Sony Ericsson cutting edge phones stone age customer service



Sony Ericsson develops the best cell phones I've ever used. I've had a bunch over the years and until recently had nothing but great things to say about SE and their products (Sony electronics is a different story).

I recently bought two SE K700i cell phones to replace my T68i and my wife's Seimens S46. One functions perfectly, the other has issues with its Bluetooth module. The problems happened out of the box, and I wrongly figured I could find a fix on the web. Wrong (and it turns out that there are others with this same issue).

My next step was to call Sony Ericsson customer service. They suggested sending it in for service. NP I thought. When I found out that (1) that the SE service center was in NC or somewhere like that I passed. When I found out that they hold the phone for up to three weeks I got pissed. When I found out that SE doesn't provide me with a replacement phone while mine is getting fixed I flipped out.

There's no reason why I should have to part with my $400 phone for 75% of my billing period because of a problem out of the box. That's so last century. These phones have SIM cards. SE should consider sending a special box (like Apple does for their portables going in for service) with a replacement SIM ready phone. I don't need a K700i while I'm waiting for mine to be fixed. Any SE SIM ready phone would do.

SE might send the phone in a box with a shipping label addressed to the service center. Customer takes out the "loaner" phone, slips in his/her SIM card and then boxes up the broken SE phone and ships it to the service center. When the service center has repaired the phone, they ship it back in the box with a return label which the customer uses to ship back the loaner phone. Can you say, good will? This would go a long, long way.

Sure, sending a SIM ready phone in a special shipping box to customers with return labels is expensive, but so is losing a 10-year customer. Besides, when I pay $800 for phones I want to be treated a little better than the current SE policy allows for.

To make matters worse, I actually took one of SE's early suggestions. They asked if I had updated the software using their web gateway. I said I was familiar with the service but didn't have a dock (sync station) necessary to perform the update. I asked if they'd ship me one at no charge given the issues I had with what I think is a rather expensive phone. They declined.

I ended up ordering the sync station. $60 and it didn't fix the problem. Lovely. Well, my SE K700i is at the service center-has been for the last two weeks-and I'm out $60 on the sync station. Very pleasant experience. Time to upgrade your customer service, Sony Ericsson.

Ironically, I received an email from SE requesting that I take part in a survey. Only thing was, they put the survey in the email as an Excel attachment (a big company like SE should really have web based surveys). I don't do attachments, so I emailed the sender. I said I'd take the survey if she'd paste the survey in the body of the email message. Well she emailed me today saying something like she didn't need me to take the survey but thanked me for my interest.



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Posted: Fri - November 19, 2004 at 01:55 PM          

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