I serviced RCA and Zenith warranties for several years. First, for me, RCA started simply sending me complete replacement chassis starting with the CTC-175's and up, and often, these chassis didn't even work straight out of the box. THEN, suddenly, RCA informed me that from then on, I'd be replacing to the component level. Most of their problems were due to that stupid tuner design that had B+, etc, going through solder connections on the tuner!! I used silver solder, and used individual copper wires to repair the tuners, and rarely had one come back again. It took me longer to repair, so the customer was the one that got stuck.
When Zenith stopped sending modules, and started repairing to component levels, I decided it was time to get out of the repair business, as Zenith quality had gone south even more than RCA had. Even before they stopped sending modules, I had many cases where the modules Zenith sent were actually DOA, and were missing parts! Often, I'd have to move parts from the old module over to the new one to get it working. And NO, I didn't get paid extra for this. I got X dollars PER job.
Both companies got lazy and their products were no better than anyone else anymore. I think all they wanted was to make the sale, have the set make it through the warranty period, then buy another one when it dies, rather than pay to have it fixed. Sound familiar?
