Poor, poor, poor Clie tech support and customer service.

[tittiger]

If tech support or customer service is important to you I recommend that you stay away from Sony Clie products. It took over a week of twice daily calls to get my N760C to play MP3's. And for the most part I am the one that had to ask the right questions and in the end solve the problem. I got a pretty good tech that actually spoke English after a week and he told me that you could only play MP3's sampled at 96KBS or above. My talk radio files were 15 Meg and sampled at 16KBS. There is a utility called "Audio Conversion Wizard" it does batch operations my first conversion to 3.5 hours increased the file size to over 90 Megs. I have gotten that down to 35megs by sampling at 32KBS, which Sony said would not work.

As far as customer support... My first Clie failed and I asked for a cross ship replacement. No such thing according to Sony. OK just ship me another overnight.
Well they said it could take 3 or 4 days to verify the credit card and then it would ship. After 4 days I called to find out it had been shipped 2 day and had disappeared! Also Fed Ex. (that Sony choose to use and agreed to these conditions) could take 8 days to investigate and credit my account for the charge. So now my only choice would be to charge the 3rd Clie to my credit (close to a $1000 total) and pay interest until the charges came off. The agent at Sony did everything they could to keep me from talking to her boss about what could be done to accommodate me under these circumstances. I had to ask for the corporate number, ask her name and tell her I was going to call corporate and inform them that she denied letting me talk to her boss. The boss was a phone tree Clone all he could do was reciting that doing nothing to help me was Sony policy. I told him that they should save his salery and replace him with a phone tree of recorded responses.
Serious folks I have never experienced service or tech support this poor.
I do have an idea why the tech support is so bad though. Their support is 10 miles from my house in Fort Myers FL. and if you know anything about this area you know they will not pay for decent talent and they certainly get what they paid for!!!!

Joe Tittiger
Fort Myers FL

[fearlessfozz]

Yeah I also had a very hard time trying to get someone on the sony tech support that spoke english. Not to be racist or anything but if you dont speak the language well then it is hard for you to understand someone alot of the time, especially over the phone. Also if you don't quite know what the term for something is then you can get no where because the non-english speaker does not know what the heck you are trying to say. After about a week I got an english speaking person then she started giving my prepared responces. I had trouble getting my clie to sync and she kept on telling my to check if my usb cable was hook up then to see if my settings were all correct. Thats ok for the first time but then I said it still does not wrok and she ran out of responces. Instead of transfering me to a real techie she said that I should check the online site. That is the same stuff she gave me. After another week I finally got to talk to a real techie and I went through three levels of them, going through comp settings instead of clie settings, and low and behold the cradle turns out to be defective.

You know, if they let you talk to the real techies to begin with then it would go much faster. Even with a simple question because if you ask anything else for the quick responces they freeze up and panic.

I also believe that if the phone number resides in the US then the tech support people should at least speak english. Or maybe have it so you can choose a language.

[martindale]

Ffor what it's worth, I would add that their mail in rebate program is totally fraudulent. It is designed to make it impossible to comply with the requirements. Don't beleive that you will ever get a rebate from Ssony.

[tittiger]

One trick I learned from doing support myself is to demand that they escalate the problem to 2nd or 3rd level. Tell them that you have done the web site, emailed tech support for 2 weeks and tried level 1 phone in support to no avail. If they can't find record of the call, which they can't half the time even if you did call then just point that out to them as a further example of their bungling of the incident. Also demand to speak to their boss if they won't escatlate it.

Joe


Originally posted by fearlessfozz
Yeah I also had a very hard time trying to get someone on the sony tech support that spoke english. Not to be racist or anything but if you dont speak the language well then it is hard for you to understand someone alot of the time, especially over the phone. Also if you don't quite know what the term for something is then you can get no where because the non-english speaker does not know what the heck you are trying to say. After about a week I got an english speaking person then she started giving my prepared responces. I had trouble getting my clie to sync and she kept on telling my to check if my usb cable was hook up then to see if my settings were all correct. Thats ok for the first time but then I said it still does not wrok and she ran out of responces. Instead of transfering me to a real techie she said that I should check the online site. That is the same stuff she gave me. After another week I finally got to talk to a real techie and I went through three levels of them, going through comp settings instead of clie settings, and low and behold the cradle turns out to be defective.

You know, if they let you talk to the real techies to begin with then it would go much faster. Even with a simple question because if you ask anything else for the quick responces they freeze up and panic.

I also believe that if the phone number resides in the US then the tech support people should at least speak english. Or maybe have it so you can choose a language.

[jdonalds]

I actually had a good service contact with Sony. I've had the memory stick disconnect problem since I bought the NR70V in May. I watched these boards until several people reported that Sony was ready to do the repair under warantee. I didn't want to take the unit apart as some suggested.

I called Sony, had a technician on line within three or four minutes, explained the problem and he started the process to fix the NR70V. All I had to do was fax proof of purchase and they sent me a box prepaid for repair. It went out four days ago. I've heard it takes 5-7 days and when they come back the MS problem is fixed.

[pabound13]

Does anyone have the phone number of SONY to call about sending back My Clie for the MS repair????

Thanks

[tittiger]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by jdonalds
[B]I actually had a good service contact with Sony. I've had the memory stick disconnect problem since I bought the NR70V in May. I watched these boards until several people reported that Sony was ready to do the repair under warantee. I didn't want to take the unit apart as some suggested.

I looks to me from what you just said that Sony has poor customer service.

There were people that had the problem and had to wait so long that they were considering doing the fix themselves, before Sony stepped up to the plate. I mean you pay twice the going rate for their proprietary memory sticks you would think that with the high profit margin that they could afford to fix the problem.

BTW Does any one know of a good hard case for the Clie? And or a company that write any type of insurance rider like you can get for cell phones or laptops?

Thanx - Joe

[jdonalds]

Originally posted by pabound13
Does anyone have the phone number of SONY to call about sending back My Clie for the MS repair????

Thanks

Here is the number I called to get Sony MS repair for my Clie NR70V: 877-0760-7669

Good Luck,
John

[fearlessfozz]

I got a few phone numbers here for repairs. One if for general questions and if they cant help you they will switch you.

1-877-760-7669

1-800-571-7669

these should help if not here are two more but i'm not sure if these are help numbers or purchase numbers, if all else fails they will give you the right number

1-877-249-7669
1-800-488-7669

hope these help

toodles

[dzamani]

I've had similar negative experiences with Sony's tech support. I had 2 defective modems, :mad: they were no help at all. I also had problems getting the MS Import to work. I had problems finding the right driver. When I figured it out myself, I called them, they asked me for the file name for their reference. Pretty bad when you have to help tech support! And I had English speaking techs. But now I've got everything working, I really like my Clie (N760C) It's great for my tired old eyes.

[rdavidboardman]

Good luck to anyone withthe NR70 MS problem. It took over 3 weeks to get mine back and I had to keep badgering them for the last week to finally get it. It has really soured me as to Sony. I'm not sure I would buy sony again.

[mevande]

The only product that I every buy an extended warranty on is a PDA. I have two, a Sony Clie 615 and an NRV70 (Wife has 615:). Anyway, the 615 would not charge, synch. anything! I bought it back to Best Buy where I purchased the unit and the service plan (Plan cost was 45.00). The 615 was 8 mo's old. They had not 615's in stock and closest unit to what I had was the 665, which had the MP3 player plus the 66Mhz faster processor. I came out very well on that deal. It alone paid for the service plan. I highly reccoment anyone that gets a new PDA to get a "warranty". Hmmm. I think in about 8 mo's my NR70V might have some sort of problem and I doubt it will be "current" then and I will get another nice upgrade:)

[clarkyboy]

I own an N770 and receive Tech Support from Belgium even though I'm based in London, UK. Within seconds of opening the box the cover had begun to fall off of my Clie. Clearly a design fault but Sony will not admit any liability naturally. Unfortunately for me my faulty cover led to my clie falling a nd getting cosmetically damaged. I found the Sony Support people argumentative and unhelpful. They wanted to then charge me for a new cover. I was then told they could send me a different colour cover I could then cut bits and pieces off and superglue it together ?? I honestly thought the guy was taking the pi**. In Europe the Clie support website is really very poor. There are few updates which make me believe that Sony really doesnt care about updating older models. I am very surprised as I was brought up buying Sony abd love their products. I certainly didn't expect this level of support from Sony.

Good Luck All.

Just bought Yishow from handango... It saps the batteries but make your Clie look a whole lot better. :(

[bettyboop]

I know service can be difficult to get at times depending on
the person on the other end. From my expereince I have found
that if you go not get the right answers within the forst 2
minutes, I ask for another customer service person or a
senior technician.
This usually get me to the right answers.

Keep in mind tech support is a postion that does not pay well,
and is considered a junior position. Most move on from here
to higher positions in a very short period of time.

[fearlessfozz]

My 70V resently took a trip down a flight of stairs without me the passed week. It held its own very well against those steps but about after the 10th dtep down I watched in horror when peices started to fly off the Clie. I must say I am surprised, the clie still works. It only sustained cosmetic damage. Some of the plastic peices came off and a little casing damage. Well I called Sony to get a box for shipmentand he did not know what the heck I was Talking about. This person asked me several questions about the box, like does sony ship it to me or do they purchase it from UPS, and after that he had me transfered to a higher up guy. This guy asked me what repaires I wanted and I said "the casing replaced". He then said if the screen is not cracked then I wont get a warrantee inspection to see if it was a malfunction. Well after about 5 mins of arguing and about the hundreth time saying I dont want warrantee repair, he then asked me what I want from sony then. I said , Look all I want is a box from sony to specially fit my clie that is insured so I can get it fixed. 10 mins later the manager comes on the line and wants my credit card number. He also said that they word charge my card eve without asking me first what the total expenses were. Finally I got a box for $25 dollars and hopefully it wont cost too much to fix.

I own a dell computer and I had to call thier tech support to get somethines figured out and they seemed to be very competent in thier work. Maybe sony needs to treat thier support personnel a little better so they will get a little better quality work out of them. I don't think that my request was all that hard to understand and they do send out boxes for repair even though it is not warrantee work. Maybe I'm just Mr. Bad Luck because I get the worst of everything. I always get the broken product, the worst waiter, the lemon car, the money hungry women. Anybody got any goodluck charms they want to sell:D

[treenet]

I am located in Switzerland. Like Clarkiboy I get support line from Belgium. The gay was nice but the same ofer: Cover for 60 US $ !!! no warantee for any mechanical problems. Also I told him my Screen has small split (The Unit is 4 Month old). He said Ithey will pick it up on my place and look the unit. For this I need to pay EUR 111.-- !!!!!! independet if they will repair it or not. I suggested I will send it by Mail, which is not so expensive, but he said, the package would come back to me unopened. I paid $10.-- for this "After Sale Service...". Last year I have problem with ext. Memory with PALM. I called Swiss Hotline, explained the proble, sent the unit to Palm in Zürich and got back absolutelly new unit in 48 Hours !!!!!!! No more comments. Excuse my bad English...

[bettyboop]

Hi Fearlessfozz

I undedrstand exactly your frustrations.
I feel that your initial request to have a box sent was
the main cause for all the confusion.

Next time I would just request for servicing.
Be as generic as possible until the person on the
other end requests additional information.

In most cases all they know is how to take the service
request order. Not the logistics behind how the
shipping department or the third party courier operates.

In dealing with Compaq, I requested a servicing and
the operator at Compaq transfered my call to UPS in
return the UPS operator explained how they send an
empty box first and then I request pickup afterwards.

I find by calling the right department first and
requesting something very basic usually works even
though I may know the operational ins and out of their
operations and want to fasttrack the request.

Asking the manufacturer's service department to send a
box seems like it just confused the matter altogether.
At the ene do the day, all you wanted was to have
your PDA fixed. Be it the case replaced or otherwise.
I would have just asked how they handle servicing?
I would like to have my PDA shipped out to be repaired.
Then the proper person would detail their method of
operation. If this does n ot include having an
insured box shipped to you first then I would ask if
they provide such a service.

Therefore asking what is required to have your PDA
serviced under warranty or not would have been the
simplist request to make. Then maybe the person on
the line would have provided what you needed to hear.

Like I have said before, if you do not get the response
you are looking for within the first 2 minutes, just ask
to speak to someone else. Do not try to explain your
situation even further or have this initial contact deal
with it. Talk to someone that understands your train
of thought. It is not always what you say but how you
say it that makes a huge difference in comprehension.
Even if you get a second, third or fourth person, keep
going until you get someone that handles your request
completely. In most cases, these large companies
record the transactions and will question why you
were shuffled between 4 - 5 different peoples.
AT the end of the day, this should help improve the
tech support for that company.
Arguing for 5 minutes with one person just looks like
a customer complaint and is usually recorded as the
customer being the instigater. Seeing that a customer
was speaking to 4 - 5 employees sends red flags to
any management personel looking at the logs.
Why didn't the first or second person have the answer?
What's going on here?

Bettyboop

[danslaterre]

Boy, am I glad to see I'm not alone in my frustrations with the lack of technical support for the Sony products. It's pretty bad when the customer knows more about the product than they do, which is what I've found to be the case every time I've been forced to call. I've gotten to the point where I try everything I can think of myself, and if I can't figure it out, I post in a forum like this! Sony is always my last resort, thankfully I don't have to *go* there very often anymore! :(