Surprising warranty service (kudos to Sony)

[cartman]

Back around Christmastime in 2007, I bought a new Sony Bravia LCD TV, as well as their STR-DA5300ES A/V receiver. Both of them have worked like a champ since I got them set up and tuned for the room. Hooked up one HDMI cable from the receiver to the TV, and the only HDMI into the receiver was my DirecTV box. Everything else was connecting via component, composite or S-Video and then up-converted to go out over the HDMI connection.

I recently bought an Xbox 360 with Kinect, and now was able to connect the Xbox via HDMI. However, there seemed to be some sort of HDMI handshake/negotiation problem between the XBox and the receiver. No matter which port I used or cable I plugged in, the picture and audio kept cutting out every 10 to 15 seconds. If I plugged from the Xbox straight into the TV, no issue. I also tried hooking my laptop with HDMI out to the receiver, and it exhibited the same behavior when trying to play a Blu-Ray.

So I checked, and the unit, since it was an ES model, has a 5 year warranty. I call Sony Support, and they said based on the serial number there was a known issue with HDMI, and the unit was eligible for 'Advanced Exchange'. This means they will cross-ship me a replacement unit to keep, and once it arrives, send my current receiver back.

Well, imagine my surprise when I got home from a business trip, and there was a box on my back porch. I open it up, and the replacement they sent was a brand new STR-DA5600ES! A pretty significant upgrade from my current A/V receiver. I call them to confirm this was not a mistake, and they said, no, that is that they sent as a replacement since there are no more refurbished STR-DA5300ES units.

As I stated in the title, kudos to Sony for some excellent warranty support on this item.

[sterlingice]

Rock on. You just don't hear that many good warranty stories any more.

To recognize another one: I have received really good service from Canon on my old camera. There was apparently a factory defect on a small number of view screens and mine started getting similar issues at least 3 years after I bought it. I looked the problem up and called in on a lark and they were more than happy to fix it up, even tho it was an older camera and any sort of warranty had long since expired.

SI