Sony India Pvt Ltd. — Defective Laptop

Address:

Bangalore, Karnataka

Dear Sir,

I would like to draw your attention towards the heights of frustration that I am facing due to My defective piece of Sony vaio Laptop.My laptop has already cost me more than 9000 Rs and it still demands Rs 18000 for proper functioning.
I purchased my Laptop Model Sony Vaio VGN FZ35GN on June 15 ,2008, serial number 7000320 and my problem started soon after the warranty expired.
Just after 1 year the battery stopped giving backup for more than 5 minutes ,I managed to get over it .After this the DVD Drive stopped working.I called the service center regarding this and they responded me that Sony does not repair the parts and these parts will only be replaced.
Over the phone I was given an approximation of about 10K-12K. Since these two problems were of not so significance I didn't bother to spend so much of money I adapted myself to use permanent power source and bought an external hard-disk instead to save my data on it rather than on DVDs.The real problem was yet to come..
On May last week 2010, suddenly my laptop stopped working i could only see the orange power indicator glowing ,other than that nothing was working .I was in Kanpur during that time so went to the Sony authorized service center for the repair .To my relief i wasn't charged any thing for this
as they told me that the problem was due to faulty NVIDIA GPU and sony has extend the warranty to 3 years if the problem is due to NVIDIA GPU(http://www.sony-asia.com/support/subtype/notifications/336580).So my laptop was repaired free of cost.

Details can be inquired from below mentioned -
date-7 June 2010,
Job No.-PSC 6179
Preet Service and Care,Ram Krishna nagar,Kanpur-208012
Ph-[protected]

As I told this was just the beginning of my problems with my laptop.I faced the same situation in February 2011,My laptop suddenly stopped working and the culprit was again the same NVIDIA GPU,but unluckily this time I was in Bangalore and the service center guys refused to repair it for free of cost as they told that this warranty is only limited to junk display, please mark their words here.They quoted me 17000 Rs here for the replacement of the motherboard as again Sony can't just change the GPU only .I think the people sitting on the streets of SP Road in bangalore are far better skilled than the people in Sony Vaio Service Center crew as they can do chip level repairing and they even don't charge 1000 Rs to just replace any part which takes no more than half hour in the worst case.Its a very bad example of making money by looting the customer.
Mentioning back to the Sony notification in the above link I will say what ever is written in the notification is in a generalized form rather than the specific problem.If you visit the google and search for "NVIDIA GT 8400M" which is my laptop's GPU unit you will get many result showing the different kinds of problems being faced by the people due to this same piece of hardware present in Sony Vaio laptop.Again if it was just the junk display that was covered under warranty then I would like to ask if the people who serviced my laptop for the first time for the same problem were a fool or they paid out of their own pocket.Finally I paid the service center an inspection amount of Rs 276 and looked for the other options and I got it repaired from the 3rd party who charged me 4000 Rs for the new GPU unit including all the service and provided a warranty of 6 months unlike Sony which provides warranty only for 1 month.

Details of this case-
date-21 Feb, 2011
Job Information-1456
RMS Technologies Ltd
Jaynagar,Bangalore
ph- [protected] ,17 ,18


March passed peacefully and somehow I tried to come-over the loss of 4000 Rs but this was not the end .On April 12 ,2011 my Display became dull.This time it was not the GPU but the LCD inverter.It was diagnosed by Sony service Center where I gave my laptop on April 14,2011 and collected back on April 23, 2011 with an estimate of 4932 Rs. I was not in a position to spend this much amount again so I collected back my laptop after paying an inspection amount of 276 Rs.
After collecting my laptop I did some research by myself and found that my Laptop uses Inverter board of " Murata TW9394V-0 MPV5K003 LCD Inverter".The cost of this part in spare shop is Rs 950 but unluckily this was out of stock in the few shops that i tried .I don't have the spare time to search whole Bangalore .After a hectic job schedule I get time only on Saturday and Sunday and most of the shops are closed on Sunday that leaves me with only one day to search the market.To avoid the problems I gave my Laptop to the service center.got it repaired on May 23,2011 and paid the quoted amount (Job number[protected], Service Invoice number[protected].

Details are below-

Inspection was done at-

Sony India pvt .ltd.
No 239,mysore Road
bangalore
ph-560039

Product was repaired at-

Sony India Pvt Ltd,
#743,Sri Krishna Temple Road,
Indira nagar 1st stage,
Bangalore
Ph[protected] ,64

Till this time I have already spend an amount of (276+276+4932+[protected] Rs .needless to say i have lost my much valuable time in this process and my work has been affected seriously.
On the very day I got my inverter board repaired at Sony service center I could see my screen flickering time to time, which I didn't noticed while I collected my laptop.I thought of taking it back to the Sony service center on weekend but only two days passed and my screen again went dull.The same problem as before .This time Sony service center inspected it and came out with a result that my LCD is defective and gave me an estimate of RS 17894 (Job Number[protected],Estimation number[protected].

Now I feel that it was better to purchase an new laptop rather than spending any amount on this crap piece provided by Sony.
This total process that is harassing me since February has cos me precious money and time.I am an employed person who has to work after hours to make a living.As my clients are mostly US based I have to attend net-meeting with them mostly around 9 PM on week days which I prefer to do from home as it is a regular routine .But this failure of my Laptop so often compelled me to stay late in office to attend the net-meetings.I can say that I have been psychologically harassed by Sony .

To summarize my points

1.At the first place Sony sells a laptop to the customer which is pron to be defective.
2.It was in the knowledge of Sony that the Nvidia GPU that they were using were defective and even then they released the system in the market without proper testing.
3.The prices fixed on spare parts by Sony are too high and even does not contain any warranty .Just one month on new part is negligible.
4.The service charge set by Sony just for replacing the parts are too high.(Eg.. If I want to replace my RAM or hard-disk I need to just open a screw in the bottom and this process will take no more than 5 minutes.Sony charges 1000Rs for it)

I expect Sony to compensate me for the troubles and frustration that I have faced using the crap piece provided to me at an MRP of Rs 60,000. and further invested an amount of Rs 9484 with DVD writer and battery still defective.And asking for a further investment of 17,894 Rs

Regards,Anshul
e-mail-anshul.singh.[protected]@gmail.com