So followup on my tech repair/replacement of my C8 panel... Took about 3 days to lock down support, tech came out 5 days later to investigate the issue in person, filed a claim, took 10'ish more days to get a replacement panel in, then 3 more days for them to ensure the panel was good and able to come out to replace it.
It was a solo dude so I had to help him unmount the TV (probably easier than dealing with the stand), and lay it on the ottoman. Then he ripped the guts off. The tech was actually pretty haphazard with the panels. We stood up the faulty panel sans guts, and leaned it against the couch. We then carried in the new one from his truck, unwrapped it, laid it on the ottoman, and he screwed in the original guts to the new panel. Screwed in the bracket, and mounted back on my stand.
Turned on, ran a picture test, booted up the Xbox, ps4, and TV, to check all inputs and sources. New screen worked flawlessly.
Then I asked him if it made sense to buy the extended warranty given his experience with this particular panel (he did mention having had to do replacement work on a lot of these panels). "If it's reasonable, yes, because if the panel goes bad, that's 90% of the cost." It's about $100-150/year, or about $450 for an additional 3 years on top of the initial year, which I'm strongly considering after this issue, and not having any plans to upgrade any time soon. Especially now, because I have had a warranty claim the local support agent has me in their system and they can support me directly, instead of going through the initial delay of going through LG to field a support agent.
That said, I will say the process was rather painless, and hassle free, but it did take almost 3 weeks to resolve. Whatever. I'm happy and the replacement works perfectly.