| The Sony folks will tell you that Manchester Audio Lab is their
authorized service center. My experience will tell you that they
take forever, will charge a minimum of $75.00, and they seem to
have a rather strange way of running a business. They allegedly
repaired my D-77 portable. Next time, I'll go elsewhere...
Anyone else know some place to go??
Mary
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re: .1
When I recently called Sony, Manchester Audio Service Lab was
no longer on their list. Come to find out, they're out of
business. In fact, a friend of my neighbor had a unit in there
for repair when they went out of business, and he never got
his unit back! I'll have to check with my neighbor for an update
on that rip-off. You mentioned they seem to have a strange way
of doing business. That's for certain. I dealt with them about
a year or so ago, while my CD player was still under warranty,
and here's what happened:
The player was skipping, I called the ol' 1-800-222-SONY number
and could I believe it, there's an Authorized Sony Service Center
only a couple of miles away from where I live, Manchester Audio
Service Lab. Great. I take it in. Six weeks later, I'm getting
pissed because it's not done yet. I called Sony and told them
M.A.S.L. were bums, in so many words. Sony called them, and
shortly thereafter, the unit was ready. It didn't skip anymore,
but now there is an audible buzz that would come and go as I
rapped on the unit. The volume of it didn't change with my
listening level. I suspected a faulty power supply. I opened
the unit up for a visual inspection. I don't know if you're
familiar with the technique of wave-soldering, but the result
is perfect and quite uniform solder connections on a circuit
board. However, one of the electrolytic filter capacitors in
the power supply had obviously been tampered with! One of the
leads had a sloppy blob of solder on it with a relatively large
brown blob of flux at that spot, and the connection was "cold"
(no longer good and solid). I jiggled the cap a little, and
sure as hell, the buzzing would come and go. I was convinced,
from the overwhelming circumstantial evidence, that those
slime-balls at M.A.S.L. had sabotaged it, because I had ratted
on them to Sony! I re-soldered the bad connection and the problem
was cured. I wasn't going to take it back, for fear of further,
and possibly more complex sabotage. I didn't even call Sony,
since I had no proof and I would've admittedly voided the remain-
der of my warranty. I never did get around to "fire-bombing"
the place, but I did give it some thought!
Mike
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