steve kwan user experience designer

Don't buy anything from the Sony Store

(September 28th, 2007 - 2:13PM)

I bought a pair of Sony Fontopia earbuds several years ago (no link because I'm mad at Sony). I purchased the extended warranty because I tend to beat these things up. I know what you're going to say about extended warranties, but I've had good luck with them in the past - particularly from Future Shop.

To be fair, I'd already exchanged in these headphones under warranty several times over the years. However, my extended warranty was still valid, and I'd paid to extend the warranty for another two years. So imagine my surprise when I took my headphones back to Sony and they told me that my warranty didn't exist.

I provided the Sony Store with the broken headphones, the original packaging, and the receipt. The manager told me that my receipt didn't have any warranty information on it. I explained to him that the Sony Store representative who handled my warranty last time must have kept it. He told me that my receipt wasn't sufficient, and upon looking in their database he couldn't find any proof I'd paid for the warranty. Apparently they only keep about a year's worth of transactions locally before they ship them all off to Toronto. What a brilliant system.

So the only way for me to prove I had a warranty would be to have the Sony Store dig retroactively through their logs in Toronto, which could take weeks. I wasn't about the wait that long. The manager refused to believe I had a warranty without proof, and I suspect he was looking for any reason not to honour it. There's nothing I hate more than being accused of lying because a store wants to save money.

I even offered to pay for an extended warranty for a third time, but the manager refused to let me. So I wound up going to Future Shop to buy a new pair of headphones, which is an extra $200 I wasn't planning to spend.

So the lesson here is that you shouldn't do business with the Sony Store, especially the one in Metrotown.

I bought a pair of Harman Kardon HK710 in-ear headphones. So far I don't like them. They go too deep into the ear and they hurt. I might exchange them.