Six situations where standard same-day service isn't fast enough, and our emergency response applies.
A direct or near-miss lightning strike during a Gauteng thunderstorm. Multiple components are usually compromised — power board, main board and HDMI input stages simultaneously. We attend, isolate every affected stage and document for your insurance.
The big rugby final is tonight. A wedding reception starts in three hours. A funeral livestream is at 10am tomorrow. The TV is the centrepiece and it has just died. We treat these as priority calls.
After a particularly violent load-shedding cycle, the TV is dead. Often this means the surge protector failed, capacitors blew on the power board, and the TV needs immediate help before further damage compounds.
A digital-signage TV at a restaurant, a reception-area screen at a Sandton office, a menu board at a takeaway, a corporate boardroom display before a meeting. Business displays are revenue-generating and need urgent response.
Your AVR exploded during a transition. Smoke smell from the TV. Visible burnt component. Do not power on again — call us immediately. Continued power-on after AVR failure dramatically worsens internal damage.
TV failure on the day of a major family or community event. We have dropped everything to attend a TV for a memorial service slideshow in Soweto, and for a wedding reception in Pretoria. These are real emergencies. We respond.
078 721 3551 — say "emergency" and we immediately route to the next available technician. We ask three things: TV model number, what happened, your suburb. Total call time about 2 minutes.
A technician with a fully stocked emergency van is allocated within 15 minutes. We send you their name, photo and live ETA via WhatsApp. The van carries common power-board, sound-IC and HDMI port stock.
Typical arrival 2 to 4 hours during business hours, 3 to 6 hours after-hours. Diagnostic takes about 30 minutes. Repair starts immediately on approval — most emergency jobs are finished within the same visit.
An honest comparison so you know exactly what you're paying for when emergency pricing applies.
| Aspect | Standard Service | Emergency Service |
|---|---|---|
| Response time | Same business day or next morning | 2 to 4 hours |
| Hours available | Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, Sat 9am-3pm | 24/7 including Sundays |
| Call-out fee | R420 (waived on repair) | R420 to R780 (waived on repair) |
| After-hours surcharge | None | R300 (6pm-10pm), R600 (after 10pm) |
| Parts inventory carried | Standard van stock | Surge-priority stock (PSU, sound IC, HDMI) |
| Live tracking | On request | Always on, WhatsApp ETA updates |
| Warranty | 90 days | 90 days (identical) |
No hidden surcharges. Final pricing depends on the fault — these are the call-out and diagnostic figures.
Mon-Sat, 8am to 6pm
Call-out + diagnostic. Fully waived if you proceed with the repair.
6pm to 10pm any day
Call-out + after-hours surcharge. Waived on repair.
10pm-7am, full Sundays
Premium surcharge. Genuine emergencies only.
Please note that all prices displayed are estimated starting prices only. Final repair costs may vary depending on the TV size, model, fault diagnosis, parts required, labour, and any additional repairs needed after inspection.
Suburbs in our core emergency response zone — typical arrival 2 to 4 hours during the day.
Outside these areas? Emergency response is still available — typical arrival 4 to 6 hours. Call to confirm.
Customer called at 4pm on a Sunday after a direct lightning strike. We arrived at 7pm. Diagnosed three failed components on the power supply, two on the main board and a blown HDMI input. Same-night repair, TV running again by midnight.
Saturday, 5pm. The customer's host duties for the Springbok final were two hours away and the TV had just died. Called us at 5:15pm. On-site at 6:50pm. Failed capacitor on the power supply replaced. TV on for kick-off at 8pm.
A busy Sandton restaurant's 55" digital menu display died at 11am on a Friday. WhatsApp at 11:05. Technician on-site by 12:30. HDMI input damaged from years of plug cycling. Replaced port, restored menu boot, ran through lunch service uninterrupted.
For the core emergency zone (Sandton, Midrand, Randburg, Joburg North, Joburg CBD) typical arrival during business hours is 2 to 3 hours. For Pretoria, Soweto, Centurion and the East Rand, 3 to 4 hours. After-hours arrivals are typically 1 hour longer. We send live WhatsApp ETA updates from the technician's vehicle.
Most South African household insurance policies cover lightning damage to TVs and other electronics, subject to your excess. We provide every emergency repair customer with a complete claim pack: the cause-of-failure technical report, photographs of the damaged components, a parts list and a fully tax-compliant invoice. Customer typically pays us and recovers the cost from the insurer with our documentation.
Most emergency faults are resolvable in-home — power-supply capacitor replacement, sound IC swap, HDMI port reflow, firmware re-flash. About 1 in 8 emergency cases require workshop transfer (typically backlight failure after a surge event, or main-board level damage). When workshop transfer is needed we transport the TV under full insurance and complete the repair as fast as available parts allow.
Yes — for genuine emergencies. We rotate a senior technician onto Sunday standby every weekend. We do not accept routine Sunday bookings (those go to Monday morning), but lightning damage, business display failure, and match-night emergencies do get attended on Sundays. The R780 weekend / after-hours surcharge applies.
We diagnose at your home, give you a written quote, and either (a) order the specific OEM part and return the next working day for completion, or (b) transport the TV under insurance to our workshop for bench-level repair. You only pay the call-out fee at the visit; the repair charge happens on completion.
Yes. Even in an emergency, every job receives a written WhatsApp or email quote before work begins. No verbal-only agreements. The quote shows the diagnosed fault, the parts, the labour and the total in Rand. If you decline, only the call-out fee is payable.
Identical. Every emergency repair gets our standard 90-day parts and workmanship warranty. Same paperwork, same coverage, same re-repair-at-no-cost promise if the fault recurs.
Five years ago, "emergency TV repair" wasn't really a category. A broken TV was an inconvenience that could wait until Monday morning. Today, in Gauteng particularly, that has changed dramatically — and the reason is a combination of three factors: load-shedding's effect on power supplies, the rising frequency of high-intensity afternoon thunderstorms, and the growing dependence on the TV as a centre-of-household and centre-of-business device. A failed TV on the night of a major rugby match, or fifteen minutes before a corporate boardroom meeting, or on the morning of a memorial service livestream, is genuinely a problem that needs solving in hours, not days. So we built a dedicated emergency response capability — separate van stock, on-call senior technicians, after-hours dispatch — to serve exactly those situations.
The Gauteng emergency call mix is consistent year-round but spikes in two predictable periods: November to February (lightning season) and the major sport months. Springbok internationals, the IPL final, the Premier League title race, the Currie Cup final — all generate predictable spikes in same-night emergency calls. We staff up accordingly. The other consistent spike is around load-shedding stage transitions; surges on the return cycle are particularly hard on power-supply capacitors, and we typically see a 200% increase in capacitor-failure calls in the 24 hours following any move up to stage 4 or above.
When lightning strikes nearby — or when a load-shedding return cycle generates a particularly aggressive transient — the surge can enter the TV through any of three paths: the mains plug (most common), the HDMI cable network (second most common, often via a connected DStv decoder which routes the surge into the TV's HDMI input), or the aerial input from a TV antenna. The damage cascade inside the TV typically follows the same sequence: the input filtering capacitors absorb the first peak and fail. The bridge rectifier on the power supply then sees an over-voltage and one or more diodes fail short. The 12V and 5V rails on the downstream side either go over-voltage (frying the main board's voltage-sensitive components) or go dead (preventing any further boot). HDMI input ICs are particularly fragile and frequently fail in the same event.
A competent emergency repair therefore does not just "find the broken bit and replace it" — it traces the full damage cascade and replaces every compromised component, because partially repaired surge damage will fail again within days. This is why our emergency van carries surge-priority stock: power-supply capacitor sets for the most common Samsung, LG, Hisense, Sony and TCL board families, sound amplifier ICs, HDMI input replacement modules, and main-board protection diodes. Most emergency repairs are completed in the customer's home in a single visit using this van stock. Only the rare cases requiring T-Con board replacement or full panel-side repair get transferred to the workshop.
If lightning has just hit your house and the TV is dead, the next three hours matter. Here is what we recommend: immediately unplug the TV at the wall (reduces risk of further damage and stops any internal smoulder). Photograph the TV's rear sticker (we use the model number to pre-prepare parts before arrival). WhatsApp us a brief description and the photo. Do not attempt to power-cycle the TV again — repeated power-on attempts after surge damage cascade further failures into adjacent components. Do not open the back cover (the power-supply capacitors hold lethal voltage even unplugged). Note your home insurance policy number if you may claim. Then wait — we will be there.
The most rewarding emergency calls are the ones where the customer is genuinely in trouble — match starts in 2 hours, wedding reception starts in 90 minutes, restaurant lunch service starts in 45 minutes — and we get there in time. Our van inventory is designed specifically for these scenarios: the components that fail most often (power-supply capacitors, sound ICs, HDMI ports, Wi-Fi modules) and that are 30-minute repairs on the customer's lounge floor. Approximately 80% of evening emergency calls are completed in-home in a single visit, with the TV playing the rugby / streaming the wedding party / displaying the menu by the time we leave.
For business customers — restaurants, bars, hotels, corporate offices, retail outlets — we also offer same-night service contracts on digital signage and display TVs. These give priority dispatch, a fixed call-out fee, and 24-hour repair-or-replace service for businesses where a dead display directly affects revenue. Contact us to discuss.
Almost all of the emergency calls we attend are preventable with two purchases that together cost less than R3,000. First, a proper Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) of at least 600VA, sized for the TV's wattage. The AVR continuously corrects voltage anomalies before they reach the TV — particularly the brief over-voltage that occurs on the load-shedding return cycle. Second, a true surge-protection plug (not a generic multi-plug) installed downstream of the AVR. The surge plug provides last-line protection against direct lightning transients. Either component alone is incomplete. Together they cover both the slow voltage anomalies (AVR) and the fast lightning transients (surge plug). The R1,800 to R3,000 spent on this protection typically saves R4,000 to R8,000 in repair costs over the TV's life.
For more detail on prevention, see our pages on power supply repairs, common TV problems and the master repair cost guide. If you need help right now, call 078 721 3551 and say "emergency" — we are on standby. Brand-specific emergency repair is available for Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense, TCL, Skyworth, Panasonic, Sinotec, JVC, Toshiba, Philips, Telefunken, Devanti, Blaupunkt and Sharp — same response times across all brands.
Please note that all prices displayed are estimated starting prices only. Final repair costs may vary depending on the TV size, model, fault diagnosis, parts required, labour, and any additional repairs needed after inspection.