Sony repaired my SZ160 plus a brief review of their process.

If' you'll recall I was experiencing issues with the Optical Drive on my SZ160. Well I sent it in for Repair and here are my impressions from my first call to them.

The intial call went well, the agents were extremely responsive. It was a little irritating that I had to go through the troubleshooting with two seperate persons but ultimately they agreed that there was an issue. After that they sent me a box and a FedEx label over night and I got it the next day.

I immediately packed my laptop and rushed to my local FedEx pickup but alas FedEx had already been by that location for the day sooo It ended up leaving for California the next day.

My Laptop arrived Friday morning at 9:52 AM. I checked the Sony repair site ( www.sony.com/repair) and gave it my repair number. I was informed that my laptop had not been checked in yet and to try again later. Later (about 2 hours) the site informed that the laptop had been checked in but was not with a technician yet and so it sat all Weekend.

Monday morning, laptop with a technician. Same is true for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and half of Friday. At about Noon on Friday I called Sony directly as I had been dilligently checking the repair site to see what was going on (I had after all only been experiencing trouble with the Optical Drive and was wondering why it would take so long). My call was promptly answered by some named Gilbert who was very....uninformative. I was simply trying to determine if "Your Sony Laptop is currently with a repair technician" meant is was actually being worked on or if it really meant "We have a lot of laptops to work on and in order to make look like we're not wasting your time and keeping your shiny away from from for no good reason, we're going to say it's with a technician." Eventually I was blunt enough with Gilbert that he put me on hold and spoke with someone who told him to tell me the truth, My laptop wasn't currently being worked on but it had been assigned to a technician. I then proceeded to ask Gilbert why something that should only take ~30 minutes to do had taken the better part of a business week. I got the usuall appologies and comiserations but eventually he explained that he didn't understand why either and would look into it. Later that day I got an e-mail informing that my repairs had been completed and that my Laptop would arrive to my home on Monday.

Monday, my package arrives and I experience a dose of eagerness and dread as I open the box. What if I ask myself, What if I still have problems with the drive but much to my relief, the drive is performing flawlessly. All in all I would say the repair process about what one should expect. There are some inefficiencies but I guess that's to be expected from so large an entity as Sony. My suggestions would be to ship your repair (If your unlucky enough to ned one that is) on Monday, give them a few days and then make the call.