In April 2003, I bought a Phillips DVDR70 DVD recorder, I was extremely happy with this DVD recorder.

In September 2005 whilst playing a pre-recorded DVD, I encountered a problem, notably significant jumping of the picture, and freezing of the picture. I bought a laser cleaner but it was of slight help in rectifying this problem.

Towards the end of 2005, the DVD recorder worked fine, and then it would only record on Phillips DVD R and DVD RW. On playing pre recorded DVDs, again the picture would jump. Now it will only record on Phillips DVD RW. I contacted you customer care department via your web site and was told to contact Servicecare, which I duly did. I was extremely surprised at what Servicecare told me. I spoke to an extremely abrupt woman, whom said;

“Phillips don’t make the DVDR70 any more and we don’t have any parts for it.”

I was surprised by this. I asked what advice she could give me, to which she replied;

“Well you have a useless machine luv, you’ll have to buy an new one”.

As I have always purchased Phillips products and never had any problems before I am extremely upset at this woman’s very negative and most unprofessional manner. After 4 years of ownership of the Phillips DVDR70 DVD I do not expect a DVD Recorder (at the time a top of the range and expensive model) to be discontinued and me left with a useless product.

Servicecare are frankly a joke, and the woman I spoke to would'nt even send someone out to look at the DVD recorder.

I really do not expect this sort of service from Phillips or its agents.

Phillips reply

Please accept our apologies for the difficulties you have experianced with our third party service provider service care, please rest assured you concerns have been passed on to our complaints department who will ivestigate this mater for you.

We would suggest that you contact service care again as they should ahve offered you a replacement DVD recorder at a reduced price.

We trust that the information provided will be of assistance.


Its a joke why should I be out of pocket for a product thats only 4 years old

I'm not sure I understand what you are getting at. Did you take out an extended warranty on this product, so you are expecting it to be repaired or replaced free of charge, or are you just angry that the product is now obsolete and therefore cannot be repaired anyway?

Is this unit under extended warranty? - if not, it's not worth bothering with anyway - assuming the spares are available? (and knowing Philips they may not be), it could easily cost more to repair than it cost originally, and certainly more than it would cost to buy a replacement machine.

No its not under an extened warranty, I do not expect a DVD machine of 4 years to be discontinued and Phillips and Servicecare not give a toss about its customers.

Personally I would consider four years a pretty decent life for a DVD recorder - as for being "discontinued", it's rare that a unit makes 12 months before that happens.

Usually spares are available for a reasonable period (there used to be a legal obligation for seven years, but this was dropped a good few years back) - but sometimes now spares are NEVER available at all, with the units being replaced under warranty, and thrown away outside warranty. As a matter of interest, it was Philips who pioneered the "never any spares available" scheme!.

In your case it needs an optic block, which may mean the entire DVD mechanism, which may even include some of the boards - in all cases it's an expensive job!.

But as Nigel has already told you - even if the parts were still available, it would cost more to repair than the price of a new DVD recorder. And you can buy far better technology now, for a fraction of the price, than the technology you could buy in 2003.

If Philips had the parts, and told you it was going to cost £200 to repair, would you rather do that than spend (say) £80 on a newer and far better model, Philips or otherwise? It's lasted you three and a half years - I'm on my fourth DVDR in only 18 months. If it was around in 2003, it's not going to have any of the features that newer models have nowadays. It doesn't have a hard drive, it doesn't support DVD-R as a recording media. Does it even support DTS? Why not take this as an opportunity to get yourself a much better piece of kit, for half the price you paid for this dinosaur back in August 03, and resign the Philips to a skip? Or a museum?

Even in 2003 the unreliability of Philips dvd recorders was well documented.

4 years must be record for any of their machines,so you are actually quite lucky.

Now its packed up you can buy a proper one from Pioneer or Panasonic and see what you've been missing for 4 years

I've still got an DVDR70 thats working fine, not used much as its just in the spare room now though. (2-3 times a week)

Wonder how long its got left....

Ha Ha..... you bought a Phillips!

ah! that explains why, when i bought my philips idtv which could not pick up digital text services,
i was not offered a freeview set-top box. i was fobbed off by servicecouldn'tcareless