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Sony Sued Over Bricked PS3s

Posted by Soulskill on from the sony's-pr-department-must-be-pleased dept.

Zarrot writes "If Sony's recent 3.00 PS3 firmware update bricked your console, you may now have legal recourse thanks to a class action suit against Sony. The complaint alleges that thousands of users (PDF) were affected by the update, and in some cases the PS3 hardware itself was damaged. It continues, 'For owners who sustained hardware damage from the Sony-required update, Sony is charging a $150 repair fee per unit. Sony, responding to the numerous complaints about the unacceptable effects of the defective update, released a further, optional update that it claimed "improves system stability" — yet performance problems continued, and the new update did nothing to remedy the systems of users who sustained hardware damage."'"

9 of 438 comments (clear)

  1. Re:XCP on steroids! by JeffSpudrinski · · Score: 4, Informative

    Didn't this same thing happen recently with the Wii console?

    http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/10/01/0626228

    One used to be able to trust the mainstream console makers, but not so much anymore.

  2. Sony is no longer a reputable vendor by stox · · Score: 4, Informative

    I had the misfortune of buying one of their GPS units. Despite the fact that their support clearly acknowledged the defects the unit had from the day of purchase, Sony did not release a fix until 7 months later. Sony insists that I pay $99.95 to get that update. Needless to say, I no longer will buy Sony products.

    --
    "To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
  3. Legal Recourse by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 4, Informative

    you may now have legal recourse thanks to a class action suit against Sony.

    I'm probably being excessively pedantic, but you don't need a class action suit to have "legal recourse." It's just easier as a class. You can sue on your own if your property was damaged or a contract was violated.

    --
    $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
    1. Re:Legal Recourse by eyrieowl · · Score: 4, Informative

      Can't speak for other places...but at least in Texas, it might be easy enough to win the small claims filing, but it isn't binding, on appeal, they can go to regular civil court and it's as though the small-claims case never even happened. And collecting on a small claims win can be difficult. Winning is one thing, getting money is another. So they could easily let you pay the fees for filing suit in small claims court, not bother showing, and then appeal when you win to regular court, which...if you don't get a lawyer for the appeal, they could win, and force you to eat the court costs and legal fees. It sounds like a nice way to annoy them, but when you start looking at the practicalities, the class-action works out much better.

  4. Re:XCP on steroids! by caladine · · Score: 4, Informative

    Especially since Nintendo seems to have removed the message about repairing at no cost as well...
    http://techforums.nintendo.com/nins/board/message?board.id=wii_tech&thread.id=29992

  5. Re:Bricked Consoles? by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 4, Informative

    AFAIK Nintendo has offered free repairs for Wiis bricked by the 4.2 update.

  6. Re:XCP on steroids! by galaad2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    let's not forget the screwed by sony part...
    sony pushed a "special" screw for 61+ euro when it was not special at all.

    http://i35.tinypic.com/2q1z68m.jpg

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2007/may/28/sonyuserscrew

    --
    root@127.0.0.1
  7. I ran out of gas and now my car is bricked! by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 5, Informative

    When it doesn't do what it's supposed to do (or stops doing what it's supposed to do), yeah, that's bricked.

    No. It's bricked when there is no hope at all at making it playable again. If it can execute code, it's not bricked.

    Honestly dude, It's bad enough the sensationalist media cannot use the term correctly.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  8. Re:XCP on steroids! by sabre3999 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Update is mandatory to use the PSN or the store. Games still work fine, you just can't sign into services.

    That still doesn't excuse the fact that their update bricked the hardware... nor is it the first time. I seem to remember a story a few months ago where new updates were bricking the older, PSX/PS2 reverse-compatible models (I have one and avoided it.)