I bought a Sony Vaio laptop last January for around $800, CW model to be precise. So here I sit, about 14 and a half months into ownership of a fucking useless brick. Sony’s oh-so-generous warranty of 12 months appropriately expired and the turkey timer that is Sony hardware assuredly went belly up.
My power jack apparently broken loose within the laptop’s case. It won’t charge or work off AC power and an otherwise fully functioning laptop sit starting at me disdainfully. A little Google-fu turns up pages of references to this issue in Sony laptops so I can take solace in the fact that I’m not the only KY frothed asshole out here feeling used and violated by our petulant Asian overloads.
I call Sony’s “customer service” (HA!) line and the little Indian man named Bradley taking my call dutifully informs me that this product is out of warranty. I say “no shit Sherlock” and ask what my solution is. He informs me that for the low, low price of just $200 I can pay to ship the gizmo to them and I’ll have it patched up and ship shape in 30 days. Well now, ain’t that service!
So, I reflexively ask to speak with Customer Relations as I’m feeling that this is a little beyond the pale and that they might like to hear how they treat their not-so-loyal-anymore customers. Perhaps, just maybe, I’ll get an actual thinking, non-script reading human on the phone who can see past that niggling detail of 12 months having passed and perhaps to meet me somewhere in the middle on the rape-you-in-the-ass fee for fixing a nearly new laptop. We’ll see.
Second lesson: If you have learned the first lesson the hard way, don’t try to get Sony to fix it. It just gives them a chance to screw you twice on the same product.
Alessan’s right–if it’s really just a broken connection, pretty much any electronics repair place ought to be able patch it up.
Can you tell me how many thousand laptops you will be buying that would justify Sony ignoring their warranty procedures just for you? After all, they are a business.
Sorry, an internal disconnect to the AC adapter is hardly the whole computer crapping out. It’s a minor fix, and his warranty is expired. Tough shit. Why should they eat the cost of fixing something that is past its warranty?
It is a minor fix, so instead of complaining about how Sony won’t go beyond the scope of their original manufacturer’s warranty and fix this for you for free, how about you just take it to a repair shop and get it fixed instead of frothing and foaming about on the internet.
People so casually dismiss warranty agreements. “Warranty period or not”, “Niggling little detail”.
The warranty period is the length of time Sony believe they should reasonably be expected to cover repair costs. What length of time is reasonable? You now say 14 months, Sony quite rightly say that a reasonable length of time is the length of time agreed at the fucking sale and specified in the warranty agreement.
Sony is going to charge him $200 to fix it. When have you ever known the original manufacturer to repair items cheaper than a third party? If that were the case, there would be no market for third-party repair shops.
Sorry, I don’t buy the idea that Sony should eat the cost just because this guy’s minor problem happened to occur outside the window of the warranty. That’s why extended warranties exist, to cover damage to products outside the normal scope of what is reasonably expected. If he felt 1 year was too short, he could have shopped around for a computer with a longer warranty, or bought one himself. On top of that, his laptop isn’t completely fried, it has not totally crapped out. A relatively minor part that I have had fixed in many laptops I have owned does not equal the computer going completely belly up.
Yup, and it’s a problem so common to laptops of all makes that Apple actually came up with their own solution (magsafe). I’ve seen it happen to Dell, HP and IBM kit as well, so claiming it’s a particular problem with Sony seems strange.
And as already remarked - they state it’s a 1 year warranty, they offer the option to upgrade to longer…hard to see your rationale here.
Actually, the warranty period is the length of service that Sony has chosen to include within the purchase price of the machine. Our OP chose 12mo of service, did not choose to purchase post-warranty service, and is now bitching about the per incident rate he would have to pay.
The repair is going to cost Sony on the order of $100 to fix, I have a feeling they’re not going to see a big upside to giving you a free repair in the hopes that you might buy another $800 computer sometime in the next 3-4 years.
My Toshiba laptop quit charging because (and I’m paraphrasing here) there were bits of metal left in the jack from welding. I noticed a problem a few months after I bought it. Instead of continously charging, it would stop and I’d have to wiggle the cord before it started charging again. Then that quit working, and I had to tape it in place. Finally even the duct tape solution quit working. So I forked out $75 for a new Toshiba power cord. Which also didn’t work.
At that point, I called Toshiba. They referred me to a local repair shop. It was they who told me what the real problem was (due to welding in the manufacturing process), that it was a known issue with Toshiba, and that even though my laptop was beyond its warranty period, I’d be entitled to a free repair. Otherwise, it was going to cost me something like $400 to repair it.
Right. It’s unfortunate when that happens but that’s the deal. I’ve dealt with many customers who believe they ought to be the exception or , be free to decide what warranty terms ought to be, based on how much they spent or how mad they are.