised it olny records DVD-RW VR mode, which rules out compatibility with most other players!

It also didnt play back any discs I'd made on my laptop in videostudio.

I took it back to dixons, who grudgingly gave me a refund. I went to John Lewis to get a Sony RDR-GX 210 for £150. Although this machine has a few problems (search on here), I considered it to be a bargain at £150, and infinetly better than the philips!!!

I am not going to bash this machine, as mine works fine.

A few 'tips' to get good performance.

1) Latest firmware upgrade! If it makes things worse, reload it after burning it SLOWLY onto decent quality CD-R media.

2) Always use a quality DVD-RW media - do some research into your dyes etc. Personally, I have found TDK to be great.

3) If burning DVD's to play on the Phillips, don't burn any faster that 4X!! Media quality does not seem to be so much of an issue here (I personally use Tesco's own brand!)

I am not going to defend the machine, as I know it has been an absolute dog, but I have always been lucky with mine.

Luck is the right word.
Philips are exclusive in selling machines that require firmware updates/cdr upgrades for them to continue working.
Most other makes,even the cheap crappy DVD+ imports actually have the machine working properly before it leaves the factory

Always avoid them after a few products that literally fell apart. Let em stick to lightbulbs and hospital equipment

Please don't say that. I may have to go into hospital soon.

Any more Philips horror stories? Just found this thread and am absolutely astounded at the bad name Philips has made for itself. Forget about buying Philips again!!

Any more Philips horror stories? Just found this thread and am absolutely astounded at the bad name Philips has made for itself. Forget about buying Philips again!!

two more horror stories here...
http://shopping.yahoo.com/p:Philips%...ion:1991994019

The new Pannys will record onto all dvd recordable discs inc' dvd-r dual layer discs.
The dmrez25 is a stunningly good unit with idtv to boot. The reliability has been fantastic on their units since they started them 4-5 years ago.
We sold panasonics 25-1 over the philips yet still had more philips back in for repair/return.
Sadly i've gotta congratulate the poster for keeping his r70 running so long.