Finally!

So about two months ago, I got a brand new TV. About a month ago, it broke. Completely out of the blue. No visible damage, no power surges, nothing. I promptly spent the following month being dicked around by Sony's customer service department. They were terrible.

First, they wouldn't even talk to me without my MAILING them a copy of my receipt. Seriously? Who uses the mail these days? Haven't they ever heard of email? I guess that would probably mean they'd have to replace it sooner, though, wouldn't it?


After that, they gave me trouble because they claimed I had told them a different model number than what was on the receipt. No sale. I was not falling for that one. After all, I had read the model number off of the side of the TV. This actually lead me to an interesting question. How do they enter that information? If it were me designing the system, I'd make it idiot proof. You know, have a couple different criteria that narrowed down a drop-down menu to a few possibilities and then have the customer service rep pick the right one. 'Cause I'm pretty sure the model number they tried to accuse me of lying about doesn't even exist. And that means that their system has issues.

Well, after getting pretty angry with the guy who accused me of lying, he told me he'd forward the request over to the correct department, which I figured was his way of saying, "Good luck with that." It did take a couple more weeks, but I came home from my weekend away and had a voicemail on the home phone asking me when I was available to have the replacement dropped off. So that appointment got set up for today.

Actually, the true amount of information that they got wrong was hilariously huge. They had my address wrong. In fact, the delivery guy's GPS said my house didn't exist. They also spelled my last name wrong, which is utterly confusing, since it's four damn letters long. Also, the fact that it's a common word makes it even worse.

My recommendation is this: don't ever have to call Sony's customer service. And if you do, use small words. In fact, spell everything that you say phonetically so they can't misspell it.

Really, it's too bad that I had this terrible experience, because the time that I had the TV, it was great. I had no complaints until it just... stopped working. So, yeah. Next time I buy another brand.