Sears tech arrives to service Sony HDTV and asks...

"Mack McKinnon" wrote in
message ...

"Dave Gower" wrote in message
...

"Mack McKinnon" wrote in
message ...
..."What's a CableCard?" I kid you not.

This is the kind of scary story that has got me thinking maybe I should
go conservative and get a CRT-based HDTV until microdisplays are sorted
out better. My 5-year old 36 inch Sony direct view CRT has soldiered on
like a fridge, so I guess I'm spoiled when it comes to reliability.

Happily, (knock on wood) nothing serious has gone wrong with my Sony set
so far. The problems I had the Sears tech out about are more annoyances
than anything else. And, within the first year, I could also call Sony
for a service call and hope that their warranty tech knows more than the
Sears guy did.

mack
austin
Sorry Mack, Sony won't service their products if you bought it from Sears.
Sears buys from Sony and pays less because they do the service. I speak
from experience. I had one of the early lcd projectors which had bad
bulbs. Sony was about to send me a replacement bulb but didn't because I
bought it from Sears. Murray

"Mack McKinnon" wrote in
message ...

"Dave Gower" wrote in message
...

"Mack McKinnon" wrote in
message ...
..."What's a CableCard?" I kid you not.

This is the kind of scary story that has got me thinking maybe I should
go conservative and get a CRT-based HDTV until microdisplays are sorted
out better. My 5-year old 36 inch Sony direct view CRT has soldiered on
like a fridge, so I guess I'm spoiled when it comes to reliability.

Happily, (knock on wood) nothing serious has gone wrong with my Sony set
so far. The problems I had the Sears tech out about are more annoyances
than anything else. And, within the first year, I could also call Sony
for a service call and hope that their warranty tech knows more than the
Sears guy did.

mack
austin
Sorry Mack, Sony won't service their products if you bought it from Sears.
Sears buys from Sony and pays less because they do the service. I speak
from experience. I had one of the early lcd projectors which had bad
bulbs. Sony was about to send me a replacement bulb but didn't because I
bought it from Sears. Murray

"Mack McKinnon" wrote in
message ...

"Dave Gower" wrote in message
...

"Mack McKinnon" wrote in
message ...
..."What's a CableCard?" I kid you not.

This is the kind of scary story that has got me thinking maybe I should
go conservative and get a CRT-based HDTV until microdisplays are sorted
out better. My 5-year old 36 inch Sony direct view CRT has soldiered on
like a fridge, so I guess I'm spoiled when it comes to reliability.

Happily, (knock on wood) nothing serious has gone wrong with my Sony set
so far. The problems I had the Sears tech out about are more annoyances
than anything else. And, within the first year, I could also call Sony
for a service call and hope that their warranty tech knows more than the
Sears guy did.

mack
austin
Sorry Mack, Sony won't service their products if you bought it from Sears.
Sears buys from Sony and pays less because they do the service. I speak
from experience. I had one of the early lcd projectors which had bad
bulbs. Sony was about to send me a replacement bulb but didn't because I
bought it from Sears. Murray

You can probably "use" the four hours pressure washer training for the next
10 years, while any training on a particular piece of electronics gear or
even technology will be out of date within months. There's no way for the
techs to be up to speed on every piece, but they should be able to have
quick access to good support. That's where a company like Sony miserable
fails, to get someone on the phone that knows what he's talking about is
impossible. You are just getting stuck pushing buttons on a phone, and
that's all.


"curmudgeon" wrote in message
...
Have no doubt you're right, Art...but how sad.
I work part-time at Home Depot and they are obsessed with training...right
down to part-timers.
So...I get 4 hours of training on pressure washers which cost $500(on
company time btw)...and too many electronics techs get none.
Like I said, sad.


"Art" wrote in message
...
Problem is endemic in the whole service business. The manufactures are
not giving appropriate training on their new products and expect the
techs to gain the knowledge by assumption. The employers are just as
frivolous about training on the newer technologies expecting techs to
learn at their own expense on their own time. The question does not
surprise me at all, sad to say. Yea, technicial training manuals and
materials can be downloaded for the manufacturer's respective sites and
the techs can read, print, to ignore that source of information. Again,
NOT on COMPANY TIME per many BEAN COUNTERS!! They just want the total
number of completes going up regardless of the increase of complex nature
of the new technologies being introduced into the consumer electronics
marketplace.
"dg" wrote in message
om...
"Mack McKinnon" wrote
in message ...
As he left, he said, "Thanks for letting me learn on your time."
Almost funny. He gave me a receipt for the warranty visit. According
to the receipt, that visit was $144, which, I presume, gets billed by
Sears to Sony. If Sony is putting up with that, no wonder they're
going broke!

I doubt that Sears bills Sony. You did pay for a "Sears" 3 year
warranty right? The warranty program within sears probably pays that
$144.

--Dan

"Hasenpfeffer" wrote in message
. com...
You can probably "use" the four hours pressure washer training for the
next 10 years, while any training on a particular piece of electronics
gear or even technology will be out of date within months. There's no way
for the techs to be up to speed on every piece, but they should be able to
have quick access to good support. That's where a company like Sony
miserable fails, to get someone on the phone that knows what he's talking
about is impossible. You are just getting stuck pushing buttons on a
phone, and that's all.

At least the guy who came out from Sears had someone he could call back at
the office, which he did. But the first guy he got on the phone obviously
knew as little as he did so he asked for someone else who he thought would
know more. The second person he talked to at least knew how to look up my
TV set's model and serial number to find out if they had a firmware update
for it, how to get it etc.

Still, by now, you would think that they would be past the point where a
service tech would have to ask the customer, "What's a CableCard?" A
ten-minute orientation in one of their stores, looking at the back of TV
sets, would have gotten him beyond that level.

mack
austin

Funny you should mention this. I called comcast about getting a cable card
for my 62725. It's my first experience with HDTV so I'm learning as I go.
Anyway, the lady tells me that I can pick up the card at my local comcast
office and that I need to subscribe to hd AND digital service from comcast.
Fine. Local comcast office is 1.5 miles away...no biggie. I'll wait until
tomorrow(Wednesday).

I get there and it's total kaos!! I'm standing in line, 6 deep, 2 lanes and
it's come to my attention that they're out of cable boxes!! hehe people are
****ED. This is 2 days before the weekend and the nfl championships!! Long
story short (sorry to ramble)I finally make it up to the counter and request
my cable card and the fact that I'd like to subcribe to digital and hd tv.
The lady informs me that I don't need to subscribe to digital to get HD and
that they do NOT hand out cable cards. Hmmm...Comcast, a company selling
communication, isn't. You have to schedule an appointment and have one
installed!!! UUUUGGGGHHHHH!! Now I know how the people that left without
cable boxes feel!! I drive home.

I call back. Complain. They say they'll have a tech out by 11am Friday.
I'm there at 10am. Cable truck pulls up at 11:30. Not bad. Guy comes in
and says, "Hi, I'm here to install your cable card. Of which, I only have
ONE and I've never installed any." Damn. I have friends coming over on
Sunday to watch the games and I get a tech that has NEVER installed a cable
card, only has one left and the local comcast is out of cable boxes. Glad I
have a pet rabbit. I rubbed his foot, and showed the guy where to push the
card in on the back of the set. I show him the procedure to initialize. We
then turn it on. It fires up, he calls and gives the person on the other
end a bunch of codes. The card downloads. We turn the set off and
on....BINGO, HDTV.

Sometimes things work out. The games where fantastic. The reception and
the dolby sound blew me away. Unfortunately, my friends are returning for
the superbowl:-(

Don



"Mack McKinnon" wrote in
message ...
..."What's a CableCard?" I kid you not.

Having heard so much about how good Sears tech service was, I bought their
3-year warranty along with my Sony KDF-60XS955 TV. Sure enough, it was no
problem at all to arrange to have a tech come out to check out my TV. I
had been told that there was a firmware update for the TV and I also have
been having an occasional "CableCard Error 161-6" problem and a couple of
other little things.

This guy -- nice guy, very earnest, wanted to be helpful -- had to ask me
what a CableCard was. He had never heard of one. Had, apparently, never
seen my model TV before and had no knowledge of it whatsoever. I don't
think there was one thing that we discussed that he knew anything about.

But he did call back to his office, found out that, yes, there was a
firmware update. It comes on a memory stick, which they are mailing to me
and he is going to come back out next week to do the update. I asked him
why we needed to do that, since there are supposed to be on-screen
instructions, so what do we need him for, since he doesn't know any more
about it than I do? He said that, well, if I didn't mind waiting until he
got there, he'd like to watch while I did it. OK. I made him a CD copy
of some .pdf downloads I had of all the CableCard error codes.

As he left, he said, "Thanks for letting me learn on your time." Almost
funny. He gave me a receipt for the warranty visit. According to the
receipt, that visit was $144, which, I presume, gets billed by Sears to
Sony. If Sony is putting up with that, no wonder they're going broke!

mack
austin

"Hasenpfeffer" wrote in message
. com...
You can probably "use" the four hours pressure washer training for the
next
10 years, while any training on a particular piece of electronics gear or
even technology will be out of date within months. There's no way for the
techs to be up to speed on every piece, but they should be able to have
quick access to good support. That's where a company like Sony miserable
fails, to get someone on the phone that knows what he's talking about is
impossible. You are just getting stuck pushing buttons on a phone, and
that's all.

I assume you are referring to Sony support from a consumer's perspective.
As a servicer, I find that Sony has some of the best support for techs.
Most companies don't do much training at all anymore and have tech support
that knows less than we do about the equipment and technology. Sony,
Mitsubishi, and Hitachi have some of the best. As a consumer, however, you
are stuck with the telephone answerers who just read from a flowchart or a
script to address FAQs.

As I have said many times, the quality of service on any particular brand is
going to depend most on the local service provider. A good tech who keeps
current on the technology and most frequently services your particular
product, and who is a factory ASC will usually be your best choice. Better
yet, but more rare, is to have a dealer with this capability.

Leonard

What you describe here was pretty much the situation when I got a CableCard
from Time-Warner Austin. They sent a tech out to "install" the card. He
showed up with one but had never installed one before, so he and I learned
together, using the manual. It took two days and two more techs plus
whoever was working on it back at the office for them to get the CableCard
(well, a second one, actually) and their equipment back at the office
synchronized enough to get the HD up and running. Then more tweaking a week
later to get it right. And there are still occasional drop-outs and
CableCard errors.

mack
austin



"M-Tech" wrote in message
...
Funny you should mention this. I called comcast about getting a cable
card for my 62725. It's my first experience with HDTV so I'm learning as
I go. Anyway, the lady tells me that I can pick up the card at my local
comcast office and that I need to subscribe to hd AND digital service from
comcast. Fine. Local comcast office is 1.5 miles away...no biggie. I'll
wait until tomorrow(Wednesday).

I get there and it's total kaos!! I'm standing in line, 6 deep, 2 lanes
and it's come to my attention that they're out of cable boxes!! hehe
people are ****ED. This is 2 days before the weekend and the nfl
championships!! Long story short (sorry to ramble)I finally make it up to
the counter and request my cable card and the fact that I'd like to
subcribe to digital and hd tv. The lady informs me that I don't need to
subscribe to digital to get HD and that they do NOT hand out cable cards.
Hmmm...Comcast, a company selling communication, isn't. You have to
schedule an appointment and have one installed!!! UUUUGGGGHHHHH!! Now I
know how the people that left without cable boxes feel!! I drive home.

I call back. Complain. They say they'll have a tech out by 11am Friday.
I'm there at 10am. Cable truck pulls up at 11:30. Not bad. Guy comes in
and says, "Hi, I'm here to install your cable card. Of which, I only have
ONE and I've never installed any." Damn. I have friends coming over on
Sunday to watch the games and I get a tech that has NEVER installed a
cable card, only has one left and the local comcast is out of cable boxes.
Glad I have a pet rabbit. I rubbed his foot, and showed the guy where to
push the card in on the back of the set. I show him the procedure to
initialize. We then turn it on. It fires up, he calls and gives the
person on the other end a bunch of codes. The card downloads. We turn
the set off and on....BINGO, HDTV.

Sometimes things work out. The games where fantastic. The reception and
the dolby sound blew me away. Unfortunately, my friends are returning for
the superbowl:-(

Don



"Mack McKinnon" wrote in
message ...
..."What's a CableCard?" I kid you not.

Having heard so much about how good Sears tech service was, I bought
their 3-year warranty along with my Sony KDF-60XS955 TV. Sure enough, it
was no problem at all to arrange to have a tech come out to check out my
TV. I had been told that there was a firmware update for the TV and I
also have been having an occasional "CableCard Error 161-6" problem and a
couple of other little things.

This guy -- nice guy, very earnest, wanted to be helpful -- had to ask me
what a CableCard was. He had never heard of one. Had, apparently, never
seen my model TV before and had no knowledge of it whatsoever. I don't
think there was one thing that we discussed that he knew anything about.

But he did call back to his office, found out that, yes, there was a
firmware update. It comes on a memory stick, which they are mailing to
me and he is going to come back out next week to do the update. I asked
him why we needed to do that, since there are supposed to be on-screen
instructions, so what do we need him for, since he doesn't know any more
about it than I do? He said that, well, if I didn't mind waiting until
he got there, he'd like to watch while I did it. OK. I made him a CD
copy of some .pdf downloads I had of all the CableCard error codes.

As he left, he said, "Thanks for letting me learn on your time." Almost
funny. He gave me a receipt for the warranty visit. According to the
receipt, that visit was $144, which, I presume, gets billed by Sears to
Sony. If Sony is putting up with that, no wonder they're going broke!

mack
austin