sony customer service - relatively satisfactory experience

so after reading about the horrors of sony's customer service, I was a bit worried when there was a problem with my order. here's what happened:

4/16
- placed order for a new CTO TZ. awesome price thru corporate discount, plus got to use a $100 coupon from discover

4/18
- got email saying order was cancelled. reason: error processing the order. i called in and the person told me it was cancelled because i picked one config (1.33 proc + 120g hdd) and the system decided to change it (1.2 proc + 100g hdd). he said i would need to talk to customer support. unfortunately, customer support was closed.

4/19
- called customer service as soon as they opened.
- cs rep #1: explained everything and confused the woman. i explained that 1) the corp discount promo was gone and 2) the website said my discover coupon code was already used. at this point, i was paying nearly $300 more than i originally was quoted. she said she could offer me a $200 'closer'. was told that i'd need to talk to discover and get the coupon reissued. fine, i call discover and get the new coupon code. however, i realized that i never got the actual code from the first woman, but i did have a call ref #.

- cs rep #2: gave her the ref # and she was going to get things going. i asked about getting free shipping as well (since i originally ordered on wednesday and they have free ship tue-thur and it was now saturday). for some reason, she said i'd need to talk to sales. fine. i figured she'd stay on the line with me so once that was done, we could fill out the rest of my order. unfortunately, she transferred me to the slowest...........talking..........person...........ever. i explained everything at a normal speed. he says, and i quote, "you're going to have to talk a lot slower". yikes. i then said that i actually will be ordering online so he tells me he can't help. won't even transfer me back to customer support. whatever, i'll call them back myself.

cs rep #3 (danielle): best of the bunch. bent over backwards to get everything right. we found out it wouldn't let her stack 2 coupons ($200 from sony, $100 from discover). she said to go ahead and submit the online order with the discover discount. she then made a note on the order for someone named 'RJ' to add the additional discount. she said it would be done on Monday 4/21. she also told me to call back in when it ships, and they can credit me back the $39 shipping (have to call back because card isn't charged until it ships)

4/21
received email from above mentioned RJ. $220 credit is processing on top of my $100 discover discount on top of my corporate discount.

4/22
email saying my CTO is being built. the $220 credit is still processing. since my card is not charged until it ships, i assume the $220 won't post until then either.

overall time dealing with customer support - 1 hr.

closing thoughts:
i understand that any giant ordering system is bound to have some hiccups. i commend the last sony cs rep for getting everything back to how it should be. i'm getting the exact same laptop at the exact same price as before.

my main complaint is why the hell couldn't one of the first 2 cs reps get it right? the third person was not a manager, so she didn't have any special authority to make things happen.

one last thing to note, having worked in customer service myself, i'm always amazed at how much a company will do for me if i just take the right tone. the idea is to sound frustrated (even if you're actually incredibly pissed), and yet polite at the same time.

anywho, thank you danielle (cs rep #3) for making this right.

that's my story and i'm sticking to it.

 

do they speak english?

 

the ones I talked too did - and if you look it up you will see they are on the West coast (hors are posted as PST time). My CTO shipped out of San Diego, so 2+2 = 4?

 

they do speak english, and quite well. although the one guy i talked just spoke it REALLY slow. mine shipped from san diego as well. and now the anticipation starts! it's set to be delivered on 4/25!

this is almost as exciting as waiting for a BOC from woot.