topic Re: Bricked KD-55AF9 in Android TV

Bricked KD-55AF9

spicybeanstew — Tue, 26 May 2020 06:03:30 GMT

We bought our KD-55AF9 29th December 2019 from Currys in the UK.

It threw a tantrum about a month ago - which we attributed to our Sky box, however things really went south last night.

The symptoms were power cycling, going through the 'Sony' banner, the Android start up then pausing and doing it all over again.

We unplugged everything else to make sure nothing else was contributing to the problem.

Occasionally if one pressed the 'Home' button during boot up, you'd get to the Home page and settings could be changed - although it might spontaneously reboot whilst I was doing things,.

I followed the Sony guide which seems to be a two stage process:

1) First check the TV has the latest updates - it has, auto-update is on

2) Do a factory reset.

1) didn't help as it weas already at the latest release, so I tried 2).

Now the TV power cycles but you only see the 'Sony' banner before it fades, and about a minute later it reboots. Twice the initial part of the Android banner came up - but then it froze and after a minute or so, rebooted.

After 2), the website revealed the UK help number +44 (0) 2073652810. Unfortunately we are five months out of our guarantee and Sony seem to have closed the UK helpline.

The next options was to download the latest patch set to USB according to the instructions and try and let the TV detect the USB stick & auto install the update. No luck - bricked TV.

So no Sony to help, no repair service and no further ideas.

As an angineer, I suspect whatever boot medium the TV has, but that is simply conjecture.

Any helpful suggestions will be gratefully received.

Thank you in advance.

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

Vapeland — Mon, 25 May 2020 18:18:25 GMT

Why would you be out of your guarantee? Minimum you would have is 2 years but Currys have been selling Sony TVs with 5 warranty. They will probably take the tv for repair but think that’s your best option. If you have the latest update and did a factory reset then correct me if I’m wrong but don’t think there’s much more you can do

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

spicybeanstew — Tue, 26 May 2020 05:49:54 GMT

Hello Vapeland,

Thanks for taking the trouble to reply, I do appreciate it.

I will be thrilled if my TV has a two year warranty; before I made the comment, I followed the link on my account to here:

Your Sony guarantee: what you need to know

Which AFAICT says most products only have a year's warranty.

I have called Currys, who say that only Sony will fix my TV and forwarded me to the Sony support number - which is currently not being answered.

So at the moment I am left with at best a room heater if I choose to turn it on.

I guess it is time to buy a new TV and stick this one in the loft for the time being; if I had an idea on how to fix/replace what I perceive to be faulty, then I'd try that.

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

Vapeland — Tue, 26 May 2020 17:50:02 GMT

I took a further look into this and see that unless Currys state they are giving a 5 year warranty then you only get a year. But under the U.K. sales of good act then if a fault occurs with your electrical good within 6 months then it’s up to the retailer to fix and not the manufacturer. If it was me I would keep on at Currys to get your tv fixed. You’ve had your tv or less then 6 months. Make a nuisance of yourself if you have to. I bought a tv back in April from Currys and it only lasted 2 weeks. I found the webchat with Currys to be more helpful then calling them. Good luck and hope you get it sorted

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

spicybeanstew — Thu, 28 May 2020 06:33:46 GMT

Hi Vapeland,

Thanks again for your response - unfortunately we bought the TV on December 29th 2019 - so we have had it for 1 year & 5 months.

I can't get an answer out of Curry's and Sony have completely shut up shop and abandoned their customers, so I have taken it to our local repair shop.

In the meantime we have bought an LG 49SM8600PLA to tide us over - it's not as good as the Sony but a) it works and; b) it cost 25% of price of the Sony.

I am particularly disappointed that Sony have ceased to manage even the customer service lines - I can see no excuse for that as it can be carried out remotely.

It would be very hard for me to say anything good about Sony in future. Impossible might be a more accurate description, but I am grateful for your attempts to help. Much better than Sony! Following Sony's self-help guidelines my TV went from a machine that would boot to a brick, with no back up.

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

Vapeland — Thu, 28 May 2020 10:16:56 GMT

TVs aren’t built like they used to be. My last Sony is still going strong after 12 years but my new one broke after 2 weeks. The replacement has problems also but has you’ve seen there’s no point contacting Currys or Sony.

LG isn’t a bad tv tbf and anything that works is better then the tv you have lol. I hope you get your tv fixed and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg! Think there’s some confusion in your dates as you say you bought it on the 29th December 2019. That makes it less then 6months old. Think you mean 2018? Keep us updated on how it goes

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

spicybeanstew — Thu, 28 May 2020 10:40:51 GMT

Ah. Yes, you are quite right, it was bought on the 29th December 2018, date of manufacture was 2018/09.

I have my fingers crossed for my local shop - I am going to give them a punt as they are going to have a look. They charge £35 for an investigation which I though was fair; the shop is Hamilton Cole, in Pulborough West Sussex and at least they are open and willing to investigate.

They have seen the problem before, but made the rather worrying statement that most moden TV's have just two boards; so it will be replacement of one of them.

I will keep you posted 🙂.

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

Tonycv51 — Thu, 28 May 2020 11:48:50 GMT

Whilst it's great that you've got a helpful local shop, currys have a 5 year guarantee on all "premium" tvs. A 55AF9 should be one of those. There would have been a logo on their website for the 5 year guarantee against the model which should be reflected on the receipt (email or store paper copy).

From having a few tv problems I would now never buy a modern TV without a 5 or 6 year guarantee. I recently claimed with John Lewis. TV was 4 and half years old, as long as you top up and pay extra for a better replacement model than they offer you (can be just by 1 pound) you get a new 5 year guarantee

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

spicybeanstew — Thu, 28 May 2020 13:22:43 GMT

Hello Tonycv51,

That's really useful. Nothing on the receipt, and the hopeful looking monthly 'PRODUCT SUPPORT' we cancelled.

I found this thread on the subject, but I couldn't see any mention on the current Curry's site.

I tried to have a look at the way back machine to look at Curry's site on the day I bought the TV, but I couldn't navigate to the page containing the KD-55AF9 and didn't see any guarantee stuff.

Redacted receipt

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

Gary_L — Thu, 28 May 2020 14:20:34 GMT

I’d definitely contact currys with the stance that it does come with a 5 year guarantee, I bought a tv back in 2016 and you had to register on the knowhow website but when I bought one for the bedroom in 2018 which came with a 5 year guarantee I didn’t have to and I bought a new Sony a couple of weeks ago and again no need to do anything other than register with Sony I’m assuming any tv above a certain price comes with a 5 year guarantee, you’ve got nothing to lose.

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

spicybeanstew — Thu, 28 May 2020 14:46:06 GMT

I have registered with Sony, so perhaps there is hope. Sadly Chichester Currys is closed ATM - in fact using Curry's site to search with a filter to only show open stores hangs.

So no Currys, no Sony.

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

Vapeland — Thu, 28 May 2020 15:01:53 GMT

I checked my emails as I bought my tv online and it doesn’t mention about the 5 years guarantee on there, but on the website it does. Like these guys have said I would assume yours has the guarantee as well. See what the tv engineer says and before you pay anything else get on at currys

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

Tonycv51 — Thu, 28 May 2020 15:05:59 GMT

This thread implies the guarantee is through Sony and is registered automatically.

https://community.sony.co.uk/t5/other-tvs/i-was-told-my-tv-came-with-a-5-year-warranty/td-p/1819153/page/2

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

spicybeanstew — Thu, 28 May 2020 16:15:59 GMT

I had a look at that thread, a lot of confusing/conflicting opinions.

@malcolm1962suggested this extended warranty link, but the first thing it says is that it is an extra purchase.

I am looking forward to what my local shop will say/can do. It would help if I could speak with Curry's or Sony in person.

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

Vapeland — Thu, 28 May 2020 17:11:02 GMT

There’s little information on the 5 year guarantee included with the tv but it does say that the guarantee is included with team knowhow and doesn’t mention anything about it being with the manufacturer.

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

Vapeland — Thu, 28 May 2020 17:12:32 GMT

Forgot to mention that it’s not an extra purchase it’s a free 5 year included guarantee 👍

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

Joe_Dohn — Thu, 28 May 2020 17:42:07 GMT

Following the 5 year guarantee, as far as I know, there are both versions (one with Sony and one with Curry's/Team Knowhow) it just depends on which one you have, which you can find out by contacting Curry's directly or checking the details of the receipt.

As for the rebooting you're currently having with your TV, I've seen an article a while back for some older models that had a similar rebooting issue. It's recommended to try a forced factory reset. Here's the link for the reset: https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/articles/00159906

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

spicybeanstew — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 11:06:32 GMT

Hello @Vapeland ,

My local TV shop blow Sony out of the water for service 😃. They have had a poke around and say that there are only two boards inside the TV, one is the PSU which seems to be fine & the other is the AV board, for which the part number for a KD-55AF9 is 1-983-356-11. They do come up on eBay for reasonable money - but there are none at the moment. What this does tell me is that these TV's do break and do get broken for parts.

Any help in sourcing a working example of one of these boards will be gratefully received.

Hello Sony? Anyone at home?

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

spannerzone — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 16:25:29 GMT

It's possibly a bit late but the original retailer has certain legal obligations even after the guarantee has expired, you should be dealing with the retailer direct and don't let them fob you off telling you to speak directly with Sony (that is how they wash their hands of their responsibilities because you chose to leave them out of any discussions etc). You and Currys have a contract in place. The other option is if you bought on credit card or on a credit agreement you have protection (section 75) and could make a claim against the credit provider if Currys fail to help.

It's not necessarily easy but under UK consumer law products are expected to last a certain amount of time, this depends on the product, a TV might be considered to last 5 to 7 years on average but a mousetrap maybe 1 month.... anyway, you have up to 6 years to make a claim and are entitled to get a report from a TV engineer/service centre and make a claim against Currys. You really should check out this, at the least it's an hour spent online reading consumer proteciton and how to make a claim when out of warranty, you may have to send a few recorded delivery letters to Currys and threaten to take them to the small claims court. Of course Covid 19 has made all this a lot harder but at the very least I would read up on UK consumer law to see if you can get some resolution from the actual supplier. I'd certainly ask the local TV shop to write you a report on the fault in case you do go down the claims route.

Re: Bricked KD-55AF9

therealvinceunlimited — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 17:53:19 GMT

Hi Stew, I noticed a lot of replies were about the warranty and only one was about sorting the problem. It seems you had some initial issues with the TV cycling through a start up process, which eventually bricked the TV. Whilst I cannot suggest anything about getting it working again I might mention that my TV [KD-55AF8] also went into the same recycling mode after I tried to do an update. I was frustrated that my TV wasn't receiving any auto updates over a number of months so decided to download the update from the Sony website to add via a USB stick, despite the warnings against this on the site, whilst they sorted out some bugs [I waited ages for them to get around to this but figured they were not doing this to encourage owners to update to the AF9]. This USB based update system worked but set into motion a process of updating then reloading again. The message said do not interrupt the process but after about three cycles I realised the only thing I could do was pull the USB at the point it was about to reload. It risked damage but my timing was spot on [after studying the process]. The lack of a new update availability at the USB stopped the process and my TV was left updated correctly and working. So, once you get it going again try switching off the auto update as this may (?) be causing the cycling. This may be a useful tip to others considering forcing an update as well. Sony should sort this software issue out but I am willing to bet they choose to blame the Android software. Good luck in getting your TV back working.