Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Worst. Customer service. Ever.

So I have this Sony laptop on my desk that needs a new LCD screen. Someone, who shall remain nameless, picked it up by the LCD screen and cracked the screen. Now obviously this is not covered under warranty but since the laptop is only a month old I need to send it to Sony, aka the anti-Christ, for repair. Now I know from experience that the fastest way, usually, is to phone the manufacturer's 1-800 number and send it to them for repair. Usually what happens is you phone, they warn you that it is not covered under warranty and they send you a pre-paid return box, you put the laptop in the box, return it and 3-10 days later your laptop comes back all fixed up. Sony seems to have a different approach to this system. They think that if they jerk me around enough I'll get fed up and just buy a new laptop. Here is how the last hour of my day went yesterday.

I phone 1-888-4SONYPC and talk to some guy. This guy takes my info and puts me on hold to talk to a tier 2 for 10 minutes. OK I can be patient after all I'm getting paid to sit here on the phone. He comes back on and gives me a story about how since I'm Canadian I have to phone the Sony number for Canada. Well ok but it took 10 minutes to find this out?

So I call 1-877-899-7669 and get an automated system. I tell it I have a problem with a VAIO computer and it automatically forwards me back to the first number. Now this is getting stupid.

Ronald helps me this time and I'm pretty sure Ronald took the short bus to school. Anyways we do the song and dance again and Ronald tells me the same thing, I'm Canadian and I have to phone a Canada[sic] service center. George is getting mad!

I dial the number Ronald gave me, 403-219-5336 and it is not in service. Fucking hell.

I phone the Canadian number and fool it into giving me a real person. This guy, Sean, doesn't have a clue. Not a sniff of what to do. He gives me 2 numbers to call. 403-291-1672 and 1-877-779-9929. The second one is for a place in Ontario that fixes spas. This is where I quit. I take it back to London Drugs and let them deal with it. I'm sure it will take a month but atleast I don't have to phone Sony.

Some how Sony took an easy idea like prepaid return boxes and turned it into this steaming pile of crap. I shouldn't have to call this many numbers or take the computer to calgary. Yes Ronald wanted to know if Calgary or some place in Quebec was closer. I told him Calgary was and he said I should just drop it off there. Yeah I'll just drop it off on my way home but Calgary is SIX hours away. I guess that is closer than driving for 26 hours to Quebec but its still not that close.

In conclusion I will never purchase a Sony product again and I can't wait until they go out of business. Which should be soon considering they are bleeding money like someone hit an artery.

Fuck you very much Sony.

UPDATE

Here is the letter that I wrote to Sony support. Hopefully they can pull their collective heads out of their asses and do something to help their customers.

I am writing to tell you that you have the worst phone support I have ever experienced. Lexmark's outsourced support in India is more helpful. I phoned yesterday (04/11/06) to try to get a laptop fixed that has a broken LCD. This should not be a problem as it is only 1 month old. I phoned 1-888-4SONYPC and was told, after a lengthy hold time, that I would have to phone 1-877-899-7669 because I was calling from Canada. I phoned that number and it automatically forwarded me back to the US number. They again told me that they couldn’t help me because I am in Canada. I was told to phone the service center directly and the number they gave me was out of service. I managed to trick the Canadian number into giving me a HUMAN to talk to and he didn’t have a clue how to help me. He gave me two more numbers to try. One of which was a place in Ontario that fixes spas. This is too much. I should not have to phone 5 different times to try to get service. I realize that the LCD is not covered under warranty and that we would have to pay for it to be repaired. Any competent company would have sent me a prepaid shipping box next day for me to return the laptop for repair. I should not have to waste an hour of my day being told that they don’t know what to do. I can not be the only one in Canada trying to get a Sony laptop fixed and I should not have to jump through this many hoops for a simple problem. I have dealt with the support lines for Apple computers, HP, Dell, Lexmark and many others out side of the computer industry and I have never come across such incompetence. I sincerely hope that you are able to fix your phone systems so that the people on the other end can actually help customers. I would hate to see what they actually do all day if they weren’t sending customers in circles and laughing loudly in the background of service calls. I gave up after an hour of not getting anywhere on the phone and took the laptop back to London Drugs where it was purchased in the hopes that they can manage to get it repaired. I do not wish to be contacted by anyone from Sony. If you want to help phone Craig at London Drugs #65 in Saskatoon at 306-975-3846 and help facilitate the timely repair of our laptop.

9 comments:

Jacqui and James said...

Hahahahaha! We'll never buy a Sony now.

Anonymous said...

omg.. what absolute drivel.. holy hannah.. no wonder scott hates sony I guess he's been dicked around by their support systems too.. the schoolboard just gave up though after like 2 months and bought new ... *sighs* crappy deal..that's gotta be frustrating though
-Kerri

Saskboy said...

I've stopped buying Sony since their DRM rootkit virus fiasco unleashed by their Music department using their record labels. Sony can 0wn your computer in more ways than one.

Zack said...

Its a cool little laptop but it has the stigma of being a Sony. I think I'll stick to my iBook though.

Anonymous said...

Zack,

it's been a while since i checked out your bolg.. Give them Hell!!
out of anyone i know, you will get through to them!!

Dad.

Anonymous said...

It's a damned shame that a multi-billion dollar corporation can't get simple phone support correct.

However, the situation you described can be found with almost every major consumer-oriented corporation. Everyone has to get crapped on eventually, too bad it's for a month-old laptop.

Zack said...

As crappy as their commercials are, Dell actually has really good customer service. Of all the times I've called them I've never been on hold more than 5 minutes and the whole call usually lasts less than 10. The strange thing is they speak english, not broken english, and they are quite helpful.

Saskboy said...

I've phoned Dell home support by accident once in 2000 and was on hold for 50mins before giving up. The business line was pretty good, about 5minutes wait at most.

MUSER said...

My experience with Sony regarding the cracked LCD screen of my VAIO notebook has been as bad as yours. Have decided to keep off all Sony products in the future.