"Customer service is the real yardstick of how good a brand is." - experience
I gifted my wife a brand new Sony Xperia Z after doing lots of research and after being impressed of the claims like shatter proof, water proof etc. Sony is considered a premium brand and my experience with Sony products has been good in past. After few days the phone charger started misbehaving. I raised this to local customer service center @ Chaitanya Electronics in Pune. This was replaced free of cost promptly the same day and i was happy and felt really great of being a Sony customer.After a few days some 3-4 months of my purchase, suddenly one day charging port of the phone comes out. I didn't panicked and went to same customer service center. They requested to leave the phone there for estimation and said this is "NOT under warranty" I retaliated by saying I am an educated user who ha been using the product with due care. They said let the engineer examine the device then they will be able to comment.I started doing some research on internet about this and nearly after a week I got call from service center, he informed me that phone is irreparable and needs to replaced which will cost approx 11000 rupees approx $200. Equipped with my research I told him this is actually a design fault. he said talk to customer care and let him know.To be frank I know that physical damages are not covered under warranty for all electronics manufacturers and I did read the warranty T&C to some extent. Condition say in Quotes"Subject to conditions of this limited warrenty, Sony warrants this product to be free from defects in design, material and workmanship at the time of its original purchase by a consumer, and for a subequent period of one(1) year." after ome digging I found there is a major design flaw in Sony Xperia Z charging port design , the socket in Phone is AB Type and charger cable has a Micro B type a described on Wikipedia and elaborately on NET (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB)
Against a Micro B connector shown below, which is standard with most phones and new Z1 series of Xperia
Xperia Z1 has Micro B connectorAlthough it works on paper, this improper shape allows connector to be inserted in wrong way (upside down), which leads to slow damage and virtually bricking the phone as you can't charge it.There customer service is pathetic and they don' t understand an inch of problem faced by the customer. They are as good a zombies. Customer service representative (CSR) kept iterating physical damage is not covered in terms and condition, I asked him a defective design is covered .. They had NO clue. For god sake this is supposed to a standard universal micro USB port not something custom it is supposed to work like a standard port. Else provide a cable that avoids the problem.
I gifted my wife a brand new Sony Xperia Z after doing lots of research and after being impressed of the claims like shatter proof, water proof etc. Sony is considered a premium brand and my experience with Sony products has been good in past. After few days the phone charger started misbehaving. I raised this to local customer service center @ Chaitanya Electronics in Pune. This was replaced free of cost promptly the same day and i was happy and felt really great of being a Sony customer.After a few days some 3-4 months of my purchase, suddenly one day charging port of the phone comes out. I didn't panicked and went to same customer service center. They requested to leave the phone there for estimation and said this is "NOT under warranty" I retaliated by saying I am an educated user who ha been using the product with due care. They said let the engineer examine the device then they will be able to comment.I started doing some research on internet about this and nearly after a week I got call from service center, he informed me that phone is irreparable and needs to replaced which will cost approx 11000 rupees approx $200. Equipped with my research I told him this is actually a design fault. he said talk to customer care and let him know.To be frank I know that physical damages are not covered under warranty for all electronics manufacturers and I did read the warranty T&C to some extent. Condition say in Quotes"Subject to conditions of this limited warrenty, Sony warrants this product to be free from defects in design, material and workmanship at the time of its original purchase by a consumer, and for a subequent period of one(1) year." after ome digging I found there is a major design flaw in Sony Xperia Z charging port design , the socket in Phone is AB Type and charger cable has a Micro B type a described on Wikipedia and elaborately on NET (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB)
Against a Micro B connector shown below, which is standard with most phones and new Z1 series of XperiaXperia Z1 has Micro B connectorAlthough it works on paper, this improper shape allows connector to be inserted in wrong way (upside down), which leads to slow damage and virtually bricking the phone as you can't charge it.There customer service is pathetic and they don' t understand an inch of problem faced by the customer. They are as good a zombies. Customer service representative (CSR) kept iterating physical damage is not covered in terms and condition, I asked him a defective design is covered .. They had NO clue. For god sake this is supposed to a standard universal micro USB port not something custom it is supposed to work like a standard port. Else provide a cable that avoids the problem.
these guys are real crooks .. they don't give any written record of service / repairs done , they always say you can check it online using job id (W113122300673) link:http://www.sony.co.in/section/repair , as you can see it has no status, I asked these guys to give me a copy of estimation and request, problem description, they refused to give that too, the worst was customer care representative who said he can help me this and he is for some reason extremely sorry.
They have charged 11000(33% of cost) for replacement which is nothing but their disregard to customer. No body knows how to repair this device and they are fleecing customers, in some cases they asked for 50% of cost. World wide people are suing these guys sadly we live in India. example:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1411717545728835/
I started posting the message to inform and educate other buyers on Sony Mobile and Sony India facebook official page. many people started to pour in, see Facebook group "Xperia Z Flawed usB port" ,seeing this sony took my contact details( i posted all details), I got a call once but it got disconnected and when I tried call back they promised call back but callback never came.Tired of this ordeal I gave cheque of 11217 to local service center and he promised i will get phone 5, max 8 days, i contacted him after 7 days flat he said it will take 8-9 days more. I asked him if phone was being imported. I started escalating the issue and used to follow every day. Today after 18 days I got my replacement.Another thing to note here is they closed the previous job order and whole deal of replacement was going on some other job number of which I had no information or record.
I am sad and sorry why I bought this phone.
