LG 32LD550

Pros: Beautiful picture
Easy to set up

Cons: My stand arrived broken, and 3 weeks and 8 customer service agents later, I'm not sure a new one will ever arrive

Summary: My husband bought our first flat screen TV for me for my birthday. Excited, we took it out of the box, and started to assemble the stand. Right away, we noticed that the stand looked like it was skewed, there was an arrow on top that pointed off to one side instead of pointing forward or even backward. We tried to adjust it by hand, but it would not turn. I called customer service and they told me that the stand would not swivel by hand, that it took the weight of the TV for it to swivel. We hung up, and continued to assemble the stand. We got it put together, and it swiveled but it was still skewed. I called back and customer service suggested something else. We hung up and tried it, but it didn?t work. Finally the third time I called back, the customer service person told us that our stand did not operate properly, and would need to be replaced. He took our contact info, and said we would have a replacement in 7-10 business days. We also requested a few screws ? he said that he couldn?t guarantee the screws would show up, but he?d try. This was Saturday, June 19th.

On July 2nd, 10 business days later, a small, lightweight box arrived. It had the wrong address - calling our street ?south? instead of ?east?. And, it was the screws ? still no sign of the stand. According to the UPS ground label on the box, the screws weren't sent out until 6/28 - 9 days after I called LG. None of this was exactly reassuring.

I called LG customer service to tell them that the stand was likely sent to the wrong address and I'd like another stand sent out. We live in Manhattan, there are approximately 1000 ? 1500 apartments per city block. There is east and west on a street - but not south. So a package marked south could show up on the east side, could show up on the west side, it could go to that street name in another boro - it could float around and eventually be returned ? anything could happen. I talked to the first service agent, who verified my information, verified that LG had the wrong address, put me on hold 5-10 minutes , then transferred to someone else who verified my information, put me on hold 5-10 minutes, then transferred me to someone else - this went on for 5 transfers and 45 minutes. The LG customer service agents said that they wanted me to prove (beyond verifying that they had the wrong address) that the stand would not show up at our apartment as the screws had. I asked them if they could pull the tracking numbers and track the stand ? they said that they didn't know the tracking numbers so they couldn't trace the package. I admit that I was pretty frustrated at this point. As I was speaking with the 4th customer service agent, the LG agent said that LG would need another 7-10 business days to send a replacement stand out ? if I could prove that the one that was sent was definitely not going to arrive. Finally, after being transferred to a 5th agent ? a supervisor this time, I demanded that they overnight me the stand. I had waited the requisite 10 business days, and even overnighted, a working stand probably wouldn?t show up until 7/6. The supervisor, after putting me on hold several times, then told me a completely different story - he said that LG couldn't overnight the stand because the stand is backordered, that it is not lost because IT WAS NEVER SENT OUT TO ME IN THE FIRST PLACE, and couldn't be sent out now. He did not know when the stand would be back in stock.

If this was true, I'd waited 10 business days for absolutely nothing, and no one at LG had thought to call back and tell me about this. But what are the chances that the previous 4 people I spoke to knew but did not tell me that there were no stands, and what are the chances that LG stopped making this brand new TV model because there were no stands? That seemed pretty unlikely to me. So I wondered aloud to the supervisor if telling me that there were no stands wasn't a pretty convenient way to not have to send me a stand in the near term. At that point, the supervisor asked me if I was calling him a liar ? and well ? I did not call him a liar, but did say that I didn?t believe him. He put me back on hold, and while I was waiting for him to pick me back up, he disconnected me. I waited until my phone made the off the hook noise before I hung up.

So now I have a TV that was a high 3 figure amount, and 16 days later, no stand and depending on what you believe the real story is, no stand on the way. And by the way, it?s a great TV, but if you have even the simplest problem with it ? look out.