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from Losing (inter)face: Customer experience and its discontents
"This comes at a moment when the quality of American products, in both their design and construction, has never been higher, which only makes the deterioration in the quality of service that much more starkly apparent. "
How often is a good product ruined by poor service? I bought a clie, a lovely though tempermental bit of technology which drove me to phone up Sony where I was berated. hmmm. Will I buy sony again?
I had to send my Clié in for repair. Paid 100 bucks to get it done, too, since it was a broken screen and therefore out of warranty. I got it back with the screen repaired, but with new problems, like a jog dial that scrolls down, no matter which way you roll the dial, and a flickering, maddeningly random frontlight, and other controls and things that don't behave as they should.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine had a problem with his Palm, called them, they sent him another one. Easy.
Even though the Clie is a better product in many ways (in my opinion), I'll probably buy a Palm next time.
I recently bought a Clie SJ30 for my wife as a present for Christmas. Within 2 weeks of use it had developed a small crack on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. She had treated the Clie really carefully, so we are baffled as to how the screen got cracked, unless it was an invisible defect when we first got it, which became worse as the menu "button" was repeatedly used with the stylus. Sony will not accept this fault as a warranty claim, and I am therefore faced with the a repair cost of £150 when the device only cost me £180 originally. Don't buy a Sony, its not worth the risk. I've used Palm's for years, and never had any problems with reliability at all.
I handle my Clié SJ30 extremely carefully. It was dropped only once, because my classmate played with the phone-strap which held it securely, and forgot to push the connection back firmly, and I didn't notice the mistake. I was completely shocked when I saw the fragile device falling towards the hard floor with terminal velocity. It hit the floor with screen facing down. I picked it up, and the screen was COMPLETELY INTACT! The cap of the JogDial (tm) broke off the button, but I had crazy glue handy. Very reliable, durable, long battery time. No problems at all. Now I own the device since more than 1 year. AND it's REFURBISHED! Let's BUY Sony, but don't beat the brightness icon with the stylus, because it WILL develop a crack on the bottom-left. Calibrate the digitizer properly instead.