Where did you buy your vaio?

I'm looking to purchase a Sony Vaio in the very near future. I'm in the USA. I'm wondering, where is the best place to buy one? Is it better to purchase directly from Sony online? Just wanted to hear your experiences...the good, the bad and the ugly! Also, are there ever Sony coupons?
Thanks!

 

I purchased all of my VAIOs over the years directly from Sony. I don't know if this is true, but I was told that Sony's from stores like Best Buy and Walmart sell an "inferior" version of the same model. I hope I'm misinformed about that.

Anyway, I had good experience buying from Sony Style. Of course they were very kind since you are about to spend big cash on their product, but honestly, the sales persons aren't very knowledgeable. You ask them a simple technical question and the first thing they do is read the specs off the Web.

So far, after purchasing from Sony Style and getting servicing help has been quite easy since my info was already in their database. I'd recommend shelling out the extra hundred or 2 on the warranty. If you have any minor problem with your unit, it pays off to just to be able to ship your unit to them and let them handle it. They do a pretty good job--OK maybe a bit slow on the return time, but at least if something goes wrong they will take responsibility without much hassle.

Lot of people bypass the extra warranty, but I think it is necessary if you really want to keep using your laptop for more than 2 years. That's what lot of those Apple fanatics do and thus live in complete denial that Apple, at times, make lousy quality machines (recall the faulty video card, mobo, incidents from Apple).

There are Sony coupons, but most of them are limited to getting a 10% discount on accessories. Sony Style almost always give you a discount code after you purchase something from them. Like I bought a battery pack and they provided me with a 25% discount coupon on my next purchase.

Those are some of my experience with Sony.

My love for Sony products began when I was living in Japan, so I had high expectations when I returned to the US, but unfortunately, so far the US branch of Sony hasn't been as good as its parent in Japan. They operate as if they are 2 different companies. So the quality on service is differs between the 2.

BTW, SPEEDwithJJ is selling his/her SZ laptop. It comes with the 4-year ADH warranty. It is a deal you should consider. Since it has its warranty, if anything does happen/go wrong, just ship it to Sony and they will fix and make it like new. I want that laptop but I have to wait until I return home to the US, but by then I hope SPEEDwithJJ has found a buyer. The premium SZs are about US$3000+ and SPEEDwithJJ is offering it at...add depreciation and all that; it is still a stealer.

 

Thank you so much for your reply. You helped a lot!

 

Any authorized retailer will do.

I'm pretty sure shops like BestBuy etc. don't sell an inferior model.

However on the SZ (I don't know if they continued it) they offered a "Premium modell" that you could only get via SonyStyle and via authorized retailers - I got my Vaio in Germany and a little shop in Essen ordered the "Premium SZ" for me.

Another shop "Saturn" only offered a lower model - but this is then priced lower and not inferior - its just a lower spec version.

 

bought it from sonystyle and got it at 50% the price they were selling it at Circuit City (Any wonder they went out of business?)