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Old 01-18-2010, 02:48 PM   #1
dubyajay
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Advice: do not buy a sony reader. Battery issues and support sucks

Where to begin? The sony reader is the most expensive paperweight ever. It doesn't work well as a doorstop, so it is a paperweight. It is useless as a reader because the battery doesn't last more than 400 page turns which means the only way to use it reliably is to be plugged into a wall. If you do buy one, be prepared for abominable and rude "support" in your futile attempt to make the expense worth it.

I pre-ordered the Sony reader in in August 2009. It arrived in mid-September. I was thrilled. No more toting around unwieldy books! It works pretty well with epubs if you can ignore the glare. Pdfs are extremely difficult to read because you have to make the text larger and you'll need to use the vertical and horizontal scrollbars to read a pdf set on 'large'. Ugh. The firmware is weak on too many levels to list, the glare is awful and it doesn't come with a wall charger so you have to pay extra for that. Works well only in full sunlight and if you're near a power source.

For epubs, it worked pretty well on the first charge. The second charge only gave me about 300 page turns - well short of the promised 7500 page turns. I went through the recommended steps to reset the unit. It still wouldn't hold a charge for more than 300 page turns. I went through this 3 or 4 more times. So since I didn't want to be plugged into a wall while reading, I reverted back to paper books.

In an effort to make my $299 worth the expense, I called sony "support" and they said to return it and they would send me a `refurbished' unit. I wasn't happy about the `refurbished' part, but my only other option was to live with it the way it was and eat the cost. So I packaged it up, went to the post office and paid for shipping and insurance to send it back.

A month later I received my `refurbished' unit. On the first charge, I got 400 page turns. Yes, that was an improvement over 300, but not by much and not even close the 7500 promised. I would have been happy with 2000 page turns but it didn't come close to that.

I mainly use the reader to read. I don't take notes, rarely use the dictionary and don't listen to music on it. I tried to reset the refurbished unit, but the reset button didn't work. So not only was the battery compromised but the reset button was broken. Back to the hell called sony support.

Since I'd paid for the shipping and insurance the first time, I asked if they could send a ups pickup ticket since the burden really ought to be on them at this point. They did. Or they said they did. I waited for 3 days for UPS to show up which they didn't because they never got the shipping label. So I called Sony `support' again. They re-issued another pickup. UPS never got that label either so they couldn't pick it up.

When I called sony "support" about this new issue, Rude Bernice insisted that they did send a pickup label and that UPS gave me wrong information. She insisted that sony did nothing wrong and it's ups's fault. She would not listen to anything I said, constantly interrupted and wouldn't let me speak to a supervisor. She claimed the issue was resolved, even though I (the customer) said it wasn't.

I still have the broken unit at my house and UPS is not coming to get it because Sony will not issue the right type of UPS ticket. I could just send it back at my cost, but that is $30 that I could be putting towards a kindle or nook, instead of this brick built by Sony.

So now I'm stuck with this piece o' crap that I paid $299 for. Plus the book cover and wall-charger. Total: $379 in Sony's pocket and I get nothing except a load of stress from Rude Bernice who really should be fired if what I saw was her best work. Or at the very least, given some training in customer service.

Now I have to go through the hassle of getting it to the hazardous waste facility to throw it out. Save yourself money and headache - do not buy a sony reader. Or any sony product, for that matter. Not only do their products suck, but their customer support makes Dell look like Zappos.
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Old 01-18-2010, 03:09 PM   #2
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Ouch! FWIW, my experience has been the polar opposite of yours. The charge lasts 2 weeks at about 2 hours +/- reading per day and the one time I needed to call Sony support they were very polite, helpful and resolved the (minor) problem I had. I'm sorry that you have had such a bad experience, but I think you are probably in the minority.

Jim
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Old 01-18-2010, 03:21 PM   #3
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What I find sometimes when dealing with support is to take a deeeeeep breath, have patience, and get ready for a long call.

Just out of curiosity, to ask a silly question, how long is it taking you to read the 300-400 pages?

If you are going through 1 reading cycle and the battery is completely dead by page 400, definitely defective. If it is taking a week or 2, it is perfectly normal as the device is still on even though you aren't using it.

As for Sony Support, I had a nightmare of a time upgrading the software with Windows 7. It took around 2 hours, the rep stayed on the phone with me the entire time until we were both satisfied that the issue was resolved.

Definitely hate to read stories like that, but as mentioned....this may be the exception to the rule.
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Old 01-18-2010, 03:23 PM   #4
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maybe try it at a sony store near you? they are verry friendly and helpful - at least here in manhattan.
i would try it again - but not on a monday ;-)

keep up hope

harry
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Old 01-18-2010, 03:46 PM   #5
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If you are happy with the reader and just upset about the battery being defective, you could always try purchasing just the battery. It's really much easier to change than you might think. When I first received my reader I took apart (it's just what I do and why people always say I should never buy nice things), and the battery isn't soldered in place or anything like that. In fact, it attaches to the circuit board with a relatively standard connector. To get at it, there are 4 screws on the outside of the case and then the back slides right out.

Anyways, that is obviously not the best solution and if your unit has a bad battery in it, then Sony should replace it. I'd give Harry's suggestion a try before you go through that. In addition, if you are completely unhappy with the device as a whole, it may be best to just cut your loses and sell the thing. It looks like a lot of new readers will be coming out soon, so it's probably not a bad time to be in the market for a different device.
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Old 01-18-2010, 03:57 PM   #6
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I've gotta admit, I'm curious about how you kept track of how many page turns you took. Do you keep a little notepad with you and make a little hash-mark every time you turn the page? Did you count other refreshes in there amongst your page turns? Did you also keep track of the time you spent reading each page?

I'm very intrigued by the process you went by in calculating this.
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Old 01-18-2010, 04:09 PM   #7
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Sorry to hear that you are disappointed; I, like most of the people here, are satisfied with their PRS600.

I manage to get at least two weeks without recharging, and I do a lot of browsing, searching, highlighting, jumping from one book to another, etc.

If you listen to music while reading, the battery doesn't last that long, but I can use my iPod for music, or my stereo. On the flip side, don't forget that the 7500 page turns are according to Sony's test measurements, in their lab. Like always, consumers cannot really reproduce those in real life, because there are several external factors. But, 400 pages is a small number.
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Old 01-18-2010, 04:19 PM   #8
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Not going to try to convince you here but on the off chance you do return it again or decide to junk it (which I suspect was just an overreaction on your part) I would defray a small portion of your cost by buying your stylus off of you. Sony has incredibly taken the position that I cannot acquire a replacement stylus under any circumstances from them...
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Old 01-18-2010, 04:41 PM   #9
dubyajay
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Jim,
You are SO lucky. Yeah. I don't listen to music on it or takes notes. I did maybe one dictionary lookup a day. I was just using it to read.

I probably wouldn't be so bummed or vocal about it if this hadn't been going on since November and if this weren't the second unit I'd received. I was hoping the third one would be as good as yours but it doesn't look like I'm going to be getting it because Sony won't acknowledge that their UPS system doesn't work the way think it does. What's really frustrating is they won't contact ups to fix it. They have issued three pick up tickets and UPS has not received any of them. I have talked with ups and they can't do anything about it. They just wait for the pickup labels to show up. So I have to keep calling Sony every three days and ask them to issue more because UPS didn't show up for the others. Meanwhile, my reader is sitting in a box.

I'm glad you had a good experience, but I will be doing my best to spread the word about Sony's poor quality reader and customer service. People need to know before buying and if I can convince just one person that Sony is not a good purchase, then I'm happy ;-)

WJ
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Old 01-18-2010, 04:43 PM   #10
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Doug - yes, many deep breaths, two months and two readers later. What I found with SOny support is they wouldn't listen to what I was saying. Oh well. No more sony products for me!
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Old 01-18-2010, 04:46 PM   #11
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Harry,
I live in the boonies of Maine. The nearest UPS store is 1-1/2 hours away. The nearest sony store is 4 hours. I already spent $379 on the worst product I've ever bought so I don't really want to spend the gas and time to buy another one. Once I recover from the lost money on this thing and nook figures out how to let me use it for library books, I'll be getting one of those.
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Old 01-18-2010, 04:47 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Laurentiu View Post
Sorry to hear that you are disappointed; I, like most of the people here, are satisfied with their PRS600.

I manage to get at least two weeks without recharging, and I do a lot of browsing, searching, highlighting, jumping from one book to another, etc.

If you listen to music while reading, the battery doesn't last that long, but I can use my iPod for music, or my stereo. On the flip side, don't forget that the 7500 page turns are according to Sony's test measurements, in their lab. Like always, consumers cannot really reproduce those in real life, because there are several external factors. But, 400 pages is a small number.
Do you work for Sony? ;-)
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Old 01-18-2010, 04:55 PM   #13
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Originally Posted by MelC View Post
Not going to try to convince you here but on the off chance you do return it again or decide to junk it (which I suspect was just an overreaction on your part) I would defray a small portion of your cost by buying your stylus off of you. Sony has incredibly taken the position that I cannot acquire a replacement stylus under any circumstances from them...
No...I don't think it was an overreaction. If this had been the first time I'd dealt with them on this issue, yes, it would be an overreaction. But I'm 2 months into it and this the second unit and it is worse than the first (reset button is broken too) and needs to be returned for a third.

Anyway, if Sony figures out how to get ups to pick up hte unit, I will be putting it on ebay. I need to recoup some of my costs.
If Sony can't figure that out, Send me your info and we'll figure out what the stylus is worth. Would you be interested in buying a wallcharger and red book cover too? ;-)
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Old 01-18-2010, 04:58 PM   #14
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Originally Posted by R0B_IX View Post
If you are happy with the reader and just upset about the battery being defective, you could always try purchasing just the battery. It's really much easier to change than you might think. When I first received my reader I took apart (it's just what I do and why people always say I should never buy nice things), and the battery isn't soldered in place or anything like that. In fact, it attaches to the circuit board with a relatively standard connector. To get at it, there are 4 screws on the outside of the case and then the back slides right out.

Anyways, that is obviously not the best solution and if your unit has a bad battery in it, then Sony should replace it. I'd give Harry's suggestion a try before you go through that. In addition, if you are completely unhappy with the device as a whole, it may be best to just cut your loses and sell the thing. It looks like a lot of new readers will be coming out soon, so it's probably not a bad time to be in the market for a different device.
Yeah. For $300 bucks I shouldn't have to do that. And two of them were bad. Not just one. i thought at first that I just got a bad one. But after the second one was bad too, I could only come to the conclusion that sony products suck.
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Old 01-18-2010, 05:02 PM   #15
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Do you work for Sony? ;-)
Nope! I'm just a happy customer who would buy their products over and over again, based on previous experience.
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