Hey there, before I head into the problem I have with the support team I'll first put the technical problem I have with the phone down here. Since I will probably get carried away quickly with how poorly handled this was. So my Sony Xperia XZ of around 3-4 months old suddenly had a small line on the screen where the touchscreen didn't work anymore. The phone still looked brand new and had never been dropped. So as massive Sony fan I was a bit disapointed but oh well nothing/nobody is perfect. So as anybody in my case would do I contacted support to ask what to do.
My first contact with support was on 04/13/2018, the person on the other end asked me to try out a few things first before sending it in. So I installed the companion tool did a reset and all that to see if it would fix the issue. Unfortunately it did not and here is where things went pretty bad pretty quick. (Btw at this point as I am writting this I still haven't got my phone back, trust me I wouldn't be here if I had so please grab a snack and bear with me).
Next day I contacted support again to share my findings, to which the person on the other side replied that I would have to send it. So he or she gave me a link to the request page. This is where I bumped into the first problem. You have to select a language and country in order to continue, problem is that the "Continue" button wasn't working. So I was still in chat and shared the info. They asked me to try another time. Because the site might have some issues (Oh really ? Hadn't noticed). So I tried again during the weekend but no succes. Since I was expecting them to ask me to try in different browsers and on different devices I also tried all that (3 Different browsers and 4 devices) before the next chat.
So next chat was on the 16/04 (We already had contact like 4 times in between). As expected they asked about the other browsers. So I told them it didn't work no matter which browser or device (I even started wondering if it wasn't on prupose to avoid paying the sending fee but hey that's none of my business I guess hehe). The obvious solution here would be that they fill it in for me since I couldn't. Lucky me they actually came up with that solution too (woohoo). So he asked for my details to fill in the papers and said I would get a link to accept the request. New problem that link leads to the same page where you had to select a language and country, in other words no good either.
At this point there were 2 solutions he said, either wait for the site to work again (Which obviousely could take forever) or send it myself. So I asked if that would get refunded in some way but no. So yeah let's make the guy pay for something that clearly isn't his problem. I even looked up the error through inspect and provided it but only got a "We will make sure this gets to the right person to deal with". I forgot to mention that all of this is in France with the French team. For fun i thought I'd try the English chat too and the guy actually said within a sec after I told him the problem "No worries sir I can see your website error has been mentionned blabla". I mean do you really think I would believe that at this point ? Anyhow I moved on.
I sent the phone to one of the provided adresses and picked an old phone out of a box as a temporary replacement. However this one is proper old like several years so hard to get a proper signal let alone be reachable. Especially abroad, which I happened to be about 10 days later. But hey, I was like they'll probably have it fixed by then. How foolish I was believing that..
The 24/04 before my trip abroad I opened a session again to get an update on things I would be leaving at the end of the week.
Quick side note : I had to open a chat each time to get an update since the IMEI option on their website wasn't getting updated. Which make me think why have a tool like that ? The person I am chatting with cans ee the status with the same amount of data but I can't ? Why have a system that you don't update.
Another quick side note : My phone's status still doesn't appear on it over a month later, this is almost impressive at this stage..
Back to the story : The phone arrived but nothing happened yet. It has been sitting there for a week. Guess no phone while abroad, terrific when you have a business to manage.
Tried again 6 days later 30/04 still nothing.
When I got home a week later again I was sort of expecting there would be a message from the delivery service that they came but couldn't find anyone etc. But no, not even an e mail, so still no phone. It's been over a month guys 11/05 I contacted support again and I have to admit I went a bit harder on the other person this time which is not something I like to do but I was done. She threw some lines at me which i knew were to try and calm me down or avoid chatting further so I just went against (Sort of felt bad to be honest). Also asked why they didn't just send a new phone ? I mean it's pretty much a brand new phone I sent.. In any case she would speed up the process.
19/05 Contacted again, actually fell on the same person. This time no times/locations or dates just "We have speeded up the process" "Someone will be in touch we you quickly". Few days later still nothing..
Still here ? Congrats you've earned a cookie.
Anyhow, I am definetly not happy with how this went and am still waiting for something that shouldn't be that difficult to fix..
Thanks for reading me !
Stan
