No offence to anyone here than owns this player, but I have had nothing but problems with it. It was a piece of JUNK! It kept freezing, skipping, locking up, etc.

To make a long story short, I took the damn thing back, and got a Panasonic RV31U-K. I am very happy with this player.

Anyone else have any simular stories?

i have an rca dvd player and not one problem yet.
plays all 200 of my titles with no issues at all to date.
going on 2 years now.

Early RCA players were good, but when they found that Toshiba, Sony, and Pioneer were selling well, they decided to go the "budget" route and place products at Radio Shack, Target, Wal-Mart, etc. to grab that market share. My guess is that the manufacturing quality went down as well, but I have no evidence of this--just their relative obscurity in the electronics marketplace.

My RCA nightmare:

I bought an RCA model RC5215P about 8 months ago. Recently the unit stopped working, it just wouldn't power up. I contacted RCA repair and was told it would cost $90 for a replacement unit. I was unwilling to pay 1/2 of the original cost for a replacement and sent repeated emails to RCA in an attempt to get this problem resolved. Finally, after mailing a letter to the CEO of the company, I was contacted and offered a replacement player for $50. I figured at this point I should just take it since I can't afford to purchase a new player.

A few days later my new player showed up at my door. But, after a day or two of use, I noticed a problem. Approx. every 5th DVD or VCD would lock the player up completely. None of the buttons on the machine or the remote would respond and I would have to unplug the unit from the A/C to unlock it. After this happening a few times, I once again contacted RCA for a replacement. They were polite and shipped out a 2nd player to me at no cost. I received this player yesterday. Unbelievably, this player is worse. It tells me that every DVD I insert is incompatible with the player....these are titles I could play in the same model before. After calling support, I was told to leave the player unplugged for an hour to get it to 'reset'. I did this and it finally read the DVD, but upon pushing play, it would give an 'unknown error' and suggested I reset the machine. Of course, after doing this a couple times, I gave up. I've contacted RCA again, this time furious that I have been sent 2 non-functioning players. I demanded that another (3rd) player be sent to me via overnight shipping since they have wasted enough of my time, and I was also in possesion of rental DVDs that I wanted to watch before they were due back. Unfortunatly, RCA was unwilling to ship me a player overnight.

So, I have sent a few emails to the Public Relations Director and Manager, faxed a letter to the CEO, as well as snail mailed a copy.

I am passing along this story as I feel RCA has to have the worst customer service I have ever encountered. I have made them fully aware that I will no long be a RCA customer, and that I will make sure to pass my horror story along to anyone that will listen.

I'm sure other have purchased RCA products and dealt with the service and repair depts without any problems. But for those that are in the market for a new DVD player, or any consumer electronics, please take my story into account. I'd hate for anyone else to have to deal with the headaches and hassles I have been subjected to. RCA has not earned my repeat business, and I hope other will feel the same.

Ryan Clayton
[email protected]

Actually, a few years ago, RCA was notorious for its poor customer service. In particular, their TVs had a nasty habit of dying, and customer support was really stingy with replacements, since they usually failed outside of warranty.

Too bad -- I think RCA has done some really intuitive, user-friendly things in terms of design, but nobody is going to want a well-designed piece of junk. I can't say that all their stuff is worthless, but it certainly isn't on the top of anyone's list. For those in the market for a player, they really should look elsewhere.