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So my PlayStation 2 breaks a month ago after less than eleven months of playing time and I send it off to Sony to be repaired. Despite the fact that I committed the horrendous crime of opening my own property which theoretically would invalidate my warranty, I am still told on at least two to three occasions that the repair fee(s) would be waived.

But of course, three weeks pass and I get some mail from Sony: "Hey, guess what? Remember that fee we told you you wouldn't have to pay three weeks ago? Well, now you have to pay it!"

I called in, pitched a fit, dealt with lying repair techs and eventually got the fee waived for good, but they have to put it through all sorts of bureaucracy now which means I'll probably have to wait another two weeks for the unit.

Anyone have any comparable consumer "support" stories?

BT - I wanted the absolute minimum rental fee because 3 out of 4 of us only ever make free phone calls and use our mobiles for the rest.

They then sent me a bill for three months line rental in advance at 15.99 a month. I phoned up, they set us back to the basic rental but haven't refunded us yet.

They then sent us a bill for this thing called a 'call limit', but didn't include the refund. They send everything 2nd class, so we got the bill two days before we were supposed to pay it.

I phoned up, they sad we could have until the end of the month to pay it, as we weren't expecting a bill before our billing date.

Two months later they disconnected us, the day we recieved the reminider bill, apparently because we'd reached the 'call level' again.

They kept talking about this thing called a 'call level' which we had 'agreed' with them (no we hadn't) and was a 'service' (i.e. we get disconnected when we don't expect it).

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr................

Luckily I keep my consoles in prime condition. My NES, much like everyone elses, works almost perfectly to this day. Even though I abused the hell out it, it's games and my controllers. None of my consoles have ever, EVER caused me a problem. I even bought EB extended warranties on my DC and my PS2. Shit, I didn't get one for the Gamecube cuz I got it at damn Wal Mar, dumb ass. Unfortunately that means I can offer nothing to this thread as far as tech support goes. When shit happens on my computer I just fucking give up. heh.

DG_Cal_Wright wrote:Luckily I keep my consoles in prime condition. My NES, much like everyone elses, works almost perfectly to this day. Even though I abused the hell out it, it's games and my controllers. None of my consoles have ever, EVER caused me a problem. I even bought EB extended warranties on my DC and my PS2. Shit, I didn't get one for the Gamecube cuz I got it at damn Wal Mar, dumb ass. Unfortunately that means I can offer nothing to this thread as far as tech support goes. When shit happens on my computer I just fucking give up. heh.

I have never had a non-Sony console fuck up on me.

My PS1 crapped out after four years of fairly heavy play (which is a little more reasonable). The laser eye of my PS2 broke after less than 11 months. I wish Sony didn't dominate the console market. Nintendo's software catalog may be inferior, but Nintendo would never market a piece of junk like the PS1, and the PS2 ain't much better.

I never had a problem out of either PS1 consoles I had. The first one was my brothers' and when he moved out, took it with him. My Nephew plays on it now. The one I bought to replace it, I sold to a friend when I got my PS2. As far as I know it hasn't given anyone any problems. The only PS1 I know that had problems was a friends. It was one of the originals that first hit the US. He had to turn it on it's side to get it to work. Pretty damn funny. I think it was he kept it somewhere that allowed it to overheat. I ain't sayin that your shit could not have possibly fucked up. I work in retail and have witnessed many times a product that NEVER had problems get purchased by a customer and fuck up. Not only that, the replacement and the replacements replacements fuck up. No telling if it's the consumer or what. It's just wierd shit. I wouldn't get my console fixed and keep it. I would try and sell it or trade it in. Sometimes you can get around the bullshit and get a new one with maybe a little paid in. Of course paying sucks. But if it fucked up once, I'd try to get a new one. It's already cost over a month without a damn PS2 and I wouldn't be surprised if the beauracracy tried to extort you for more money. heh. That's a good idea actually. Either way though, that's my advice, get it back, get a different one.

I've had my Gamecube dropped from a first story window (boxed) and survive.
No broken parts or nothing.
Now my computer at work is a different story, you spill a bit of coffee on it ( and I mean a tiny bit) and it fritzes.
Stupid Microsoft.

Sony's consumer division has lously quality control. Everything from their cheapest CD player to their flagship 777ES SACD player has repair issues - and the latter is a multi-thousand-dollar player that weighs a good amount.

Their broadcast division is better, if only because that field demands quality.

A friend of mine is a Sony whore. His entire room is almost entirely Sony products.

the first run PS2's were pretty good, the later runs have had serious issues.

i have one friend who's got a first run PS2 that plays any DVD regardless of region, and has had no problems. yet i have a couple of other friends whose PS2s fried within a month and are dealing with the repair issues...

btw, sony sucks royally...


btw, on the subject of spilling things in the comp... last night my friend spilled hot chocolate in the keyboard, not only did he kill the keyboard (ever seen a keyboard with hot chocolate POURING out?) and seems to have killed the mobo, if the assorted glitches (fan monitor fuckups, alarms for no reason, etc.) which wern't there before, are any indications. damn that was funny to watch, but i think i'll be RMA'ing the board for him.

Why the fuck do they say you can't return an opened product? How do you tell if it's fucked up if you don't open it?

I have to disagree, EVERY Sony product from my 3 year old MD walkman to the PS2 and TVs has worked and never had problems and the one mate I know who had a stereo problem with Sony had no fuss about getting it fixed.

Maybe it is just The American Way over there.

Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:Why the fuck do they say you can't return an opened product? How do you tell if it's fucked up if you don't open it?

He means he opened the actual platform to check the ciruitry.

I've never had a problem with any game platorms or equipment.

Come to think of it, my TV that I got from my mom is a Sony. It's fifteen years old. LoL. Well, shit happens.

So far no sweat...I mean yeah my Sony things have had a couple more problems(bizarro blue vs clean discs) but nothing bad.

As for Walkmans...those thing are one thing I never liked too much from Sony...breaks down too quickly.

Ghost Rider wrote:So far no sweat...I mean yeah my Sony things have had a couple more problems(bizarro blue vs clean discs) but nothing bad.

As for Walkmans...those thing are one thing I never liked too much from Sony...breaks down too quickly.

I have practically dropped mine on concrete from my waist and it still keeps going. I hate the earphones though, they broke no problem but then you need decent earphones really, not the crappy ones that come with, something like Sennheiser.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:I have to disagree, EVERY Sony product from my 3 year old MD walkman to the PS2 and TVs has worked and never had problems and the one mate I know who had a stereo problem with Sony had no fuss about getting it fixed.

Maybe it is just The American Way over there.

I've never had a problem with anything Sony either. But I don't buy exclusively from Sony either.

C.S.Strowbridge wrote:

Admiral Valdemar wrote:I have to disagree, EVERY Sony product from my 3 year old MD walkman to the PS2 and TVs has worked and never had problems and the one mate I know who had a stereo problem with Sony had no fuss about getting it fixed.

Maybe it is just The American Way over there.

I've never had a problem with anything Sony either. But I don't buy exclusively from Sony either.

Well naturally, for instance my watch is Casio, my PC is Medion, my printer is HP, CD player JVC and so on.

But Sony aren't the corporate shitheads they are made out to be here, their TVs alone are worthy of them being such a big company.

Eh, their TVs are decent but there are better.

Sony Vaio's are not a laptop to buy for the corporate environment. Problem is execs like them because they are thin and look cool.

If you dont turn in a warranty card after buying the laptop, the warranty is only 3 months.

We had a Vaio with a broken drive, they wanted 800 bucks to replace it. WTF? I can replace my own hard drive on a Dell or IBM laptop for the cost of the drive. Fuckers. The problem with the Vaio was the repair disk would not acknowledge a new drive.

Another problem I had with the Sony Vaio is with their recovery disks for Windows 2000. One of the real slim models is the problem. When you run the recovery disk if does not give you the option to reinstall without format.
It just busts all partitions and wipes them. WTF???

Not every Vaio is that bad, but still.

TrailerParkJawa wrote:Sony Vaio's are not a laptop to buy for the corporate environment. Problem is execs like them because they are thin and look cool.

IBM tends to rule in the corporate market (mmm...Thinkpads are great...)

I've never had any problems with Sony products in the first place.

IBM tends to rule in the corporate market (mmm...Thinkpads are great...)

I have a 560E for my personal laptop. Got it from a dying company for 230 bucks.

My first company was Thinkpads for the laptop fleet, my second was Dells. Latitudes are like Volkswagons, they are easy to fix. But not much on performance.

My first comp was VAIO. It sucked. Granted it was Win95, but still. I couldn't upgrade to 98, and if I tried adding hardware, the computer would fuck up and I'd have to recover the damn system.

Durran Korr wrote:So my PlayStation 2 breaks a month ago after less than eleven months of playing time and I send it off to Sony to be repaired. Despite the fact that I committed the horrendous crime of opening my own property which theoretically would invalidate my warranty, I am still told on at least two to three occasions that the repair fee(s) would be waived.

But of course, three weeks pass and I get some mail from Sony: "Hey, guess what? Remember that fee we told you you wouldn't have to pay three weeks ago? Well, now you have to pay it!"

I called in, pitched a fit, dealt with lying repair techs and eventually got the fee waived for good, but they have to put it through all sorts of bureaucracy now which means I'll probably have to wait another two weeks for the unit.

Anyone have any comparable consumer "support" stories?

I don't have stories concerning technical support, but I am pissed off at Sony for instituting a $6.95/month subsription fee for playing my beloved Infantry Grrr. Kill. Death. Maim. Burn. Destroy.