I bought this monitor Geek Squad Certified Refurbished.
When buying geek squad certified, I had the confidence that my monitor was thoroughly checked, diagnosed, REFURBISHED, and had received the repairs it may needed if it was sent for faulty.
Best promise was that it grants you up to a 90 day warranty and repairs.
When they first shipped my monitor, they choose FedEx, now a lot of carriers dont exactly gentle handle every package they deliver, however Fedex is notorious for mishandling packages and damaging them, trust me, I worked there, we drop heavy packages from a height, and employees just frisbee smaller packages into the truck, this is done because human safety is prioritized first.
I finally received the monitor, the box had scuffs and damage all over, the box was very thin, and upon opening it, had right about zero of the original protective packaging is usually comes with.
All there was in the box was two thin sheets of bubble wrap, the monitor facing the, and the heavy arm stand parts weighting on top of the monitor.
The bubble wrap collected on the bottom of the box, probably during transit as the box was being delivered sideways throughout shipment, and the monitor was making clear contact with the bottom of the box, and the parts were laying right on top of the monitor.
Starting with the arm stand, the parts were kind of dirty, but had horrible scuffs and scratches all the way around, the monitor arms were sprayed with damage all over the plastic as if it gained a new cosmetic.
The monitor is up next down the line.
Upon reveal, the back of the monitor is just as damaged, pretty severely so as well.
Picking up the monitor, you can hear a lot of rattle on the inside of the monitor, what that rattle is? could be anything, but assuming broken plastic.
I set up the monitor, placing it on the table as gently as possible, connecting it to the pc, and as it turns out, you notice theres a scuff on the left bottom of the screen, noticeable when the screen is still showing a black image.
Finally, you get image, surprisingly no dead pixels (yet) and no pixel damage.
However on the bottom center of the monitor, and its quite noticeable too, you can see a bruise on the monitor in the size of a quarter, making the colors of the image draker just in that spot, cant tell if a severe ips ghosting or what, but whatever.
Going forward, its time to tinker with the menu settings to get the image I desire for my needs.
Thats when the next issue occurs, listing through all the color profiles, scrolling through vivid mode (the setting i was hoping to have the monitor run on) makes the display straight up crash and restart with factory default settings.
Okay, uh sure, whatever, I would like to adjust the brightness instead since its looking pretty dim.
As Im adjusting the brightness to get a brighter image for content production, the display once again crashes when you go above 80%.
Okay, perhaps theres a settings causing this error.
I turn off all settings, like power savings, freesync, etc etc, nope, nothing fixes it.
Made all diagnostics but it wont help, different outlets, cables too. monitor still crashes around those settings with nothing plugged into the monitor.
I plug in an experimental HDMI plug, I chose Roku.
Tried both ports, but as soon as an image comes in, it makes the monitor crash immediately and practically power cycle.
Could it be that the firestick is prompting HDR which prompting the display to be brighter which might be crashing it? who knows cause there is just no way to turn off HDR on the monitor to see if thats even the problem.
After all troubleshooting and testing, its clearly that the monitor is defected, probably the power supply from within.
Obviously I was not sent a REFURBISHED monitor, I was sent a defect a customer sent back to Best Buy.
Clearly Geek Squad didnt NOT certify this monitor.
They must have plugged it in once, got an image, and sent it off to traces.
It was by no means repaired, certified or anything.
The monitor wasnt even carefully packaged, so if this monitor was a working unit before, they set this monitor up to failure with the way the monitor was packaged, which was abysmal, let alone choose that carrier for that kind of a delicate product.
I reached out to the best buy customer support, however it may just be that best buy went forward with replacing actual human beings with ChatGPT.
As I was chatting with them, explaining my problem, and asking for a repair or a replacement, I was getting irrelevant responses and the agent was pressing on returning the monitor, not because it was mentioned it was the only option, but they communicated it in such a way that indicates that I was requesting it.
like so:
"Hey I want to use my warranty to have the monitor fixed or replaced"
-"I can help you return the monitor"
"No I want to redeem my warranty, I need to have it repaired"
-"Great! I will start your return right away!"
It was like that with a couple of representatives.
Perhaps asking for a supervisor would get you to speak to someone who is capable of paying actual attention to the wording of the conversation, however the "agents" refuse to have you connected and will argue to speak to you directly themselves.
After having a polite conversation, I frustratingly I said "Connect me to a supervisor" 3 times in a row since I could empathize the important of it enough, prompted the agent to say this:
"This conversation has become [inappropriate/unproductive]. I'm going to need to disconnect now."
Fully indicates that this was response was not generated other but ChatGPT 4.0 (or 3.5).
No outcome of that, so next up is the phone customer support.
While finally speaking to real humans, they are of no help and can only do a return and offer mindless solutions that wont work.
Pressured to go to the store by the agents on the phone, I tried reaching out to the store by phone, but apparently post covid thats impossible.
I found a tricky way to contact the store, and I was truly connected to the first competent person.
Unfortunately, still unable to be offered a replacement or a repair, and I will have to spend gas to get to the store and back home without compensation for the cost of travel and frustration spend resolving this issue.
Reaching out to LG has obviously done no good all things considered LG is just being LG, and just serving right about the most nonexistent warranty support.
Refused to help me redeem my warranty, and offers to do a repair at the 3 times the cost of the purchased price of the monitor, not including dealing with the physical damage to the plastics of the monitor or arm stand.
Truly after this experience, not only this will be the last purchase at Best Buy for items above $10, and on top of that I will be forever be extensively informative to a wide range of people to steer clear from going to best buy, and instead turn to better alternatives out there.
I will make sure that I can reach to as many of people and make sure they dont end up telling the same story I have in this review.
I will forever endorse and advertise not purchasing anything from Best Buy, anywhere online and in person.
To think I was sent someone's defective monitor instead of an actual refurbished item.
This is unacceptable.