| Address: Mumbai City, Maharashtra |
I bought a Sony Xperia Z3 some time ago in Mumbai. From the minute I took it home I noticed it had problems. The phone would keep losing signal, and would have to be restarted multiple times a day in order to reconnect. I also noticed that the battery life drastically reduced within about a month o[censored]sing it.
I took the instrument back to the place I bought it from, and they advised me to go to the service center, which I did. But the person at the service center told me it would take a month to fix and that they do not give any replacement phones. Having sold my earlier phone to pay for this one, I thought it better to bring the phone in later.
Some weeks later, I noticed that the back had developed a huge crack in it seemingly on its own. On a hunch, I researched the web and noticed that there were a huge number of these complaints about the phone developing this issue. There was also a small crack in one corner. But overall the phone was still totally functional.
Some time later, suddenly and abruptly the phone screen went black. I took the phone to the Sony Service Center, as was told by their representatives that the warranty was voided due to the screen crack. I told them about the crack developing on its own, but they said that this was technically impossible.
They then quoted me Rs. 30, 000 to fix the phone (more than 2/3rds the original price) and told me I would have to pay upfront. Or they would give me a 20% discount on a new phone. I told them this was not possible as I had already spent close to Rs. 50k on the instrument already.
Then I went online, where to my surprise I found literally thousands of similar complaints from users all over the world. In all cases, Sony started off by rubbishing the claims, but when groups o[censored]sers started approaching the courts and consumer forums in the UK, they suddenly did a U-turn on their strategy and started fixing the phones under warranty.
I have barely owned this phone for a couple of months, and I have never had any issues with any other phone manufacturer before. The phone is touted as a rugged and waterproof phone which is misleading to customers who take Sony at their word and then end up with huge damages as a result. The screen is so fragile that it cracks even without being dropped!
What makes things even worse is that when they returned the hanndset to me they had shattered the back panel totally (whereas earlier there was only a hairline crack). They refused to even repair the damage which their own customer service people had admitted to causing. They even had the audacity to alter the job sheet to cover up for this (see pic attached). The overall attitude and tone taken towards the customer is that of total indifference and reeks of malpractice.
