Name: Jon

Position at ShopJimmy: Customer Service Partologist

One sentence job description: Answer phones, emails, and anything else that is thrown my way.

Favorite LCD breakage story: A lady called saying that her son’s friend threw the remote through their one-year-old 52” Plasma trying to change the channel.

TV model in your living room: Olevia LT42HVI

Family: I have two boys: Zach is 16 and Anthony is 8.

Hobbies: Tennis, Golf, Disc Golf, pretty much anything outside, music, movies, and watching any kind of sports.

Favorite restaurant: Anyone that can cook a good rare filet.

Go-to Pandora station: U2 Radio

Beverage of choice: Starbucks coffee straight up!

In-flight reading material: Skymall, do people really pay those prices??

Sports team(s) you root for: The Twins and the Yankees (except when they are playing the Twins), MN Vikings (Brett, I know you are reading this: come back for one more year, we need you).

Three things you’d bring to a deserted island: Food, SPF 1,000 sun screen, and a boat.

On a web dating service, you’d describe yourself as: Well, I just may copy and paste this questionnaire to one.

You can find me on…

Have you heard about the Lose Weight or Lose Money Challenge I am attempting?!

This week, I welcome Justin to the weight loss challenge; thanks for joining me so these blog posts are slightly less awkward! I encourage other employees or customers to join if they’d like.

Last week, we had the first ever ShopJimmy Potluck and the food was way too good. Justin and I ate more than our fair share, as did everyone else…

I also took the plunge and joined a health club last week, and I started counting Weight Watchers points. I travel a lot, so it’s too easy to grab fast food, but now I am making much better decisions. I am down six pounds this week and it looks like Justin gained one thanks to the potluck.

Have a good week!

Jimmy

They say a picture is worth a thousand calories words…

P.S. A big thanks to Emily and Jackie (pictured above) for planning everything!

This post is courtesy of Nate, our Parts Manager and resident cat lover. It also appeared in our April newsletter. Not a newsletter subscriber? Login to your Customer Account and subscribe today to get exclusive news and special deals!

We’ve been experimenting with some of our parts to see if we can get them to go the extra mile. It’s been paying off. The “generic” parts of the TV are generally more generic than we give them credit for. LG Plasma parts are a simple and great example of how you can stumble across compatible alternatives to those pesky, hard to find parts. Let’s use a popular one that is currently sold out: 6871QYH053B. My first step is usually to drop the “B” or change it to a different letter. Google searching (or “Googling” as the kids call it nowadays) quickly tells me there is a 6871QYH053A. In the probable event that you have trouble finding one of those two, here’s a little trick I learned way back when I first started: swap the 0 for a 9. This will usually give you the off brand version of the part (like Akai or Maxent versus LG or Zenith). So, that gives us 6871QYH953A and 6871QYH953B as alternatives.

Not done yet. Look at the board where it says “Model.” It reads: 42V8&X3. This is referring to the panel model of the plasma panel. Those 31 models we have listed for 6871QYH053B all use variations of the PDP42V8 and PDP42X3 panels. Each one uses the same layout of parts to make the panel do the dirty work of showing moving pictures. So, taking one of those parts from a similar, if not identical, panel should work nicely. Take a gander at PDP42V8 and PDP42X3 (plus YSUS) on ShopJimmy and you’ll see even more alternatives to our original part. LG has two naming conventions for their plasma parts: 6871XXXXXXX and EBRXXXXXXXX. This trick will usually help determine EBR alternatives to 6871’s or vice versa.

Want even more options? I thought so. By now you should know that LG plasma panels are used in more brands than LG. Toshiba and Philips both use this YSUS in one or more sets, but they don’t call it the same thing as LG. Toshiba (75003031) and Philips (996500041771) both have their own part number for this board. Therefore, it might be worth it to take a look into some of these other part numbers, too. These tricks work pretty well for most plasma panel parts, however the main logic controls can vary in compatibility, so be wary of how far you stretch to find an alternative there.

Along with 23 other entrepreneurs, Jimmy was selected by an independent judging panel (comprised of business, academic, and community leaders) as a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in the Upper Midwest!

Straight from the horse’s mouth (a.k.a. their press release):

Regional winners will be announced at a gala event on June 10, 2010 in Minneapolis, MN. National winners in numerous categories, as well as the overall Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award winner, will be announced at the annual awards gala in Palm Springs, CA on November 14, 2010.

Congrats, Jimmy!

Have you heard about the Lose Weight or Lose Money Challenge I am attempting?!

How come nobody wants to join? Justin threatened to, but he decided he likes his pizza a little too much. I don’t blame him. Well, this week wasn’t too bad; I managed to exercise 3 times and not eat too horribly at SESDA in Atlanta (although the food was excellent, btw).

Until next time,

Jimmy

Happy Earth Day!

Pick up a couple pieces of trash. Plant a couple trees. Drink a couple green beers. Wait, wrong holiday.

Here at ShopJimmy, we try to do as much as we can to stay in Mother Nature’s good graces…

- The majority of our replacement parts are reclaimed from brand new, damaged electronics goods that, potentially, could have found their way to landfills.

- In 2010, we’ve reclaimed parts from over 20,000 plasma and LCD TVs. We break down all units to their simplest parts and recycle as much of the remaining materials as possible.

- All cardboard boxes are shredded into packing material (or used elsewhere), and all plastics and metals are sorted and recycled, when applicable.

- Our technicians also pull new, working components from cracked circuit boards to refurbish non-working boards, which are then sold to a local vendor who refurbishes TVs.

In January, we were featured on Tainted Green, a site dedicated to supporting “the fundamental drivers behind the green movement.” Click here to read their post about us and our recycling efforts!

We get a few sales calls here daily. And by a few, I mean a constant chiming of phones lit up like the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center.

Not that we’re not pleased that the phones are ringing. That’s generally a good sign for a business!

We do, however, receive a decent amount of calls asking the same questions…

How do I search for a part? What are your shipping and returns policies? What’s an RMA Number? Who the heck are you?

The answers to these questions (along with many other FAQs) are now located in our new “Help” feature, which you can find near the top, right of each ShopJimmy page!

Have you heard about the Lose Weight or Lose Money Challenge I am attempting?!

Week one was a little too easy. Week two, on the other hand, was a disaster. We’re having a sale! I exercised five times, but ate out waaaay too much again. I think I’m seeing a trend. Since you all are keeping me honest to my word, and reading boring blog posts about my weight loss, you get 10% off your purchases now through Sunday if you enter the discount code “thanksfatty” upon checkout.

I wont let this happen again so take advantage of it!

Jimmy

According to today’s issue of The Wall Street Journal, the “average flat-panel TV now sells for $610, down from $1,351 four years ago.”

Translation: now might be a great time to start pricing new TVs, as big electronics retailers are fiercely competing with each other amidst an overall price deflation in electronics.

1*

*The number of games played by the Minnesota Twins at their new stadium, Target Field. It’s also the number of wins they have at Target Field! Yesterday, in their home opener, the Twins defeated the Boston Red Sox 5-2, improving their record to 6-2 this season.

Have you heard about the Lose Weight or Lose Money Challenge I am attempting?!

Well, week one was a little too easy, I exercised three times but ate out waaaay too much (Joe Sensor’s, Don Pablo’s, TGI Friday’s, Jimmy John’s, Dairy Queen, Taco Bell, and the list goes on…).  Thankfully, no discounts this week!

I have a long way to go.

Jimmy

A couple months ago, we reached a point in our business development and growth where we could begin giving back to others and donating resources to the community (if you have a free minute or two, read Jimmy’s hilarious post about his latest volunteering adventure). Many of us were raised in Minnesota (and others have planted roots here), so we felt that it was important to help our fellow Minnesotans.

Jimmy’s adorable little daughter, Millie, has been treated at the Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, and the care she received really resonated with Jimmy and his wife, Christy.

As a result, we’ve decided to donate all of the proceeds from our remote control sales to the Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. From January to March, we gave almost $3,000 to help the great pediatric health care they give thousands of children every year!

We plan to switch charitable causes eventually, so if you know of any awesome, worthy charities we’d love to hear about them!

A big congratulations to Chet Cabell from Economy TV in South Carolina, who correctly picked his way through this crazy tournament and chose Duke as his champion!

For his Nostradamus-like predictions, he won $300 toward future ShopJimmy purchases!

Also, a shout-out is in order to Jeff Wallace from RTA International in California, who correctly picked Duke in the championship game, but had them losing to Kansas (along with 94.3% of Americans–alright, I made that stat up, but it was a lot!). Jeff won $150 toward future ShopJimmy purchases! Well done, Jeff.

What’s next? The Masters? How well do you think Tiger Woods will play?

Just when you were beginning to think that the best Swedish exports were meatballs and ABBA…

A Swedish company called People of Lava (how cool is that name?!) just introduced an HDTV that features the distinct markings of the future of television.

It’s an Android-based ( is Google’s mobile platform, so the TV comes standard with internet connectivity), 42-inch, 1080p TV.

As you can tell from the picture above, you’ll be able to easily add Android widgets (widgets are like on-screen tools: calendars, maps, weather forecasts, stock market tickers, etc.) and browse the web (see the image below). We saw similar products at CES this year, but the People of Lava’s “Scandinavia” (that’s the TV’s name–not quite as clever as the company’s name) is the first HDTV built using Google’s highly-touted Android platform.

Once again, Google is taking over the world. Literally.