Sony Connect: How Not to Run a Content Site?
December 27, 2005
So far, my experience with Sony Connect has been pathetic. We bought my younger son a Sony MP3 player. On Christmas day, I signed up for Sony Connect, after installing the client software from the CD that came with the MP3 player. I then dutifully entered the code for the five free downloads that came with the MP3 player, along with a second coupon for two free downloads that I received from some other shopping. That gave us seven downloads. My son then picked four songs to download, we followed the instructions, tried to download them and—poof!—the download failed with a cryptic popup message. There was no way to abort the download, retrace our steps, or otherwise recover from the failure. The songs didn’t download, but our account was debited the four downloads.
So I dutifully found my way to a mechanism to contact technical support with the problem. I filled out the form with a description of the problem, and I also noted that this was not an auspicious start.
OK. This is technology. Shit happens. This is where customer support kicks in. Almost immediately, I get an email response saying they received my report, “Your question has been received. You should expect a response from us within 24 hours.” So far so good.
Unfortunately, this was 48 hours ago. Not a peep since.
So I dug out the auto-generated email just now. It includes a place to update the incident report via email, so I did. I wrote the following note, and I wonder what kind of response I will get now.
48 hours and no response…
So my initial attempt to use the site failed miserably, and now I have waited 2 days without a word of response.
Is this what I should expect in terms of quality of the service and customer response? I will wait a few more hours, but then you will lose my business for good.
I should note that I have historically been a big fan of Sony products. I have had Sony televisions, stereos, Walkmen, and other electronics that have served me really well. (I did have a miserable experience with a Vaio purchase this year, but I had decided that was an isolated incident…) But this experience with Sony Connect, so far, is really poor. Wouldn’t you imagine that they would have extra staffing around Christmas to deal with the many people who would do exactly what I did—configure a new MP3 player, join their service, and try to download a few tracks? And wouldn’t you imagine that they would be ready to respond in their promised timeframe when some of these connections predictably failed? Given the cost of acquiring new customers, wouldn’t Sony Connect want to do everything in its power to make these opportunities work well?
UPDATE: 72 hours after my initial contact, Sony Connect emailed me a work-around, but I haven’t tried it yet.
MUCH DELAYED UPDATE: I tried the workaround eventually, and it worked. But I was so unimpressed with the initial behavior and so put off by the customer support, that we never did any other business on that site. My son decided to rip his existing CDs onto the Sony MP3 player we bought him, and has made do with that. Now he is shopping for a new MP3 player, and is not looking at Sony. So even though the device is fine, the lack of a decent experience with the Web site made him give up on it right away, and now he is giving up on the device. This doesn’t bode well for the Sony eBook device, which apparently will require purchases of content through Sony Connect.
Posted by Bill Trippe at December 27, 2005 12:06 PM
