Replacement PS3 Problem, advice?

[Miz]

Hi Tony

I’m new here and had a quick browse through the pages and noticed that a lot of people have the same issue as I do, with the ‘yellow light of death’.

Basically I bought my PS3 19 months ago from PC World. I had no problems until earlier today, where it shut down by itself whilst I was playing Fifa10. At the moment I have been reluctant to ring Sony, because my warranty is out of date, and from reading other people’s posts it seems useless unless you have a warranty. Therefore I am going to pursue PC World through the Sales of Goods Act 1979 to see if I can get a result.

I copied the letter you created and amended it a bit.

My address

Date

PC World Customer Services
Customer Contact Centre
PO Box 1687
Sheffield
S2 5YA

Dear Sir/Madam,

On 06/05/08, I bought a Playstation 3 40GB from PC World, Newport Retail Park for £299.99 (including a game) which is not of satisfactory quality.

The problem is the device goes into standby a few seconds after it is switched on.

Sony have quoted £145 to replace the Playstation 3 console with a refurbished model.

I wish to claim a replacement from PC World as my contract of sale is with you and it is reasonable to expect goods of this nature and cost to last longer than this. This is one of my statutory rights as described in the Sale of Goods Act 1979.

A copy of the proof of purchase is attached. This is a copy of my bank statement and a receipt of the day of purchase. I believe this is sufficient proof that there is a Contract of Sale.

Please arrange for my Playstation 3 to be repaired or replaced or send me £145 within 14 days from receipt of this letter otherwise I will pay for this myself and recover the money through the small claims court.

Yours faithfully,

Misbah Abdul-Halim

I just want to know, should I send my letter to the head office of PC World, or the PC World branch I bought my PS3 from. Should I also include the part where I say I would take them to court now, or should I include that later on, once I get a reply.

I would really appreciate your help
Thanks

 

[Tony]

Hi Miz,

Send it to the head office and don't mention court yet

Tony

 

[Miz]

Thank you, i'll send it off today.

 

[gtgt]

Ok, My PS3 had the yellow light problem out of warranty. I've had the standard email off Amazon and the £42 offer also. I have told them that I will still be taking this to a county court. Also, they have asked me to contact Sony to get written proof from them that the console has an inherent fault and only then they will look into it further.

 

[Tony]

Ok, My PS3 had the yellow light problem out of warranty. I've had the standard email off Amazon and the £42 offer also. I have told them that I will still be taking this to a county court. Also, they have asked me to contact Sony to get written proof from them that the console has an inherent fault and only then they will look into it further.

This is quite normal. The problem is Sony don't do engineer's report, so that request is unreasonable.

Tony

 

[Chonger]

Hi, Im new here....

My story is pretty similar to everyone elses on this site talking about PS3.

Faulty, not reading games and now wont even inject/intake games....

I am going to go to the store i bought PS3 from (Argos) tommorow,

Had the Sony quote £121 for refurb replacement ....not impressed...
So my plan is to take back, boxed, with reciept and a copy of the SOGA letter tommorrow...

My PS3 was £300 when i bought it almost 18 months ago,
I was just wondering if they offered me vouchers or refund what would be reasonable , for example they offer me £150, should i take that as a reasonable
refund?
Thanks for any advice you can give and for the wisdom already gained from using this site!

 

[Tony]

How much would you need to buy a refurbished one from Game or the like? That sounds like a reasonable figure to me.

Tony

 

[BargainHunter]

In my day we never had play stations.. do yourself a favour throw it away and get yourself outdoors! thats what i say

 

[coulditbmagic]

I too am having problems with Sony, they accept the PS3 is faulty however they are now asking for proof of purchase which I cannot find. I have the box, I've given them the serial number - it cost over £300 2 years ago and now has error msg 80010514 and will not read any discs. Surely the machine is not fit for purpose - please help !!!

 

[Tony]

Yes proof of purcahse will be required to make a calim under Sale of Goods Act. How did you pay? A credit card statement is adequate proof of purchase.

Tony

 

[dibly24]

hi, i've had my ps3 now for bout 3years and now it reads no games or blu-ray dvds, the problem i have is i cant find receipt cause its been so long i know i got the console from gamestation, so is there a way i cant do this consumers rights act without the receipt?

 

[lunik1]

Hey, I'm new to this forum and have too experienced a problem with my PS3.

A few months ago (under 6) my PS3 broke and I had Sony send me a refurbished console (I only had it about two years, I wish I knew about this forum then :/). Unfortunately this console has stopped accepting blu-ray discs.

I'm outside of the warranty but I think its more than expected for this £100+ replacement to last more than a few moths. What avenue can I take to try and have a free replacement/repair?

 

[shaffrey]

My problems seems to be very much the same as most people,,, our PS3 gave up last June just over a month after it run out of warranty. I rang Sony and was told it would cost £140.00, which I could not afford. I didn't know what to do until I read your site last November. I wrote a letter to Toy'r'us using one of the templates you kindly provided. I had to wait about 6 weeks for a reply. They stated that the warranty had expired and I would need to ring Sony, indeed they actually said that if Sony admitted it was a manufacturing fault they would cover the cost of repair. Of course Sony were not going to admit this but I rang them all the same, they told me they would repair the console for £140.00. So I was back to square one. I remembered the information you gave regarding an engineers report. So I found a company close to where I live and paid £35.00 for a report. I then sent this back to Toy'R'US, this time we got quite a fast response simply saying that our warranty had run out and any repairs carried out by Sony are done so on a chargeable basis, but they have very kindly offered the name of an engineer with an excellent reputation for repairing the PS3. I am completely flabbergasted at there response, So it looks like the only choice I have now is small claims court unless of course you could offer any further advice.

 

[ZapB]

Hi all,

I have a PS3 40GB version from Dec 07/Jan 08 with the problem where it fails to recognise any type of optical disc. I purchased this through Amazon.co.uk.

I have been through the process of trying to claim from them under the Sale of Goods act. They sent back the usual response saying that they needed further information. In response I paid to have an independent engineers report carried out. This concluded that the PS3 has an inherent manufacturing defect relating to a diode used in the Blu-ray laser circuitry.

I have submitted this to Amazon who have just written back to me saying that they refuse to accept this as proof of a manufacturing defect and that they would only accept a report from a Sony repair centre. I find this completely unacceptable as Sony are not going to admit to a manufacturing defect even if they did offer such a report service.

Amazon are offering the usual £40 cash or £50 in Amazon gift vouchers as a gesture of good will. Frankly, I find this a really poor show on behalf of Amazon as the amount I am claiming (£90 for new Blu-ray laser unit + £35 for the report) is surely less than their legal department has cost in terms of time to investigate my case.

Do you think I should accept their gesture or should I proceed to go to the small claims court? Has anybody else successfully managed to claim against Amazon. I do not want to waste any more money on this inferior product.

Sony have already lost a customer for any future purchase and I am seriously considering if I should ever use Amazon for any kind of electrical goods in the future too in light of their reluctance to accept what is a very common fault being due to a design/manufacturing defect.

Many thanks for any advice you can give.

 

[simon1981]

Hi!
I've been following this thread for some time and have finally reached a point where I need to request some advice! My story started in October 09 when my 40gb PS3 died in the middle of a game of Fifa and displayed the ylod. I called Sony and got nowhere, I then found this site and commenced discussions with Blockbusters opening with the template letter provided. I was then requested to send an engineers report which I did, highlights below:

We have evaluated your Sony Playstation 3 system and have found the following faults. In
our opinion it is not possible to repair this unit and therefore your only option would be to
replace it with a brand new fully functioning system with full warranty.

Faults;
The integrated graphics controller on the motherboard has failed, preventing the system
from booting correctly. Although the Playstation 3 is a games console it is actually still a
standard computer inside with similar components. Due to the motherboard failure, your
Playstation 3 is unfortunately beyond economical repair. This fault is very well known and
eventually affects all PS3 consoles.
This fault is related to a manufacturing defect – the NVIDIA series of chipset’s all have
known problems with high lead content in the dye, and many devices have been affected
including many HP laptops, Dell desktop graphics cards and Apple Macintosh computers.
Replacement parts cost;
We are unable to quote you on a replacement parts cost because individual components
such as the integrated graphics chip cannot be sourced by the general public or small
businesses.
Labour cost;
If we were able to obtain the required parts, our labour charge would be fixed at £104.85.
This is a very intensive job which requires a very high skill level, patience, and many hours of
our technician’s time.
Our recommendation, as a company, would be to seek compensation or other resolution
from the retailer of whom you purchased the console from. Under new EU legislation you
have a statutory minimum of 2 years from the date of purchase in which you can return an
item to a retailer, and an expected lifetime of up to 6 years.

Fairly straightforward I thought, until I received this reply (nearly 2 months later):

Thank you for your email dated 6th April. Firstly I would like to start by apologising for the delay in this matter, for any inconvenience that may have been caused and to thank you for being so patient whilst we reviewed the contents of your engineer’s report.

After a through review of the engineer’s report with Sony who are the manufacturer of Playstation, I wish to confirm that Sony do not consider the fault with your console to be inherent. Regrettably Blockbuster considers the console deemed beyond a reasonable period of time to exchange/return or refund as indicated in the Sales of Goods Act 1979.

However, I would like to offer a solution to resolve this matter satisfactorily and as you are a loyal and valued customer; Blockbuster is willing to cover half of the repair cost to your console as a gesture of goodwill.

We would ask that the console is repaired accordingly and then the invoice of the repair be forwarded to us, where we would forward a cheque to you accordingly to fulfil our offer. Please let me know if you wish to accept this offer and I can be contacted on 0845 60 60 999 at anytime if you wish to discuss anything further.

Once again, thank you for your patience in this matter and I look forward to hearing from you accordingly.

Obviously I wasn't too happy with this reply as I didn't feel that they had given the engineers report any credibility and I felt that 19 months was an acceptable amount of time given a reasonably expected lifespan of 6 years and that not only had the goods not been of serviceable quality at the time of sale they had failed to live up to durability expectations also. I replied stating my beliefs and rejecting the offer and shortly received the following:

Thank you for your email dated 9th April. Please accept my apologies for the delay in our response to you regarding the matter with your Playstation 3 console and for any inconvenience that may have been caused.

I wish to confirm that in relation to the Sales of Goods Act 1979, it does confirm goods must be of satisfactorily quality at the time of sale and fit for the purpose known. And it’s our belief that when the console was sold to you in April 2008, it met the above criteria.

A consumer may make a claim within a 6 year period in England under the Sales of Goods Act; however the length of time the sold goods would last for is classified by “a reasonable period of time”. During which after 6 months from the date of the sale and up to the 6 years; it would be for the consumer to prove the goods where inherently faulty and did not conform to contact.

In my previous email, I confirmed that Blockbuster has reviewed the contents of your engineer’s report and from our investigation; we do not accept the claims made in the report but would be happy to honour our original offer of covering half the repair costs as a gesture of goodwill. We also recommend that Sony completes any repair made to your console.

In line with the Sales of Goods Act, as the product has provided a benefit of use to you from the date of sale and due to the depreciation of used consoles we would deem our offer to fair at this time.

Please let me know if you would still like to accept this offer and I thank you for your patience in this matter.

So now I am unsure of what to do. Should I have a second engineers report done by a third party to give weight to the first one? Should I point out that 19 months is not a "reasonable time" for a £300 games console to last under normal conditions? I appreciate that Blockbuster made an effort to investigate but it does seem to me that Sony might be a little biased in their decision to admit it was an inherent fault. Regrettably it seems that I may have to pursue the matter in the small claims court but I would be grateful if anyone could suggest another way. Is there an ombudsman service for this sort of thing?

 

[alex_anthony]

Play.com just replied to my initial email with by saying that they will pay half the cost of the sony replacement thing as a gesture of good will, but they can't do more without an engineer's report.

Is it worth the hassle of getting a report?

How do I make sure they would reimburse me the cost of it? How much should it cost?

 

[Nickster]

Hey Anthony

Why don't you email them back and ask them specifically what further action will be taken, if you were to show an engineers report.

If it is full payment for the repair, or even a new replacement, and you're happy with it, then I'd probably get the engineers report.

Just a suggestion.

 

[ringo]

My son's PS3 stopped working last month. He bought it June 2008.
Sony offered to replace it with a reconditioned one for £130.
I contacted the retailer Game Stores Ltd and although it was out of guarantee, because the console was faulty, after trying to repair it they sent a credit voucher for £199.99. for a replacement. As long as you have proof of purchase the retailer is responsible.

 

[nooner]

Hello.

My trusty Launch-day 60Gb PS3 failed on the 12th December. Whilst scouring the internet for fixes I came across this site, and thought I'd try to get a free repair under the SoGA.

As mentioned it was a launch day, 23rd March 2007 purchase. I bought it from Toys R Us, using a Maestro card for £499.99. I have rang Sony, and they insist it's not an inherent fault, contrary to the general opinion, and they will charge me £131 for a replacement. They also mentioned that as there is a disc jammed in there, they will make a note of it but there is no guarantee that I will receive my game back (Call Of Duty: Black Ops).
After speaking with the Store that I bought the console from, and getting the standard "It's Sony's problem, not ours" fob-off I emailed TRU head office, using a slightly modified version of your standard letter; i mentioned that there is a disc stuck inside and want this replacing, plus I didn't ask for a new console or a refund, purely a repair. I'm a bit of a collector and having a perfect condition launch day model means a lot to me! At the end of the letter I included the last 4 digits of the card I bought it on, along with the date and card-holder name, all for proof of purchase.

A few days later they responded, and to my surprise the result was more positive than I thought it would be. They have offered, providing I bring it into the branch I bought it from, with the receipt (this was underlined), and they will send it to their workshops, where it will be assessed, and if a manufacturing defect be found, they will repair it.

My questions are these:
1) Can they insist on the receipt? I'm sure I still have it somewhere, but I personally believe this was an attempt to try and scare me off.

2) Can they insist on themselves assessing it? I can't help but think this might be biased in their favour...

I plan to write back, emailing a screen grab of my on-line bank statement for proof of purchase (Unless the receipt shows up beforehand), offer to take the console into the store, so it can be assessed for cosmetic damage and that the warranty seal is intact, obviously get the store manager to sign to this effect, then take it somewhere independent to carry out a full assessment on the unit.
Can I insist on these points?

Also, the letter was a Word document attachment, but in the main body of the email they asked for a phone number "for their records". Is it wise to give them this, as things often get said that suddenly get forgotten when relied upon! I know Toys R Us can be a real pain to return goods; I had problems with a TV just a few weeks old, but I'm remaining positive (and I'm not worried if it drags out as I have bought a new PS3 to keep me going! Spare one for the bedroom!)

Thanks,

Dave

 

[Ashley2011]

Ps3 problem

hi my ps3 got the yellow light of death about 1 year ago and i paid sony £100 to give me a refurb and now it has happened again and they want another 130 odd pounds for another refurb i refuse to pay such a price and i was wondering if i can still quote the sales of goods act even though i brought the ps3 from the manufacterer ... i hope this makes sense im somewhat exhausted by all this