Community

PortlandBill

I've been trying all morning to get a price from Sony for replacing my Z2 phone battery.

They seem to want to make the process difficult, almost as if they dont want to support a 2 year old £500 phone. They cant give me a price. I have to create an account with them, then make a booking, send it to them, they'll inspect it, quote me for a "service & repair" (it's not broken, it just needs a battery FFS), they'll wipe all my data, no doubt break all the seals that make it waterproof, then send it back all at some unknown cost and time period.

Crazy. I'm thinking I'll just get a new Samsung instead.

Do i have any other options?

Lord_viridis

@BillPortland wrote:
I've been trying all morning to get a price from Sony for replacing my Z2 phone battery.
They seem to want to make the process difficult, almost as if they dont want to support a 2 year old £500 phone.
It's 4 years old, maybe not yours, but from a service point, the model is 4 years old.
They cant give me a price.
ANY manufacturer will need to assess before quoting a repair.
I have to create an account with them, then make a booking, send it to them, they'll inspect it, quote me for a "service & repair" (it's not broken, it just needs a battery FFS), they'll wipe all my data, no doubt break all the seals that make it waterproof, (and replace them with new tested seals) send it back all at some unknown cost and time period.
All costs are quoted to you before any work is carried out to give you the option of refusal.
Crazy. I'm thinking I'll just get a new Samsung instead.
Do i have any other options?

Samsung service is exactly the same, in fact all manufacturers repair work is treated in this way, purely because the work that is carried out, is itself warrantied, and if they went and just did the work without assessing any damage or issues, and then something went wrong later down the road that was not directly caused by the repair job, but instead another issue that wasn't considered or assessed before the original work was carried out, you could well say it was due to them or their repair.

It's unfortunate we can't just get a single figure for a single job but when liability for the devices integrity is passed onto repair staff, a correct procedure must be maintained.

Lord_viridis

It does appear that you might be able to get an estimate on costs though, purely an estimate, by logging in to Xperia care and booking it in through that.

It will still need the evaluations but at least you'll have an idea of cost.

Go into Local support and log in, then into support, and repair.

PortlandBill

no, it's not 4 years old, it's 2 years old. When they brought the model out has no bearing on it's life, serviceability, spares avaialability or anything else for that matter. If they were selling it 2 years ago, it's a 2 year old product.

Any reputable manufacturer will have a prepared plan for routine works. If i call my car dealer, he will quote me for supplying and fitting a new battery. No problem. Of course, it'll be subject to the car being in certain condition on receipt (that the bonnet will open, that the wires haven't corroded, etc), but changing a battery is such a routine, frequent (about every 5 years in the case of a car) and necessary operation that they have customer service proceesses in place to deal with it. But not Sony. All they need to say is "If all it needs is a battery, it'll be an estimated £XX and X days return subject to.....".

Not ALL costs. Your talking only about Sony's costs. I have to consider whether it's worth the costs of return shipping and the unknown period of delay against an unknown and possibly uneconomical new battery price. I dont even know which country i need to send it to. We live in a free market. There are others that can compete with Sony and should be given the opoportunity. How can i consider others when Sony won't quote to compare against?

And not ALL manufacturers are the same. Maybe phone manufacturers are but that's only because they're allowed to get away with it. Take my car analogy, i can ring a multitude of garages and they'll all give me a quote for routine things like brakes, tyres, clutch, battery, etc , etc, They don't need to do an assessment! It's a phone FFS. We know that what they really want us to do is throw the phone away and get a new one. So they make life really difficult to provide service/parts.

Not to worry, there are other, decent, reliable and reputable companies out there. Sony's just proven to me that they're not one of them.