Has anyone ever had a successful experience with Sony Customer Service?

[davcarls]

I bought a supposed top of the range F series Vaio a year ago and have had problems from day 1 including overheating, sounding like a hair dryer and struggling to process data streams (I got a  2year warranty and purchased an additional year so no disputes about out of warranty work).

I arranged a collection over a month ago for today, e-mailed them yesterday to remind them, made arrangements to stay in all day and no-one turned up to collect it, not even a phone call.

This exact same thing happened last year when I arranged a repair - stayed in and no-one turned up on the day arranged. On this occasion I had to waste 2 days staying in and then they said I would get a VIP turn around of 3 days. 7 days later it was missing and I eventually received it back after 10 days. I use it for my work so this is more than just an inconvenience.

I wrote and e-mailed to the main customer service in the UK but got no response back.  They seem to have a policy of pass the buck and will when I called they said they couldn't help and referred me back to the vaio-link customer service who are some outsourced outfit and totally incompetent. It seems that they try and inconvenience you as much as possible so you will give up trying to get it repaired. I guess they hope that if they stone wall you enough times you will go away.

The inconvenience in time and money this has caused me is far more than the cost of the stupid machine so by this action Sony really are being short sighted as I would not risk this expereince again.

I saw on another thread someone had written to the executive officers:

Head of UK Customer services is Mr Karl Barker, karl.barker@eu.sony.com

Sony CEO is Mr Howard Stringer, howard_stringer@sonyusa.com

Head of Vaio Service Europe is Mr Koji Mizuno, kmizuno@vaio-link.com

I was wondering if anyone else had tried this and had any success.

[davcarls]

As an update to this:

Shortly after posting I got a phone call from someone in Belgium from Vaio Support Link apologising for the inconvenience and saying they would be monitoring this every day, reassuring me that this was being given a top priority.

I was insistent that I needed a loan unit and eventually they agreed, phoning me regularly to say they were "searching" for one and updating me. I received a phone call last week to say they had one and was sent a loan form which I filled in and returned.

I was informed that I would recieve the loan unit yesterday and a courier would come to collect my unit today. I was also promised that someone would call beforehand to give an approximate time when they would be delivering the loan unit (I said that it should be afternoon in both cases).

So what happened? Tuesday (yesterday) nothing - no loan unit, no phone call and I stayed in all today. This morning (Wednesday) I get a call from a courier who come to collect my unit so I sent him away.

So after a month of so-called customer service schmoozing, they still couldn't even organise the logistics of delivering a loan unit before collecting my lap-top and I'm back to Square 1 again having wasted even more time.

It would appear that even when being given so called "VIP" treatment they cannot organise a simple delivery.

It's no woner Sony's share price has lost 50% since last year which will probably have even greater adverse effects to the Customer Service as they try and cut costs.

Totally useless.

[Laura11434347]

Just of the phone to Sony for the fouth time today to get my laptop repaired. This has been going on since the start of July. Everytime I speak to someone they tell me a different story. They don't communicate with each other, don't look at anything I send them, don't call me back when they say they will and their attitude on the phone stinks. They even charge silly rates every time I call up. I am so fed up with the whole thing....and to make it worse, this is the second time I have had to send my vaio back to them in nine months for repair. I haven't even had the thing for one year yet.

I had never even written a complaint letter in my life until I had the joy of owning a Sony Vaio.

Totally useless doesn't even cover it!