May31Written by:Bill Park
Friday, May 31, 2002 6:00 PM  So, I've been tied up a while, and not as available or hanging around as much as usual. I've been both on the road sporadically, and swamped with work. Now this has never stopped me from participating on line before, so what has been the problem for the last few months? After all, all the hotels and venues are wired…
I've had a nice little Sony 505HS for a few years now. Great little machine, with a 500 mHz Pentium III processor, 128 megs of RAM, large hard drive, nice screen, and every type of interconnection I could imagine. Less than an inch thick, and under 4 pounds, it has been my constant companion. I even have done some minor recording projects on this machine. Anywhere that I might be, I could write, work on any of the corporate jobs I might be involved with, or hook up to the internet and keep in touch with all of my friends.
Sure, the floppy and CD drives were loose and connected to the computer in a variety of ways, and there was a docking bar needed to get to the video, parallel port, and serial port, as well as gaining access to more USB I/O. So if I wanted to carry all of the accessories and a few blank disks I was really talking about a lot more weight than just 4 pounds.
But the up side was the size, and the support that Sony gave to me over the life of the box. If I had a problem, they fixed it. That simple. Once I broke a key, and once the modem failed. On both occasions, Sony sent a shipping box to me, which arrived the next morning after I called the support line. I boxed up the computer and shipped it out, and in both cases it was returned to me promptly and repaired properly.
I started looking around for a newer, faster machine. The 505HS just can't keep up with the demands of some of the high res photo projects in which I have been involved, and is beginning to feel a little sluggish with some of the newer versions of the apps that I use. Since I had been so happy with the 505HS, I immediately looked at the new Sony R-505 series computers.
But the price was a bit more than I wanted to spend.
Like many others, I turned to ebay to search for a better deal. I found many sellers of refurbished and used Sonys on ebay. I placed a bid on one nice looking machine, and I won the auction. The transaction was smooth, and the seller was friendly and easy to deal with. In the original ad it clearly stated that the machine had no recovery disks. I was not overly concerned about this, as Sony generally posts all the drivers on their websites.
The machine arrived and worked as advertised. It contained Windows XP Pro. I fooled around with it for a while, and was quite happy. The new machine was designated an R-505 JSK (UC).
Garry Simmons dropped by one day, and he showed me some tricks and configuration tips. I had just received my own copy of XP Pro, so Garry suggested the logical thing…
"Hey, why not clean the machine out and start from scratch? Reformat the hard drive and load in your copy of XP Pro?"
"Sure, why not?", I replied.
Fatal decision.
When I got the OS loaded, XP had none of the drivers needed to support any of the hardware in the machine. I went to the Sony website and downloaded the drivers for the R-505 JSK. The drivers did not work with the machine, which reported that the drivers were not the correct drivers for my machine.
So I look at the specs, and find that my R-505JSK (UC) does not have the specs of the standard R-505 J models. It had the specs of the newer R-505 DS (P), including 1.2 mHz processor, wireless lan, 30 meg hard drive, and 256 megs of RAM. Instead of the little docking bar of my old machine, this machine has a docking tray, which conveniently combines all of the loose drives into one box into which the computer slides and latches securely. In my older model, the S meant 128 megs of RAM, and the new machine has 256. In my older model the K meant Windows 2000, and my new machine has Windows XP Professional.
I begin to get the feeling that I might have a prototype machine.
So I've got a very fast computer that is limited to 8 bit video, filling only about 1/3 of the screen, and no interconnectivity at all.
I try to contact Sony technical support. They didn't want to talk to me, since I am not the original owner. I try to explain that I don't expect warranty coverage, I just want to get the machine working again. I try to get them to sell the System Recovery disks, and here's where the wheels come off the wagon.
The Tech wants to register the machine. Fair enough. I look where the serial number should be… no serial number. I look where the model number should be… no model number. Now, one of the places that the model number would normally be is in a little recessed space at the bottom of the screen. If anyone had ever glued a metal tab in that space with model number info, it would have to be pried out with a sharp object, leaving scratches, or floated out using some chemical, which would most likely leave some traces of damage to the plastic housing. I look all over the machine, and other than "Sony" and "Vaio" there are no identifying marks on the machine. At this point the Tech is no longer willing to help. I even try having him trace the serial number from the docking station and the battery, figuring that the whole unit was a set, and he could find no record of those items having ever been registered. I went to the BIOS, where the serial number is normally burned into the system information. Nope. The serial number field is blank in the CMOS, though the model number is listed as an R-505 JSK (UC).
I hang up, and try calling back to get another Tech. Again, no help. He points me to the Parts Department, and gives me a phone number to call. But the Parts Department will not help me unless I have a registration number, which I cannot get unless I have a serial number and model number.
In frustration, I turn to the various internet sources that I have, but no one can help me.
Finally, I contact PC World magazine. I figure that I am not the only person buying used computers over the internet, and I wanted to know if they had received similar complaints.
I was contacted by a very nice person from PC World, who put a lot of time into trying to help me to resolve my problem. She arranged for me to be able to buy the D series Recovery Disks. They did not work. I then bought the J series Recovery Disks, which also did not work.
So I call Sony Tech Support again. I get a very rude individual who is not interested in helping me at all. He tells me that since I am not registered, I will have to give him a credit card number, and he will charge me per incident for any information that he gives. I should further understand that he does not guarantee to solve my problem, he will simply look into their Knowledge Base and see if he can find an answer that has worked for others in the past.
Now, the Sony Knowledge Base is available on line, and I can search it myself. I ask him if the disks that I bought are not entitled to some Tech Support, and he says No. I ask him for the phone number for the parts department, but he says that he cannot give me that information until I give him a credit card number and it will cost me $20 to get that phone number from him.
Back to my wonderful contact at PC World. And I really want to thank her for all her support. If she had not intervened, I never would have got as far as I did in trying to solve my problem. Though the end result wasn't what I had hoped, she really made every attempt on my behalf. She even managed to get a person from Sony to contact me to discuss my situation.
This would have been great, if the Sony representative had been interested in helping me. She told me that I had a prototype machine, which I had been saying all along. She said that, on that basis, it was stolen from Sony and she could not help me. She was not interested in fixing it, buying it back, or having me ‘trade it in' on any other model "But I've got nearly $1800 invested in this Sony machine!" Not Sony's problem. "What about the two sets of disks that you sold me that did not work?" Also not Sony's problem. . End of story, see ya, bye.
Now, here's the logic… she is protecting Sony.
Okay, protecting Sony from what?
God knows that if any other rogue prototype notebooks get out into the mainstream, we know better than to reformat the hard drives, because Sony won't help us. But how many of these can there be? Meanwhile here I am, a good and loyal Sony customer. I've bought a fair amount of Sony gear in the past, often paying the premium for the brand name when other brands of similar products sell for significantly less. This is the second Sony computer that I have bought in the last three years, and due to seeing mine, a couple of people that I know have bought Sony computers for themselves. I've even toyed with buying the RMX-100, in a configuration that would be about $24,000.
So how did she protect Sony? By pissing me off and insuring that I never buy another Sony product again in my lifetime, she did not help them as far as I can tell. One would expect someone interested in Customer support and care to fix the machine or offer a trade in deal, in order to keep the customer happy and coming back. That is how to protect the brand name, because that would take an already loyal customer and probably keep him as a fan of Sony products for life.
The origin of the notebook in question is of little import, since I am obviously not the thief, nor a fence, and I did obviously buy it for a reasonable price through a legitimate outlet. Since the prototype was based upon the older J series and resulted in the D series which has been available for some months now, it seems to me that whoever was testing it has moved on to test the next series which we won't see for a year or so yet, and had abandoned my unit. Where it went from that point matters little, since it had served its purpose for Sony developers. In effect, it is now trash to them, and no loss.
There is also no real loss to Sony by supporting the notebook, as we are talking about a copy of the original software that was meant for this machine, in the form of the proper System Recovery Disks for this machine. And I have offered to pay for that support,… in fact I have already paid for it twice.
They are not interested in tracking the seller, or finding the original person who took the machine from Sony. More proof that this unit has no value to them. Instead they want to pretend that it does not exist. In doing so, they have alienated me and stuck me with the cost of not only the computer, but two sets of System Recovery Disks that are not the proper disks for the machine. Insult to injury.
I've been attending corporate customer care meetings for many years, and I know that the folks at Sony have to have been going to the same meetings that I have been attending. These meetings are all about the science of making the right decisions required to keep customers, and to create brand loyalty. Sony is a very successful company and has obviously mastered the issues in question. So what happened in my case? I don't know. I was always polite, I never displayed attitude or hostility, and I always tried to deal with the people on the other end of the line with rational, logical conversation. Still, I end up losing money, Sony loses a customer, and another company will gain both my money and my loyalty.
So, I have been dicking around with Sony since March, hoping against hope for a happy resolution to this problem. Meanwhile, I have been off-line, borrowing connections and hitting this site in a ‘catch as catch can' method.
But all that has changed now. I just took delivery of a brand new notebook. You all remember AsusTek, the company most noted for their motherboards? Well, they also make notebooks. Apparently they have done so for some years. I got a brand new model, just released in June of this year. It is an M2A, with built in DVD/CDRW, 256 megs of RAM, 30 gig hard drive, wireless lan, modem, soundcard I/O, PCMCIA, USB, 1394, and VGA and printer port all on board, with a docking bar port for an optional docking bar to provide even more interconnectivity. It has a microphone built into the front of the video screen. It weighs in at about four and a half pounds or so, and came with Windows XP Professional and a very nice carrying case with plenty of room for disks, papers, and accessories. The total price including shipping was less than what I paid for the Sony R-505 JSK (UC). Yes, I am still out the cost of the Sony, so this in effect cost me twice as much as it should have. But it is quite a nice machine, has a 14.1 inch screen, includes the CD internally, gets three times better battery life, and at first blush, I am very impressed. The keyboard is larger and easier for a clumsy guy like me to use, though it is a new layout, and I keep hitting [Home] when I shoot for [Backspace]. (I'll get over it, really.) The buttons and ports are better and more logically located. AsusTek even threw in a mouse, for those who use their notebooks as desktop replacements and can't get the hang of the touch pad.
Will this machine be any good at audio recording? I don't know. That is not it's primary purpose in life. But I was able to get 15 tracks of 16 bit playback without a problem on the Sony 505HS, so I imagine that I will be able to do as well with the AsusTek M2A, and have more plugs, since this machine has twice the processing power. I know at some point I will try it out as an audio machine, but frankly I just don't care. It is a way cool replacement for my daily companion Sony, which I had not realized had slipped into such an important place in my daily routine.
It's a shame that I had to lose so much money to discover this new machine, but what is done is done. I am happy to have my tools back, and in the next couple of days I will get it all configured and be back to my normal, web-crawling, opinionated self. So those of you who have wondered of my whereabouts, and to those of you with whom I have lost touch, I apologize for my lengthy time away, but…. I'M BAAACCCCKKKK!!!!!
For those of you who might be interested in picking up an AsusTek M2A for yourself, they are not that easy to find in local outlets, but are available at a few on-line sources. I got mine from www.googlegear.com. This is the first time that I have bought from them, but others, including fellow ProRec Editor Garry Simmons, recommended the site to me.
Tags:2 comment(s) so far...
I find it interesting that not once in this post did you mention trying to contact the seller or Ebay about the problem.
the seller obviously mislead you about the laptop's origin, and by selling a stolen laptop, which I assume crossed state lines, the seller violated several Federal laws, not to mention Ebay's seller policies. You also didn't mention if you had any type of buyer protection either thru Ebay or Paypal, which is something they both constantly brag about, In the least the dude should have been banned from Ebay. Let me guess, the seller has over a 1,000 transactions with positive feedback and is an Ebay power seller.
I can understand Sony's reluctance to help someone who bought a used, stolen laptop.
It just goes to show scammers are all over Ebay, so if you are buying something off Ebay, the buyer should really, really BEWARE!
By rustycox on
Saturday, January 09, 2010 12:50 PM
|
The idea of 'stolen' was a tricky one, in that any beta of any product is not owned by the person testing it, but by the original manufacturer. So by selling the laptop, even though it was given to him, the seller sold me a 'stolen' laptop. Sony did not want it back. I asked. They did not want to pursue the fellow who sold it to me. They didn't even want to know who he was.
I doubt very much that they would be able to make any sort of legal case for the laptop being 'stolen', as the defense would only have to ask them to prove that they had ever at any time required or requested the beta testers to return the laptops. If they haven't, and that seems likely, then the case fails on the company's own past practices, which is a very strong point in the law.
ebay/paypal may brag about their protection, but that is an illusion. If the seller has no money in their account to freeze, neither ebay nor paypal will or can do anything.
It made a lot more sense to me to contact the manufacturer directly, both because of the possibility that it WAS stolen, and because the most direct route to support would be through the manufacturer.
I don't see how you can understand Sonys reluctance, as this was not a laptop stolen from a store or individual, it was a beta piece, one that they had already moved past. For them to support it would be the same as any other legacy support that they offer on their website to anyone who owns a Sony laptop. This support is not restricted to original owners.
And as I said, a few months later all the software needed to support the laptop was available for free download from the Sony website. So it was obvious that they were going to support it, and for free. So why not offer that support to me when I called and asked for it? Just to piss me off? Why make me pay for support products that were not the right products?
I've run into this before and I've even attended a lecture from a corporate CEO who warned about employees protecting the company assets. He listed situation after situation where employees, with all the best intentions drove customers away while thinking that they were protecting the company. I believe this is what happened here, but I was unable to pierce the veil to get to the next management layer who may have taken a more logical and pragmatic view of my situation.
By Bill Park on
Saturday, January 09, 2010 1:39 PM
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|