After reading that page while listening to the conversation, I have a different take on this, gpw. This guy is pissed about being jerked around and he's looking for recorded evidence and drama about the situation. I agree that he may be stupid for buying a PS3 in the first plac
Oh, I get what he's
trying to do, I'm just saying he pretty much found the worst possible way of going about it. I originally found this article on digg, and the comments there were a mixed bag ranging from "Sony sucks" to "This guy is a jackass". My opinion is lying somewhere in the middle.
Yeah, he "might" have been jerked around, but he left himself open to this. This is what happens when you read sensationalist blogs like The Consumerist every day and take what they say to heart. I'm fully with him up until he starts acting like a complete jackass. His initial correspondence with a supervisor didn't go well, so what does he do? Puts all his faith in the power of the internet. Yes, it might work, but he's sacrificing so much more time than he has to.
Here's how you deal with any CSR if you know what you want is hard to get: You call, you get their name right away and refer to them by their name. You don't yammer on about shit that has nothing to do with your problem "And another thing...there's no fucking games for the console...blah blah" but make little small talk while the guy is looking up your information and shit. You want to be as pleasant as possible without being a pushover. If the CSR can't help you, you politely point out that you think you've exhausted all options at this level and you'd like to speak with their supervisor....you keep doing this until you get as high as you possibly can up the ladder and someone can either help you or give you a definite answer of "no one can do this for you without completely changing company policy". If that happens you either drop it or you send an email to someone higher up. You either get what you want, or you waste a few hours.
This guy is all over the fucking place. He's audibly pissed off, threatening a CSR who does not care in the slightest about whether or not 100 people on the internet are claiming to never buy another Sony product, and wasting so much fucking time on the lowest possible level. What does he even hope to accomplish? To record the guy saying that it probably doesn't void the warranty to have dust in there? That in itself doesn't accomplish shit, because if Sony works like almost every other company out there, the CSR has no say over warranty validity, the techs do...that's their job and people higher up can overrule them, but a CSR can't. So what it comes down to is he's trying to get a recording of this guy saying that dust will not violate the warranty...which again does shit all since as it was said, there is a clause in the warranty stating that 'acts of god and neglect' are not covered. Appropriately vague. Notice how it also doesn't say filling the console up with caulk will violate the warranty. So what it comes down to is he has a recording of a CSR saying basically "Dust should not violate the letter of the warranty, but I haven't seen it and the techs make that call based on when they open up the console. The letter of the warranty leaves room for them to make this call." Great job. Even if the guy flat out said that it's not neglect it doesn't fucking matter. He hasn't seen it and it's not his call. Entrapping or tricking a misinformed employee from an entirely different branch of corporate infrastructure in no way constitutes a legal agreement. Sony has so much room to play with that the only easy way to get his shit done is be nice and reasonable. He might be able to do it this way, but in the end he'll spend so much time and effort it's not even worth the $150.
As for phone conversations being taped, it varies from place to place. How it should work is that if a company is taping a conversation you are a part of you should have equal access to the recording, but it doesn't work that way. Instead according to the state and country you live in there are different rules. Some states have no laws about this, and some places (like Canada in general) have deal with non-concentrically acquired recorded evidence on a case to case basis according to context. My general point is that the method he uses (which I've seen before) to get around the consent aspect of it where he lives is entirely pointless since it's very easy for ANYONE to argue it wasn't clear enough at all.
