Sony CDX-GT100 xploded

Just 93 days after we bought a Sony CDX-GT100 car stereo for the little auxiliary input hole, that’s right, the little input hole fails. We had to turn our PS1 upside-down to use it. Had to re-align the laser on PS2. Our Sony TV picture is bent in the upper left. Sony PSP had black marks on the screen when I bought it. Yeah, avoid Sony is the lesson here, I think.

Uh oh. I just read about someone on Crutchfield review having the same problem:

I’ve encountered one problem with this receiver. And unfortunately it’s quite major. The problem is the AUX input on the face of the receiver. The entire purpose of me purchasing this receiver was for the aux input on the front, as I didn’t want to have one on the back and have a longer cord running through my dash, etc. I want to leave my cd’s at home and have my iPod hooked up to it, saving me time, space, blah blah. For the first month or so, it worked beautifully. Sounded awesome, no problems. It was everything I wanted it to be. Then out of the blue one day the left side cuts in and out throughout my entire vehicle. I jiggle the input and it comes back on but still cuts out. I get back home and dissect the face of the receiver to find that the aux input is actually on a entirely seperate motherboard by itself in the bottom right corner, and the only thing connecting it to the major circuitry is 2 wires. One for right, one for left. This is all fine and everything until you take into account that the AUX input’s mechanism/board/whatever is not properly anchored to the frame of the face, leaving it to move almost freely, causing the left and right wires to come off of the circuitry. Anyways, the left one had came off of its soldering. I decided it was too small for me to do myself, so I took it back and got another one exactly the same. And of course, it’s been about a month or so and guess what?!? You guessed it. The left is starting to cut out. I would second guess myself and think maybe I’m mistreating these things, but I really just leave the cord plugged into the face and only fool with the other end (ipod end). I’m out of room. BEWARE

UPDATE: Yay! Sony says we get to pull out the whole stereo and ship it to them just because the face doesn’t work.

UPDATE: Sony shipped a “refurbished” replacement with the same bad auxiliary input. Thank SOOOO much, Sony!