At the onset of this letter let me ascertain this fact to you that I am and will always be an ardent and loyal fan of SONY. In my formative years as a student, the biography of Mr Akio Morita, Made in Japan, was my inspiration of sorts, for thinking “out of the box” and for delivering consistent Quality. I still remember the day I bought my first “Walkman”, Oh what a feeling! Then I went on to buy music systems, Televisions, Cordless phones, countless floppy disks, even more CDs and DVDs, my first and only PSP and so on and so forth of only Sony. Despite of all this I somehow had never bought a Sony Mobile phone and a Cybershot camera, but when you launched the ‘Xperia Z’ with the tag line, ‘The best of Sony in a smart phone’ it got me interested infact really interested when you guys made it water resistant. Let me tell you now that I am a Chef and so far almost all my mobile phones have, at some time or the other been adversely affected because of the fact that I sweat a lot. Now I had a phone which would solve this problem and as it is I was looking for a future ready phone which can replace my Blackberry. To top all this I was getting the Amazing Cybershot technology in a 13 MP Full HD Camera which came in the Xperia Z. Now I am also an avid amateur Photographer, I do a lot of food photography with my DSLR. But it is not possible to carry one around in my kitchens all the time because of its bulk. Well Xperia Z solved that problem also for me, and what got me even more excited was the fact that I can do a lot of experimentation with my photography making full use of the phone’s water resistant properties. I had done a lot of research on the net before taking the plunge into buying this phone (I was considering the Samsung Galaxy S4, the HTC One and the Iphone 5). I saw demos and videos of the phone in exhibitions where the phone was dunked in water, slammed to the ground, scratched and brutalized in un-imaginable ways. There was even on shop in some country where they had a beautiful model in a shower cubicle having a bath and talking on the phone. Boss this was very impressive!! So I took the plunge and bought the phone, I even waited for 15 days to get the Black color piece. During that fortnight the Samsung Galaxy S4 was launched, I was not and still am not impressed with that phone, for me Xperia Z had everything that I wanted. Finally I got that phone on 22nd of March 2013. > I was smiling all the way home from the Croma Shop in Fort, Mumbai from where I purchased the phone. It really is a remarkable phone, and I am a total gadget freak. In just a few days I knew more about the Android OS than my friends who have been using it for the past few years, thanks to the fantastic Sony Interface. On the first day itself I did what most Xperia Z phone owners would do, I did the “Water Test”. I felt again like the 14 year old who had bought his first Sony “walkman”, now I had a Walkman, Cybershot and Android all in one sexy Package. Thank you Thank you Thank you for this wonderful wonderful thing. > But now the Fairytale ends. Two weeks back I had gone on a vacation with my family to Goa and on the first day itself the phone stopped working. I did take a short video of my children in the pool with some water splashing on the phone. It has become a habit for me that when ever I would take the phone in my hands I would automatically press all the port doors to make sure that they are closed firmly even though I had not opened any one of them. Well I took the photos and kept the phone in the bag. After an hour or so I tried to see the photos but the screen would not come on, I tried to hard boot the phone and the screen did come on but switched off immediately. My wife could see my face going white. I immediately opened the ports and I saw “red”. The water indicator strips had turned red. The phone didn’t switch on at all for the entire trip. After I came back to Mumbai, the first thing I did was to take the phone to the Authorized Service centre at Mumbai Central, Digicomp Complete Solution Ltd. The lady behind the desk straight away said that the warranty of the phone is voided as the phone has got water ingress damaged so the phone will not be replaced. Well I know the fine print of the terms and condition did mention that, but some how I feel cheated with that remark. My whole criterion behind buying the phone was its water resistant feature. If you have the means to check your surveys which I was asked to fill up twice through the Sony Privilege app on the phone, the reason for buying this phones have been the brand SONY, the cyber shot and the water resistance feature. Well this was not the end of my woes, the lady at the counter went on to say that their service centre is not authorized to open the phone and they can only try to repair it with some software. Another customer was being handed back his Xperia Z phone which also had water damage saying that his phone is beyond repair. His phone was only a month old. He was pleading to repair the phone even if it costs money. But he was told that nothing can be done. This really was scary. A phone which claims to be water resistant gets water damaged and is irreparable!! Well I was also told the same thing, I also requested that please try to repair the phone. But alas I also got the same reply yesterday after more than a week that my phone cannot be repaired. I was told by the service centre people that I will have to pay 80% of the market value of the phone and I will be given a new phone, do you actually think someone will spend almost INR 30,000/- again on a phone which is flawed? On the sly one of the employees of the centre told me that the phone can be repaired in the grey market easily. What are you people doing? > Three weeks back the Xperia Z Ultra was launched in Mumbai at the Taj Mahal Hotel. I am a chef at this same hotel. I met the representatives of Sony there thanking them for the brilliant Xperia Z they had introduced. I was the first person to buy this phone in Taj and now on my recommendation there are at least 10 owners in this hotel itself. All this was prior to my vacation when the phone got damaged. I am in half a mind to call some of the media people there whom I knew and tell them about the false information given about the Xperia Z. Your Promos for the Xperia Z Ultra have gone a step ahead and have actually shown a model filming his dog from under the water inside a swimming pool!! God help the people who buy that piece of misinformation and pity them when they have to go thru the distress of realizing that their phone cannot be repaired. > > To cut the story short, I need help and answers from SONY. Why did you claim for the phone to be something that it is not? As was my first line of this letter, I am and will be a loyal SONY customer, but I want to negate all the people around me who told me after my phone got spoilt that Sony is not a phone manufacturer so I should have never bought a Sony phone. Thankfully I was saved from the trauma of not loosing my data due to the brilliance of Android and the backups I had created online. > I am hoping to receive a befitting reply to this letter / request / complain (whatever you may feel this is). If I don’t get a reply then I shall be forwarding this letter to my friends in the press, and to the various websites dealing with Sony Xperia Z and my personal blogs and of course to the consumer courts. > > regards > Raghu Deora
