After 3.5 years of faithful service and 1100 of operation, my Epson 8350 suddenly decided that it had an internal fault. The symptom was a red flashing temperature light. A quick call to Epson verified that I was way out of my warranty period. The closest official repair place was down in Vancouver, WA. I chatted with a local (unofficial) place too but didn’t get a warm and fuzzy so I shipped my projector down to Compass Micro down in Vancouver. Thankfully I had stored the original box and foam up in the rafters in the garage so I wasn’t too concerned about damage in transit.
Shipping only took a day and was about $20 (each way.) The gang at Compass Micro diagnosed it the same day it arrived. The lamp fan was dead and the part was $29. Tack on their $60 minimum labor charge for the first hour and I was back in action. The part took a few days to arrive and then they quickly shipped it back to me.
So while it would have been nice to not have this problem at all, I was very happy with the service and the total bill was a lot less than buying a new projector. If I have something like this happen again, I might be inclined to open up the projector myself and see if I can tell that a fan obviously isn’t spinning.