I hardly ever have a problem with Sony TVs I have sold customers. I can count on 1 hand the failures I've had over the last 10+ years. So I never get to deal with Sony service much.

I have a Sony TV (48" entry model) that was bought 3 months ago now. The 1st month it sat in the box, 2nd month hooked it up and it died after 2 weeks. Now for the last month, I have been trying to get Sony to warranty it.
I have went round & round with their customer service department, mix of India call center and I 'think' American call center.
1st it was the pictures. I took all the pictures they wanted and emailed it to them like they wanted. Then they said the pictures were not good enough, take more??? WTF, I used a Canon with lighting to take the damn photos. Hubble space telescope couldn't take better pictures!
So after a few days of back and forth with that, a young Indian lady said they were going to ship me out a power supply (this TV has external power brick). I explained it was not the power supply, I already tested that. After 10 minutes of arguing and her, she explained this is what was going to happen, whether I liked it or not.
Of course the new power supply did nothing for the defective TV.
Now I'm back & forth with them saying they are 'reviewing' the issue. It is going on 3 weeks since I contacted them about this defective TV and I'm no closer to getting this resolved than on day 1.

I am SUPER pissed at this point. I have already replaced the customer's TV for them, so now this TV is mine to eat the cost of. Anyone else had to deal with Sony service recently? Experience?
Thinking of filing a case against Sony for breach of contract (warranty contract) but the time & cost would be years & 10x the cost of the TV. If I was a man with more money, I would do it based on principle.
Then there is the whole thing of what is a reasonable time frame for them to take care of this? I don't know the law so if it takes them 6 months to warranty the TV, that is OK by law? What if 3 years from now they are still reviewing the warranty issue? That still OK by law?

Sue Sony? You funny man.

Just have to do the process. Get your distributor involved for extra leverage.

I had similar experience with the one and only Sony I had issues with. Was a 55" xbr a couple years ago. TV worked but had a band on the bottom of the screen that was wavey. Sent videos and everything. Took a couple months of bs to get it replaced. What ticked me off the most was it was a brand new TV, that our disty could or would not help with as it was opened and was purchased 2 weeks prior to installation.

concur with Tom on this one.

Ive had an uptick in Sony issues since they started incorporating Android into the TV. The "smart" features have needed Tv reboots often, as well as some back luck here and there with some of the XBR 930 series getting stuck in reboot mode where it just tries to load Android over and over again.....Sony Support has been awful to say the least.

FYI
I have had much better luck with The Sony Pro Support line - "ES support?" Downside is it takes FOREVER to get them to answer the phone, hold times are massive - BUT they are knowledgeable and more willing to work on issues

I know, but it is the thought that goes thru your head when you know you are legally being crapped on and not much you can do about it.

Entry level model, so it didn't come from distributor. It came from amazon.
Which wouldn't have mattered anyway, it was over the 30days when found defective. So distributor (just like amazon) couldn't do anything for me, has to go to Sony. Dealing with Sony, there is no such thing as extra leverage :)

In the middle of a crap storm as we speak. Last December customer approached me about a house he bought and was going to gut and remodel. Dist was running a special on the SONY 75" 94s. Customer bought 2 and I asked distributor if there was any problem with the tvs sitting on the shelf until house was ready for tvs and they said no problem. 6 months later picked up both tvs and installed them one was perfect the other had no physical trauma to box or tv but when you turned it on the screen behind the screen was shattered. I called the dist same day I picked them up and they said they invoiced them out 6 months ago so it was Sonys problem. I called Sony went through the 3 weeks of pictures upon pictures, call after call and their engineers decided it was damage not defect so I had to call dist. Called dist they basically told me to go shit in my hat and get tv repaired. Luckily the customer was home and witnessed me handling and hanging the tvs and holds me to zero accountability. He wants to sue dist but not sure how far that will go.

And this is a former disty of yours, right?

We just had Sony cover a $700 mainboard replacement on a set that was 3 months out of warranty. :)

It did take them a while to get it done. We took it to our local Sony authorized repairman, and Sony wanted him to repair it, pay for the parts, then send in reimbursement forms and wait to get paid. We advised him to make sure he gets paid from Sony FIRST. Eventually it happened that way.

We have 1 other TV out there that seems to go wonky all the time. Will not power on until you unplug it and plug it back in. Sony has had us do update after update, force an update, clear caches, delete apps, safe mode, etc....I have not heard back since I was there a few weeks ago and sat through 2 Android updates! 2! And they both took over 30 minutes each! Customer pays for our time luckily :)

yes it is a local disty that I was a actually doing quite a bit of business through.

That sucks. I've been in situations like that before and unfortunately you are at the mercy of the distributor. And if they don't want to own up, not much you can do but eat it or claim insurance.
And of course let everyone know which distributor it was that did it to you and never do business with them again.



So apparently I've found out: Sony will ONLY work with you thru the phone from 9am-6pm EST, Monday-Friday. Emails get a response of 'call during those hours', even if you tell them you are not available during those hours to call (and no matter how many dozen emails you send them). The Indian on the phone today (7pm on a different line), pretty much told me if I can't call during those hours, I'm just screwed! Nice!
I'll make some time tomorrow and call during those hours to see what new BS they throw at me then.

It has been many years since I've dealt with Sony's customer warranty service, I have to say this experience guarantees I will never sell another Sony product, for fear of being on the hook to service it. Customer can purchase it themselves from someone else.
So with such high volume of problems with manufacture these days (reason I can't make any money anymore), it seems the labor only model as come to pass for me. "I can't afford to sell anything to customer's anymore" - how f^ up is that statement.

Shitty situation that's for sure. I can't imagine any of the other tv manufacturers being any better. You bought on Amazon, so you used a credit card. Any recourse by contacting the credit card company and doing a charge back? I'd tell them the unit was DOA and Sony is refusing to honor the warranty.

Big Blue doesn't care unless you're Best Buy that sells millions of TV's every year. In that case, you get taken care of.

Goes for the consumer as well.

Yeah I'm completely done selling any TV'S. I was still selling Sony because there was a decent margin on the higher end series but they just aren't worth the headache. The distributor was MRI. First real problem I have had with them but a 3k+ problem isn't a good place to have a problem. Although there is not one physical scratch on the tv itself both MRI and Sony told me its my responsibility to make sure the television is not damaged before I take possession of it. I then asked if every customer that buys from a sears or best buy or walmart physically plugs the tv in and checks the inputs before they leave the store because that was what would have needed to be done to catch the damage on this set. Good luck dealing with their service most of the emails I would receive stating I needed more info or different pictures would come to me Friday afternoons at 5:59 and then nobody would answer the phone until Monday morning. It's an exhausting process to be sure. I hope you have better luck then I did.

That's a BS argument on their part. The counter argument, about as reasonable as theirs, is "did you open up every TV box and test run it before you sold it to me?" Of course the answer is NO, thus negating the validity and reasonableness of their argument.