I'll let him answer but my experience is that they actually attract lightning, but you can still get a lightning strike nearby that comes into your house via the cables/wires. Remember the heavy roof wire leads the lightning into the ground at your foundation. It can still come in via the burried TV cable, etc. I know of one instance where the lightning hit the roof shingles and not the spikes and still caused a fire to the house. They are not 100% effective. But they might help. Hard to collect data on a system like that.

Skip

I appreciate your input, thanks.

YEP. Up to 24 hours and can prove fatal

Wouldn't a lightening strike to the lines result in the surge protector popping before the surge reached the tV? I assume the surge that possibly was the cause of the damage came through the power chord.

forget your lightning story.
Contact store and say my new tv doesn't come on.
Put ball in their court.

We had 5 tv's when lighting hit between our house and the neighbor. (4 out of 5 went dead) I had comcast at the time. Repairman was able to get 2 back because they were plugged into a surge protector. That was good news because I only wanted 3 tv's anyway. My brother told me to check everything out and don't settle with insurance company. He said that you could find things months later. He was right. A week later the air condition guy came for regular maintenance and it had blown out the surge protector on the furnace. The light had gone from green to red. I had that replaced. It blew out one section of my lawn sprinklers and the box was also blown. That's when he found out that a water pipe was blown and I had to get state inspection approval and they dug up a part of my back yard. I can't remember everything else. Insurance company was good and they ended up sending me 3 different checks every time I found something else. I think that was about it. Check everything out.

Lightning
 

If there was no physical damage to the home it was probably a near by indirect strike. Did you have any other electronic damage to garage door openers, irrigation system, etc. Did your neighbors have any damage to appliances or electronics? Did you have a surge protector on your meter by SECO or Duke? Would you be willing to share what village you live in?The POA will be sponsoring a presentation on lightning on Tuesday, May 17th, 7 PM, at Laurel Manor. You do not need to be a member to attend.

SECO's whole house protector does NOT cover televisions or computers.

On some models, if you remove the back cover, you void the warranty. You don't even have to touch anything, just opening the case voids the warranty.

Lightning rods along with a full lightning protection system are designed to intercept a lightning strike that is already occuring to a structure and route it safely to ground, preventing a fire and reducing any damage to wiring, appliances and the building itself.

Lightning rods do not attract nor are they designed to attract lightning. Since the descending stepped leader of a lightning bolt doesn't 'decide what to strike' until it is very close to the ground, lightning will only strike a lightning rod system if it already happens to be in (or very close to) the lightning's path.

Check out what SpaceX does to protect their rockets.

I stand corrected, "attract" was not the word I should have used:
"Lightning rods do not attract lightning; they provide a conductive path for an existing electrical charge that is already in the vicinity. The reason buildings place lightning rods around them is not to draw lightning. But instead, the lightning rod will be more likely to take the strike than the building itself in the event it strikes. This safely transfers that electricity to ground. Otherwise, the lightning strike could create a building fire, damage electrical equipment, or injure people."

Skip

Then why get it.

Taking care of don’t mean it’s free?? We see when repair done?

Because it will reduce the risk of damage from a strike on the power line side.

It will also dissipate/limit/reduce some of a strike on the house side.

The warrantee is mostly marketing hype.

I had a screen issue too with my Samsung TV, and they sent out a guy to replace the screen. Great Service.:bigbow: