FYI SONY Support

[Mania]

I just wanted to let everyone know about my experience with Sony Support.

My receiver broke a month or so ago (I posted about it here under "A fatal blow to my receiver" At first I took it to a local Sony approved guy, but he, after about two weeks, told me it was board that he couldn't replace. I had to come and pick it up and send it to the service center in Philly. Despite a mixup with their call center inwhich I had my wife try to drop it off in Philly on a saturday, but they were closed (She ended up being late to a baby shower), I sent the unit via ups to their regional service center on a tuesday. It is an ES receiver, so it was well within its 5 yr warranty. I called up last friday to find out if they had even bothered opening the box yet. The lady on the other end checked her documents, and said the package had already been fixed and shipped out to me. She even gave me the tracking number. It had just been delivered to my house!

Needless to say, I am very happy to have my reciever back again. I couldn't be happier with the way Sony handled the problem. In my opinion, a week is not a lot of time for a large company to fix a problem. The earliest they could have opened it was on friday, and they sent it back to me the following wednesday.

[kelsci]

Mania; I remember your post. I am happy for you that SONY made good on repairing your receiver. However, if I am correct, there was someone who reminded you of that 5 year warranty clause. That person deserves a big thank you from you.

[skeptic]

My eternal experience is that Sony support stinks, stinks, stinks.

4 Sony tuners in Trinatron TVs failed on me and they wouldn't even acknowledge what every independent service guy in the industry told me and that is that Sony went through a long period where outsourced tuner boards failed in service after many years because of cold solder joints. Apparantly someone didn't know how to setup and run a wave solder machine. No discount on repairs, they wanted nearly as much to fix them as a replacement set would have cost. Three 13 inch sets were finally repaired by Radio Shack. A fourth 27 inch set was repaired by a local tv repair service.

Years later during my brief stint working for an AV contractor (worst most boring job I ever had), their professional support couldn't get me the dimensions necessary to design an opening in a wall for a couple of 62" rear projection sets in a company boardroom. I got quite a telephone runaround too. We had to wait until the sets were delivered and measure them ourselves since nobody even carried them retail. The word for Sony support whether consumer or professional equipment is STINKEROO.

[Mania]

Mania; I remember your post. I am happy for you that SONY made good on repairing your receiver. However, if I am correct, there was someone who reminded you of that 5 year warranty clause. That person deserves a big thank you from you.

I believe that person was Slosh, so here's a big thank you to ya. You saved me from having to go out and buy a new receiver, as I wasn't likely to pay to have this one looked at and or fixed.

[eqm]

My eternal experience is that Sony support stinks, stinks, stinks.

4 Sony tuners in Trinatron TVs failed on me and they wouldn't even acknowledge what every independent service guy in the industry told me and that is that Sony went through a long period where outsourced tuner boards failed in service after many years because of cold solder joints. Apparantly someone didn't know how to setup and run a wave solder machine. No discount on repairs, they wanted nearly as much to fix them as a replacement set would have cost. Three 13 inch sets were finally repaired by Radio Shack. A fourth 27 inch set was repaired by a local tv repair service.

Years later during my brief stint working for an AV contractor (worst most boring job I ever had), their professional support couldn't get me the dimensions necessary to design an opening in a wall for a couple of 62" rear projection sets in a company boardroom. I got quite a telephone runaround too. We had to wait until the sets were delivered and measure them ourselves since nobody even carried them retail. The word for Sony support whether consumer or professional equipment is STINKEROO.

if i'm not mistaken, when i worked as a product researcher for an un-named warranty company, sony regular line (including tvs) was almost completely separate from their es division and pro division. that could be part of the difference....?

[skeptic]

I've dealt with both. They both stink.

Want to get some insight into what other people think about their service? Just read some of the hundreds of review of the KV-36-XBR-250 Wega television sets on this site. I bought 4 of them 4 years ago and haven't had any problems luckily. Why did it buy them even knowing what I would be dealing with if I did have trouble? Because I thought they had the best picture. Had I read these reviews BEFORE I bought, I might have made a different choice.