Sony PlayStation 4 "What a Pile of Junk" : How Sony's poor quality control will hand the next gen console crown to Microsoft and Nintendo

Today is launch day for PS4, today I have spent around 14 hours dealing with my broken Players Edition PlayStation 4 .. being told my issues were insignificant and being made to feel as insignificant as those issues... 

This not the article I expected to write, but today did give me a chance to look at the PS4 and Sony .. from the perspective of gamers who having secured their launch day consoles  find they are in possession of what amounts to a pile of junk ... a dead on arrival console .. 

The experience allowed me to evaluate and study Sony's Customer care department too .. as well as raise  questions about  their quality control and attitude to anyone challenging that quality control...

Is Sony living off past reputations of quality? That's a £349 question...What was the last Sony product you bought that did not fail? What was the last product you bought that failed on starting up? 

I purchased the £450  Players Edition of the PS4 : took many pretty pictures and then discovered there was a screw loose inside the console ... which several hours of talking to Sony staff , removing the hard drive .. which comes off in a very cool way I might add .. still could not reveal ...  

here is how to test for a loose screw rattling in your launch day PlayStation  4... 

At this point I spent several hours trying to get through to Sony , on launch day to get a replacement .. so much time was spent .. the replacement is set to arrive 4 days after launch .. which kind of scuppers all the work and play I had planned for the PS4 .. including getting head tracking working with Kill Zone Shadowfall...and hmd testing 

I was told I would get a call back from a manager .. which I did several hours later. Apparently my console was deemed functional though obviously flawed and we went over the same issues I went over several hours ago for another hour or so .. so this is Sony Customer care .. apparently I had not suffered sufficient grief for any form of compensation ... 

So I went back to testing the console : which had by now shredded my £55 worth KillZone Shadowfall Blu Ray .. because as well as the loose screw rattling around the entire Blu Ray drive was FUBAR : as you can hear and see in the following video ...

I would much have preferred to be talking games ... or the consoles features, but I think it is most important for those at Sony to listen to some negative feedback ... I am not here to sell PS4s after all... that's the job of the less mavericky liberal gaming media ...

I can see people holding off buying both the Xbox ONE and PS4 , there may be an initial bump .. but it will taper off towards Christmas .. and with Sony treating core gamers this way .. it was obvious talking to Sony Customer care that I am not the only one in this situation and the delay in getting my replacement suggests many collections and deliveries with functioning consoles are being made .. with the likes of MCV reporting "official" lines on replacing consoles.. 

It takes hours to get through , the staff are not suffiiciently empowered to solve individual problems , talking to a manager did not expedite my replacement and 

frankly Sony are on their way out if their quality control continues in this manner .. opening up the hard disk cover reveals that FOX CONN logo .. familiar to so many of us .. and that does not inspire confidence in these enlightened times ..

Economies of scale are all well and good, but having product destroy itself and take out expensive games in the process is not a good business model, nor is making people who actually work and play on these devices wait 4 days after launch day, people who have pre ordered more than half a year in advance.. 

Picking up the PS4 I was surprised how light the whole box was , including the camera and extra joypad .. normally I would say this is the better design, in fact I am sure I have done, joking as you will see in my Xbox ONE review how that machine looks and weighs like an old VHS machine .. the thing is .. the ONE works , is as solid as a tank .. and although some people have reported Blu Ray drive problems ( maybe Sony supplied those too right?) the big M have at least offered people who missed out on the launch day due to faulty machines a game at least ...  Sony do not seem to care , I am in fact supposed to feel lucky that I am getting a replacement .. complete and utter nonsense ..

When you buy something you expect it to work , no one would buy a 2nd hand console with a broken blu ray drive and a rattling screw inside .. no one would sell it even ..

My launch day Player's edition PS4 not only has a screw loose inside, a blu ray drive that cannot read discs ( therefore I can play online according to Sony this makes a functional console) it actually destroys discs ... very expensive PS4 game discs ... how is this not significant enough for compensation ? Care to answer Mr Yoshida or House san? 

So what can we deduce?  Sony have severe and significant quality control, production issues ( an entire Blu Ray drive does not come apart in transit ..it has to be flawed at the point of console design or construction) and customer care issues .. with staff clearly overwhelmed .. and that signals a larger number of console failures than Sony expected ... not the normal amount some in the media are using to mitigate this Sony FUBAR event.

I also have no time for console manufacturers trying to blame retailers or delivery firms for the damage .. there is not outer damage to my console as you can see in the videos above (more to follow) ... I don't think there is any damage .. I think there is a design or manufacture flaw, in the Blu Ray drive assembly. one that Sony should take heed of..

We can also start to wonder if the PS4 overall has design flaws .. it is the first Sony console I have had that runs louder than it's rival Microsoft console .. now that is a change for the books... The heat exhausts right over the cables .. so you cook your HDMI , Ethernet optical cables .. There is no vent I can see over the hard disk or topside fan .. it runs significantly hotter than the Xbox ONE .. to the touch .. 

The next gen console war has only just begun, a long time ago I joked about the battle between the Microsoft XBox One VHS machine vs the Sony PS4 Betamax ..  

In the history of tech, there are instances where the better hardware fails ... just like Betamax.. is Sony about to not learn from history and fail again ? 

Well that is up to them and how they deal with the poor quality control and inconvenience they are causing to their customers .. 

Later today I will attempt to contact Sony Customer care again to see if the console having destroyed my KillZone disc and the blu ray drive being the cause actually qualifies for anything other than what comes across as a condescending replacement ...at their own pace ..which keeps changing .. depending on how much you complain ( in the wrong direction) 

Boy I must sound like a totally biased Xbox fan boy..... fascinating... absolutely fascinating..

Well Mr Yoshida and House .. over to you .. come back Kaz..... 4 the playahs .....if only 4 the playahs ... 

and next up:


Sony PlayStation 4 Launch FUBAR update : DOA replacements delayed by overwhelmed courier and tech support : Or how I learned to stop worrying about the Console War and love the Xbox One ...

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Sony PlayStation 4 Launch FUBAR update : DOA replacements delayed by overwhelmed courier and tech support : Or how I learned to stop worrying about the Console War and love the Xbox One ...

CONTINUE? 

So today I spent some more quality time with Sony ... in emails and on the phone, at one point having to phone to remind them that they promised to phone me .. and what an interesting time it was ...

First a recap ...yesterday I spent the day with my new friends at Sony tech support chasing around a loose screw in my shiny new PlayStation 4 console ... it was decided it was a novel thing and perhaps I could live with it ...by the tech support ..oh these guys ... real jokers right? That was before it started making shredding noises when I inserted the KillZone Shadow Fall disk .. 

We engaged in interesting conversations and pondered great philosophical questions of the console age including " when is a dead console a dead console?"  and if one were to place a semi dead PS4 console and a cat in a box with a decaying poisonous isotope.. would that mean  the PS4 like Shroedingers cat would simultaneously be alive and dead but we could never tell what state ? That seems to be explanation the Sony tech support were giving me for the state of my launch day PS4...

Today one day later it was confirmed my console is no more.. Yesterday they did agree to replace it on Saturday, Monday then Tuesday ... entering the details after the phone call .. today I was told it would be collected on Wednesday and then looked at and maybe I would get a replacement several days (7 days) after that... they would also take the game and test that and maybe send another ... they would also be taking the piss n'est ce pas? This was AFTER I complained to the latest manager I was dealing with... one I was promised would expedite the matter but did not have the authority to do so as I found out or OK CONFIRMED several hours later...  

So phoning up to chase Sony had actually put me in a situation where THEY were going to take longer replace my console  or send a console and take my game!.. I don't know ...is this deliberate ? Are others being "threatened" with delayed console replacement if and when they complain?

Anyhoo I corrected the manager, and to his credit he confirmed my console would now be replaced on Tuesday .. so I was back where i started. 

To his credit he confirmed , the courier covering the replacements had been overwhelmed and on the launch day after a certain cut off point all replacements were knocked back after the weekend . This is why my replacement went from Saturday, to Monday to Tuesday and so have many others ..and beyond ...

They are hoping to have this FUBAR event solved sometime next week ...

The question is though why did no one hire a second courier? Damage is being done to Sony's reputation ....but how did this come about and how is this possible?

The answer is Sony's rigid hierarchy ... at each stage , a person can only do so much .. and that does not involve ..thinking outside the company guidelines ... so when you get through to the nice tech support they want to replace your console the next morning ...but they do not have the authority to do so ...so they pass you on to their manager who in turn cannot solve your problems because they do not have the authority to think outside guidelines and say solve a problem in real time like say employing more than one courier to deliver the stack of replacement PS4s .... 

Had they been able to,then I would be writing a very different article ... right now .. 

No .. the only people who can make such adjustments are the higher ups in head office ...but you know they will all be lauding up in post launch celebrations .. leaving the poor Sony workers defenceless against my retorts ...and of course with a mountain of replacement PS4s that are going nowhere soon..enough.. to quell the righteous anger of PS4 fans ...   

Would you believe even managers at tech support cannot handle compensation .. issues all of this has to be dealt with in writing to the "head office " the email . address and contact names of which I am still waiting for ... you know I am going right to the CEOs...

What I learnt today is the  hierarchical, compartmentalised   structure at Sony is a really potentially damaging aspect of their business model ... or it is deliberate ...so people can say I can only do so much ... which keeps complaints and problems away from higher ups...

There are obvious signs the Sony policy for replacement of DOA PS4s was going to run into problems... 

The use of only one courier to replace and collect the damaged PS4s ..  

The overwhelming number of failed consoles in the USA launch..

Strict staff guidelines that prevent them from expediting replacements 


Solutions 

You could hire more couriers to deliver the replacements and avoid further delays ... 

But this allegedly requires a higher up from HQ ... not available on the launch day it seems or bothered ...enough to check how the replacements were going or if the staff needed help... So who at Sony was in charge of the UK launch ? And why are they conspicuous by their absence ?

Tech staff need to stop blaming customers or patronising them ... we don't want sympathy ... we want what we paid for ... if Sony is not delivering on that ..someone outside Sony should investigate ..the issue is not one of Sony replacing faulty goods ...but why is Sony being allowed to introduce so many failed goods without adequate quality control ..using customers to pick out failed product when this should have been picked up back on the production line..We have rules against this sort of thing in the EU..

And by their own admittance (on line) Sony  seem to know about a significant batch of faulty PS4s... several signs point to this ... 

10000 DOA or faulty PS4s were in the USA launch pipe ... so we may see  a similar number for the EU launch ...perhaps more with an even larger user base .. Europe and it's dog loves the PlayStation brand...

Prominent Sony higher ups released pre launch day  PR blurb to  known sites announcing they were prepared for ...i.e EXPECTING mass failure rates... and had solid plans and stock to mitigate those launch issues ... except .. no one it seems managed to work out they needed adequate logistics to cater for that stack of failed PS4s... and the SOLE courier Sony had lined up was quickly overwhelmed by the demand for replacements..

The poor tech support guys and girls manning the trenches of the console war had no idea the number of failed consoles that were about to be uncovered ...through people having to buy them and try them ... and the thousands of faulty consoles having gotten by Sony Quality Control .. 

All whilst the higher ups from Yoshida san , to Mr House are in my personal experience of the Sony PlayStation 4 UK launch as hard to get hold of as that screw rattling around in my dead on arrival launch day PlayStation 4 ...

And the truth Ruth? The way Sony is structured such problems will only be redressed when higher ups get involved .. and I mean it's time to dish out some good will compensation ..you know Sony ...4 the players...

More to follow as I chase the higher ups...  

GAME OVER ?

this content is © and originated from thegameveda http://the-games-veda.blogspot.com/  if you are reading it from any other site that has not provided a link back it has been leached