Sony XA 5400 ES display has gone blank x2

The lovely sounding CD player lost its display one month before going out of warranty 1.5 years ago. I sent it to the Sony service center (a 3rd party I'm told) in El, Paso Tx or some such place. Well it was fixed and warranted for another 30 or 90 days. I've had it back for a little over a year and now the display is once again dead. My dealer said to be thankful, that the unit had been faithful for 6 years and I should move on. Problem is, that's not the answer I wanted to hear. Is there such as thing as an upscale Sony repair service where some human can actually break down the repair and communicate with me to let me know if it is even economically feasible to bother?
The dealer suggested that I gambled by not having proper surge protection and obviously the display circuit was very susceptible to surges - thus getting fried not once but twice. He wants me to consider several different Richard Gray surge suppressors.
Did anyone else experience this type of failure from their Sony ES unit? Is anyone familiar with a better repair service. Is it true that my lack of surge suppression led up to this mayhem? Thanks for the input in advance.