Customer Service Done Wrong

Last November, I resolved to never buy any music published, distributed, and/or associated with Sony BMG. With their massive Charlie Foxtrot by installing rootkits onto computers just by playing a music CD, I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw a building. Keeping your intellectual property safe is one thing. Violating customer privacy and security was something quite different.

And now, after what Megan has been going through just to get a box delivered to her, not even a full one but an empty box, I'm simply going to never purchase a Sony product. Ever. Period. The real money shots come in the updates down at the bottom of the post.

Update They left me on hold for an hour, then hung up on me. I'm starting to believe it is deliberate.

Update II The plot thickens. It seems the reason I haven't gotten my second box is that . . . Sony has no record of ever having sent one.

Update III That's right. Apparently the somewhat English challenged help-desk interpreted "Okay, send me a box" as "I'll call you back" and put my request in the circular file.

Customer service is not rocket science. Yet this story displays a basic ignorance of the entire topic, and, when compared to the complete failure to properly resolve the XCP rootkit scandal, suggest that the incompetence is systemic throughout the corporate hierarchy rather than simply isolated incidents.

So yes. I will never have to worry about Sony VAIO customer service, for I will never again be a customer of Sony.

(Fortunately for the geek in me, rumor has it that Sony's PS3 lost the exclusivity contract with Squaresoft, the makers of the Final Fantasy series, after the extraordinary difficulties of the BluRay backlog. So I won't have to miss out on Final Fantasy XIII due to my self-imposed boycott.)

(I was wondering how I would sneak Megan's suggested googlebomb into this post. Amazing that I was actually able to do so!)