How NOT to Run a Recall: Ask Sony

You'll remember that earlier this month I wrote about Sony's recall of 19 models in the VAIO TZ series notebooks manufactured between May 2007 and July 2008. Apparently, as the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission said:

Irregularly positioned wires near the computer’s hinge and/or a dislodged screw inside the hinge can cause a short circuit and overheating. Sony has received 15 reports of overheating, including one consumer who suffered a minor burn.

Yeah, well, that's all well and good (or bad, rather), but here's how it works (my wife's Vaio TZ-250 was among the recalled laptops):

Once you submit your information via their web form, Sony will call you and make an appointment for a technician to come out. The technician will come, take your system apart, and re-route the wiring.

They will then put the laptop back together.

Do not let them leave without testing it yourself!

At this point, my wife asked them if the laptop was working as it was when they arrived. They said "yes." The correct answer would have been "no."

When I arrived home, the laptop was booting fine, but the following was not:

• Wi-fi
  
• Bluetooth
• Fingerprint recognition
• Caps lock indicator
• Num lock indicator
• HDD indicator
• Touchpad (they should have picked up on this right away, if they'd bothered to check)

All that broken because he re-wired something? Well, I called into Sony Tech Support and found out a couple of things (it took an hour of my time, though):

• The techs they send out have been contracted for this purpose and have no product knowledge aside from the Sony tells them explicitly to do
• There is one cable under the touchpad that controls everything above --- he must have disconnected it and left it that way
  

After making another appointment, the tech came out and apparently fixed the cabling. However, wi-fi was not working. I had to (on the phone) help my wife re-enter the security key information, but it still wouldn't work.

The tech wanted to look at the router which I vetoed as there was nothing wrong with it. The Vaio was seeing the networks (running a draft-n 2.0 router so it sees two SSIDs) but it could not connect.

Finally, my wife told me it gave her a "service not started error." WTF? I told her to reboot the laptop. After it booted, it was able to connect to either the 2.4 Ghz or 5.0 Ghz network.

Still, it was ridiculous that I had to do this all over the phone. I'm working from memory (since my wife's laptop is Vista and I only have XP at work), and yet I can figure it out while the tech just stood there helplessly.

At least the laptop didn't explode (as previously with some Sony batteries), but since the TS person I spoke to told me the odds of a fire from the wiring were extremely low, I feel like I was "taken," wasting a lot of my time and my wife's as well.

Good job, Sony.