Best place to buy a sony

Hi
Im looking to buy a sony FE790. Please mention some decent places to buy ,other than sonystyle.com . How is sony's customer service. I've heard its not good.

 

amazon.com

 

That is if you want to buy an overpriced sony.

portable one is definitely the best regarding price and service and if you live in US, you get free shipping.

 

Portble one doesnt offer some of the configuration options that sonystyle does. You can only get the Go 7400 128mb, instead of the 7600, and its the same price.

 

SonyStyle has some of the worst customer service policies of any online retailer. If you order your product and it gets delivered problem free, then you are golden. If you have any issues, it is a pain to get resolved.

Examples of problems:
1) order an AC adapter and they have a computer problem between the order processing computer and the warehouse computer. Even though the web page status says approved, waiting to ship, there systems have silently cancelled the order behind your back. You'll just wait around forever for your order unless you call in and inquire. Only the more experienced agents know to look in the log file for extranious events, otherwise the newbies will tell you everything is ready to go, just be patient.
2) order an AC adapter again. Sony ships it to San Diego warehouse instead of your location. They cannot tell FedEx to redirect, you need to wait until it reaches San Diego, then have them reship. Well at least they reshipped it priority.
3) order a PC, it comes damaged. SonyStyle has no replacement policy even for DOA. Your only option is to ship it back for refund and reorder. If you bought it on sale and the sale is over, good luck getting your original price. Also they will try to stiff you for the return shipping even though it was DOA. You need to argue or escalate to a manager for them to pay shipping. Most other stores will take care of everything for DOA reported immediately, not SonyStyle. I can understand if it broke after a week, but really if you order something new, you should expect it to work out of the box.
4) the customer service will sometimes bounce you to tech support implying they can process an exchange. Tech support will bounce you back to SonyStyle saying there is nothing they can do, this is a SonyStyle problem. The 2 companies behave like they have no relation at all.
5) Tech support is very interested in getting your serial # and model # so they can bump their call processing stats up. Even if they know they can't do anything about your problem, they will ask you for all that info, then they will bounce you back to SonyStyle.

Sony PCs have great features and if you don't have any issues they are great. If you have issues, SonyStyle (and Sony) are one of the more difficult companies to work with.

If you decide to purchase from SonyStyle, do it for other reasons, don't do it because you think you will be treated better by Sony.

I've heard purchasing from the Sony brick and mortar stores is a different experience and they will take care of you.

 

i can't speak to service, but amazon's prices are fine. an fe770g on amazon is $1249 (after $100 rebate) with free two-day shipping. the same machine at portableone is $1349, which is the list price at sonystyle. there are plenty of good reasons to buy from portableone (service, more config options, etc) but it's not necessarily the cheapest.

and i wouldn't order from sonystyle if it were the last place on earth selling computers... if you have to buy direct, go to a physical sonystyle store.

 

amazon's price is more than fine. I am waiting for the SZ360 to get online, which is priced at $2350 with $150 rebate, no tax, and free shipping. Does portable one offer these?

 

Don't know about other places, but from where I live, The Sony Store always have had the biggest selection of VAIO laptops.. not to mention ones that are exclusive to Sonystyle only.

 

Don't know about portable one's service as I've never been a customer but Amazon has their price on the SZ360 beat by about $200 (after rebate). Also no tax and free shipping. I got my S260 on Amazon too, couldn't beat the price anywhere after many days of research.

 

7600? which model?