Hello,
Following my ongoing troubles with Sony over a VAIO Fip 15a I feel compelled to share my experiences with the community at large. I would appreciate any feedback and advice others are willing to share.
So, in November I received delivery of a Sony Flip 15a, I had a wee play around with it and installed whatever I'd need before returning to the ship on which I work 5 weeks of every 10. I was pleased with the laptop, it seemed to be the perfect medium between small form factor and performance. I thought I'd be able to run any software work required me to, keep in touch with home and play some low intensity games.
On returning offshore and making further use of the machine however I discovered that after 30 – 45 mins of gameplay / processing the machine would start to lag considerably, either crashing the program or making it unplayable. The easiest way to test this was through games and I ran Don't Starve, Rogue Legacy, X3 Terran Conflict (on low settings), Ring Runner and Legend of Grimrock ( among others) each with the same results, despite running each well below the system specs of the laptop. Even running chrome for a prolonged period triggered the lag.
So naturally, I assumed there's a fault with the GPU, the specs measure up so the programs should work, at least for longer than a few hours, without issue. As well as some dead pixels (within allowable limits) and a strange screen dimming issue (weird drivers) I contacted sony at the end of december.
As with any other company I was immediately subjected to the cycle of reboots and clean OS reinstalls (possible thanks only to a friend at home who emailed me the required drivers) . Sony eventually relented and consented to take it in for testing on the 3rd of March when I'd be back in the country. Unfortunately since I discovered the problem a month after buying the laptop it wasn't eligible for an immediate refund.. However considering the circumstances of the unit being unfit for it's purpose (ie unable to run programs below its own specs adequately) I requested a return and was politely told that It'd need to fail repair three times before a refund could be negotiated.
So they replaced the SSD which was apparently faulty (though I never seemed to have any SSD like issues with it) and returned it to me. No improvement, same problems. It seemed whatever tests the techs ran did not pick up the easily replicable results or they ignored them. I was again put through the depressing process of clean recoveries and reinstalls to no avail. I was helpfully informed that “we deem this as normal as all games consume the utmost of the graphics card power which results in the stuttering of the VAIO”. So far so much the same. The technician seemed to be ignorant of application specific requirements and also of the fact that getting games to run wasn't the only issue.
On March 20th they again agreed to accept the laptop back for repair. I knew I'd be offshore again by the time Sony were done tinkering with it so a friend kindly agreed to be ready to collect it when I received notice of return. In the mean time I bought a more reliable laptop. In hindsight, I should've taken my case straight to the small claims court.
Unfortunately no notice was forthcoming. On the 12th of April the manager of the radio station I volunteer at let me know they'd received an exciting package for me, completely out of the blue. My friend picked it up, took it home and upon opening it immediately noticed that the screen was cracked in two places from the bottom right hand corner upwards. The touchscreen itself was also inoperable, barely accepting input and zooming in and out on the Windows 8 start screen, making any use impossible. A repair notice let me know that they'd swapped out the motherboard.
Upon letting Sony know this they informed me that I should have notified them of the damage within 5 working days. My time on the vessel and the complete lack of any delivery notice left me later in getting back to them. I eventually left a post on Sonys technical forum and the case was elevated. I was put in contact with people who did more than read off a script and on my return from abroad I began to receive phone calls from Sony. The rep who got in contact was far more helpful and it's still him I'm dealing with.
Sony agreed to accept return of the laptop once again and of course concluded that they were faultless in the units damage. The Sony rep offered to recoup half the cost of repair on Sonys side. Though such a solution grated as by this stage all I want is my money back and an end to the mess, and the damage was through no fault of my own. However if I was to determine whether the unit worked with the new mobo, I'd need the screen fixed. So I paid up, and requested that, as I left the country again on June 7th that the laptop be held until I got back. I did this both over the phone to the repair centre and over email with my contact in Sony.
They shipped it anyway of course, without any notice whatsoever. On the 10th of June my friend let me know a dpd delivery had failed. I asked my Sony rep if he knew anything about it and he assured me that the mistake was being sorted and the laptop would be held until I returned.
Then the repair centre emails me a 'do not reply' asking me to phne them to arrange delivery. I've emailed my rep and hope he'll ask them politely to hold on to it a while longer. And I really hope no one drops it or bashes it or drops something on it. Again.
So that's where I am now. Thanks for reading it all, if you did. I half wanted to share my experience so far, I don't think this is thee sort of customer care that we should expect, and I genuinely also want peoples opinions on this. I'll post it on a few forums I respect and some social networks.
Many Thanks!
