I am starting to lose faith in Sony.
As stated in the Blu-ray sucks posting before this one, I am an early adopter. I purchased a PS3 a bit early (not as early as some) and spent a lot of money on the unit. I have enjoyed my PS3 immensely. The majority of the new generation of games purchased in this household are for the PS3, even though we have a Wii, Xbox360, and Nintendo DS.
Back in December you read about the problems I had getting the service box for my dead drive PS3 from UPS. It took some doing but I finally got my PS3 sent into Sony and repaired. It came back and everything seemed to be fine. The PS3 had worked better then ever and we were enjoying movies and games like mad.
Are you ready for the sequel?
Designer #1: "We'll use solder that heats too fast and breaks the system!" Designer #2: "Brilliant!"
As anyone who is into games will know that image above signifies that my PS3 has become a victim of the dreaded Yellow Light of Death (YLoD). The YLoD is akin to the RRoD (Red Ring of Death) on an Xbox360. Hell it even comes from the same exact problem: Sony and Microsoft allowing their consoles to heat up too much, using inferior solder on the logic boards, and resulting in the solder literally melting away and preventing specific circuits from completing. The machine then shuts down and does not allow itself to be turned on again due to it knowing further damage will occur.
Microsoft, to their credit, extended warranties on their console and repaired without charging customers. This was in no small part due to not only the gaming press but the mainstream media pouncing on anything Microsoft might do wrong and spreading the word worse than Lindsay Lohan spreading disease in a public bathroom tryst. Sony, on the other hand, doesn’t get much bad press as their name rightly implies standards and quality assurance. (Microsoft is everyone’s punching bag.)
Yet now, for the second time in a year and under 1.5 months from receiving my previously repaired PS3 back from Sony, I have to send it in again. Yes, this is the same physical console as the original purchased one.
The problem I have (outside of this having happened) is that I have had the PS3 for quite awhile now, I have had some marathon gaming sessions that would put a lot of the pros to shame, but the YLoD decides to show up after the PS3 was repaired.
When I originally had to send the PS3 in for service two things needed to be done: replacement of the Blu-ray drive and a cleaning. Sony is well aware that the PS3 Phat is a vacuum that sucks dust like you wouldn’t believe. (There was even an incident where Sony denied an owner warranty repair due to the amount of dust in that owner’s PS3, he eventually got it repaired under warranty after Sony relented.) If during the course of this cleaning Sony’s techs did not check to make sure that the solder issue, which contrary to popular opinion happens more often then not, was not occurring on this particular console then fault lies with Sony.
The long, drawn out point I am trying to make is that I find it hard to believe that a console that was repaired not more than 1.5 months ago is failing due to something that takes time. A lot more time then what has passed since receiving the repaired console.
It is averaging lower than 30ºF outside and the house never gets above 68ºF because heat here is expensive. From the owner’s manual for the PS3 supplied by Sony the operating temperature is 41ºF to 95ºF, which is well within the parameters of what the house it at. We control humidity here too, otherwise bloody noses happen way too often. I could understand if it had happened the first time, but not after having been repaired. I truly believe that the tech at Sony did not do their job properly as a cursory check of an item like this would seem to be normal operating procedure when doing a cleaning.
The YLoD had to be something that was coming for awhile, yet Sony missed it. Now I get to ponder whether I will have yet another UPS/Carrier Lost issue since most of the country is still going through snow storm hell, including here where our snow has turned into solid fields of ice.
