" Almost immediately experienced a hairline crack in the front screen."
Why would you not take it back at this point?
"This phone was NEVER abused, dropped, etc."
Again If you did not do it ,why would you not take it back? I have worked in the mobile phone industry for over 10 years and have not always had Sony, cracks have been known to be there out of the box, in many brands of phone, but are always swapped out ion store straight away. if the crack is not there out of the box it DOES NOT magically happen by it self.
"Then she asked ... "did you try unlocking it?" Nope - hadn't thought of that. What a brilliant idea. So then the SONY rep's reponse was ... and you can't make this up ... "I use the Experia and don't have any problems." Really? Well congratulations! That makes me feel so much better and magically made my phone spring to life. You moron!!! I told the rep about the NUMEROUS blogs and info on the Internet concerning the fragile screen and associated problems. Of course she'd never heard of ANY SUCH THING. Apparently all the Experia's are PERFECT except for mine. They would appear to take their Customer Service lessons from the federal govenrnment in Washington, DC ... in other words, they can't get out of their own way."
Clearly the person you spoke to was inexperienced, but unless you bought this from a Sony store i can't see that that is Sony's fault.
Finally if you paid attention to this forum instead of just ranting you would know that with a $2 adapter and a USB mouse and/or keyboard you would have been able to access your phone data to transfer into a new device.
But at the end of the day what can you expect from a person who spells "Xperia" as "Experia" when it is written clearly on the top of the page. I am not talking about a one off typo as the mistake is repeated 4 times.
