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Annual Customer Support Rankings
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo's Tech Tuesday is running PC Mag's annual survey of best and worst PC vendors' customer support. At the top of the list: Apple. At the bottom: Sony. Heard any good tech support horror stories lately?"
I've seen something recently about a really bad web designer who came up with a vomit-inducing color scheme for the IT section of a popular website. Sorry I can't remember the name, and I don't have a link handy...
Apple is at the top, but not perfect.
:/
When the hard drive in my iBook died, I had to send it back to Apple (no problem there). As the documentation requested, I included my power adapter and the cord for it with the laptop back.
*repairs*
When my laptop was returned, not only did I not get my same power cord back, but the two pieces (the brick and the cord) we incompatible... Not only that, but I still had the small plug to go directly into the wall (I forget what they referred to it as), and that wasn't compatible with the brick piece either. WTF?
So I had to call them back up and have them send me a power cord and the small plug piece. They were quick and fairly understanding about it, but I'm yet to figure out why it would have been so hard to just send the same cord/brick piece back with it that I sent in...
But the laptop itself was repaired without issue and in a timely manner, it was just a minor inconvenience of not being able to plug in my laptop to charge it...
Me :) Really! Ask my boss!
Posted anon, as its not my story.
s uc k/6701337.html
---
I'm so glad this happened to me because I wouldn't have believed it otherwise...
This normal-looking 20-something couple came in tonight and stood at the dropbox just clutching their three movies and staring at me until I asked if I could help them. They then proceeded to tell me that the dvd copy of 'Office Space' they had rented from us had downloaded a virus onto their brand-new dvd player and ruined it. (Anyone who has seen the 'Office Space' dvd knows why this is hilarious--for those of you who haven't seen it, after the FBI warning a Window...a MICROSOFT-LOOKING WINDOW...pops up and says a virus had been detected and, when you hit menu or start, your TELEVISION (i.e. Not Monitor) screen is flooded with pop up windows. After a few seconds you are taken to the dvd's start menu and presented with the usual options.) Even though they looked deadly serious, I thought they were joking and I said as much. The man got a little testy, so I explained to him that it's all a joke and simply part of the movie. They both swore up and down that it wasn't part of the movie and that this virus had destroyed their 2 month old dvd player and, even after I popped out the dvd trailer and put 'Office Space' in and showed them and actually started the movie with no trouble at all...you guessed it: they STILL did not believe me.
I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my entire life.
http://www.livejournal.com/community/customers_
Being on the phone with Dell tech support is by far the worst experience ever. They don't have a clue, and it sounds as if they are reading off solutions to a list of problems that sound like the one you might be having. Hopefully they move the damn thing out of India.
interesting how the two ends of the spectrum happen to be the two companies that charge the most for their computers.
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
sent in my Texas Instruments Travelmate 2000 (286-12 1 mb ram 20 meg hdd) for an LCD replacement, came back with a power adapter for a travelmate 3000, completely incompatable with the laptop...
Great News! You've been linked to by Slashdot!
policy analysis and political satire
Me:
I just used a Mac and backed up 20GB of data over 4 DVD-Rs using your Backup 2.0 software. Unfortunately I no longer have a Mac but need to restore those discs, could you tell me what compression/spanning techniques are used by Backup 2.0 so I can retrieve the data?
Apple Rep:
Apple uses all open standards with their software. Thank you.
>:|
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Based entirely on my own experiences and those of my friends (how's that for sample size?) I'd bet that for every call the manufacturer receives some poor "computer geek" friend gets ten calls.
It'd be interesting to know how the unofficial support channels stack up against the real thing. I'd bet that neighborhood support would put everyone to shame: we do everything from replacing hardware faster than any mail-in service does to trouble-shoot VPN setups for our bosses and we don't (usually) fall back on the old tech support dismissal "That's a software problem: call Microsoft. Good-bye." Or in the case of a hardware issue "That's a hardware problem: Call IBM. Good-bye."
Now isn't a nightmare that my official vendor (whom I paid the full list price of $0 for the software) couldn't tell me this themselves, but instead someone from the community had to do it for them?
I'll never buy another monitor from them again.
Had a 21" monitor go bad, so I called Sony to get a repair. They said the warranty was 3 years, and the back of the monitor says "Mfg. August 2001" (this was mid-March 2004). So I should be set, yes?
No. That would be easy.
Apparently, Sony's system says that monitor was manufactured in February 2001 and thus is out of warranty. The only way I could prove the age of the monitor was to send in the original paperwork when we purchased it. Knowing my purchasing department, it's hidden in a box somewhere and it would be worth more to buy a new montior than spend the time looking for the paperwork.
Lousy jerks wouldn't even accept a picture of the back of the monitor clearly showing the serial number and manufacture date.
Quite a few of us live them...daily. Multiple reports of how an entire computer doesn't work -- because they failed to enable num lock and the keypad wasn't "working." People whose machines freeze so they turn the monitor off and on. I've seen an occasion where a patron jams a floppy into the drive...backwards and THEN demands that we give him his floppy back.
Then there are those who know the URL but insist on searching for that address in google. Ever heard of an address bar? Guess not. Oh, and when the connection is down, they ask why -- and then proceed to give me a blank "Dummy Mode On" stare when I explain that the proxy server wasn't working. Like I should've said something like "the hamster stopped running."
Not to mention people who ask how to spell "solitary" (instead of solitaire) and those who ask how to get to "yoohoo" or "googles."
And by the way...You're Welcome!!!
Here are the tables of results for notebooks and desktops
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Our company purchased a nice supply of Sony Microvault USB keychain drives. For whatever reason, these drives just stop working. If you unplug a drive without properly dismounting it, it will fail to be recognized under any OS as a drive. Windows reports it as a "security device". There is no way to recover the data, the drive is shot. Further testing showed that even if you dismount it properly, there's a good chance of corrupting the drive.
Call up Sony tech support, you'll get bounced around to several support numbers (some long distance, some toll free). Most of the time you get directed back to the number you previously dialed, and your issue is never resolved.
This is a documented problem, and on the occasion that you're able to get the correct tech support staff Sony will refuse to fix it. There is a lengthy process to fix the drive, but it's a pain and your data is unrecoverable. Sony has since stopped making the Microvaults, but it's a good example of how bad their support really is.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
The last time I needed to call IBM (to get the recovery cds for my laptop, they don't ship with them anymore...) I was quite surprised to be connected to a quite knowledgeable guy from Georgia (In the United States). Zero time on hold, took less than five minutes to get everything that I need, and I had the cds in two days.
Compare this to Toshiba, where I have not only never gotten anyone who remotely speaks English, but every repair also seems to involve shipping your laptop back to them, and waiting for two weeks for "parts" that you were told would be in stock every day for a week.
I've also heard good stories about Apple, but nothing can beat my experience with IBM so far.
I needed to reinstall XP Pro, but didn't have the disk. So I called; the first guy told me it wasn't covered under the warranty (not true; I had the uber-extended-lifetime warranty), then finally agreed to send it to me. Sent me XP Home instead.
Second person, same deal - sent me XP Home after apologizing for not getting it right. Waited several weeks; it never came.
Third person, "we needed to order more disks" (this is after 3 weeks of waiting for a disk that usually takes 3 to 5 days to come). Promised to send a disk.
After 2 weeks, fourth person: "our database says you've already gotten it". After checking the dates, I point out that that was the *first* disk I was sent - the XP Home one - that I'd already told him about. He checked with tech support, and found out that their database has the same order # for Home and Pro. Corrected the order number, and (hopefully) sent me the Pro disk.
It's been 4 days, so I'm still waiting. And the worst of it is that they always get my "service tag" wrong. It's got an M in it, so it's understandable that they'd mistake it for an N, but I spell it out in the international phonetic alphabet every time. Jeez. I decided to just install Home, since they said I could keep the disks. I have Office Pro, anyway. Anyone know how to do an easy (translation: without data/program loss) upgrade? And yes, of course I finally found the Pro disk the day after I installed home, despite having been looking for it for 5-6 weeks at least.
Oh, and don't forget - you can't lodge a complaint through the phone system. You have to use their website. Smells like BS to me. How many people are going to take the time to do that extra step?
Is it Apple answer the most "how do I check my e-mail" questions, or is it they help you set up a network type of questions?
Any monkey can answer 100 questions on [insert basic function here], but do they just tell customers to "format C to fix it" so they can get through the most?
I like muppets.
Great article. A few points:
In 2002 28% of desktops needed fixing, while this year the number dropped to 17%.
I find that kind of hard to belive. I support about 75 desktop machines, and other than coffee spills destroying a keyboard or two, and a couple mice going bad (I'll blame that on the cords being abused), we haven't had any hardware that needed repair/replacement at all.
DELL. For a company whose users love it, it has some "now, about that " issues to address. Its desktops received high marks for reliability, but when they do break down, Dell's tech support generates some grumbling. Part of the grumbling may relate to the company's outsourcing of portions of its tech support some respondents in our survey complained about not being able to understand some of the help technicians. Whatever the reason, Dell scores slightly below average on tech support.
True. I can't understand anything they're saying, and it's very difficult to deal with their outsourced support.
Its worst category, though, is notebook computers. These rank below average for reliability in general, with 25% of business notebooks needing repairs. On the plus side, when it does have to repair its machines, Dell does a very good job.
I've had 3 Dell Laptop harddrives crash on me. All the same brand of drive, same symptoms. We've also had problems with some of them (we have around 15) overheating and freezing up.
I really wonder how many problems are actually bad hardware, and how many are things like Windows problems, and spyware/viruses.
I had a problem with my Earthlink service recently, and sent them an e-mail about it. I got the standard questionare back asking for information about the problem. (what OS do you use? What Browser? Etc.) One of the questions asked, "What kind of computer are you using? (PC, Apple, Dell, Gateway or IBM-Clone)"
I told them I was using a Touring Machine.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Here's a good example of Sony ingenuity.
.MSI file to create the bootdisk. So I can't create it because I run Linux. Further, it will not run on any other system because it detects the hardware is not compatible with the BIOS update. How about letting us download the flash util and the update so we can make our own bootdisk?
I have a Sony Vaio laptop that is giving me troubles with the video driver under Linux. It uses the Neomagick graphics chip which is crappy but should be able to do 2D dosktop stuff just fine.
I thought upgrading the BIOS might get rid of the artifacts I see in X all the time. I went to their site to grab the latest BIOS for the machine. The BIOS on their site is in the form of a bootdisk that will do the upgrade for you. That's great. So what's the problem? The _make_ you run a Windows only
It infuriates me that they would force me to have Windows installed just to update the BIOS.
BigFiber.net
My dad, who has a full service contract on his latitude D800 laptop (i.e. they come to his workplace to fix it) was asked to take his laptop apart and pull the modem adapter out, and try to place it back in when it would fail to connect. When he told them he didn't have the screwdriver (nor the expertise) to do any of that, he was told to go buy an appropriate screwdriver, and call them back so they would guide him.
Needless to say, I told him to call back, b1tch and complain and actually send a guy in to fix his laptop as per the service contract.
Turns out it was windoze XP that was screwing up. Now what would've happened if he'd fried his laptop with static electricity while trying to do the operation? Would they've fixed it? Provided him with a replacement, AND a backup of ALL his work-related data?
IBM, not Apple, have the best support, but by contrast they have poor overall reliability. Apple hardware is susceptible to the fewest failures of the hardware vendors reviewed, which is why they are top of the list.
I find it vaguely disturbing that this man, who would tell us about support and who makes his living with his notebook, would not do automated back-ups.
Although I know that this may not be an absolute statement, so many computer problems are not the fault of the vendor, and those that are, are often made worse by personal computing habits.
It is so simple to do a nightly backup to a ftp server with only a batch file, a text file, and pkzip. I only dare mention this on /. on the off-chance that the article's writer is lurking nearby. It is advice he could use.
cheers, potor
Apple: "After all, the company's control over both software and hardware helps make its systems more reliable."
Bingo. Exactly.
I have two separate Apple support stories. One was at my company: for whatever reason, Preferences got corrupt on a 10.3 machine (I thought we left this stuff back in 9). Called Apple up, and the guy was extremely knowledgable and friendly. Walked me through what needed to be done on the command prompt (fun boot!), exactly what files to change, etc. Got back up and running in under 10 minutes.
Second story: iPod on PC. What a disaster. Simple installation: Dell machine that came as is with not a lot of junk installed. Installed the iPod software, installed iTunes, hooked it up and... nothing. Called them up. Played with services, played with dlls... Finally I got results a few days later by reading some forums online (not Apple's).
Now, before you say "Well, Apple shouldn't need to support PCs", 2 issues. One is that they market the iPod for the PC (in fact, I usually see it as "iPod for PC/Mac"). Second, and more importantly, when you become a PC-related company you have to learn to deal with lots of different vendors. Apple isn't stupid: they should know this. They should know (at the very least) to check the common Dell configurations and see what conflicts. "Remove the other programs" isn't an acceptable answer. "Reset the iPod" or "Restore the iPod" REALLY isn't, especially at the alarming rate I've heard it.
I always said, you can get a good feel for how solid a product is but the first bit of documentation you see. 3G iPod, bought a few days ago. Very top of the first reference card you get instructions for reseting it in case it crashes. I've only had to do this once, but kind of ominous, you think?
I love Apple too, but for another reason: I bought a snow-white keyboard from them, it arrived at the end of the week. After unpacking it and using it a bit, I saw that the spacebar key was a bit crooked. It was also a bit annoying for me to use, as I type a lot in my profession.
I called Apple, and they said it was not problem for me to exchenge the KB at a local Mac dealer. I went to the Mac dealer, and they were asshats to an extreme extend (The store is going south fast, as they are using all the time to blame Apple instead of taking care of customers.)
I hung around the store for ten minutes as the second in line for service, and listened to the four people in the offices playing Snood and complaining to their bosses about how Apple rips them off. That might be true, but you still need to SELL something if you're in the selling computers-thingy.
As I could not exchange the KB there, instead they got angry with me, I called Apple again. They were shocked to hear about the treatment and sent me a new KB. This was friday afternoon. On monday morning, the new KB had arrived. I unpacked it and installed it, getting ready to send the old one back. After installing it I discovered that it lacked the Æ, Ø and Å keys. And I kinda need them to write norwegian.
So I called Apple again, and talked to a kind customer service woman. She heard my story, verified it in their log and said: "God, this is embarrasing", and sent a new KB next day delivery. This was Monday afternoon. Tuesday morning, the new KB arrived, with all the keys, none crooked. But it was the 2002 model, not the 2003 model.
So, again, I called Apple.
This time I said: "Look, I'm not complaining. There has been some fuckups, but your behaviour has been kinda superb in handling it. But the KB is not the one I ordered. I can, however, keep it for a small reimbursement"
The representative said: "What kind of reimbursement did you have in mind?"
"Well, I could really use an Apple Mouse"
"And how much do you want to pay for it?"
"Well, about 30 USD sounds fair"
"And would that be a wired or a wirless one?"
"You know, the wireless is veeeeeery nice..."
"I see. Let me talk to my manager about this, please hold"
I held the line for two minutes, before she returned. "Do you have Bluetooth in your Mac?" she asked.
"Yes, it's a new Powerbook" I responded.
"In that case, I'm sending you a new Bluetooth Apple mouse, free of charge as a was of saying sorry for the mishaps." she said.
After giving her my CC number (without exp. date), she brought up the old order and added the mouse to it. five minutes after, I brought the old order up in Safari and saw that the mouse was due to be delivered soon.
This is, bar none, the best customer treatment I have ever recieved. The fucked up, yes, but really, really went out of their way to unfuck it. And I got a new Bluetooth mouse to replace the piece of crap that is the Microsoft Bluetooth mouse.
And I like typing on the 2002 KB better. Win - win - win...
The response may have not been exactly helpful, but it was correct...
The great thing abotu Backup is that it just dumps files right onto the CD or DVD! If you mount it you can see the files right there and copy them to your hearts content. At least, I was able to get stuff off them that way.
That's what they meant I think, in that they don't "compress" the file in some wierd way like OTHER backup programs. They make sure you can get to the data without the program.
iPhoto is simialr in that underneath, it's just storing your original photos in directories, so if iPhoto ever stopped working or you had backed up an iPhoto library to disc you can just get out the JPG files.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I was moving out a building I was living in. I called my local electric company to come and shut off the power, to keep me from getting bills.
A person came and I took her to the basement where the box was. She looked at me and said, "What do I do now?"
I said, "Your job?! Turn it off."
She asked, "But how?"
I said, "Go and open the box and figure it out."
She said, "But what if I get electrocuted. I'm leaving."
I went over, opened the box, pulled out the large fuses that where there, and the lights went out. Luckily I had a flashlight because she didn't. I should have turned mine off and left her down there.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I would have thought we'd see a link to actual survey instead of a story about the story about the survey ;)
Here is the results page
Here is the start of the survey story
NTL support in the UK is a son of a bitch. That isn't to say the tech support staff are crap; they're usually very knowledgable and very helpful, but the service itself sucks.
You ring up, and you're asked to key in your phone number. Why couldn't they just get it through caller ID? Then you're guided through the familiar maze o' optiions(tm) until you wait for 20 minutes listening to Brian Eno shite interspersed with "Your call is valuable to us, so we put you on hold you dozy twat". Then you get to a person.
I remember one time my broadband had gone tits up. So I called up, got through, said I was using Linux and was told they didn't support it. End of story, they refused even to run generic ping tests, just no Linux ever. (The company is part owned by Microsoft btw). It just so happens I had a Windows XP partition which hadn't been booted for a month or two, so I booted that up and called support again. This was at the height of the Blaster outbreak, so they screened all the calls to make sure that all XP users had the patches etc. I said that I didn't, but it didn't really matter since the XP install had been untouched since a month or two ago and I just want to get some generic tests run anyway. What did they do?
They said I couldn't be put through to tech support and they wouldn't do anything because I didn't have the Blaster patches that I couldn't get for an OS I didn't use. The reason I needed the patches was because I might have a virus which can do no damage anyway because there was no Internet connection. So to get the patches for this virus which doesn't do anything, I need them to fix the internet connection, however they won't fix it as I didn't have the patches.
Sons of bitches. If anyone from NTL is reading this, GET SOME FUCKING LINUX SUPPORT YOU COCKS.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
The only time that I call those places is when I need to have a part replaced. And it usually sucks - you have to convince those on the other end of the line that you really do, in fact, know what you're doing and that you really do believe that the problem will be resolved by replacing the dead hard drive.P? I once had a fairly new Dell Dimension die. After looking at it I just reinstalled the OS on a new hard drive - problem solved. I called tech support to replace the hard drive and told them that was the problem. They started asking if I'd jumped through their hoops - I just said that the machine is working perfectly one a spare drive and that was the problem. I got the new hard drive.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
wow, and i almost forgot i had something to add.
same situation, a hp 6110, starts not wanting to feed paper. so i call up support and have me jump through the hoops, until the fax started making this terrible grinding noise. the tech: "thats not right. I'll get you a replacement"
3 days later, the replacement arrives (we paid for 3+ day shipping). its remanufactured, and its doa. call back, explain, they ship another one, they pay for shipping this time.
2 days later, the replacement's replacement shows up. its dead too. call back. they overnight me a replacement.
finally, i got one that works (i had three of these in the office at the time). the rest get shipped out, end of story...right?
nope. last week (the adventure started back nearly a year ago) i got an email saying that my replacement has shipped to my Puerto Rico Address (oddly, i live in Missouri), so i call them and ask whats this about. seems that my business email is still attached to one of the machine's serial #. so i talk to about 2-3 different people and they thank me for pointing this out to them.
yesterday i got another shipping confirmation letter. i decided to just delete it and let them deal with it.
Way back in 1986 I got my first lappy (a Toshiba T1000, I wish I still had) It arrived in the mail on a Friday. Saturday morning, all alone with a cup of coffee, I fired it up and started playing. After no more than 10 minutes I went to drink some coffee, and I bumped the coffee cup against the top of the unfolded lappy, spilling coffee on the keyboard. The T1000 instantly died.
I was crushed.
I called customer service on Monday, and got a nice oriental gentleman.
me: My computer is broken.
him: just send it in.
me: but I spilled coffee on it!
him: wipe coffee off, send computer in.
All I paid was shipping to them, the fix was free and fast.
Ahh, I loved the 80's.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
(16:13:55) hackeduser25: omg i cant belive they did this to me
(16:14:35) stephen samuel: precisely what did they do?? All I saw was on the guest log page.
(16:14:53) hackeduser25: they put porn on it and changed everything around
(16:15:19) hackeduser25: im gonna havet to do it all over again it took me months and now i must re-type it all
(16:15:23) stephen samuel: Do you have a backup copy at home?
(16:15:29) hackeduser25: im gonna have a panic attack...no
(16:16:05) stephen samuel: It's possible that (most of) the original stuff is still there.
(16:16:18) hackeduser25: i know the site is frozen
(16:16:35) stephen samuel: How do you do updates??
(16:16:49) hackeduser25: easily but i cant access my account!!!!!
(16:16:52) hackeduser25: cuz they changed it all
(16:17:30) stephen samuel: You may want to get to the people who host the site and ask them to reset it back to what it was yesterday... (at least the password).
(16:19:26) stephen samuel: In the meantime, I'd suggest that you come up with a password that's not easily guessable.
(16:19:48) stephen samuel: Did you have an 'easily guessable' password?
(16:20:19) hackeduser25: well it was password.
(16:20:47) stephen samuel: That explains why you got slimed... It's the first password that a hacker would try.
(16:21:13) hackeduser25: omg great
(16:21:15) stephen samuel: Literaly -- it's the absolute MOST used password by newbies.
(16:21:27) hackeduser25: oh well great then
(16:21:49) stephen samuel: justasec.. I'm looking for my file on how to create relatively secure passwords....
(16:22:13) hackeduser25: k
(16:24:24) stephen samuel: http://www.bcgreen.com/solaris/passwords.html
The above session is now tacked on as a warning at the end of the referenced web page.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
A few years ago I had a couple of the infamous IBM Desktstar GXP drives that failed. I purchased the drives OEM; they came sent to me in static bags and packing peanuts.
When I requested an RMA for the drives I was informed that these *broken* drives *had* to be shipped back to IBM in the orginal IBM boxes or I could purchase *new* boxes from IBM!
Fortunately, rather than having to shell out $20 for "IBM approved" boxes, I was able to borrow two boxes from a guy at work and then when I got my RMA drives back I gave him those boxes.
I don't know if they really would have refused service had I sent them back in any old box but the website made it clear that they could.
Barely less than a week ago, I bought a Sony Vaio VGN-S150 laptop, to replace an old HP Omnibook subnotebook running Linux. I wanted something that was small-ish but had more than 1024*768 pixels on the panel. The VGN-S150 is a "mid-size" laptop, with a panel resolution of 1280*800 and absolutely amazing brightness and clarity.
I was aware that Sony had a poor reputation for reliability and suport when I bought it. However, since I don't tend to abuse my machines, I don't anticipate needing to deal with Sony. If the machine craps out, it will be because the machine is legitimately a lemon, and that fact should be revealed within the one-year warranty period.
I'm finding, much to my delight, that the VGN-S150 is turning out to be a rather fine Linux laptop. The ATI graphics drivers, both XFree86 and radeonfb, can drive the odd panel resolution directly without complaint, so I get to use all the pixels. The internal 802.11g card, with the Intel 2200BG driver, appears to work fine (although Kismet isn't talking to it). I have yet to get sound working, and I'm still trying to get ACPI standby/suspend to work. Elsewise, it's just lovely. Once I get Linux fully working, I'll do a write-up for the TuxMobil pages.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I bought a DRU-500a almost immediately after it came out. (It was the first DVD burner that supported both the + and - standards.) If I remember correctly, it was 300 dollars. Anyway, I got it home, put it in, and:
1. Read CD's fine
2. Read DVD's fine
3. Burned to the included DVD+RW just fine
4. Burned + discs
5. Burned - discs
I decided, saright, it works. Just long enough later to be out of store warrenty, I get around to burning a new mix CD. Hmmm, that's odd, the first track won't play. Further research showed that it would play just fine in my computer, but not on ANY standalone unit. However, the track was there, if I used a standalone unit, started on track 2, and manually rewound to track one, it would play just fine.
So I called sony and explained the problem in details, indicating that I figured it was burning a few sectors earlier than it probably should have, and that standalone units, which don't have all the error correction my computer does... couldn't handle the missing data.
Oh god. First, they wouldn't help me at all because I didn't have installed their piece of shit OEM burning software. After going back and forth on the phone, they gave me an RMA. So I shipped it out to Arizona, $10.
They said I should have it back in 2 - 4 weeks. 2 weeks later, I called to see what the status was. The response, "We couldn't find a problem with your drive and shipped it back to you yesterday." Well thanks alot.
After recieving the drive back, and the problem continuing, I called again, went through the same shpeil, and continued to get nowhere. Eventually the tech told me that the drive was performing as designed so long as discs would play in the unit itself. Half the techs I talked to flat out refused to believe me. They kept asking if I was using 'Sony, TDK, or Kodak' brand cds. Now, I didn't know that Kodak even made cd's, and so I asked where, in their documentation, did it say that I needed to use those 3 brands. The tech responded that it wasn't in the documentation, but if you were having a problem, that they recommended those.
They were completely unhelpful, would not just, send me a new unit as I repeatedly requested (being that I could not encounter ANY other stories online documenting this, I came to the conclusion that the unit was defective), and were consistently rude to me. They said the only way I could get the unit replaced was if I shipped it to Arizona and they decided something was wrong with it. Since they had decided it was fine previously, I figured that that was rather pointless.
To make a long story short, about 2 months later, a new revision of the drive firmware showed up on sony.com; listed in the revisions was, 'improve playback on standalone players.'
Installing the new firmware solved the problem.
Well I'll be damned. They knew this problem existed. If they had told me that it was a problem and that they were working on it but didn't have a fix at the moment, I would have been fine. Instead they gave me the runaround constantly.
This, coupled with 2 identical VCR's from Sony that failed in identical ways, has turned me off to Sony, forever.
Just as a note for the curious, Sony owns Aiwa, so don't buy from them either.
My company had a few hundred thousand lines of decades old Fortran code accessing an Oracle DB using "pro-fortran". Then Oracle dropped pro-fortran without any explanation. They did this so quietly that even Oracle "support" people weren't informed. It took us over six months of asking to get Oracle to acknowledge the fact that pro-fortran is no more among us.