Sony Premiere Support say broken mic holder = no firmware upgrade!
 

I rang Sony Premiere Support today about getting my camera upgraded to the latest firmware so that I can use their new accessories.

They seemed to think the upgrade was only required for the hard disk recorder not the 32GB SxS cards, which is worrying if they're the experts!

I'd arranged pickup (or so I thought) and then asked if there was any chance of getting the microphone holder (which snaps off just by putting the camera in a bag) fixed for which of course I would pay.

I was then told that given that the camera was physically damaged they could NOT take the camera for a firmware upgrade. Apparently the broken external mic holder means the camera is "physically damaged" and therefore not covered!!!!

When I said I thought it was scandalous a company could charge me £4000 for a camera with a clear defect (after all, who hasn't had the stupid external mic holder snap off - the wafer-thin plastic support is a complete joke on a camera at this price point) and then use that to refuse to apply a firmware upgrade I was told "With respect that's not my problem".

I am spitting mad and absolutely incredulous!

Am obviously going to now go and shout at my dealer (would have preferred the camera to go direct to Sony as it's more convenient to get it picked up from my place of work at the day job), but thought others should be alerted as to this calamatous state of affairs.

In Australia you have statutory warranty rights under law. Not sure about the UK, but I imagine you have similar laws? In effect they state that if you pay a reasonable amount of money for an item, you have the right to expect a reasonable amount of service from that item. If it fails in an unreasonable time, they have to fix it or replace it.
Perhaps you can force them to fix an obviously poor design flaw, then get your firmware done. Try looking up the laws, and see if you can't force the issue through that avenue? A bit of a roundabout way, and far from satisfactory though. I'd print a big placard and stand in front of their store till they fixed it :)

Ian, although you have Sony's Silver support, it's the dealer who's responsible and he should be your first point of call. If you feel the broken part was not of 'mechanisable quality' - especially considering the price, then I'm sure you can gather enough evidence to get Sony to repair this as well.

Yes I've contacted my dealer but my rep there is away until 1st September (and I have an all-day conference session filming gig on 18th September for which I decided I'd need more than the two 16GB and two 8GB cards I've got) and to be honest I naively thought it would be better to go direct to Sony. My bad!

I haven't been impressed with the dealer so far to be honest but this may just be my naivety about what the standard of support/knowledge is in the "industry". eg when placing my original order for a ton of stuff I had to go to another dealer for the ReflecMedia green screen stuff that my dealer sells but never got back to me on despite several requests (not his area of interest which is cameras so I just got the impression he couldn't be bothered). I am, to be honest, less than impressed with the gear they sold me as a rather naive newbie wanting full kit eg shoulder mount and tripod but no easy way to move camera between both until Phillip Bloom helped me out directing me to piggy-backing secondary Manfrotto plates but which aren't anywhere near as stable as I'd like, an external mic that was initially delivered without a suitable adapter for the mic holder and is not only too heavy for the flimsy mount (causing it to break when the bag rubbed against it) but is visible in the viewfinder at wider settings etc In a normal situation I'd kick up merry hell but it seems to me (when trying to buy the camera none of the dealers bothered returning my calls) that this is pretty much "the norm" when it comes to service in the "professional broadcast" arena.

My brother (who works in video at London's Goldsmiths College who bought a LOT of gear from them) had warned me to steer well clear of this dealer and was very angry about them (talk of not paying bills and going to court because of total unsuitability of equipment they'd supplied) but Mr Bloom's endorsement won me over when no other dealers were even interested in calling me back. Anyway, given my brother's experience and my dissatisfaction (maybe I'm being too picky - I'm just a hobbyist and for me this is a lot of money) with what had been supplied on dealer's recommendation I just thought I'd get better service by going direct to Sony, especially as there was no real sale in it for the dealer (other than possibly for the hard drive).

I'm now totally confused about the whole 32Gb SxS card/firmware issue though. I notice that my dealer's web site says firmware upgrade is required for the hard drive but no mention that it is needed for 32GB SxS card, which is what I'd read on the forums.

All this + the high cost of the 32gb SxS ($1400) sure does make the Convergent Design stuff, Flash XDR and nanoFlash, look more appealing

AND you have 4:2:2 if that is important



*this is not an advertisement, even tho it reads like one

Ian.
What is the name of your dealer ?
I think you should name them, or at least tell us what part of the country they are from.

Paul.

BTW, my mic mount broke and I was able to rebuild it with epoxy and milled glass fibers.

The second camera's mount hadn't broken yet so I reinforced it the same way.

The EX1's mic mount, as everyone probably already knows, is poorly designed. There are thin strips of plastic linking the mounting screws with the body of the mic holder. The thin plastic strips aren't much bigger than a couple of toothpicks. It looks like it's meant to break.

To reinforce the holder I taped off the underside of the mount after using a tiny Dremel tool to roughen all the inside edges. Epoxy doesn't "weld" to anything and needs a rough surface to make a solid bond.

With the mic mount set up so that the whole thing is level, I then filled in the voids with the epoxy/glass mix. The result is a solid one-piece mount, rather than a couple screws suspended with thin strips of plastic.

I used a low-viscosity epoxy resin called West Systems epoxy. It's designed to do laminations on boats and other similar work. It sets slowly so allow a full day before pulling off the tape. And give it the better part of a week before it cures to maximum strength.

I think there are enough clues in what I already posted to make it clear. We don't have many dealers in the UK so choice is extremely limited. I live in central London. This one was just taken over by another one so that now there is even less choice than when I bought the camera back in January.

What annoys me is there are so few because they're supposed to offer "professional" service. Honestly I'd rather have bought the camera off one of the regular consumer dealers in Tottenham Court Road. At least I'd have someone I could go and complain to face-to-face without having to take a day off work.

When I was desperate to buy the PMW-EX1 back in January they were the ONLY dealer who expressed any interest in selling me a camera. I still don't know whether it's because the "professional" dealers are all hopeless at selling or whether they just decided I must be a time waster.

And if I named the dealer who I felt had given me bad gear/poor advice in the interest of fairness I'd also have to name the other dealers who just wouldn't return my calls (or in the case of the one that did expressed no interest whatsoever in taking an order).

Your posts make such depressing reading Ian. If you or I ran our businesses in this way we'd deserve the crunch.

And talking of poor Sony design, the door hinges on my DSR-11 have been designed by some spotty teenager who's never heard of sectional changes inducing stress raisers. I bet I'm not the only person to have a door that's fallen off. And no amount of epoxy would ment that one.

tom.

Question for Dean
 

Dean:

Did you re-use the original screws after filling in the mic mount base with epoxy? If so, how did you protect the holes while filling?

If not, what kind of new screws did you use?

Thanks...looking to reinforce mine as well.

Dave McCallister

Dave...

I was careful to avoid filling in the recesses and used the original screws.

One option is to fill the screw's recesses and holes with modeling clay. It doesn't harden and it's what's often used to help prevent epoxy from getting where you don't want it.

Just have to be careful when applying the clay and not get it where you want the epoxy to stick. Modeling clay seems to be somewhat oily and can act as a release agent if it gets in the wrong places.

The tape I used to seal up the bottom was ordinary duct tape. The duct tape sticks nicely to the bottom of the mic mount and seals up the edges to prevent the epoxy from escaping. Yet the epoxy doesn't stick to either side of the duct tape.

Take this a little further. The entire purpose of the extended warranty service Sony offer is to keep you going - so if they exclude accidental damage to flimsy parts, then it isn't really worth having. Everything you could use it for wouldn't count - if they cite wear and tear and small damage as reasons to duck out. Firmware upgrades are nothing whatsoever to do with your misuse of the equipment. The matter of the damaged bracket is irrelevant. Firmware and software upgrades are just one of the annoying things we have to face when carrying out unpaid research and developent as beta testers - which is what they do. Get the product out there, get it paid for, then collect the complaints and comments and 'fix' the bugs. So if this upgrade is needed - they cannot morally (and probably legally) refuse to do it - especially when you even pay for the extended warranty.

My Landrover Discovery got a recall for an upgrade to the computer - The scratches and dents and broken wing mirror didn't effect the upgrade - AND they fixed the mirror free of charge, when it wasn't their fault. Sony want their equipment to be considered professional, not consumer - as a result wear and tear is an expected by-product of normal use - and NOT a reason to refuse service.

The dealer in this circumstance is an intermediary inconvenience, as the warranty is for Sony to be directly involved, bypassing the dealer. You have the special waranty with Sony, and your rights under the sale of goods act with the dealer. However, these rights are limited as they exist to protect consumers. Business to business still receives protection, but has some of the useful protection granted to consumers missing.

We should be reticent in extrapolating one person's experience to the rest of the world. Here I've always had good experiences with Sony services and it is surprising to find Sony UK (which is a bigger broadcast market) doing less well. It might be useful, since something seems to be wrong, to talk to one of your local official Sony Tech Service firms, or chat to the support people in a local production house to learn who they deal with. Retail houses vary enormously in the quality of their service and depth of knowledge, and those renting gear to professionals are usually worth your time.

On the mic holder: which would you prefer to break when you give the mic an unintended nasty blow? The mic or the camera casing? I'd prefer the cheap and easily replaceable mic mount. Perhaps the mount is flimsier than necessary, but I take the mic off before putting the camera away. I know that Phil Bloom broke his, and several others have found it too fragile, but it is weak for a reason.

For what it's worth, the mic clamp on the Canon XH series is just as prone to break. Serena is right, though; it's better to have a replaceable part break than some other intrinsic part of the camera body.

Currently there's only one UK dealer that gets the DV Info Net endorsement; you'll see their banner ad circulating here. For Ian, if they're the one in question, please contact me privately by email.

My mic mount clamps onto a Lightwave shock mount.

Lightwave | MM-XL1 Mini Mount | MM-XL | B&H Photo Video

I used to own an XL1s and this just happened to be a perfect fit!

If anything is going to go first, it's the very flexible rubber blocks of the Lightwave mount. The mic will flex several degrees without placing undue strain on the EX1's mic holder.

Also, the mic is more likely to slip out from under the "finger" hold-down on the Lightwave mic holder before anything on the Lightwave shock mount would break, so I'm not worried about the Sony mic holder at all.

As for what should give first, designing a piece to break isn't a good idea. Instead, make use of exisitng technology to allow a reusable break-away mount. There is an industrial Velcro that looks like a pad with hundreds of plastic pegs. These hold solidly until they're subjected to a certain amount of load. Then they'll break away. To re-fasten just push them together until they interlock with a "click".

A feature like this would take all of five seconds to put back in place. It would provide the desired strain relief without having to sacrifice a part that can't be readily replaced.

Ian, I'll try to inject some Zen into this thread...

Remember that when dealing with CS reps they are limited by directives, one of which seems to be (something like) "don't accept defective camera's for maintenance upgrades". This makes sense as these have to go through the "repair" process (and will probably also get the new firmare).

Now you could argue that the mic holder being broken makes the camera defective and in need for repair. You could also say it is (almost) a cosmetic issue.

Your options therefor are:
1. Submit the camera for repair (possibly at a cost) for the mic mount
2. Detach the mic mount and don't mention it when submitting for the maintenance upgrade

You can order the replacement part whenever it's convenient for you or try to get it fixed under warranty/silver support. Just decide if you want to go the maintenance or repair route in advance.

George/

Hi George,

Yes I'm one step ahead of you ;-). Before I'd mentioned the mic holder the rep had given me a case number and an email address to send my work address to if I wanted pickup from there rather than the address registered on my agreement.

I've sent the email regardless to see if a collection box turns up. After all there's nothing to lose and if the box doesn't show up or they still refuse to take it I can chase things up with the dealer in a week's time. If the box does show up they may ignore the mic holder and apply the upgrade anyway.

I'll post an update here when things get resolved but in the meantime anybody in a similar position should just avoid any mention of broken mic holders when calling Sony Premium Support.

And I still don't have a reliable answer on whether or not the firmware upgrade is needed for the PMW-EX1 for 32GB cards. A couple of forum posts say yes, but Sony Premium Support and the dealer web site say no.

In jest... Maybe you need to migrate to Australia. Our Sony professional dealership over here has also done the right thing by me over time.

Not sure about that Bob!

I had to pay for a new mic holder, so Sony are definitely not admitting that they have a "part that is likely to fail" or anything similar.

Yet this is the first Sony camera I've ever had that has broken a mic holder, and it was just from placing it into a bag!

Cheers,

Vaughan

To ask Sony to pay for a replacement part requires that they (or other reasonable arbitrators) agree that the part is deficient for its intended use. Obviously they think the mic holder performs as designed, and perhaps you didn't try to convince them otherwise. At the other end of the scale, they replaced the lens assembly of my EX1 for a fault they found but I hadn't identified.

Update
 

My ploy to just send the camera to Sony anyway failed. Got home tonight to find a message on my phone machine, re-iterating that because the external mic holder was broken this meant the camera was physically damaged and therefore inelligible for a firmware upgrade by Sony Premium Support.

I've disliked Sony with a vengeance after terrible experiences with them: three DAT walkman players (plastic cog invariable breaks after 13 months - minimum replaceable part, the whole unit at £500); portable CD players (cost of repair almost as much as a new unit; 4 months later same fault develops - "Oh repairs are only covered for 3 months, not a year. Didn't we tell you that when offering to either repair the unit or advise spending a tenner more for a new unit?"); video DV tape decks - dead a month after purchase and then sat in Sony repair labs for 4 months before being returned); Vaio laptop ("oh the three year warranty doesn't cover you for the keyboard letters all flaking off, and if you want the dead screen replacing you have to pay to sit on a premium line on hold forever to get us to actually support the warranty we charged you a small fortune for, We'll then tell you to fax us a copy of the warranty agreement on another premium line even though we sold it to you online and not through a dealer, and then keep phoning us on that same premium rate line on a daily basis to find out that it takes us a week to pick up the fax from a fax machine which is on another floor).

Am beginning to wish I'd stuck to my guns and just refused to give Sony any more money, no matter how good the picture quality on the EX1 is. They are far and away the worst, and consistently so, company I've ever had to have any dealings with.

Dealer will be back next week so hopefully I can get things sorted then, but I just wish Panasonic or Canon would get their act together and offer a reasonable alternative so I never had to give Sony another penny again.

Did you send it in along with the broken mic holder? Or did you remove the mic holder and send the camera without it?

Might be worth ringing Citizens advice bureau. I would be steaming mad if they had told me that, after paying out that kind of money...especially with a 2 year silver support included. Thats just rediculous. I have an EX1 myself and rung them up to ask if I could carry out the firmware upgrade myself, to which they replied, "we dont let end users do that task as we regard it as a dangerous process".
I've carried out a lot of firmware upgrades for various computers peripherals and motherboards, and whilst they are a process that can be dangerous if you are not careful, they are actually pretty straight foreward. This really should be an end user upgrade.

Good luck with sorting out your problem. I would feel very cheated by Sony if I were in your shoes.

I've downloaded the EX1 version 1.1 firmware, step by step instructions are included, don't know if i feel confident enough to try it though.

Paul.

Well, my poor experience with Sony with my first batch Anycast wasn't a good experience, but I put that down to just one of those things - but having sat on the HD fence for quite a while now, after reading this bizarre interpretation of their service agreements, I think I shall go with P2 - XDCAM was looking like the winner for me, but looking at my current kit - lots of it shows signs of stress - I broke the mic holder on my JVC 5000 series and repaired it with the bracket of my old Beta SP. I think I might ask Sony for the wording of their warranty so I can make my mind up for certain.

I didn't send it. I emailed them, as originally requested before telling them about the mic holder, to confirm that the address to return the camera to/ pick it up from was different from the registered address (ie my work address not my home address). The phone call was in response to that email, effectively saying "It doesn't matter what address you give us we're not taking it in".

Just detach the the mic mount and tell them you fixed the issue, then verify you should only send the camera without accessories. Then order a replacement part through your dealer if you want.

George/

This doesn't make any sense.

It's like saying that they won't fix a camera because it's damaged. However, if it's not damaged, they'll fix it.

Is there someone higher up the chain of command to whom you can make an appeal?

Sounds like embargo-on time if they keep this up. I would hope it is more of a translation problem somewhere along the internal communications path between Sony Japan and the local dealerships.

There is a labour cost to install the upgrades. There have been incidences of grief and lamentation when JVC owners have tried to do their own. Sony may well have decided if its worth doing, its worth doing properly. There might be some contention over labour costs and who pays, the dealerships or Sony if the upgrades end up being an unforshadowed impost on the dealerships.

If JVC goes next generation with the GY-HD--- family and match the EX1 and EX3 performance, there may well be a jumping off the Sony ship. RED's Scarlett may also be hanging around in the wings for those who do want to jump in other directions. With the RED, you go in eyes wide open knowing that much is still in beta and the promise that the upgrade support will be there.

With a large outfit like Sony, one assumes the products are already turnkey and proven, not in beta test.

For myself, the only camera failures have been operator induced, small things like hostile environments, being dropped once, service has been good, legacy support for a 30 year old product still existed about a year back, so I personally have nothing to complain about.

Sometimes when faced with a situation like this I ask the person, "If this were you, what would YOU want done?" I use a tone that's reasonable and not threatening.

It sometimes makes stop and think, realizing that while they might be following company policy, what they're really doing is depriving a legitimate customer of what they deserve.

local dealers in any country would be highly unlikely to ever hear from Sony Corporation in Japan about any issue. The local sales companies in each country are responsible for their dealers, so perhaps you need to pursue this within Sony UK and find out who both the dealer manager and service manager are.

I don't know anything about the extended warranty offered in the UK by Sony, but I have to say I am VERY surprised that a broken mic holder is being used as a reason not to apply the firmware upgrade to your EX1. Can I ask though, is there a different number or contact process you would use to request a repair? I know this is going to sound a little silly, but i wonder if you'd have more luck getting the mic holder repaired, and asking for the firmware to be done while they are at it, instead of the other way around.

If you did decide to install it yourself, wouldnt that invalidate your warranty ?

Also, where did you download it from ? - Found the site....think the link is down now though.

Dsr-11 ...
 

The door handles broke on mine years ago but the unit still works! I keep the door around and place it gently over the opening when not using! I surprised I haven't lost it yet!!!

Just a quick forum policy note here: the firmware is Sony's own intellectual property and as such they are the only entity that can rightfully distribute it. I know that some of you have offered to share the firmware with others via email, bypassing the rightful IP holder in the process.

That's illegal, but if you want you to do that, it's happily none of my business. However... you will not use my site to advertise your willingness to violate copyright law. Therefore I will withdraw from public view any post that offers to redistribute this material outside of Sony. I've just withdrawn one such post. Please don't force me to start closing accounts... if you want to redistribute a major corporation's intellectual property and risk the associated legal repercussions, by all means use your *own* web site for that purpose. I'll have absolutely no part of it whatsoever.

Thread stays open for now... take care,

The issue is that they (Sony Premium Support) don't regard repairing the mic holder as their job. In fact I rang them about this a month or two back and realised I was wasting my time. My big mistake was in mentioning it again when I contacted them about the best way to get the firmware upgrade. Clearly my card is marked as being the owner of a "physically damaged" camera.

Hopefully when the dealer rep is available next week it may be that he can get the firmware upgrade sorted locally, and maybe I can get the mic support sorted out too. It's a pain for me because like most dealers he's open Monday to Friday only so it means taking time off work, which is going to prove difficult.

Sony Premium Support seems to be a single office serving the whole of Europe. The rep I spoke to (and who then called me back when I tried to return the camera by subterfuge) certainly didn't have English as his native language.

I don't think I was threatening, and for me I was very calm (considering I was absolutely incredulous at what the rep was saying). I did say I thought it was scandalous that an issue which many owners were reporting as a design flaw would be the excuse for not applying an upgrade that was needed to use accessories that had been marketed before the camera itself had been launched and then asked "So what am I supposed to do?" That's when I got the "With respect that's not my problem".

To be honest "respect" was the last thing the rep seemed to have, but as English wasn't his native language I guess it's possible something got lost in translation.

QUOTE: "I use a tone that's reasonable and not threatening."


Second that. The people I have encountered have not gone out of their way to cause me any hassle at all.

The people who invent and build these increasingly complex and many-featured contrivances don't go out of their way to cause hassles either.

Having been a backyard inventor/builder of one or two things over the years I know the cold dead hand on the back of the neck when something you think is fine turns dog on somebody after you have turned it loose.

I would not like to have on my conscience, somebody in Sony's R&D department doing a little one-step off the 30th floor balcony because of something I said or joined in on after a product has entered the world and stumbled.

Another Update
 

Returned home to find another message from Sony Support, telling me that if I took the camera to an official Sony Repair Centre and had the mic holder repaired then they would be happy to take the camera and upgrade the firmware.

Maybe someone there has been reading this thread?!

This is so silly... Would they "be happy to take the camera and upgrade the firmware" if you just took it off completely?

My camera just returned from a week on vacation in France with new back plates, firmware and the battery fix. I sent it in without the eyepiece which I have removed since I never use it. THe story with the mic holder got me scared that they would refuse to touch my camera as well but alas - no problems. I can also confirm that France upgrades to 1.11.