Received a call back from Toshiba! Albeit a non-helpful call…
Tim was a friendly gentleman who claimed to be in the “same boat” as me, purchasing an HD-A30 just after Christmas. He claimed that Toshiba has no plans to compensate those folks who purchased HD-DVD players recently, nor do they have any plans to facilitate any kind of trade-in program through the retailers.
Tim then assisted me in filing a formal complaint with Toshiba over the phone.
It’s been just about 3 months since the purchase and about 1 month since my initial contact with Toshiba before receiving any semi-meaningful response.
I have a feeling that Best Buy will not have any desire to help, or maybe they’ll do some kind of lame $100 trade-in towards a Blu-Ray player. But with Blu-Ray players going UP in price now, this whole situation really is a big 4-Q to everybody.
Is there enough separation between Toshiba, the retailers, and the movie production companies that they can continually pass the buck and say no one is to blame for bilking consumers out of hundreds of dollars? Or, is there enough tie-in between Toshiba’s multi-million dollar ad campaign (Super Bowl commercials) and their soon-after discontinuation of the product that someone could come up with a class action lawsuit? If they knew the boat was sinking, it would benefit them to get as many people to buy prior to D-date to minimize their losses.
