New Costco Plasma - Dropped It = Cracked Case > Best Play?

[x2ski]

I'm super-agitated right now, so I'll try to keep this short:

Bought a 50" plasma at Costco, and the thing is freaking heavy. It wouldn't fit in my truck because the box was too big.

Costco employee helping me load it suggests we take it out of the box. According to him, they do it all the time. So we slip the top part of the box off. It's a tight fit but we get it in there.

Drive home, and the wife and I unload it off the truck and onto the driveway. The corners on the bottom of the box are flimsy and won't hold, so we take the tv out of all remaining packaging.

We pick it up to bring it in and the wife says she "doesn't have it". I say "okay, let's put it down". I didn't know she was balancing it on her knee at the time. As I put my side down, it slipped off of her knee and the corner of the tv slammed onto the remainder of the cardboard box lying in the driveway.

It made a loud cracking noise, and at that point I knew it was [censored].

</five minutes of bitching back and forth>

We got the tv in the house and set it down. It is noticeably cracked in the corner, but not as much as I anticipated; regardless, I like my stuff to be perfect, and this tv no longer is, and I haven't even plugged the damn thing in yet.

Anyway, I plug it in. It powers on fine, but since I don't have cable yet (new house) I couldn't check any channels. The user menus look fine, and all of that seems to work, but whatever... This freaking sucks.

The wife suggests we take it back and say it was like that when we got it home. A friend of mine agrees. I'm not comfortable doing it, but I don't know what else to do, besides suck it up and deal with it.

The reason I went to Costco is because I understand that they have a great return policy for electronics. Apparently, you can "trade-in" your old stuff for new stuff. Unfortunately, I don't think I can do that with this tv a year from now, since it's damaged. I either have to act on this immediately, or just keep a damaged tv, not knowing how long it will last. According to the Costco guys, you're not supposed to even lay a plasma on it's side, let alone drop the [censored] thing.

Help me OOT... What would you guys do? If you would take it back and report it damaged upon inspection, would you have a detailed explanation, or would you keep it as simple as possible? I'm not good at this stuff at all, although my friend said he would go with me, and he's pretty hardcore with negotiating and whatnot.

Thanks.