My rights with an electronic warranty?

m0bov

Run an ethernet cable to the TV, if you've spent £3500 on a TV, spend a bit on the cabling and get a decent hardwired connection to it.

Undervalued

Lynne_H wrote: »

I bought a very expensive TV last April (£3500) from John Lewis. We watch the TV on demand and through our wifi. We have really good 50 MB wifi and have no problems with the wifi on other devices. The TV intermittently (but frequently) looses its connection with the wifi. We have to turn the router off and on and that usually solves the problem. We have had months when this problem doesn't happen but at the moment it's an every day occurrence.

I have now contacted John Lewis as I have a 5 year warranty (although still within the initial one year). They are sending out a subcontracted engineer to look at it. However, the subcontracted company has told me they will replace some hardware and if that doesn't fix it I'm on my own. I have done a factory reset which didnt solve the problem. I'm really worried they will blame the wifi when I think the issue is with the tv software or firmware on the tv not talking to the router properly.

What are my rights? If I'm in the 1st year of warranty with john lewis can I just request a full refund and return the item? At this stage I just want my money back. I am so upset to have spent so much and have a product that doesn't work. An ethernet cable wouldn't work well in our set up because we'd have to trunk it round half the house.

Any advice appreciated!

There can be a whole number of things that cause this sort of issue and although it is possible it may be a hardware fault in the TV, it is most likely not.

I had similar issues (with much more modest equipment) where one device would behave like this despite apparently good WiFi signal and speed.

Possible solutions include setting a fixed IP address for the device, ideally at the TV if that is possible, or failing that reserve an IP address for it on your router.

Using 5GHz rather than 2.4GHz, even if a speed test suggests it is slower.

If your router has both 2.4 and 5 GHz on the same SSID it may be worth turning one or other off and / or giving them different SSIDs.

Just because it is a very high end TV doesn't mean it is immune from these sort of issues. The WiFi chip inside is unlikely to be any different from a 50 quid Amazon Fire TV stick or similar!

Is the TV very close to a party wall? If so it is possible that next door's router may only be inches away from it, far closer than yours!

As others have said a wired connection would be far more reliable. Powerline adaptors are a possibility providing both are plugged into the same ring main. (The house may well have 2, 3 or even more ring mains).

To be honest I will be very surprised if it is actually faulty.

Jumblebumble

Undervalued wrote: »

There can be a whole number of things that cause this sort of issue and although it is possible it may be a hardware fault in the TV, it is most likely not.

I had similar issues (with much more modest equipment) where one device would behave like this despite apparently good WiFi signal and speed.

Possible solutions include setting a fixed IP address for the device, ideally at the TV if that is possible, or failing that reserve an IP address for it on your router.

Using 5GHz rather than 2.4GHz, even if a speed test suggests it is slower.

If your router has both 2.4 and 5 GHz on the same SSID it may be worth turning one or other off and / or giving them different SSIDs.

Just because it is a very high end TV doesn't mean it is immune from these sort of issues. The WiFi chip inside is unlikely to be any different from a 50 quid Amazon Fire TV stick or similar!

Is the TV very close to a party wall? If so it is possible that next door's router may only be inches away from it, far closer than yours!

As others have said a wired connection would be far more reliable. Powerline adaptors are a possibility providing both are plugged into the same ring main. (The house may well have 2, 3 or even more ring mains).

To be honest I will be very surprised if it is actually faulty.

Fixed cable every time is the answer
In addition
IMHO a fixed IP is unlikely to make a lot of difference
Some power supplies on BT routers interfere with Powerline adapters
The powerlines should not be plugged into surge protected adapters
A 50MB connection does not imply you are not being heavily traffic shaped or are suffering contention by a cheap and nasty ISP
You could change the channel on your wifi router
A Draytek router 2862 will beat a cheap domestic router any day
Any router that needs frequent rebooting is only fit for the dustbin. We run Drayteks for 6 months often

Undervalued

Jumblebumble wrote: »

Fixed cable every time is the answer
In addition
IMHO a fixed IP is unlikely to make a lot of difference
Some power supplies on BT routers interfere with Powerline adapters
The powerlines should not be plugged into surge protected adapters
A 50MB connection does not imply you are not being heavily traffic shaped or are suffering contention by a cheap and nasty ISP
You could change the channel on your wifi router
A Draytek router 2862 will beat a cheap domestic router any day
Any router that needs frequent rebooting is only fit for the dustbin. We run Drayteks for 6 months often

Maybe however I have experienced a very similar scenario which was completely solved by a fixed IP. I Googled it in some detail back then and I was clearly not alone. It may well not work in the OP's case but costs nothing to try.

Powerline - yes I agree, plus to be effective they must be on one ring main.

As said, it remains possible that the TV is faulty. However I would be very surprised. I feel for both the non technically minded consumer and the retailer in these situations.

prettywowers

People who write "looses" when they mean "loses" should be shot.

neilmcl

prettywowers wrote: »

People who write "looses" when they mean "loses" should be shot.

And people who have nothing better to do than to police forum spelling should find something better to do with their lives!

shaun_from_Africa

One thing to look at that may fix it. (I had a similar problem and it worked for me).

Go into your wireless router settings and have a look for the wireless frequency bands. There may well be two of these switched on, 2.4GHz and 5GHz. If they are both on and both have the same SSID (the network name), this can cause problems with some systems that use the wireless signal as they can automatically switch between the two which can cause the TV to lose the internet connection for a short time.

The way I fixed this was to simply change the SSID of the 5GHz signal so the TV would only look for the 2.4Ghz signal and ignore the other one.

It may not be this that is causing your trouble but it's worth looking into.

Lynne_H

Thank you all for the very helpful technical advice (and clarity on where I stand warranty wise) - an engineer is coming out to look at the hardware possibility but I will also start to troubleshoot improving the connection between the router and the tv based on the various suggestions made. Thanks again. I'll let you know how I get on.