Sony Europe's Nastyness

Unfortunately for me I was too late in ordering my S13p, it seems that they have ran out of stock for their premium chassis however they still have the 3G modem chassis.

Normally I'd wait until the normal S13p chassis to come back but horror, all week they hadn't and today they simply just removed the option of choosing the 3G modem, it is now standard adding an unnecessary extra which adds around £100 to the cost. They also did this quietly.

I have phoned up their sales line and said this was done to further differentiate the normal s13 and the s13p, they then tried to sell me the laptop claiming that the 3G will be excellent as I could use it everywhere until I pointed out my Android phone does tethering.
They also laughed it off as their free battery offer was still on and said to me "the free sheet battery practically halves the price of the 3G modem.''
( Note I do not care for their offers, it's just nice if it happens, I was going to purchase the S13p without the sheet battery anyways, but the free battery offer runs out on 6th of Aug and well then what)

Now In my local Sony centre they were nicer and said that they would offset this by giving me £50 worth of accessories which incidentally gets you pretty little in the Sony Store.
( I went in to see whether they could get the normal chassis, but they couldn't so they gave me this offer because their store wasn't doing particularly well and so was desperate for a sale.)

Now before all of you complain and moan to me about getting the normal S13 and speccing it up, this actually works out to be more expensive than the s13p was, plus all the colours apart from pink or white is an optional extra.

I've attached a PDF to show you what I mean.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=81306&stc=1&d=1344029362

Note this has not happened in Sony USA or Sony Japan. In fact Sony USA does nice offers such as free ps3 whatnot, Sony Japan is very good in terms of customer support, warranty .etc but that's expected of a Japanese company in Japan.

Now let's summarise what Sony Europe has done to the S13p:
1. Advertise the 1600x900 screen as a premium when it is just a plus
http://i.imgur.com/ry1Wa.jpg
2. Add cost by including crappy software(junkware) that no one uses quietly.
http://i.imgur.com/irEzK.png

3. Wait until the normal chassis is gone and stick its middle finger up and say nope 3G modem is now the new standard feature.
http://i.imgur.com/r8Fms.png
http://i.imgur.com/HTANM.png

All this in the space of 3 Months.

Plus it doesn't help that Sony tries to hold back aftermarket SSDs by trying to limit SATA 3 option only to its overpriced SSDs.

This is very close to the final straw, I am not very happy of Sony's business practice and i certainly do not approve/condone it.

Many of you may now try and suggest another manufacture/brand, but understand this, no manufacture comes close to Sony's specs in the 13'' segment. You may suggest the GIGABYTE U2442N - well that's not going to be distributed in the UK for at least a couple of months.

Dell copied apple so much (look at their new XPS line) that they've sort of compresses in terms of spec and well now overpiced

Asus - laptops don't really look nice (excludes zenbook), they are also fixated on lower end graphics chips.

Toshiba - laptops are overly plasticky and glossy nightmares also does not do too well in spec.

Acer - Let's not go there

Samsung - Don't offer much in the 13'' segment also screens aren't great.

Apple - Too expensive for what it offers.

Sager/Clevo - No I'd rather get an acer, as support is virtually nonexistent.

Novatech - Glossy nightmare.

I guess that leaves Lenovo; thinkpad t430s which also has a 3G modem, better screen, better keyboard, better battery life, better warranty and customer service. However it is quite a bit expensive, and only offers NVS 5200m and well that's abysmal at best. But I get a 10% discount (voucher) plus 10% cashback, now this makes it sort of more worth it, plus its legendary build quality.
I am tempted by this.
At least Lenovo has better business practises. But like asus they are fixated on lower end gfx chips.

( Yes discounts and offers were necessary to bring the price down to Sony's Level otherwise that thinkpad will be godly expensive.)

I will remove this if Sony Europe offers an option without 3G again as that would mean that it was temporarily out of stock, but then why go through the trouble of editing the website.

Furthermore I apologise for this long post, but this really pissed me off.

Please read fully to understand and before replying, plus this seems to only affect Sony UK/Europe.

 

I'm in exactly the same boat. Yesterday I was looking forward to buying a cheap £850 S13p with upgraded processor and GPU and upgrading the other parts myself. Now I can't get it without the additional WWAN.

Did they mention that the other chassis would come in stock at a later date? If so atleast you actually got an answer out of them. I couldn't!

 

Maybe eventually S will replace Z...
You should wait a couple of months, cause the price do come down on sony europe as time passes. They are very pricy when new models have just come out, especially at Sony UK.

 

Well In the email they sent me they said that the 3G modem has become the standard S13p and over the phone they said that it has likely become the standard, however they said it might come back, but they don't know when (likely never knowing Sony). I got an answer out of them by being persistent and well they see it as a lost potential sale.

No the S series Will never replace the Z, the Z is Sony's flagship, they may just gimp the S series in order to gain more Z sales

Maybe simply Sony Europe is supplemental Sony USA free PS3s and stuff.

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I think I'm done with Sony, this mess is the final straw for me, I was so close in ordering a S13p before this fiasco. The S13p was the dream laptop for me and that dream has been taken away by Sony Europe's management.
Thus my money goes to its direct competitor lenovo.
I really like Lenovo Thinkpad Edge S430, it's practically the same to the vaio s but has a much worse GPU (620m). Which I don't mind because it is much much cheaper, I can then use the money I have saved to upgrade it, extra ram (possibly an ssd) or build myself another desktop.

 

Unless you dont know, Sony had recently made quite significant loss. That's why you see the F series and possibly the C withdrawn from the market. And looking at the Z and S series which has many similarities (13" size, etc) already, it would be no stranger if Sony would want to manufacture only one 13" model. The Z series used to have expensive price tag on them. But now the starting price for Z (without PMD) is approaching to starting price of premium S. Unless Sony still aims to sell the Z specifically to businessmen and the riches and ignore the rest of the majorities, thinking they can make a huge profit. But considering many other competitors out there (HP, Asus, Mac...etc), this is unlikely. Even you have started thinking other brands, right?

So thinking "the S series Will never replace the Z" is a little naive. Flagship or no flagship, if the company is making a loss and need to shrink, they Will shrink. If the price is not right, people will just not buy (just like yourself) and that is the end of story. No offence to Z series fans, at the end of the day, it's a possibility.

 

Yes I am fully aware of Sony's big loss, but nevertheless Sony has flagship products, I went into the Sony centre I well I could quite easily differentiate between their normal and flagship products, all companies have flagship products regardless.

The S series is also aimed at businessmen, but since the S series got a bump in specs that would be very similar to the fatter F series Sony decided to roll it into the S series, C series was essentially the 2010 E series and so it got rolled into into the E series.

The T series is just a cheap point and squirt ultrabook for the masses.

And the Z series is for people who want the best of the best. Now the Z series isn't as profitable as the other series, it uses special manufacturing techniques, uses proprietary parts and to top it off it's still made in their homeland of Japan. Now Sony is a company that likes to push technology and so they did. Sony also does not expect to sell a lot of Z series and thus would keep manufacturing in small batches rather than mass production, for a flagship product the price is about right, I'm quite happy to pay for the Z series but I'm not keen on its upgradability.

So all in all sony now only has 4 Vaio laptop lines (E, T, S, Z) and two desktop lines (J, L), and well it is actually a nice decent size for consumer choice, Sony expects most of their Vaio sales to be the E, T and J series and then the S and L series, then the Z series. Sony is not a company to axe flagship products, that would be like BMW axing its 7 Series.

All companies have have their flagships that manufactures don't expect to sell a huge amount.
Dell - XPS, Precision
HP - Envy, Elitebooks
Toshiba - (High end Satalites and Qosmios)
Sony - Z series
Asus - Zenbook Prime
Acer - (High End Aspire)
Lenovo - X1 carbon (if it arrives)
Apple - Macbook Pro retina
They may not be as profitable but most companies have flagships which have good quality and provide a good user experience if you're willing to pay for it.

Hell look at bugatti veyron, they made a huge loss on every car built (about £ 4 million), but volkswagen sold them anyway, it's not always about profit.

For the profits side:
HP, Dell, Toshiba, Acer, Lenovo basically have two sectors, consumer and business and within those sectors you will find plenty of Models that extend far beyond Sony's or Apple's offerings.
Now HP and Dell struggle to make profits, Toshiba too made a loss and so did acer. However Lenovo made a sizeable profit, they did that by having a different models globally especially in China their home Country, in China they have more budget lines and plenty of mobile phones that never made it out of China.

So really I'm not being naive, I believe companies need the perfect balance of products ranging from budget to expensive (flagship) to be able to succeed and well if Sony is very unhappy with their vaio line they can just sell it off since that's what they did with their TV business with Samsung.
Note only Sony Europe is pulling off this scandal, Sony USA and Sony Japan are in the clear.

The S series may well be the new flagship, but it can't in it's current form of poor screens .etc

Even with the 3G modem added I still could have bought the S13p no problem, it is a very good notebook, I was mainly put off by Sony's ludicrous business practise rather than being priced out this time.
My custom as a result then went to Lenovo, I got the Thinkpad Edge S430 and I plan to add 8GB ram and a Samsung 830 256GB SSD, because of the price difference, I'd still have money left over. Now the screen is better than the Sony screen due to it being the same as the the 900p T430 screen which is good, I don't really do that much gaming so the poor 620m GPU isn't much of an issue so long as I can still do CAD work on my laptop. I chose the i5-3210m over the i7-3520m since the i7 is only 5-10% faster than the i5 which isn't significant. The thinkpad keyboard is better than Sony's, so is battery life. However Sony beats this lenovo by being 2mm thinner and having a larger and better trackpad and the awesome GPU.

 

Thanks for the heads up on Lenovo S430 Voyanger.
I was waiting for payday on Monday to order my S13P.
I was so happy to see the sheet battery for free that I up the CPU to i7 and even went for Blu-Ray drive lol.
But today morning got the nasty surprise to see the price hike of £125.
I can't afford it anymore even after taking the i7 and Blu-Ray out it is still expensive with a 3G modem I don't have any use.
I know £125 extra is not much but for a student on part-time work its a lot. And I know I should buy something cheap but I need one laptop to cover all my useage scenario and something light to carry around everyday.
I was pretty much using a whole month salary on it but not any more.
Lenovo S430 i5 may not have the awesome casing, have rubbish battery life, inferior graphics chip, no backlit keyboard.
But it has better screen, thunderbolt (whatever that will do), awesome Lenovo keyboard, bigger HDD on base model and nipple mouse pointer with button. I tend to use trackpad and button on top combo like normal mouse.
Plus with current discount its £665 which is £400 cheaper. Which means I can still afford to feed myself this month.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

No it's completely understandable, the price hike may push the price higher than many people's budget.
The Lenovo Thinkpad Edge S430 case uses magnesium alloy too and steel hinges, battery life is comparable to the Sony Vaio S but people so far said that battery life is acceptable, 5 hours medium usage which is not bad.
True there is no backlight keyboard but it's not an issue, just switch the lights on in your room.
Graphics chips is no longer much of an issue for me, I just bought that version only because the i7 version was more expensive for no reason.
Yes there is the awesome keyboard, it has a better matte screen and yes it does have thunderbolt/displayport and don't forget the HDD is faster too.
I did one better, I bought the same laptop as you, added 3 years warranty (send in) and added an 14'' sleeve and well it adds up to £742.04, the best part is that I also got 10% cashback on top so that's an extra £62.67 off.

I can then purchase an extra 4GB ram and get a 256GB samsung 830 SSD plus either a usb 3.0 enclosure or an ODD adapter and I would still have money left over, total spend £857.37 which Sony isn't going to get.

However Sony's S13p still remains king in terms of raw power with a 13-14'' screen, No manufacture beats it yet.

 

I completely agree with topic starter...
Hmmmm... I'm wondering if any representatives from Sony are also reading these kind of threads/forums...
I would like to know how they thinking about it... because these kind of threads are definitely deadly for selling...

 

Unfortunately the people on notebookreview are only a minority, which accounts from possibly 1% of Sony's sales, however that said Sony is more likely going to take this as good publicity, (remember any publicity is good publicity), it may hurt their sales but not by much, most vaio people are going to buy the E series, T series and the normal S13 series they may possibly even go for the S15. However those who like and are willing to shell out for more then there is the S13premium and Z series to spend on. Sony Europe now does not expect high sales from the Z or S13premium.

Earlier on Sony Europe considered ending CTO for vaio laptops in Europe, but I'm glad they didn't do it since people do like to choose for their own rather than being fully restricted to spec sheets, this should theoretically lower Sony's cost as they only need to start making the CTO laptop after they've received the order. Hence in Europe the 2-3 week wait.

However these threads do harm Sony's credibility around the word regardless of region even though this problem is just limited to Sony Europe which operates independently from Sony USA and Sony Japan .etc

Lenovo however decided to not release the Thinkpad Edge S430 North America and Japan, which is nice for a change considering we Europeans always seem to get everything last and at vastly inflated prices too.

 

Am i right in understanding your issue being that Sony doesn't offer you the same discount/extra's as they did before? I don't think they HAVE to give any discount or special offer at all. They are free to sell their products any way they like. On all the offers i saw so far there was an end date as well and with the premium version it was always stated there is limited availability. I don't see how this is "nastyness" on the side of Sony really.

 

I think voyanger's point is that prices are particularly high when compared to sony us or sony asia. And this is very true if you go to sony UK, when new models comes out, the prices are near un-touchable for less wealthy people. Plus they never do free PSV or PS3 give away like the US do. Sometimes you find some selections are quite annoying too. E.g. you have to go for 2gb 640le to go for premium display and not 1gb 640le. Thus pushing the budget further.

 

No you're not right it's not the offers that I'm concerted about, if you've read my long post you'd understand where I'm getting at.
At first the S13premium had two chassis, one with 3G and one without, now when they ran out of the normal chassis they didn't choose to restock the normal chassis, instead they've now got plenty of 3G chassis and well Sony Europe made that standard instead whilst using the exact same model number,they should at least change it. On Sony UK's website (Applies to EU too) never stated this "limited availability" of the S13premium or any product in fact.

Since I am a student I am eligible for Sony's education discount, now If I went with the Sony S13p with gun metallic (avoids fingerprints and looks epic) the total cost to me would have been £826.76,

Now for the Lenovo Thinkpad edge S430 it generally has the same specs, but I've added 3 year warranty. 8 GB ram and a 128GB mSATA drive, this brings the price to £853.62. Shock I spent more, ironic because this includes Lenovo's limited 10% off offer.

However I will miss the backlit keyboard, the extra 2mm thinness, the nicer box and most of all the kepler 640m.

Yes they can sell their products in anyway they like but not when they use dirty tactics such as the standard inclusion of generally unwanted software which you have to deselect.

What you're getting confused over is the limited offers such as the free battery and half price ram, I am fully aware that those end and well those weren't the deciding factor for me to purchase the S13p, please read my post carefully. It's not about the offers rather the product itself.

Now if I was concerned about offers, I wouldn't be spending more money then I would have been on a Lenovo laptop. In fact I spent more on the Thinkpad then I would have on the S13p.
But that does not include the £70 cashback from Lenovo and crucial. So really I would have only spent £783.62. But cashsback takes a while to arrive and there's a chance that I'd never see it.
For those interested Sony S13p (Gun Metallic no 3G) with 7% discount and 6% cashback would come to a total of £777 and well that's still cheaper than the Lenovo was going to be.

Wrong again, I've said in my first post that this problem of changing specs quietly and keeping the same model numbers do not happen at Sony USA or Japan.

I am annoyed at the fact that Sony Europe did not restock their standard chassis, and pushed the 3G modem on to be the new standard (used to be an optional extra). This invariably pushed up price to the consumer, you would have spent more money by going with the normal S13.

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I'll edit my first post so that it is clearer to all people. Since I believe it is too long for people to read in one sitting, so I made it longer and added clarification points in a different colour.

 

Well Voyanger they at least lost 2 sell worth £2000 for sure.
So we did manage to do some damage.
And we are spreading the word about a alternative which actually got a port that can drive a large monitor with 2550x1440.
So people who are getting S13P for media work they now know there is an alternative.
As I am planning to get one of those cheap 27" IPS display from eBay, I was worried that Sony without any display port or Dual link DVI would be pretty useless at driving it even with 2GB RAM GPU.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

£2000 is not much to Sony it's pittance compared to their weekly Sales. But yes eating is more important than an electronic gadget.

Yes but you have to remember the GPU on the S430 is only a 620m which is really just a little better than the HD 4000 but It will be sufficient in autocad and whatnot. But for people who need the gaming power then no there's not really a good viable alternative yet.

I only intended to do a little gaming, but in reality I don't game that much so I can even get a PC with integrated graphics, I chose the thinkpad over the asus zenbook UX32VD because it was more flexible and well I don't fancy a display that has light bleed, also I don't want ULVcpu.

Although I don't care too much about thunderbolt and display port for that matter, I'm actually surprised that it even has thunderbolt, but if I add MSI's GUS II then I get desktop class graphics when I need to, (that's if it gets released). Other than that USB 3 will be plenty for me.

 

Ah, I was wondering about the substantial price increase. Sony UK are complete rip-offs imo - charging in the excess of £1000 for a laptop (S13P) that has a display on par with laptops half its price is utter bull****. I considered the S13P for a fair while, but my experience with Sony, and in particularly Sony Centre with regards to my now dead Vaio FZ, I regret wasting my time on another of other their laptops!

The S430 is very good value for money with the current coupon, but I can't stomach the glossy, cheap looking bezel... a matte screen should have a matte bezel! Apart from that, and a few thermal issues, it seems a great buy.

 

voyanger, where do you find the live chat page? Can you send me the url?

 

the price for s13p in Sweden for the most basic config is 1400 euros, 1730$ -_-....... with 128gb ssd + 8gb memory + i7 its 2,240$ omg ;-; will hurt my wallet..

 

Well my local Sony centre is nice and polite but venture out you do get some nasty ones who can't be bothered with customers.

No it's ok I don't mind the glossy bezel, it's not that bad, other than that materials used on this laptop is pretty much the same as the normal s13. I think lenovo was trying to copy BMW in their recent dashboard designs, matte soft touch plastics with glossy piano black wood trimmings. It's interesting to see that combination, however I am worried about fingerprints and such.

I wouldn't have bought the S430 if the coupon wasn't there otherwise this laptop would have been overpriced for what it is (620m gpu ) I would have bought a t430s instead otherwise, but I don't mind as long as I get my 10% cashback too.
That's pretty much an 18% discount there. (Cashback doesn't include VAT in its calculation)

It randomly pops up when browsing through the models and shopping basket, Sony UK, FR and DE definitely have the chat feature, don't know about others though, but look carefully enough you can find freephone numbers too.

You're not paying sony to do those upgrades right? Do them yourself you might save some money. Yes it's a shame that sony currently chooses not to do the S13p without the 3G modem, that would have saved you around 1400 SEK.

Funny thing Sony Ireland prices its S15 lower than the S13.
http://i.imgur.com/slPZx.jpg
People in Ireland do yourselves a favour and get the S15, it's vastly superior and €10 cheaper.

And well they're the only ones to do that, so I'm guessing they're selling a lot more s13 than the s15 other there since it's about supply and demand.