My Time At Vaio Technical Support

I was recently "laid-off??" from VAIO technical support in lovely San Diego. I thought I would share my lovely story of working your butt off for a large company and then getting the ole "laid-off" message.

I left work one evening after finishing my usual 25-30 calls. Everything seemed cool except for some odd reason my email folder was removed from outlook. I asked my a-hole supervisor why this was and he said it was common and not to worry. Then I looked in my Outlook calender and wasn't scheduled for any meetings. Left work that night with kind of a weird feeling that something wasn't right. Well it was confirmed after having a lovely dinner with my family I got a message on my cel saying that "sony has decided to go through some layoffs and my contract has been terminated immediately. Please do not show up for work tommorow."

I was orginally hired on as a temp because Sony doesn't hire direct anymore.They said with the turnover they have it wasn't worth it anymore to hire direct. The ad that I responded to said "6 month contract to hire". This sounded pretty good to me and was very excited about being at such a great company... i thought.. The first day I was there I heard from some of the other tech's that this "6 month contract to hire" line was total bull****. No one is considered unless you have been here for a full year.

So my first day on the job and there are 8 people in my group. Everyone seemed very smart and looks like we had a good group of tech's. 1 Hour into training and our trainer is busting out jokes and aimed at women and asian people. I was shocked being that we had one girl in our group and I don't think she said anything because of the shock factor. I have never seen such terrible skills at training people and can't believe how this guy got the job. Then after that terrible intro from our trainer, the supervisor of our department gets up and makes if very clear " WE DO NOT TAKE SUPERVISOR CALLS". Dude flat out said if we get a call and the customer is requesting to speak to him then we have to "eat it" and let them just tear into us until they wear out. Basically he was saying " I make a fat living at Sony sitting on my ass getting on USC football forums and don't want to be bothered talking to these A-hole cusomters". This supervisor.. we shall call him Chad was the biggest jerk I have ever met. First of all he had no tech savy at all. Everytime I would ask him a question he would pause, scan the area and then go say talk to that guy he should know. And then good ole Chad would just get back on these USC football forums. The first month I was there I had a very difficult call and customer insisted on speaking to the floor supervisor. I tried for almost 20min to explain to him our bull**** "no supervisor escalation" policy thanks to Chad. Finally I gave up and went to Chad to see if he could help me with this call. After telling Chad my situation he abruptly thrusted out of his chair (took him away from gtalking with his USC butt buddes) went to my cube and threw on my headset and proceeded to have some sort of fit. I don't think Chad was loved that much as a child and probably was dropped a couple times when infant. After the call he then threw down my headset and stormed back to his desk. So just remember guys when one of the tech's says to you " I can't transfer the call to a supervisor".. thank Chad for that and his bull**** policy of "no supervisor calls"..

Taking some of these calls could be downright brutal. People claiming they are going to file a class action lawsuit because their computer isn't working still... and my favorite is " there has to be some kind of lemon law for computers isn't there?" There was nothing like putting people on mute so I can laugh at their misfortune. One of the worst calls was "I have sent my computer in multiple times and it still isn't working".. Some of the bench tech's were really good but because Sony isn't commited to hiring new employees they recycle temps so the quality starts to suffer. For example the new bench tech's start making $12 an hour. People that work at the local IN&OUT Burger joint make $11 an hour. Making $12 an hour and living in San Diego is called "surviving".. So someone who works their ass off fixing your computer is barely able to pay bills and live in this glorious city. .. having that said what kind of quality do you think you are going to get from our bench tech's??? And here is the craigslist ad URL for proof.

http://sandiego.craigslist.org/nsd/tch/588736215.html

So to sum it all up I was lied to about the "6 month contract to hire".. I was the only one out of 8 people to stick it out and be there almost a year and then have the plug pulled. Two weeks later I checked out craigslist again and they were hiring for the same position. some layoff eh?? I was able to learn a lot while I was there and worked for some good people but to stick it out when people are leaving left and right and to know the product very well is very dissapointing to just be dropped..
Well there is my story of working for Sony.. sweeeet..

 

That sucks. Sorry to hear that. What did you think of Sony's notebook quality?

 

safe to say he is not gonna recommend it as I wont either after owning one vaio laptop and customer service sucks badly with them.

 

What exactly does "customer service" have to do with greggara's question about "notebook quality"?

Gary

 

that's why it's sony > like no other

 

This question is totally off topic.

 

Sounds like how pretty much any large corporation in the US does things. My brother did a similar thing with IBM - he worked 6 month contracts with them right after college, never two contracts in a row. Eventually, they out-sourced his section to the Phillipines.

One section of the company I work with recently eliminated all full-time positions for anyone that isn't a supervisor. Work quality has taken a real dive from that section since they now have a high staff turnover and hardly anyone knows what they're doing, but apparently the cost savings are worth it.