My title of this story(what else to say when I am sharing my abominable experience) was to be "Banging my Head against a Stonewall that is SONY". Since there were some character limitations, I changed it a bit. Nevertheless, this is about the pathetic service that SONY is extending through its service centre in Jayanagar, Bangalore. It goes by the name Abhivruddhi Tech.
I submitted my Sony VAIO to Abhivrudhi Tech in Bangalore on July 12th, 2014 as it was not starting up. They informed me that they will diagnose the problem thoroughly and get back to us on an estimate. Upon my agreement, they will go ahead with change of the spare part.
They called a few days later informing me that my rechargeable battery was not working and it needed replacement and it will cost around 10000 INR. I agreed to the same and it was delivered to me again on 26th July 2014 for which I paid INR 9500.
Ever since this date(ie when I took delivery of my laptop), I have visited Sony centre five to six times as my laptop was not functioning properly and mostly it was that it just did not start up. Every time, I visited they had a new reason to tell me. The first time, they told me that the system was not shut down properly(In other words, we shut down the system while the windows update was going on). The second time, they said that checked again and said that it could be a problem of CMOS battery. The third time, they asked us to disconnect the battery and charge it directly through the socket, power it off, reconnect the battery and start again.
Week after week, our woes continued and I had one or another new suggestion from Abhibruddhi. I got really annoyed and wrote to Sony on September 6 complaining about the poor service that we were getting from Abhivruddhi(see my mail to Sony at the end of this mail). Finally, we went last Saturday again asking them to fix the problem once for all. It is their claim now that we have to change the mother board for which it would cost around Rs 12000. We said that we wanted to talk to the Manager to explain what happened. They refused to let us meet him(How rude!), leave alone giving his phone number to be able to converse with him.
Naturally, we are upset as it was diagnosed properly in the beginning. After all, we have spent Rs 9500 already and travelled 60 kms week after week to Sony Centre without any remedy. We are not willing to invest another 12000 Rs on the mother board.
The problem now is that if there had been a proper diagnosis in the first place that it would cost around 20000 or more, we would not have agreed to changing any thing as it is better to buy a new laptop. We have not got any thing in return for the 9500 Rs that we already spent. Now, we are forced to pay another 12000 or forfeit the 9500 that we already paid for the battery.
We are asking Sony to refund the money that we paid for a new battery, or own up the faulty diagnosis and do the mother board change free of cost. Please be informed that this mail is as much about the poor service that Abhivruddhi Tech provides, as it about getting my money back.
I summed up everything to Sony India in an email and thought that some pressure from Delhi would at least coerce them into action. They promptly called in a 2 days time and put me on a conference call with the Bangalore Sony Centre(Abhivruddhi). The lady, however, was trying to convince me that the system was working when I left Sony Centre. I just had one question for which Sony still does not have an answer. If it were working, as Sony claims, why would I frequent their place? Coming back to the conference call, the lady told me that Abhivruddhi will have to take the final decision on this and will get back to me in a couple of days.
Unfortunately, the couple of days that Sony mentioned has never arrived or so does it seem. The cycle goes on. I call them up giving them the full history starting from July and asking to be put on line with a Senior. The senior is always busy and I am promised that I will get a call back as soon as he is free.
As you can rightly guess, the Senior is just not free enough for me.