The following article appeared in a Call Centre Focus newsletter in the UK on 18 March 2011.

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Fed-up owner allows Lamborghini to be demolished

A group of men smashed up a Lamborghini – with consent from its owner.

Businessman Han Nan allowed the men, dressed in blue boiler suits, to demolish the car because a dealership would not fix a fault.

He took it to the dealer in November to have an engine malfunction fixed. But it was returned still faulty and with a damaged bumper and chassis.

Crowds in Qingdao, China watched in shock as the £140,000 motor vehicle was reduced to a piece of twisted metal – see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jOuMbH3lDk.

Fed up with the poor customer service, he decided the only way to protest was to smash the car up – on World Consumer Rights Day.

The stunt comes on the back of folk singer Dave Carroll, who wrote a song about United Airlines and a broken guitar. The song chronicles his year-long attempt to win compensation from the airline [see next posting below].

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I’m now thinking that the last time Sony Customer Service lied to me about fixing my Sony Vaio SZ5, I should have taken it to the Reception area at Sony’s UK Headquarters, smashed it with a sledgehammer , and then posted the resulting video on YouTube. 

Perhaps this might have captured Sony’s attention. Sadly, everything I tried came to naught, and I finally ended up with nothing more than a letter from their legal department.

Meanwhile, if you’re personally experiencing problems in dealing with Sony’s technical or customer service departments, please read my postings below.

At the very least, you’ll  feel better from knowing that you’re not the only person in the world who has: (a) experienced outrageous service from Sony; and (b) been left feeling totally amazed that Sony’s attitude to customer service could conceivably be so shockingly reprehensible, or that Sony’s senior excecutives really don’t care and simply won’t reply to letters.

Perhaps between us, as fed-up owners of Sony Vaio PCs, we may eventually be able to make enough noise to cause Sony begin to pay attention.

It’s an amusing song, called “United Breaks Guitars”, outlining Dave Carroll’s experience of customer service at United Airlines. It can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo.

Once you’ve watched this video, you may also be interested in:

1. The prompt and impressive response from Taylor Guitars at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n12WFZq2__0.
2. The fact that United Airlines only paid attention to this complaint once Dave Carroll’s video had been viewed over 150,000 times on YouTube – see Fox News report at http://www.youtube.com/watchv=QiH2hJHPQvk&feature=related.

So, clearly we must all now hope that Dave Carroll will buy a Sony Vaio PC and then write a song about his experience.

Then, perhaps, Sony Vaio will recognise – and start to do something about – their truly appalling technical and customer service.

Alan

I feel compelled to tell the world about my experience, over the past nine months, for four main reasons:

1. So others can avoid the misery, frustration and expense that I’ve suffered at Sony’s hands;
2. So senior executives at Sony get the message that it ought to be unacceptable to lie, mislead or ignore customers in the way that Sony have treated me;
3. So senior executives at Sony will think twice, in future, before launching products with inadequate software development and testing beforehand; and
4. To provide a mechanism for others who have suffered at the hands of Sony Vaio to voice to their frustrations, with a view to encouraging Sony sit-up and take notice.

I have not had the benefit of even a single day of productive use of this Sony Vaio PC since I first pressed its power button on 31 August last year.

This PC has been back to Sony twice for inspection and repair, unsuccessfully in both cases. Indeed, I even had to threaten to report its loss to Lincolnshire Police in order to get Sony to return it to me again, so I can show the world what a supposedly “perfect” Sony Vaio PC looks like in reality.

Unfortunately, now I’m getting ahead of myself, and letting my sundry frustrations with Sony show, instead of telling you my story calmly, objectively and step-by-step.

First let me tell you a little bit about myelf, so you can see that I’m not some kind of nutter with a grudge against Sony.

As it happens, I’m an experienced management consultant with special expertise in helping organisations improve their customer experience. So I recognise both good and bad customer experience when I see it.

I have to say that dealing with Sony Vaio has been the very worst customer experience I have ever come across, either personally or professionally.

My intent, in creating this blog, is to provide a vehicle for people who have experienced appalling service from Sony Vaio, either in terms of products or services, to share their experience with the wider world, with a view to urging Sony to take product development and customer service more seriously.

My next posting will explain how the problems with my Sony SZ5 started.

Alan