Okay, call me a bad Mom. When the VCR we had for several years finally went out, my daughter freaked. There was no way for her to go to sleep without her favorite musical VHS tape each night. After two days of listening to her cry herself to sleep, I went to find a VCR.

I found this one at Wal-Mart. It was on sale for $89.99 and I thought that would be a good deal. The VCR is a 4-head with record and playback features. It sounded like a great deal to me. We brought it home and set it up and started a video tape.

Ummm..... We could hear it. We just couldn't see anything. So we loaded it back up and took it back to Wal-Mart. They exchanged it for an identical one. After going through the hook-up process again, we were thrilled that this one played. The picture was clear and the sound was great.

At this point I still thought we had gotten a good deal. The VCR has features such as express recording, timer recording, and timer recording with the VCR Plus+ System. There is a slow motion option and a frame advance option, index search and zero search. It also has a feature called Pro-Tect Plus Locking Feature.

The Pro-Tect Plus Locking feature allows you to set the VCR to record by the timer recording, and lock the buttons on the VCR panel. This way, there will be no accidental erasing of the time and channel you have set to record. This can be especially good if you have small children in the home.

The VCR played fine for 3 months. Then one evening I noticed that one of our frequently viewed tapes was beginning to look snowy. I thought that it was just the tape because my children play some tapes almost continuously. However the next day several tapes were snowy. I tried adjusting the tracking a few times, and that didn't help. Then we heard a squeaking sound coming from the VCR. I tried to eject the tape, but it wouldn't come out.

Eventually, we got the tape out, but it was ruined. I still thought that it was just the tape we were watching. After all, some of them I knew were 4 years old. We had just bought Hannah a new music tape that week, so I put it in to replace the one she had been watching. It started squeaking again. Again I tried to take the tape out, and again it wouldn't budge. I worked with it until I got it out, but of course there was nothing much left of the tape.

So, I called a number listed in the user's guide. The only thing that did was to refer me to a shop in my area that works on RCA products. Okay, so I am going to call this place and find out what I need to do. I called and they told me to contact the dealer. Wal-Mart wouldn't take the product back even though I have my receipt. They told me to return the VCR to RCA. I called RCA again, and again they told me to take it to someone in my area that repairs RCA products.

So far, no one will work on the VCR an honor the one year warranty. Handy TV will fix it, but only if I pay the labor costs. I just bought this VCR and do not want to pay labor costs. RCA will not help me, even though the VCR is still under warranty. So, I am stuck with a VCR that eats tapes. If I had wanted to have another mouth to feed, I would have bought a dog.