I've been reading all of whats been said about the brand and I need to share my experience - there's always two sides

Six years ago I bought a Phillips 32" (CRT) 100MHz Pixel Plus set with built in wireless surround sounc - it was quite expensive at the time but the set has been brilliant, I've had no problems at all with it, the picture is still top class and the sound adequate for my needs - yes Id love a large plasma but with the Phillips still going strong can't see the need to upgrade at the moment - I imagine their are many other satisfied users out there -

if you are thining of Phillps dont let the large number of negative posts put you off - its human nature to make a noise when youre not happy - so there are bound to be unhappy people, no matter what brand


On another positive note - just had a refund of the purchase price of an unused (after 3 years) extended warrenty on a Pioneer DVD recorder - top class service from Richer Sounds - the Pioneers been great too

Agree that a positive post was needed but with the following point to be made.
I used to own Philips kit and it was very good going back 8 years or so. I now have Panasonic. The reason I did not purchase Philips again is simple.
I work in a small independant shop selling home entertainment and domestic elecrticals. About 6-7 years ago ther was a massive shift in build quality from philips that meant we were having many more problems with their kit than ever before. It got to the point where we had no confidence in selling the brand and just didn't bother.
Panasonic on the other hand maintained their quality as have Sony over the same period.
From your side of the fence, having bought 1 item, the product has been great. From our side we bought many items and found the quality to have dropped significantly.

Agree with skinj. The OP is happy with one Philips product - that was built over six years ago. The build quality of that one product is no indicator of what Philips themselves have been doing over the last six years. If the OP had bought a Philips TV only two years ago he may well have been much less happy than he is with the one made when Philips was still a good electrical consumer goods manufacturer.

I'm happy with a 13 year old Mitsubishi VCR that still works in my spare room - but it wouldn't make me go out and buy a Mitsubishi telly, a Mitsubishi DVD player, a Mitsubishi Freeview box or a Mitsubishi amp (that is, if such things even exist).

Which is my point - the fact that a lot of negative posts are made shouldn't make a potential buyer not go for a brand as there is never a fair balance - good v bad

've no recent experience of their products, but for any brand a buyer may get a defective product - Id be interested to know if there are any indpendant customer satisfaction surveys of the different brands like I believe there is for cars produced by What Car. This would then give a much fairer guide to standards, reliablility etc than is presented on sites such as this.

I think we're all agreed on pretty much the same thing. All brands can produce a bad product - I had a faulty Panasonic DVD recorder (even though a lot of people say that Panasonic, Pioneer and Sony are the three best manufacturers of DVDRs) which put me off buying another Panasonic. And just as likely, anybody can find a reliable hard-working product from one of the "lesser" brands.

But with Philips, what you find over and over again, is that there are more poor quality models in a Philips batch than there are in batches from other manufacturers. From a batch of 100 identical Philips TVs, sixty may develop faults. Whereas from a batch of 100 identical (say) Sony TVs, only three may develop faults. So the odds are that a Sony TV will not need repairing or replacing until it has really reached the end of its life cycle, whereas with a Philips TV there is a very good chance that it will need repairing or replacing long before it ought to be.

If you had bought one of the 40 Philips TVs that never developed a fault, you would be in the happy camp and wouldn't understand why so many others were slagging off Philips. But the problem would be, there would be more slaggers off of Philips than satisfied customers - and that is not normally the case with one of the more respected brands.

What source have you got the 60% failure rate? Have you just pulled that out of the air? This thread, as its title suggests, is for the positive side. I have a new Philips set and i have high hopes for it (I do have a problem with it but am looking to get it resolved before I give up with an entire brand).

Oh yes, I made 60% up. I don't know the official failure rate (if indeed there is an official failure rate) I just know that most contributors on these boards who actually run either TV repair shops, or work in electrical retailers, regularly say that more often than not it is Philips goods that are returned because they have failed.

Whether more often than not means higher than the 50% mark I don't know - I just avoid them because I know that they have a high failure rate and I'd rather not take the risk.

How things have changed. The British used to be renowned for NOT complaining enough - now it has turned full circle.

If I were a lawyer, I'd say " I rest my case"

Whilst there are no official figures around, I'd be amazed if the Philips 1st year failure rate was even as high as 10%.

There's no way John Lewis, Comet, Tesco, DSG or Argos would accept a product failure rate that's anything like the "60%" suggested above, particularly on a high-value item.

All of them will do regular QA checks on suppliers and if there are problem products, usually withdraw them.

Come off it! - Tesco are mostly selling the cheapest junk they can source, their sole criteria is the lowest cost. Bear in mind much of what they sell is just badged junk, so the name on the front usually is no indication of the manufacturer.

First year failure isn't really the concern though, it's the second year when it's out of warranty!.

BTW, specific model failure rates of more than 60% aren't unknown, for example failure of the Pace 2500 Sky box was probably nearer 90% than 60% in the first year - which resulted in most ASA's dropping Pace for a number of years.

Nigel,

I agree you may have specific model failure that can be high - particularly if you have a couple of 'iffy' batches or a fundamentally flawed design.

What I was responding to was a post which suggested Philips had a failure rate of "60%" - now OK, that was a figure plucked out of the air - but you're not seriously suggesting the average failure rate of Philips Audio / Visual products is more than 10% in year one ? If it were, do you seriously think the major retailers would still be stocking them ?

In the case of John Lewis who sell on their reputation and 5 year guarantee, I can't believe they'd deal with a manufacturer who's products had an abnormally high failure rate - it would cost them too much in terms of back-up and reputation.

I was merely responding to your claim that Tesco would stop buying particular manufacturers due to high failure rates - as they obviously do no such thing - their sole criteria is low price.

As for 'major retailers', they aren't likely to do so either, where you should look is the independents who respond far quicker and more accurately than the 'major retailers' in dealing with problem manufacturers. Bear in mind 'major retailers' employ buyers, who have no relation to the sales floor. It's the independents who dropped Philips like a hot brick!

60% was obviously a highly inflated made up figure though


I wasn't aware JL were supposed to have a decent reputation?, they sell extended warranties, it's the insurance company who pay out on those, not JL. But if you don't pay the extended warranty then JL aren't interested, we had a customer the other week who took a Panasonic DVD recorder back, it was 14 months old, and they just told her to take it away, as she hadn't paid the extended warranty on it.

JL have a 5 year warranty as standard on TVs and used to have a 2 year warranty on VCRs - whether they've continued the latter with DVDs I'm not sure.

The point I was making is that if they're covering items for a 5 year period, they're going to want to be fairly comfortable that the goods will probably last that long. Hence if Philips were running a failure rate of 50% into the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th year I wouldn't expect JL to be stocking them ?

As for the reasons independent retailers stock brands, I suspect it's as much to do with the deals available, extent of competition from the nationals, reliability of deliveries as the reliability of the products. No point in having ultra-reliable products if the price is cr@p, the competition too hot and the supplier never delivers.......

JL don't cover them, it's the insurance company they use for their warranties that does.


Independents mostly rely on their good name, quality of service, and good products - as such they are VERY concerned about poor quality product. This is why you mostly find Philips in the large multiples (because Philips offer the buyers a good deal), the same applied to the last Sharp CRT models - they were absolutely rubbish (the CS chassis and later), independents all stopped selling Sharp, and the big multiples took up the slack, no doubt at advantageous prices?.

Bear in mind most independents buy through buying groups, and have similar (or greater) buying power than the multiples - some (like ourselves) use both buying groups and direct accounts, although you need considerable turnover to get a direct account with a manufacturer.

Agree on most of this, but you can't deny that supplier incentives i.e marketing support be it financial and non-financial are also a consideration. There are no shortage of 'independents' who's shop windows and signage make it very clear which brands they favour - and I doubt that they put those signs up on a FOC basis........ do they

You don't get paid anything for putting signs up, but the signage is provided free - the whole idea is to increase your sales, so everyone wins.

Certainly various manufacturers do provide marketing support, contributing towards newspaper and radio adverts, even towards sign writing costs for vans.

If we have a specific Sony advert in the press, then we would expect to get a contribution towards (and hopefully all of it! ) - but if we had a general advert with various makes listed, then we have to pay it all ourselves.

You've probably seen similar in your local press?, with independents having more than one advert, but at least one will be brand specific.

Over they years I've used Philips washing machines,irons,shavers,mobile phones,vcr's and even a dvdr and without a doubt their products are crap.

The only one that never packed up completely was the phone.

I'm unsure how seriously we should take someone who rates a 100Hz crt as excellent quality in the first place.

Pioneer and Philips- chalk and cheese