It was relatively good to start. The background story goes like this. Sunday, Aug. 13, I had a party and someone dropped my Pronto on just wrong on a slate table. The screen was cracked diagonally from corner to corner. The next morning I called cust. service after doing some research on this forum on my options and other's experiences. My Pronto was 21 days out of warranty. Ouch. I new that my chances were not good and I was expecting from the first moment that I was going to pay the 60% refurb. price. I chalked it up as a learning experience. Put the Pronto away when you have a party.

I called them with a good attitude told them right away that it was out of warranty and that it was damaged due to dropping. Now my Pronto had taken it's share of drops before and never had an issue so I was fairly happy with it's durability. You cannot expect anything with an LCD screen to take drops for a long period of time and not break. One bad angle drop is all it takes.

Any way, I was very nice and asked what my options were. Two options: Pay Philips 60% of retail($240) and ship mine to them, or buy a new one. $240 seemed reasonable, it's probably 10% over cost, which also seems reasonable.
So I agreed. I got off the phone and went to my nearest shipping outlet and shipped it UPS. Then I called back with the tracking number and they said they would release my refurb. as soon as the tracking number went live. The number went live tues. but they didn't get mine out the door until late Wed. Not impressive, but acceptable. Because of the delay, my Pronto would not arrive until Mon.

The refurb arrived Mon. afternoon. It's screen was broken. At that point I was pissed. I don't know who to blame for that, but my first gripe would go to UPS, I know how they treat their packages. So I called Philips again with a more stern attitude. The cust. service rep. was very apologetic. I told her that I assumed it was the fault of UPS. At that point, she told me that someone had made a mistake on the charges for my refurb. I was charged ONLY $150.

IT DOES PAY to be PLEASANT. That is the moral of the story.

So I was happier at that point. I tried to demand that they ship immediately FEDEX. They wouldn't. I tried to demand that they ship FEDEX when they got my return tracking number. She said she would attach a note to the account. That was all she could do, and her boss was in a meeting at the time, so I did not argue.

Well, I recieved my second refurb. Friday 9/1/00 via UPS. It worked.

That is my story, and I am satisfied. For those of you who have been rude to cust. service regarding a Pronto see how I was rewarded by my niceness.

For those of you whose Pronto has not broken yet(IT WILL at some point) be nice and you may be rewarded as well. Feel free to comment or ask questions.

Ralph:)

That mirrors my experience exactly. I had one repair already (no backlight) after which they sent me the wrong kindo of Pronto. They rectified that quickly. I'm about to send mine back (I called the day before the warranty expired). This time a column of pixels is missing. Same great service from the start. I indicated that I couldn't send it back till at least Tuesday of this week but they said because I called before the warranty expired that was fine.

I just really wish I didn't have to send it back at all. Days without a Pronto are like heck.

I thought the replacement price was supposed to be US$150, which is what it was not so long ago. When did they change it to 60% of retail?

Peter,

I believe the $150 applies when you damage the remote within the warrantee period. After the warrantee is up, there is a prorated charge for the replacement. I guess he was luckey that he wasn't 1 year out of warrantee, would have probably been a lot more.

Ralph, I'm glad your happy with the service. Of course on the other hand, your remote will be repaired (for a whole lot less than $160) and eventually end up in someone else's hands. I think a reasonable repair charge for these devices would be alot more "consumer friendly".

Jim L

As far as repair goes, one of the downsides is that you have to wait. The advantage of the current "swap" method is that you are without your Pronto usually for less than a week. To me, that seems that a little extra is probably worth it. (Of course I've only had to do mine twice under warranty so I haven't had to shell out bucks. It was hard, however, packing it up because in both cases it was still usable.)