Panasonic Corporation of North America Panasonic North AmericaPanasonic USA Customer Service Product Burn McAllen Texas

I have a Panasonic Blu Ray player. I've had it a while and decided to check on getting a firmware update for it. I called Panasonic Customer Service and they took my order (they charge $7.95 when the unit is out of the warrenty period), and said someone would call me within 24 to take my payment and ship the disc. No one did. So a week later, I called them back and told them no one called. They apologized, and said now someone would now call back within 24 hours for the payment and ship the disc. No one did again. So I called back a few days later and asked for a supervisor. After a long wait a supervisor got on, apologized, took my payment, and said he would send it.

So the firmware update disc arrives yesterday. I follow the instructions and run the disc, and my player goes crazy. It doesn't do what the instructions says it's supposed to do, which is to say "finish" on the screen when done, and open the tray automatically for disc removal. It instead shoots out the tray without saying "finish," and instead says "insert disc." No matter what I do, no matter what disc I put in, it spits it out and says "insert disc." It no longer works. It won't turn off, I had to finally unplug it. When I tried plugging it back in again, the same behavior started up again. The "firmware update" rendered my unit unfunctional.

So I call Panasonic Customer Service again and tell them all of this. Their update apparently destroyed my player. They put me on hold a long time, came back on, and said I would need to send it too the service center (The McAllen address I put down for them). They then tell me that after evaluation of the probem they will call me back and tell me how much it's going to cost! In other words, they charge me $7.95 for something that destroys my unit, and now want to charge me to fix it! So, I ask for a supervisor again, get put on hold for a long time again, and a woman finally gets on, and I ask her about being charged when they destroy my unit, and she tells me how they will "evaluate" what caused my unit to stop working, and if they don't think the update caused it, I'll be charged for the repair. What do you think are the odds that a company behaving like this is going to admit culpability? I've always had good luck with Panasonic in the past, both with their products and customer service. I don't know what's happened to them, but it isn't good. I will not be spending money boxing and shipping my unit to them on the off chance they admit blame. They clearly don't appear to be a fair, honest, and customer oriented company any more.