Sony knows customer usability but not service

So I finally got my Sony Vaio back from Sony Repairs – wow whatta pulava that was.

It turned out that the Harddrive had failed, but Sony did their best to try to ensure that I couldn’t get it replaced under warranty. I first took it to the Sony Style store where I had purchased it and was told to come back because their ‘systems’ were down. Wow… pretty impressive for a tech shop…

Anyway, I told them that the warranty would be coming to an end soon and I want it recorded that I had tried to bring it in. A week later, I brought it back to them and again they couldn’t find any info on their system so I was directed to their Sony Service centre which is in Scarborough (30min drive suburb of Toronto). I actually had to drive there myself rather than just drop my laptop off at the sony store. When I got there they told me ‘Sorry, your warranty expired yesterday.’ Despite me bringing it to their store a week earlier, they said that warranty is based on the day that they actually receive the item. Wow!! what a scam. They had no record of me trying to take it to their store and they wanted me to pay $900 to replace the HD. It was only after I argued and demanded that they review the store video tapes that they conceded. GREAT customer service…

Well, after 1 week I was called to go back to their office and pick up the repaired laptop – the HD had been replaced but that’s not where the probs stop. The laptop was completely wiped and set to the default (I don’t understand why Sony can’t provide a backup service – as I wrote about earlier, I had to extract the data myself).

So now I have to reset everything which is a pain in the ass. I had to find all of the product license codes so that I could reinstall MS Office and other applications, but I expected this. What I didn’t expect was that the Wireless Adapter wouldn’t work. I recall when I first received purchased the Vaio last year, the Intel adapter did not work and I had to upgrade the drivers. Well it seems that the new HD installation does not have the new drivers and so I had to manually upgrade it myself again. Second, the XP installation that they put on the machine only has SP1 so I have to run all of the upgrades – it’s a day later now, and I’m still doing this…

Overall, this has been a chore and a half. I definitely like the Sony for it’s look and when it works, it works great. But their customer service sucks. If IBM ever created a thinkpad that was sleaker looking, I’d definitely go back to using them. For now, though, I’m happy with my Mac Powerbook – the Sony Vaio is going onto Ebay…