Please for the love of God never buy Sony, Read my Story

Sony, I used to be their biggest fan, I used to love their products in the early nineties.

Well now I am going to tell you a story about my experiance with Sony. They are long, but they are all true and because of all the crap thats happened to me from Sony I will refuse to ever buy Sony again.

Why Sony Sucks Reason 01: The PS2

In 2001 being ambitious and young i was looking forward to the PS2. It was the biggest thing and I just wanted it. After spending over $700 bucks on that I played it for about a month before the problems began. First the ps2 would refuse to run games and sounded like it was running on diesel. So I took it apart and had to oil everthing in side (the slider) and must continue to do so every month for it to work. Next, Sony decided that it would be a great idea to make some games with discs that are blue on the bottom. Well it just so happens that the PS2 I had was not able to read these discs, and millions more too. After I told Sony my problem they told me to send it in, but not before they said they would charge me $100 US dollars. I told them that they sold me a defective PS2 and the warenty covers it. They refused and told me I have to pay. So I told them to stick my request where the sun don't shine. Basically I paid over $700.00 bucks for a faulty PS2.

Why Sony Sucks Reason 02: The Headphones

I've always loved clip on headphones, so just last year I purchased a pair of Sony's for $50. The headphones were wonderful until the connection inside broke. So I thought, no problem, ive fixed tons of headphones, just take them apart. Well, Sony decided to make these headphones "one timers". Once you take them apart (which is glued together) they are designed to basically break so that they can never be fixed or put back together. They had designed it so that the headphones are impossible to put back together. This is the 4th pair of clip ons i'v had, all the others were put together with screws or had a clip like lock. Not these ones though.

Wht Sony Sucks Reason 03: The Camcorder

In 2004 I recived one of the greatest gifts I could have imainged, a camcorder that was $1000.00, pretty exepensive. I wanted to be a film maker so I wanted the gear. This of course was a sony. Well only a few weeks after I started experiancing problems. The camera was made in a way that this buttom called "blacklight" almost lways gets pressd. Its hard to avoid it or its uncomfotable to hold the camera. This buttom makes everything so bright you cant watch the video very well. I ended up losing 4 hours of footage I shot in Poland on a vacation because of this dumb thing. But this buttom was only the beginging. Sony has the files in MPEG2 format. They added some sort of Codec that only allows you to use their software to edit their videos, which by the way blows. In order to preview your movie you must save it first, which is retarded. It takes hours to do and there are tons of glitches. Not only that you cant use any other editor to edit the videos due to the protection codec they add. After 2 years, I finally got a program that somehow disables this codec and allows you to edit the video clips, but it took me 2 years to get this.

Why Sony Sucks Reason 04: The Minidisc player

This by far is the worst. Last year me and my brother got 2 minidisc players, which are the same. They were great, SONY, no problems. But only a month later my MD player broke. So I sent it in to Sony to fix it, they said the warenty would cover it. I kept asking when they would send it back and they said soon, until they finalyl stopped responding. After waiting 7+ months I gave up, Sony got away with murder and basically stoll my MD player. At this point I was very angry, but I liked the MD player so I got a new one. I am a moron for doing this, but I knew no better. I jumped on the sony bandwagon even after they stoll my md player. So I got to install it, its all the same, same model, software etc. But I noticed it wouldnt let me transfer music onto the md player. I played with this for hours and hours until discovering that you cannot transfer downloaded music. What the heck? My last MD player was the same, it never did this. So I cannot use the MD player. So I went to my brothers computer and atatched the damn thing to use his software from the old one, (HE STILL HAD HIS). All of a sudden nothing works, not even the old one. I discoverd that sony has some sort of file it installs on your computer (secretly) that disallows you from using this. So now not only does my MD player not work, but it killed my brothers too! Nothing works anyways, just says format errors. I know that the MD player did somehting because as soon as I install it on any computer it screws everything up.

If you read this you know my pain, I feel I have been violated and I swear that i will never use Sony ever again, and i hope you think twice before letting this horrible company do this to you.

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"There dosen't look like there's much shelter over in those mountains, but that's the only choice I got right now, this is gonna be a long week" - Les Stroud Arctic

Last edited by TrooperMax on Sat Dec 23, 2006 3:59 pm; edited 1 time in total

The worst part about this is that its all true. It sounds like an episode of Seinfeld but this all actually happend and cost my family hundreds of dollers if not more. You can buy sony but i warn you to be carful, not long ago Sony was accused of installing spyware onto computers through their products, that doesent surprise me.

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"There dosen't look like there's much shelter over in those mountains, but that's the only choice I got right now, this is gonna be a long week" - Les Stroud Arctic

You get a +10000000000 Respect.

Sony fails on all levels.

Sony used to make top notch, great products! They have gone down hill and I agree: I would never buy one of their products again! In the 80's I bought a Sony 27" TV (It was really one of the biggest you could get at the time) - The thing STILL works! A few years ago I bought a small Sony TV for the kids - The damn thing died after a year and a half......

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The liver is evil, it must be punished!!!

I agree Cedrones, I have products from the eighties from Sony and they are good, but very out of date, but those were the best.

I got a 19" tv that we got in '89, so I was a still a little tot at the time, the darn thing still works, even though at the airport it rolled down the conveierbelt and smashed into a wall once.

So the only reason they get good business is because they ahve a good "previous" reputation, but not anymore.

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"There dosen't look like there's much shelter over in those mountains, but that's the only choice I got right now, this is gonna be a long week" - Les Stroud Arctic

It used to be that companies built things to last. Then some, Sony apparently is one, decided that quality was unnecessary. Another company is JVC. In the 90s I got a 20" JVC television. Excellent set. Built in stereo speakers plus jacks for rear channel speakers. Good features, easy to use remote. But within weeks of the warranty expiring, it needed an expensive repair. A couple of years later the picture tube went. It's not worth putting any more money into. I have a DVD player and rear channel speakers hooked up to it to listen to music CDs in surround sound.
And yet, I have a Hitachi tv that is so old it has rabbit ears (ask your parents or go to a museum) and it just won't die. It was bought second hand years ago after it had done its time in a hotel room. It has tuning knobs on the front for VHF (chanels 2 to 13) and UHF. For cable, I need to use an adapter to hook a vcr to it as a tuner.

Im running a sony sound system in my car, havnt had any problems with it, or any other sony product for that matter. Althougth after reading that, ive second thought them Confused

Well i'm not saying everything htey have is bad, just had too many problems with their "newer aged" gear.

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"There dosen't look like there's much shelter over in those mountains, but that's the only choice I got right now, this is gonna be a long week" - Les Stroud Arctic

Sony =

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It's not climbing the mountain to get to the top; it's climbing the mountain to enjoy the climb.

My sony stuff seem to work fine. The Headphones have no problem (But they are loud so I just turn down the speakers) My Vaio is in it's 4th year. Only upgraded the RAM (because of Norton). My PS2 works fine but I might need a new controller. THat's one been going for 5-6 years. I do have some old stuff which work great.

The thing is that due to all of the competition there is not as much of a profit margin in electronics as there use to be. I know Sony has been losing money and I wouldn't doubt if the quality of the products has been going down.

I will say that I rarely buy Sony products because they charge you for quality you are not getting for the most part. It's a roll of the dice in the fact that some of there products will do fine for years and others will die again and again. Lost of people with Sony Laptops have had there motherboards die again and again. I will ask my friend who works for Sony and see how it is on the inside (we went to High School together and he went from EA as a programmer to Sony)

I for instance for the most part don't buy EA products. There a horrible company both from the inside to the outside. They killed the NFL football market by buying up the NFL franchise rights because they couldn't compete with Sega Sports (the NFL2K series). They got beat 2 years in a row in sales and ratings by most magazines so they go out and spend millions of dollars so that only they can make games with the NFL logo, and team names. Then they and the NFL come out and say "we feel this will provide better games, ect) bull$#*( if you ask me!

Also my friend said it sucked working there (thats why he left). Also EA got sued for millions of dollars in OverTime they were not paying. They use to give out vacation time to compensate for the long weeks of hard work. So if you got a extra 160 hours in 1 month of working 16 hours everyday you got 1 month off before your next project. They would then make the people stay and do another 320 hour month's worth of work, and then another until they had thousands of hours of OT they were not getting paid for and they finally sued.

So stay away from EA as well, IMHO.

Yeah EA is horrible. A ton of kids that go to UCF get hired there for next to nothing because they are want to make games.

I like Magnavox as good technology. I never have problems with their stuff.

I feel your pain Troop. I bought a PSP and have regretted it ever since. Ans the sad thing is after having so many problems with it I just emailed Tech support to see if they could help and my response was basically "we're too stupid to know what to do so we are gonna ask someone who is at a higher level in the company" they said they would get back to me in 2 weeks....that was in September of 2005! Evil or Very Mad

After that and the crappy PS3 that one of my friends blew his money on I'll never trust Sony. They are too expensive for most of their bad products.

I feel your pain Troop. I bought a PSP and have regretted it ever since. Ans the sad thing is after having so many problems with it I just emailed Tech support to see if they could help and my response was basically "we're too stupid to know what to do so we are gonna ask someone who is at a higher level in the company" they said they would get back to me in 2 weeks....that was in September of 2005! Evil or Very Mad

After that and the crappy PS3 that one of my friends blew his money on I'll never trust Sony. They are too expensive for most of their bad products.

I still have and use (regularly) my PS2...but I'm not going to bother with PS3 as there's the 360. My Sony TV still works fine and I've had that for years, can't remember when I bought it though...sometime in the 90s. Also, one of my digital cameras is a Sony and I love that thing. Takes great pictures, although it doesn't compare with my Nikon admittedly.

Personally, I really like Pioneer products. They work well and last forever, if a bit on the pricy side.

Now that I think about it, doesn't Les use Sony to film his show??

Probably, I must say of time my view has changed a little but only a little.

Sony itself makes great cameras, cause mine is good, but the software is horrible! I just wish they put more money into the software. Sad

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"There dosen't look like there's much shelter over in those mountains, but that's the only choice I got right now, this is gonna be a long week" - Les Stroud Arctic

Yeah, we don't use their software on our computers. It sucks.

I have my ps2 for years and had no problem but maybe to play dvd's on I think that's the only sony I have

Planned obsolescence. Manufacturers realized that if they made a product to good they could only sell it to you once. Pretty much if something makes it through warranty it’s lived its designed life. I used to joke about warranty timers being built into products but now I know it’s just one or more cheap components that are design to have a certain useful life and stop functioning properly or all together when they reach this. If you check with other owners of the same product you will see that most of them have the same problem occur at about the same time in their use.
Occasionally they’ll make this design limited component a little too good and the product will last longer then expected or more often not good enough and it will give out before the warranty is up. That’s when you get the run-around with repairing it.
I’ve pretty much given up on warranties and mail-in rebates. I don’t get half of those either.

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How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?