A couple weeks ago, the power supply on our very old, out of warranty Pioneer panel went out. The obvious symptom was that the cooling fans weren't switching on, just like on a failed PC power supply. Part of me was a bit happy that I could go "panel hunting" with all the holiday sales coming up.

Before pulling off the wall and scheduling a bulk pickup, I did a web search about the issue to see if there were cheap fixes. About 3 minutes into the search, there was a link to the Pioneer website with a notice that, commencing in 2008, were doing a power supply warranty service for many older panels, including mine.

Long story, short, Pioneer just needed my panel's serial number and they arranged for a local tech to come out to the house, 2nd Day FedEx'd the part to him and within an hour the panel was good as new for no charge, zero, nada, gratis, etc. Now that's service, but now I have to wait a few more years before I can buy another panel. Can't recommend Pioneer more.

The service guy said that until he got the call on my panel he was unaware of the warranty notice. He also said that buisness was bad since people weren't repairing their out of warranty panels because of the low prices these days, but that he has serviced quite a few that were damaged by Wii controllers flying out of the hands of players.