Hello, I have had this fault happen to 5 of my Ultra Z phones.
After the 2nd & 3rd instance, I realised that the phones simply broke down without being dropped or mishandled.
The phone simply failed to work when removed from one's pocket.
It was working when put in there, or placed on the table etc.
With horror one was presented with a phone screen lit up as normal, yet USELESS as it will not respond to touch.
It got so bad that I bought TWO Ultra Zs each time, because I feared the breakdown would happen again whilst away abroad etc., ( which it DID , whilst on a trip across USA, leaving us without comms)
My "spare" Ultra Zs finally ran out, and I was left phone-less.
So I was forced to purchase a new Ultra Z from a seller in Glasgow this week, just to maintain phone services.
It cost me £180, boxed, new, with all accesories.
4 of my failed Ultra Zs were meantime shipped to Sony for repair/replace. So far so good.
Then Today Sony tell me to repair each phone they want £254.56
I tried Sony chat line to attempt to reduce the repair costs, or perhaps replace them FOC, but was told "no more can be done"
In all this has taken days of wasted time and huge inconvenience for me. Sony, you now have a very very sad customer here.
This year alone I spent over £ 3,600 on their Ultra Z phones, audio & lens accessories. A drop in their mighty ocean I suppose?
However to this long-term, loyal Sony customer, it is a lot of money.
Being forced to spend another £1000 or so just for repairs to virtually new phones is unacceptable to me.
Does anyone at Sony care?
Kind regards.
P.S.,
I am/was/have been a Sony customer for all of their various product genres, expecting & previously finding them to be the best, and most reliable pieces of technology available.
As a qualified design and manufacturing engineer with wide experience in telecomms fields, it is my considered opinion that the Ultra Z has a poorly designed chassis which is quite incapable of giving adequate physical lateral stiffness to the delicate glass components crucial to screen operation by touch. This is why they crack and ultimately fail to operate.
For my remaining 2 working Ultra Z phones I am designing and manufacturing a rugged casement, from billet Duralumin and Titanium, which will prevent the phone being "bent" in normal use. Sony themselves do NOT make a case .
Sony appear to have abandoned us customers to the worst case ( sic pun ) scenario- a delicate, unreliable product.
