I believe sony practices unfair and deceptive business practices. Fraud is the legal term. Read on about how sony avoids their customers through lack of response to complaints, zero customer service and a same as cash scam.
Sony has ZERO customer service. A word of advice... Don't purchase expensive merchandise over the internet. I financed a television through Sony Financial Services (SFS) in what was described as a "180 days same as cash" financing program.
I never received any information about my finacial relationship with SFS. Not even a bill. I called 45 days after I'd made the purchase to see if I could obtain a bill. That is when I first learned how thoroughly horrible SONY's customer service is.
Here's what they do: they take your information, name, telephone number, address. Then they tell you they have to schedule a call back which you should receive within 48 hours. I called them at least 15 times over a period of EIGHT months... That's about 240 days... And never never never recieved a call back. I have an answering machine, I gave them a work number so they could call me there... Actually... I insisted they call me there. I wanted to pay my debt. No one called... And the phone number for them that I was given isn't customer service... It's their calling service. YOU CAN NOT CALL CUSTOMER SERVICE DIRECTLY.
Meanwhile I wrote them letters... To every address I could come up with... Obtained over the internet, through interrogations of their crappy customer service calling service staff... Finally... 8 months of work paid off... I was contacted by a SFS financial agent who discussed my problem with me, arranged for me to pay the original debt (without finance or interest fees) if I paid the debt within the month... The catch here was that she said they would send me a bill. Do you know when I got the bill? Yes, your right... After the due date.
Yet another scam Sony has come up with is a "same as cash" finance program. Well... If you don't get a bill you can't exactly send them any payment within the time period allotted as "same as cash".
It was through my tenaciousness that I obtained any bill at all and paid my debt. I made several payments over the 8 month period without contact from SONY. I still have never received a bill that showed even one of these credits. I demanded they write a letter stating I had a zero balance on my account, thankfully they sent me the requested letter.
This is not over. What they did may also have been illegal. If this was a revolving account (which I have no idea because they never gave me any information on my account)... There's a little thing called the FAIR CREDIT BILLING ACT... It's a federal law, read about it on the federal trade commission's website (http://www.ftc. Gov). It requires creditors to promptly credit accounts and send bills. Subsequently I've reported SFS' actions to the FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION (FTC). The FTC will also take my complaint and forward it on to any other agency that has jurisdiction. Even if there is no current recourse for their actions, the FTC identifies fraudulent business practices and puts the wheels in motion to stop scams like these.
I've also reported SFS to the BBB in NJ, MI and NY where I had obtained addresses for SFS. BBB was no help, they told me they did not have enough information on my complaint and closed the complaint. Did they ask me for more information? No, they did not. I've had more success hassling the companies who have ripped me off in the past and quoting the laws to them regarding my complaint (AT&T, SPRINT) than going through the BBB. The BBB is slow and I doubt they really care what the outcome of your complaint is. But... If you have a complaint about a company it is still a good idea to report them to the BBB because they have a nice little database they keep all complaint... So SFS has gotten a couple more records in the database through my efforts... Hopefully that information will be of assistance to other consumers ripped off by SONY.
There's also state government resources called THE ATTORNEY GENERAL's OFFICE... I submitted a complaint to the NJ Attorney General's Office.
I shall never buy anything associated with SONY CORPORATION and I will not rest until they are taken to task by the federal and state goverments for their fraudulent practices. I'll take a page from The Big Lebowski here and end this by saying "This will not stand, man."
Connie
Austin, Texas
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