Yes, it has happened. Earlier this afternoon, I was the lead dancer of the “OMG wtf, dood! turn on! tuuuurn on!!!!” spastic-power-button-mash. It was a dance I had gotten used to doing over the course of the last month or so. Or should I say, become familiar with, or ignorant of, the obviousness of the situation anyways. At some point, sooner rather than later, no amount of power-button spamming would prime my displays into life and that time was finally upon me.

And there I was, with two displays; one that wouldn’t turn on at all and the other one flickering really fast.

So what was the first thing I did?

Google it of course! Looking for a cure or at the very least, the cause. Turns out it’s probably the power-supply… or transformer… or whatever. I guess it didn’t matter, they’re toast. Jam anyone?

Well at that point, I was pretty much screwed. So I went to the Samsung website to check their support to see how much it would cost me to send them in and get them fixed or replaced – I figure one of them had to be cheaper than the other – but with no immediate information online, I ended up having to call the 800 number.

Within a few minutes of automated menus, I was connected to Liz. After filling her in with the serial numbers and the problem, I got right to the point. How much is it going to cost? Where do I send them and how long will it take?

Turns out, it wont cost me anything.

Excuse me?

Yep. They are still under warranty. 3years parts and labor. Through till 12/01/2010!

Well color me happy! And I still have the original packaging. Within a matter of about 15 minutes I went from ‘aw crap’ to ‘wow awesome!’, had two UPS !!PREPAID!! shipping labels sitting in my inbox and an RMA number for both monitors.

Sometimes, things just work out.

***UDPATE***

Dec 09
I’ve received both LCD’s back from repair and they are perfect – they replaced the panel and ipboards on both and I’m really happy. The panels are much nicer than the original ones (: