Still No Word From Sony

I called Sony early on Tuesday morning to try to get onsite service for the trouble I've been having. I paid extra money to get this kind of coverage and was told they had to order a new hard drive to fix the unit. I still haven't heard back from them to schedule service (which will probably be a few days after their call). This was not the quality or speed of service I expected when I bought a Sony computer.

I also have no confidence that a new hard drive will fix my machine. The Sony rep told me they'd try a couple of times to fix it before having me send it in to Sony. So much for inspiring confidence in this consumer.

Last year, Sony ended up putting more than four mother boards, two hard drives, two screens, and a DVD burner trying to fix a refurbished unit they sold me and never were able to fix the problems I was having. The unit I have now was sent to me as a replacement for that one. Now this unit is having trouble and the quality of service has not improved.

One of the Sony reps also gave me a number to call to see if I could get a loaner unit. I called the number and they said they had no such policy. Thankfully, Mom and Dad came to Fairfax yesterday and are letting me borrow their laptop until mine gets fixed. (Did I mention I have the best parents in the world?) Without their help, I'd be sunk right now as it is the end of the semester and I am trying to wrap-up numerous projects and papers.

My problems with Sony go back almost two years now, when I first ordered my original computer back in 2005. I wanted an S260 because they got 4+ hours of battery life. The salesman talked me into getting the new S360 instead. They looked identical but the S360 only got 1-1/2 hours of battery life and wouldn't have lasted me through a class. It took me several weeks of thinking I had a defective unit to figure out a fundamental change had been made in the design which required much greater power consumption. I spent a month on the phone with tech support trying to solve the issue and no one at Sony was informed of the change. I discovered it on my own. By the time I discovered it, the S260 had gone out of production and they ended up sending me a refurbished unit as a replacement. I didn't find out until I first started having troubles with it that the refurbished units only came with a 90-day warranty. (Fortunately, I bought a 4-year onsite coverage plan or else would have been sunk.)

The issues I have had with Sony have literally cost me hundreds of hours, including some precious moments with friends during my last days in Orlando. They also affected my grades during school last year. (I have since made sure to do a much better job keeping things backed-up and using my USB drive much more so I can use computers at school as a contingency.) If I put a dollar value on this time, it is far more than the computer is worth.

When I was working as an engineer, I used many different laptops from Dell and IBM and not one of them came close to giving me the headaches that two (three?) Sony laptops have now given me. I always had phenomenal tech support from both IBM and Dell and cannot believe how much worse Sony is in trying to troubleshoot problems and respond to repairs.

I will say that everyone I have ever spoken to at Sony is incredibly nice and polite, but at the end of the day their organization just does a poor job at helping customers resolve problems.

Because of all of this, I will probably be in the market for a new machine soon and it will not be for a Sony. At this point, I will probably either go for a Mac or a tablet PC. I will never buy a Sony computer again and recommend anyone else to avoid them.