Sony India, I thought you are a big global brand following ethical business practices. Many of the electronic products that I use are sold by your company. My trust in your brand came to an end yesterday after I visited your service center in Bangalore to repair my Sony Xperia smart phone.

Background: My phone suddenly became dead and I took it to your ?Authorized Service center? in Koramagala, Bangalore. A lady attended to my complaint with an apathetic attitude. She took the device inside and came back in 2 minutes with the following explanation? ? There is a hardware problem. We don?t repair waterproof devices here, we have to send it to our main service center on Residency road. It will cost around Rs. 9,000. Someone will call you after 3-4 days for approval. After that it will take about 7 working days to get the device repaired?

So, a minimum of 10 days and Rs.9,000 was quoted to me.

Then I asked her, Residency road is just 6 kilometers away from Koramangala and why would it take 3 days for them to send it there. She replied it was because of the transport strike(amazing!). I was amused by this answer and asked her whether they are going to send my mobile phone only in a KSRTC or a BMTC bus.(because the transport strike was called by the state run bus transport companies). She replied that in any case it would take 2-3 days. I offered to take the device myself to the Residency road service center, but she refused saying that customers are not allowed there.

She told me that all my data and records will be lost. I had no other option and reluctantly handed over the device to her.

While returning from your authorized service center, I noticed a nicely set up startup brand offering smartphone repair service. My gut feeling told me to give the phone to them for repair rather than to the lethargic and apparently dishonest Sony authorized service center folks.

I immediately went back to your authorized service center and asked them to give my device back. They asked me to pay Rs.150 as inspection charges. Infact, they did not do any inspection and just lied to me that there was a hardware issue. They even admitted earlier that waterproof phones are not opened there. Perhaps, just holding the phone and seeing whether it is water proof or not was ?Inspection? in their views.

I took the device back and gave it to the third party repair shop to check. He inspected the phone and told me that just the battery needs to be replaced. He took just 2 hours to order a new battery and bring back the dead device to life, with all data intact!

Now you compare your false services and reality. 10 days vs. 2 hours; Estimated 9,000 cheating bill vs. actual 2,000. There were 2 more customers in your service center with same kind of problems and both got similar answers and similar quotes.

Now the question is will I ever trust Sony and will I ever buy another Sony product. The answer is a big NOOOO!