Robert bought a PlayStation 3, which crapped out him after four months, falling victim to the yellow light of death. He says he contacted Sony to get a repair, but the company insists on charging him $150 plus tax and shipping. This is odd, because Sony offers a one-year warranty on PS3s.

He writes:

I had recently had a very disappointing experience recently and was told by a friend that I should share it with your site, consumerist.com. I had bought a Playstation 3 about 4 months ago in June. My Playstation 3 was used in moderation and I rarely ever used the actual disc drive because the primary game that I play (Tekken Dark Ressurection) is played off the hard drive instead of DVD or BluRay. Basically, I felt that such an underused product should work without problems. However, I ran into a problem with my Playstation 3. I did a search on google, and confirmed it was a malfunction called the YLOD (Yellow Light of Death). After this, I contacted Sony at 1800-345-7669 and explained to them that my 4 month old console has died. They said that without a receipt, they cannot fix it for free, but they would fix it for $150 “plus” tax “and” shipping. I immediately said no, because no system should ever die after 4 months of the purchase date. I do realize that it was my fault for not having the receipt, but even if I did have the receipt, I should never have to send a system in for repair that has yet to age over a year.

Being that the case of the YLOD is talked about by consumers on Playstation’s “official” site, Sony should know that there are a number of their products that have a malfunction. Customers even have several pages of posts on Playstation’s official website discussingt how to fix the problem “themselves”. The fact that Sony would charge $150+ even when knowing this problem exists is just wrong.

The fact that Sony is demanding a receipt is bizarre, since the PS3’s serial number should let Sony confirm when the PS3 was sold. I’d suggest Robert call customer service again and again until he can speak to someone reasonable who’s willing to honor the company’s policy.

Any other suggestions?

(Photo: jpghouse)

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