Once again the ineptness of many of the phone tech support services reared its ugly head again. This time it was Sony's phone support. I worked with a client to set up his new Sony Vaio laptop (great screen by the way) and found that he was not shipped the Microsoft Office 2007 CD or certificate of authenticity that he paid extra for at purchase. Without the certificate, we could not activate the Office product. We called tech support and after 35+ minutes at three different people at two numbers, we were told that a call would be made back to my client within "three hours".
About four hours later, I received a call from my client saying that the tech's did call back and after working with them on the phone for nearly another hour he was in the middle of a reformat!!! I said, "WHAT???" Too often tech support people on the phone get frustrated that the problem is not getting resolved and resort to the all to easy and much over used "reformat" the system. It is an extremely easy tactic for the phone support person to take a break from the call without every resolving the issue.
I reformat systems all the time…but only when they truly need it. In this particular case, all we needed was a simple 25 digit authenticity code from Microsoft. Sony could have easily said, "0ur mistake, we will put a disk and certificate in the mail today." They would have had an extremely satisfied customer and resolved the issue in under ten minutes. But that would make too much sense, instead they used up at least two hours of phone and tech time to NOT resolve the issue.
Uggh, I get so mad I could spit nails at the lack of common sense and decency in today's business world.
On an aside, situations such as these really solidify my resolve to help people discover the world of free, open-source software and support. Paying for a product used to mean that we could count on getting a solid product and support. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.
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One of the greatest tech support problems for me is that since it is someone from India or some other country I can’t understand them after all the waiting. On the rebatesyou never get them. I believe that is an area that should be investigated by the federal trade commission.
I had the same problem a few years ago with a Digital Camcorder(Sony)..I never received the CD. I even offered to pay, no communication was ever established.
Yesterday 3/22/07, I had a surprisingly pleasant chat “on line” with a Sony Rep(Wesley), therefore, I did not get the broken English that is so common today with Tech Support.
January, 2007 I bought a 60′HD TV and had to replace the
satelite dish and receiver…the installer could not speak
English but insisted that I sign some papers. I asked to speak with his supervisor..you are correct, we could not
understand each other either.
I have SCREAMED about rebates for years and warned everybody I know, it is a SCAM and I am tired of it.
Nobody,i.e.local district attorney, state attorney , FCC, FTC, Better Business Bureau, will help you. They will simply accept your complaint!!
Phil.