Dear Sony...

Those of you who know me know I'm a bit of a gadget freak. I also love all things Apple and until recently have had a bit of time for Sony, however I think I may have made my last Sony purchase.

Sony have always been a design-lead company and I've owned a few design classics from that venerable Japanese company. I've owned various Walkmans, both for cassettes and CDs, as well as a couple of rather nice TVs - including a very nice mid-model pre-digital 26" Bravia LCD that is still going strong with a set top box to take care of the digital TV conversion.

So I've always not minded paying a little extra for a quality product. Sony have always delivered and their products always work well, are well designed and generally are solidly built. Sony has never let me down.

Until now.

The story starts at my local big box movers store and trying to find a replacement for my clock radio/iPod dock which was purchased before iPhones came out. My new iPhone was unsupported by this unit so it needed to be replaced.

I also wanted to get a dock with a decent sound quality - not a normal quality of a clock radio - so I looked at the mid to upper price range this time.

I took my iPhone along with a selection of tracks ranging from Beethoven's '9th' to White Zombies' 'More human than human', and proceeded to test a number of different units at high and low volume in the store.

I was impressed by a couple of units and was not surprised that one of the best sounding units was by Sony. The blandly named 'Speaker Dock / Clock Radio for iPod and iPhone' (way to go to the Sony naming department!) fitted the bill, was under my budget figure and I got a deal lower then RRP for it. So far so good.

I took it home, unpacked it and set it up, added my iPhone to charge and played a few tracks to see how good it sounded in my bedroom. It was perfectly suited to the space and worked as well for heavy rock and classical guitar. Perfect.

Well, perfect until it got dark.

I had noticed the bright display when I set it up, but the instructions said it had a brightness control, so that seemed to be covered.

So lets talk about the brightness 'dimmer' settings on the Sony Speaker Dock / Clock Radio for iPod and iPhone. There are, in fact, three. They are bright, brighter and Searchlight mode.

Yes, if you are looking for a clock radio that provides a nice nightlight so that you can walk around your bedroom at night without turning on your bed lamp, this one is for you. If you actually want to sleep in, like, the dark of the night, then sorry this one only works if you have a thick book to sit in front of the display to cover it's searchlight-like illumination.

So Sony had really stuffed up on setting the design parameters for light levels in a bedroom that is the most common place you would put this kind of product. I don't mind having ONE bright setting, but three bright levels and no low light settings? Product design fail.

Now let's look at how Sony handles this problem. They have on the "Support for this product" button that goes to a Support webpage for this

I asked the following question on what I though was their support forum. It has the header "Ask a Question":

"I have one of these models - is there a way you can dim the display right back darker from the three very bright settings it has. Can the display be turned off in any way? It is far to bright to be used in a bedroom."

To which I got the reply: "There are no matching results for ICF-C1IPMK2 - I have one of these models - is there a way you can dim the display right back darker from the three very bright settings it has. Can the display be turned off in any way? It is far to bright to be used in a bedroom."

Yes, it was not in fact a support site, but only returns a FAQ result IF that question has been previously asked and addressed. I had tried asking a question. There was no result and no next task path offered - such as - would you like to submit this question to somebody who actually cares?

So how do I get a question into the Sony online support system in the vain hope of it actually being answered?

Well I did a bit of lateral thinking and saw that in the Support area and saw a prompt box with the heading "Latest FAQs" - and a question about resetting the time in daylight saving mode. Not what I wanted, but maybe the link would take me into an area that had other FAQs. One can only hope with this web site.

And I was right - I did get to a page with ONE FAQ item and - joy of joys - a button that had a label "Can't find what you are looking for?"

Pressing this button got a pop-up with a text box to put your question in. I was dismayed, however with the information about this facility below the box:

"Please describe what you would like to see as detailed as possible. Though a personal response will not be provided, we value your suggestion. Sony will continuously strive to improve the usefulness of the information provided on this site."

Well, I'm sorry Sony, your information so far is as useful as tits on a bull.

This happened because... (a conversation with customer support)

I have an account with a credit card attached that offers loyalty points, but since I don't really do much purchasing using this card I've not really bothered with it - until I got a points statement recently and realised that over time the points can add up, and they also can disappear if you don't use them.

So I decided to try and find my logon account details for these rewards and see what my points could get me.

Not much, really, considering how much I'd spent using this card over the last two years.

Oh well, I thought I'd have a look anyway, especially since the site also offered a Points/Pay system that seems to allow you to pay the remainder when you don't have enough points and there was small home theatre system I thought looked nice that I could get with my points and a little cash.

The Points/Pay option was indicated by the following text just above the Add to Cart button on EVERY product page:

"Don't have enough points? You can use your credit card to pay for the remainder."

So I click on the "Add to Cart" button.

But it didn't work. There was no option for Points/Pay in the cart, even though I have been told on the previous page that I can do this.

Writing to the support email for the site, I got back the following reply:

"Unfortunately you need to have 70 percent of the products points to be able to use the Points/Pay option."

To which I returned the following:

"Fair enough, there is a condition that wasn't met, however there was NO indication WHAT this condition was. One page says I can do something and the next tells me I can't - with no indications why not. I could not find any information on the site on the 70% points rule - it was not in the FAQ or the Terms and Conditions.

BTW, as a user I was looking for a way of setting a points + pay level such as that which is used on my bank's rewards site and assumed that it may be offered once you got to the checkout. They provide this; You don't.

Good user interface design helps your customers by providing timely useful information. In this case the your Rewards site has failed."

In the end they failed to provide relevant information - telling me I can do something and then stopping me AFTER I'd made a purchase decision does not give me a good purchasing experience on this site, and also takes away from normally good relationship with the issuer of the card.

In the end it has meant that I have wasted about 30 mins of my time trying to shop on this site, and now my complaint has aded to the card issuer's support costs - all through bad user interaction task design that really shouldn't have gone live.