Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Sony Vaio Support - The Worst of the Worst - Part 1
At present I have four Sony Vaio laptops (in order of purchase):
1) Z600-HEK
2) VGN-A197VP
3) T1XP
4) SZ71
My problem - number 1+2 are in another country, besides 1 is too old and 2 is being used by my pre-teen daughter (MSN/Bebo primarily). Number 3 had a master boot record failure a week ago and one of the recovery DVDs is not working (I removed the recovery partition after making the DVDs). I've not even called Sony Vaio support about this because if your laptop is older than one year they charge you a 12.50 Euro (16.55USD!) "analyst fee"! You even get charged the "analyst fee" even when there is no analysing - for example when the screen broke on the T1XP (because it is not glass and Sony made a design flaw not putting a screen catch on to stop tiny things going between keyboard and screen which take out the membrane screen) I had to pay it! The conversation ran a little like this:
Me: My screen is smashed
Sony: We don't know that
Me: I know that, I can see it!
Sony: We don't know that
Me: So what do I need to do?
Sony: Pay the "analyst" fee
Me: OK, Visa xx
Sony: OK, so your screen is smashed.
...
Plus last time I called up about a laptop older than one year which was back in July 2006 you were forced to call a 35p/minute (0.69 US Cents!) number, and you got queued AND you got the "analyst" fee on top before anything even happens - they don't even give you a repair quote - so the whole call experience is like a "donate cash to Sony line". So that is why I don't call about the recovery disks for number 3 (besides it is 10" which is too small for day to day use).
So that leaves me with my main day to day laptop, number 4. But it broke the other day even though it is less than five months old. If you pull out the power cord the laptop goes instantly dead. Thus the battery system does nothing. I have MANY flights booked up starting very soon and required a laptop that does not have to be plugged into the mains, so this breakage is less than ideal.
At this point I must state two things. Sony Vaio support is the worst customer experience I have ever had in my life. I've returned three laptops over the last few years and it is absolutely agonising. With the last return this year (May) I was pushed completely over the edge and was at the point of pursuing legal action. The straw that broke the camels back was not that Sony wanted £580GBP (1138.13USD) to repair laptop #3 which had a second hand street value only marginally higher! But that they provided only the premium rate 35p/minute (0.69 US Cents!) number to make the payment! Yes you heard it right, only one means of making the payment of £580GBP in order to get my laptop back, was to call this premium rate number, get queued, trawl an IVR tree and then burn lots of time conferring my Visa details at the cost to me of 35p/minute. I still can not get over this - being forced to pay 35p/minute in order to make a payment and a payment for over half a grand! Such Sony arrogance had me in a state of disbelief and as such I was going to take legal action and take up the issue with every appropriate UK regulator.
But and it is a big but. I received a personal call from Sony (remember this was before I started this blog) who had read about my experiences on the Vaio forums. He sent me a cheque to cover ALL repair costs. So on the plus side if I was buying another laptop, yes I would buy Sony again. It is clear that Sony have lost the big lead they had against competitors in the analogue days. It is also clear that internally they are so screwed up that a computer manufacturer (Apple) could step in and take 90% of the portable music player market (and the majority of the music download market) from under their noses. But they produce the slickest, best-engineered sophisticated electronics devices still. The hardware (size, battery time, build quality Etc. is often a marvel). It is everything else that lets it down. In the case of Vaio laptops, Vaio support. Or to give another example, I've bought both their hard disk and flash based MP3 players and I am astounded at the hardware quality. But the hardware is rendered pretty useless because the software is so dire, in this case Sonic Stage. What surprises me most is Sony do not react to customer input. Even taking the Sonic Stage example, Sony have not fixed the software yet customers have been complaining for years. As a result, Sony own next to nothing of the music download market and hardly score in the portable player market.
Now that the background has been covered and I've really tried to make it brief since I could really write a book on my experiences with Sony Vaio support, I will turn to the immediate problem at hand.
If I call Sony Vaio Support it asks for my serial number. It requests and rejects it three times saying it is not valid and then hangs up the phone! Thanks Sony for your complete in utter customer disregard. Five months back when I had a problem with laptop #3 you forced me down a premium rate number route to pay many hundreds of pounds, forcing me to pay to give my Visa details and now you provide me with a single number to call which rejects my in-warranty laptop and hangs the phone up on me.
This would not be quite as bad if it were not for the fact that in trying to bypass the forced premium number route in the case of laptop #3 five months back I entered the serial of #4 (since it is under warranty, so my ploy was to use it to get an agent so I could pay the £580GBP without using the premium number) and discovered back that then that their system was screwed. I've even had it confirmed from Sony (via the personal call mentioned) that their database is not properly loaded with the serial numbers of the Vaio's.
So Sony you have known for at least five months that your customer support solution is broken. You therefore have known for at least that five months that there is a good chance that if a customer calls the ONLY number for support, that your automated system will inform them that the serial is invalid and hang up. An utter disgrace.
Sony please tell me why I have to go to this blog effort to "contact you"? Please tell me what the hell I can do if you only have one number and you know the system driving it is screwed? You know that for many customers (who have just suffered a broken laptop) will simply be getting hung up on without a single option or means to speak to a person! You take arrogance and customer stone walling to the Nth degree.
And for readers, I've still got my "special" contact within Sony and emailed him yesterday. I will try contacting him again after pointing him to this post since I have heard nothing yet. But take it clearly from me, I will only buy Sony because I believe that thru such techniques I can actually reach someone. But for the poor average customer, well I pity you dealing with Sony. I will however offer you a tip on reaching someone at Sony if their support system keeps rejecting your Vaio and hangs up the call. Go into a shop which sells Vaio's and note down lots of serials. Call up using them until you get one that works. I've not tried it but that is my next plan of attack to reach a person at Sony now that my in-warranty UK purchased laptop is broken.
As for prospective Sony Vaio customers. All four of mine have broke or have been broken so from my experience the chances of having to call Vaio support to return it is high. And when you do call Sony Vaio support here is what you may experience (1.3Meg MP3 call recording).
And before any readers suggest faxing Sony support. Last time round (July) I did that nearly every day. That did nothing. I then had it confirmed that they leave the fax machine off-hook.
1) Z600-HEK
2) VGN-A197VP
3) T1XP
4) SZ71
My problem - number 1+2 are in another country, besides 1 is too old and 2 is being used by my pre-teen daughter (MSN/Bebo primarily). Number 3 had a master boot record failure a week ago and one of the recovery DVDs is not working (I removed the recovery partition after making the DVDs). I've not even called Sony Vaio support about this because if your laptop is older than one year they charge you a 12.50 Euro (16.55USD!) "analyst fee"! You even get charged the "analyst fee" even when there is no analysing - for example when the screen broke on the T1XP (because it is not glass and Sony made a design flaw not putting a screen catch on to stop tiny things going between keyboard and screen which take out the membrane screen) I had to pay it! The conversation ran a little like this:
Me: My screen is smashed
Sony: We don't know that
Me: I know that, I can see it!
Sony: We don't know that
Me: So what do I need to do?
Sony: Pay the "analyst" fee
Me: OK, Visa xx
Sony: OK, so your screen is smashed.
...
Plus last time I called up about a laptop older than one year which was back in July 2006 you were forced to call a 35p/minute (0.69 US Cents!) number, and you got queued AND you got the "analyst" fee on top before anything even happens - they don't even give you a repair quote - so the whole call experience is like a "donate cash to Sony line". So that is why I don't call about the recovery disks for number 3 (besides it is 10" which is too small for day to day use).
So that leaves me with my main day to day laptop, number 4. But it broke the other day even though it is less than five months old. If you pull out the power cord the laptop goes instantly dead. Thus the battery system does nothing. I have MANY flights booked up starting very soon and required a laptop that does not have to be plugged into the mains, so this breakage is less than ideal.
At this point I must state two things. Sony Vaio support is the worst customer experience I have ever had in my life. I've returned three laptops over the last few years and it is absolutely agonising. With the last return this year (May) I was pushed completely over the edge and was at the point of pursuing legal action. The straw that broke the camels back was not that Sony wanted £580GBP (1138.13USD) to repair laptop #3 which had a second hand street value only marginally higher! But that they provided only the premium rate 35p/minute (0.69 US Cents!) number to make the payment! Yes you heard it right, only one means of making the payment of £580GBP in order to get my laptop back, was to call this premium rate number, get queued, trawl an IVR tree and then burn lots of time conferring my Visa details at the cost to me of 35p/minute. I still can not get over this - being forced to pay 35p/minute in order to make a payment and a payment for over half a grand! Such Sony arrogance had me in a state of disbelief and as such I was going to take legal action and take up the issue with every appropriate UK regulator.
But and it is a big but. I received a personal call from Sony (remember this was before I started this blog) who had read about my experiences on the Vaio forums. He sent me a cheque to cover ALL repair costs. So on the plus side if I was buying another laptop, yes I would buy Sony again. It is clear that Sony have lost the big lead they had against competitors in the analogue days. It is also clear that internally they are so screwed up that a computer manufacturer (Apple) could step in and take 90% of the portable music player market (and the majority of the music download market) from under their noses. But they produce the slickest, best-engineered sophisticated electronics devices still. The hardware (size, battery time, build quality Etc. is often a marvel). It is everything else that lets it down. In the case of Vaio laptops, Vaio support. Or to give another example, I've bought both their hard disk and flash based MP3 players and I am astounded at the hardware quality. But the hardware is rendered pretty useless because the software is so dire, in this case Sonic Stage. What surprises me most is Sony do not react to customer input. Even taking the Sonic Stage example, Sony have not fixed the software yet customers have been complaining for years. As a result, Sony own next to nothing of the music download market and hardly score in the portable player market.
Now that the background has been covered and I've really tried to make it brief since I could really write a book on my experiences with Sony Vaio support, I will turn to the immediate problem at hand.
If I call Sony Vaio Support it asks for my serial number. It requests and rejects it three times saying it is not valid and then hangs up the phone! Thanks Sony for your complete in utter customer disregard. Five months back when I had a problem with laptop #3 you forced me down a premium rate number route to pay many hundreds of pounds, forcing me to pay to give my Visa details and now you provide me with a single number to call which rejects my in-warranty laptop and hangs the phone up on me.
This would not be quite as bad if it were not for the fact that in trying to bypass the forced premium number route in the case of laptop #3 five months back I entered the serial of #4 (since it is under warranty, so my ploy was to use it to get an agent so I could pay the £580GBP without using the premium number) and discovered back that then that their system was screwed. I've even had it confirmed from Sony (via the personal call mentioned) that their database is not properly loaded with the serial numbers of the Vaio's.
So Sony you have known for at least five months that your customer support solution is broken. You therefore have known for at least that five months that there is a good chance that if a customer calls the ONLY number for support, that your automated system will inform them that the serial is invalid and hang up. An utter disgrace.
Sony please tell me why I have to go to this blog effort to "contact you"? Please tell me what the hell I can do if you only have one number and you know the system driving it is screwed? You know that for many customers (who have just suffered a broken laptop) will simply be getting hung up on without a single option or means to speak to a person! You take arrogance and customer stone walling to the Nth degree.
And for readers, I've still got my "special" contact within Sony and emailed him yesterday. I will try contacting him again after pointing him to this post since I have heard nothing yet. But take it clearly from me, I will only buy Sony because I believe that thru such techniques I can actually reach someone. But for the poor average customer, well I pity you dealing with Sony. I will however offer you a tip on reaching someone at Sony if their support system keeps rejecting your Vaio and hangs up the call. Go into a shop which sells Vaio's and note down lots of serials. Call up using them until you get one that works. I've not tried it but that is my next plan of attack to reach a person at Sony now that my in-warranty UK purchased laptop is broken.
As for prospective Sony Vaio customers. All four of mine have broke or have been broken so from my experience the chances of having to call Vaio support to return it is high. And when you do call Sony Vaio support here is what you may experience (1.3Meg MP3 call recording).
And before any readers suggest faxing Sony support. Last time round (July) I did that nearly every day. That did nothing. I then had it confirmed that they leave the fax machine off-hook.
