Sunday Times to investigate OLED Screen Burn Issues

[OLED Screen Burn]

I've created this thread for anyone who has experienced OLED screen burn and has not reached a satisfactory resolution with the retailer they purchased the product from.

I am currently in dispute with John Lewis over a screen burn issue on my 55" LG B6 OLED TV. I've been given the run around like many others and they are refusing to cover the screen burn under warranty as they say it's explicitly excluded and they also don't consider this is covered under the Consumer Rights Act, 2015 as they classify that it can only be caused by misuse. As I'm sure was the case for many of you, this really got me annoyed as a TV should be fit for purpose and be expected to last at least the 6 years required under our consumer rights.

After contacting the Question of Money, of the Sunday Times, I got a positive response from Jill Insley who writes the column. Jill has agreed to investigate my case and I highlighted how I believe the problem is widespread. So she has kindly agreed to take complaints from anyone else affected, regardless of which retailer you purchased the TV from.

I'd appreciate it if you could reply to this thread if you do send in your details, just so we're all aware of the numbers of people involved, but clearly that's up to you.

So Jill asked for the following:

"No complaints going back further than six years. If the complainants could email me at this address, and put OLED and the name of the company they bought the TV from in the email title, then give fuller details about when they bought the TV, when the problem developed and a description of the problem, and what response they have had from the retailer, plus an emailed copy of the receipt for the TV "

The email address is [email protected]

I hope Jill can shame the retailers and LG into some reasonable course of action.

Please feel free to spread the word elsewhere as I'm not really an active contributor on forums (just created this account today after seeing how many people were affected). I will also look for other forums that have posts of OLED screen burn.

Good Luck to everyone

Edited: My dispute with John Lewis has now been resolved - see a later post on this forum. The Sunday Times had not yet followed up with John Lewis and as this is now resolved, they will no longer investigate and report on my case. However Jill has said she will look at any other cases she has received and see if these provide the information she needs to investigate this.

 

[OLED Screen Burn]

The fact LG are launching new OLED with a selling point of “burn-in covered under warranty” means they know full well the old panels are sus. IMO

It seems that LG's new 5 year warranty currently only covers their Premium range (Z1 and G1) see https://www.lg.com/uk/oled-tvs/2021/oled-warranty so my guess is they want to help people upgrade to the Premium range for piece of mind! I think these are the new Evo panels which are their new brighter/thinner panels. I think the A1/B1/C1 models won't have this new panel and I assume won't have the 5 year guarantee. I would have considered most OLED TVs as premium products given the pricing vs LED.
The G1 gets rave reviews but, although I haven't seen a G1, I'm still personally happy with the picture quality of my B6 - other than the screen burn!

 

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And if they know that, the decent thing to do would be to replace customers burnt in TV’s.

I'm hoping that some bad PR can get them to agree with your point of view!

 

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We all know they're not fit for purpose. A TV that can't watch certain channels. Can you imagine and other product which some ridiculous restrictions?

I agree - so let's make more people aware of this, I think it's a huge cover-up in the case of John Lewis. They apparently have a completely inflexible policy on screen-burn. Internally in JL it's classified as being due to "malicious misuse", so an embarrassed manager told me! They are using this to say your consumer rights don't apply. So rather than just all agreeing that here I hope that as many of you as possible who have OLED Screen burn will contact the Sunday Times. Let's make sure everyone knows!

 

[OLED Screen Burn]

Both here and on other web-sites strategies have been discussed to use consumer rights law and obtain redress in genuine cases of screen burn,
with all vendors, *when* screen has not been abused, and, there is a genuine manufacturing problem.

Op needs to present details on his specific case - what is the nature of his burn in ?

(googles not showing me that in the litigous USA owners have started and kind of joint legal action)

I didn't go into the details of my specific screen burn as in my opinion it's clear from this forum, and many others, that this is not a unique product fault but a case of a product being "not fit for purpose". In this case watching TV. I've seen (I think on another forum - I'll find it if you're interested) that Currys had a judgement against them for OLED TV screen burn and the judge agreed the product was not fit for use and awarded a partial refund. You have 6 years to make a court claim under Consumer Rights Act 2015.
So one option to do this with John Lewis, but I think getting them some bad publicity would make more people aware of this, or we may all individually need to make claims unless you can publicise a court win. Anyway that's why I'm going the Sunday Times route for now.

LG confirmed I need a new display, but they know it's not a unique part failure to this TV as it is so common. That's also why they have a £200 all in display replacement offering (if they ever get the displays in). This would be very reasonable if it was a unique fault that would be unlikely to reoccur but I'd expect the problem to just reoccur as I believe they replace with the same display (and at this price I be surprised if they weren't refurbished displays).

You raise a good question on US OLED customers - I'm not sure how to search for US court cases but perhaps US retailers are repairing/replacing them as I can't imagine that the displays in US models are that different.

However to answer your question, my screen burn was caused by the Sky News yellow banner. Bright yellow seems to have been a real issue for the 2016/17 OLEDs. The banner has recently changed as it was previously solid yellow to the left of the Sky News Logo, and this was displayed as green once screen burn occurred - I didn't seem to get any temporary image retention before this happened either. The rest of the banner had scrolling text and looked okay but also shows up as green when viewing content with a yellow or brown background. I'm not a mad Sky News viewer but the yellow banner can be on throughout a news bulletin (although there are ads without the banner). So unless watching Sky News from time to time is considered misuse then I'd say the TV wasn't fit for purpose. I've had a plasma so I know not to pause for long and I have never experienced screen burn on my Panasonic Plasma which is now over 10 years old (and the fans in that TV, that I was most worried about, are still working fine too).

Anyway else reading this had LG OLED TV screen burn?

 

[OLED Screen Burn]

My parents B7 is now a mess with screen burn, can see it on pretty much all content excluding blacks obviously.

It was bought from Curry's so I don't know whether to try and push it with them. The more people that try, the more pressure on them.

Someone in AVForums claims to have taken Currys to the small claims court in 2019 and the judge ruled in their favour. So you could try pushing them for a free repair/replacement, as judging by that posts on that forum Currys have been one of the best at accepting claims.

You're also welcome to also report this to the Sunday Times (as per this thread title) as they are currently taking emailed complaints on OLED TV screen burn regardless of the retailer. Let us know if you decide to take this further.

 

[OLED Screen Burn]

My dads B6 has two green lines along the bottom. Bought from John Lewis in 2017. They aren’t interested in fixing it, he was watching BBC and Sky News. The lines are bad, so he ended to buying another non OLED set and moved the B6 to the conservatory.

I have a B9 and the screen is still perfect, it’s not used a lot, hope it escapes screen burn.

Sounds similar to my own experience with a B6, but glad to hear your B9 is currently holding up. My B6 problems started before 3 years were up but I only reported it 40 months after the purchase date. Yes John Lewis has a strict policy if rejecting screen burn claims - claiming "malicious misuse" as the only cause - so you have no rights! They have had "lots" of claims according to one John Lewis manager I spoke to, but they can't do anything (as in above their pay grade ).

If anyone knows if John Lewis have been taken to court on this please let us know. I can only assume they haven't yet been successfully challenged as they still have this policy in place and escalating to a manager in technical support just gets you nowhere (as the policy is inflexible). I've escalated this further and am still expecting a call back this week but I don't expect to have any joy changing what sounds like a high level management policy. I have even emailed Sharon White but no response, not even from a minion. Maybe this goes right to the top.

Given this situation, unless someone successfully challenges John Lewis through the small claim court I believe they'll hold out. For now I'm relying on the Sunday Times to get a similar result and publicly shame John Lewis in the process. You're welcome to send your details in to the Sunday Times as per the initial post in this thread.

 

[OLED Screen Burn]

how much daily time did the tv spend on sky news channel ? I mean I watch c4 news for maybe 30mins a day and intermittently dip into others .. but if you can show your tv is not stuck on sky news for 6 hours a day, don't see why you couldn't defend your position.

Maybe an hour a day on average - I generally record the 10pm showing and then fast forward through the recording based on the headlines, but for any major news events it would be on longer. Now I'll flip between news channels if it's anything live.

well yes - £200, given the use you have already had of product doesn't seem an unreasonable compromise, even if it was just for another 4 years use
if they refunded the tv knocking off, use you've had, I'd expect a bigger deduction.

I would agree if this was a once off failure but, given the number of reported issues, this is just going to reoccur in another 3 years. Some may argue that's not bad but having invested £1900 (over £2000 with added-care policy) in the TV, I had expected it to last a long while! I think my old Panasonic Plasma (admittedly only 46" and not UHD, but over 7 years older) was only around £800 from Costco, and it's still going strong!

I'd therefore rather get a refund and invest in a newer TV that will last. Both TVs were best buys in What HiFi and I believe they are still rating OLEDs very higher. I just hope LG have fixed the screen burn now, but as only the 2021 "Premium" ranges, Z1/G1, have been given a 5 year warranty by LG then I would assume they don't yet have the confidence to do this on lower priced, but still relatively expensive, A1/B1/C1 OLED ranges.

 

[OLED Screen Burn]

It still leaves you out of pocket for a known problem with the technology that seems to regularly happen across a range of owners just from actually using the TV as a TV.

I'd agree and it seems a clear case of a product being unfit for purpose under consumer rights.

 

[OLED Screen Burn]

An update on my dispute with John Lewis. I had an interesting call back from a more senior manager at John Lewis initially offering £100 towards the (once only) £200 LG panel replacement. I explained that I expected the screen burn to just reoccur with a replacement so I rejected this and requested a refund. To my surprise I was then offered a replacement (2020 model) LG OLED TV (Model 55CX5LB) or the cost of this towards an alternative TV. This was £1185 which seemed a steep step up from £100!

My original B6 was £1899 back in 2016 but, given the offered set was a better replacement, I accepted the refund as I believe the small claims court would have made a deduction for the use I'd had so far. John Lewis also collected my old set and returned it to LG which was fine with me.


I can't explain the change of heart from John Lewis. Jill from the Sunday Times had not yet contacted them, so either someone saw these posts or they just had a change of heart, which based on the previous calls I would doubt.

Jill did said she will obviously no longer be following up on my case but would check any other reported cases to see if she could take another case forward. So I can only urge anyone who still needs help with John Lewis or another retailer on the screen burn issues to send her an email.

 

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They probably don't want to set a precedent. They can say they offered you a refund for good faith/customer service/discretionary, not because there's a known problem with the technology that will affect plenty of people that they would then have to automatically refund.

I agree and to be honest I had not expected them to change their position as I had many previous calls and emails on this topic with them. I guess it got escalated high enough that someone could make a decision on closing the issue. All I can recommend is to persevere with your claim until they give in - they know this is a product problem.