Bad experience with Sony Vaio SZ-140 purchase

Today I returned my Sony Vaio SZ-140 because it was unusable due to frequent blue screen errors on startup and Windows system lock up and crashes. I don’t plan on purchasing a replacement from Sony because my total experience with this, my first Sony computer purchase, was negative, from sales to delivery to quality to support. I hope that others don’t have the same experience I did.

I ordered my computer from SonyStyle on January 26, 2006. First I attempted to customize the configuration over the internet with 2 GHz Core Duo, 1 GB Ram, camera and Bluetooth, 80 GB hard drive, fingerprint sensor, DVD burner, silver keyboard, XP Pro, extended warranty and a few others. The web site link to the extended warranty didn’t work and no delivery date was given, so I called SonyStyle to order. I made it clear to the sales rep that the reason I was calling was because I could not order an extended warranty and needed a reliable delivery date. During the sale, there was some sort of communication problem between Sony and the credit card company that kept me on the phone for over an hour and delayed the transaction by a couple days. I asked the SonyStyle sales rep to send me a confirmation email on the configuration. When I received the confirmation email, the extended warranty was not listed. It took me three more days to contact the sales rep to fix this as he did not respond to phone or email messages.

Maybe Sony can do better on delivery? When I ordered the computer, I was told that it would be shipped in two to three weeks. The SonyStyle order information site was worthless as they never update the information. As three, four, five weeks went by I called SonyStyle and was given different dates each time. I had a trip planned on March 2 and 3 and wanted to get the computer before that time. Without notice of any kind, the computer was delivered to my workplace on March 1 with no name listed for delivery. After opening the box, the mail room attendant found a delivery phone number on the invoice and called it to find out that it was supposed to be delivered to me. I was out of town that day, but returned to the office in the evening to pick the computer up.

It will be worth all the aggravation if this product works. I was pleased with the appearance and weight of the product until I put the battery in. The high capacity battery is very heavy, sticks out about ¾” from the back and below the bottom of the computer, and acts as a rear base for the computer. This will prevent it from fitting into a standard computer protection sleeve like the one I already have. The silver keyboard felt okay to me, but if you look close you can see the outline of the letter sticker borders on the keys. With high hopes I booted up the computer and here is what happened…blue screen failure on initial startup, blue screen failure on second startup, was able to start Windows on third attempt, but the system locked up and I had to reboot. Reboot was successful but I received four of those Windows system error recovery dialogs that ask you to send the info to Microsoft but they never have an answer. I was not able to complete the computer setup until I returned from my out of state trip. For several hours I was able to perform a few tasks, like get the latest Windows updates, register my fingerprints and setup wireless LAN and my Bluetooth mouse between seemingly random Windows crashes and intermittent blue screen failures at startup.

After looking through the available FAQ for this product, I called Sony support to see if the computer problems were known. The support rep was nice as he read from his written instructions on how I could perform a system recovery by holding down the F10 key at startup. I was disappointed that the first thought was to “reinstall” rather than troubleshoot on a computer that had barely been used. The recovery operation went very poorly and was interrupted with blue screen crashes and Windows system recover error dialogs. It was not practical for the support rep to stay on the line until the system recovery process was complete, so he promised that the problem would be escalated if I experienced the same problems after full recovery. The support rep suggested that the product seemed defective and I could call SonyStyle about what to do. The system recovery never completed successfully, so I requested a return authorization number online and sent the package back today. I was not about to request hardware service from Sony on a brand new system, especially after I waited over a month for delivery and had such negative experiences with sales and support.

I hope that your experiences with this product are better. I understand that problems can occur with some parts of a computer sales, delivery, quality and support system, but my experience tells me that while Sony is a great place to purchase a camera or TV from, I better stick with dedicated computer manufacturers when it comes to buying computers.

 

I ordered a 140 from SonyStyle about 2 weeks ago. They really should just fire all of their config/supply channel management. Never got an actual ship date, estimated or otherwise. Called several times: "No clue. Maybe you could check back next week?"

They told me the camera is what is causing their out of stock conditions. So I said "give it to me without the camera". Okay, but they were still unable to give a ship date. Awe. Some.

So I canceled and Sony got to share profits with J&R. Sorry, shareholders, I realize this was self-centered of me.

No one's as good as Dell at managing the order cycle, I haven't experienced anyone worse than SonyStyle.

 

Hey, you guys ain't the only ones. RR shows thier service is really bad:

http://www.resellerratings.com/seller1640.html

The consumer complaints there tell the story. Please don't talk about how only people with bad service report there. Newegg, Portableone and Bestpriceaudiovideo as well as undoubtedly many others get ratings well over 8.0 as well as praise from buyers who love to share their joy of a good deal.

Ironically though my deal for a T250 went well with Sonystyle last year. Also just recently the screen had dust in the LCD so I sent it in a few days before the stock 1 year warranty expired. They actually sent me a postage paid box withing 24 hours and I sent it in. The laptop returned from them quickly with a new screen with no dead pixels. I didn't have to pay a penny for postage. So I have had great service from them.