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Sony Sued Over Bricked PS3s
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."'"
What happens when eventually, every electronic device you owns fail and they won't repair it for free? Will you stop using electronic devices? I had a Sony TV that lasted for 13 years and it recently broke, I'll never buy that company again!!!
Greetings and Salutations....
I tend to agree about Sony....they used to be good, but, today? too many questionable decisions.
On the other hand, the update DID increase the stability of the units. After all, what is more stabile than a brick?
regards
dave mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
That was what I liked about Microsoft when my 360 RRoD'd. They sent me the label, shipping was paid for, all I had to cover was the box. The free month of xbox live wasnt bad either. Turn around was pretty good too.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I haven't installed the 3.0 update. I just played my PS3 last night (MLB The Show). I watch movies on it just fine.
My PS3 is far from useless.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Bricks are useful. You can build a house, a fire place, they are strong, good insulators, etc...
A PS3 after crappy hardware destroying update is useless, except for giving toxins to some poor asshole in a 3rd world country to try an recycle it.
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.
Wow. Are you a lawyer? Or an idiot? Or not a US resident? Or some/all of those?
Here's what happens when you sue on your own in the USA. No attorney will probably take the case, so you'll probably want to go to Small Claims Court where your costs are lower to file the paperwork to sue Sony. Sony may or may not show in court. If not, you can win a default judgment against them. Yea! You won $399 or whatever your PS3 cost. Now how exactly are you going to collect? Are you going to find a local law enforcement officer who will serve Sony? What if you don't serve them in the right place? What if local law enforcement doesn't want to do it? What if Sony just ignores you? Are you going to sue them again in a real court? At more expense to you? I suppose there is some chance that you might get lucky and Sony might give you a new PS3 or pay you the money, but I'm not sure I'd count on it. So yes you can sue Sony on your own just like any "natural born citizen" over the age of 35 who wants to be president of the USA can run for the job, but whether you can actually be president or get money from Sony is something completely different.
Really? please point out the fanboisms. I said i like the PS3 but most likely wouldnt buy anything else from Sony. Considering I also own 2 360s, a Wii and a gaming PC, i dont really know how I could be a 'fanboi'. Thanks for your useless post though! :)
Good-bye
While it is probably an accident, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn that this was at least partially deliberate.
Corporations and the sociopaths who run them will only become greedier and greedier, especially if left unchecked. Sony weren't punished for the rootkit fiasco and they obviously don't believe they will be punished for criminally negligent behavior such as skipping entire phases of testing and expecting their entire userbase to be unwitting beta-testers. This applies to the hardware as well as the software world, and I'll list the recent Peavey Vypyr Guitar amplifier as an example, because I bought one and taking it in to service fixed NOTHING. Posts like this, this, and this only scratch the surface.
I dealt with this kind of crap even more intimately at my last job, but I didn't mind it so much then because it paid my bills and I didn't need any of the stuff I was fixing. So the particulars of the rant may be slightly off-base, but you shouldn't be the least bit surprised that corporations would try to get away with shit like that.
It's amazing how this is blown completely out of proportion.
The story itself is inaccurate and misleading. The users affected were having trouble with their blu-ray drives after the 3.0 update. There is no bricking involved. The 3.01 update was never meant to fix the problems with the blu-ray drives, it fixed a problem with stability in Uncharted.
Wether the update caused the blu-ray problems or not is only speculation. One user said his player started working again after reformating his hard-drive and reinstalling the 3.0 update, so it might be the case, but it might also be coincidence.
The "1000's of users" statement is completely bull****, and is a number completely drawn out of the plaintiffs a**.
It strikes me that these reports (and the british Yellow Light of Death TV-programme) started spreading precisely when the PS3 Slim was announced and the PS3 price drop took effect. It feels like a well crafted FUD campain.
And Sony continues to show contempt for their own customers. Fortunately, this doesn't affect me as I haven't bought any Sony music, movies, hardware or consumer products since the whole "root kit" issue. Coincidently, people are still saying "oh get over it, that root kit thing was years ago". Yes, it was, and they still don't care about their customers. Why in doG's name would I buy anything from a company like that? I don't have to, and I don't. There are too many other companies out there that try to earn my hard earned money.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
In that case, no device can ever be bricked, as they can function in the capacities of: paperweight, doorstop, or therapeutic stress relief target (you can hit it with a bat) just to name a few. If your pedantic definition of a word renders it nearly meaningless, then I don't see what problem you could possibly have with a more useful re-purposing of the word as something actually applicable.