I'm the CTO for a media / telco company and order a lot of hardware and actually need a lot of sony stuff, so I thought I'd try sonystyle.com - big mistake.

Ordered a NetMD player online end of July. It was in stock and I paid a bunch extra for overnight shipping. Needed it for work and was pretty important.

Two weeks go by. I use their online CSR function who say the order is 'just shipping now'.

A few days go by. I call them up and they say the order didnt 'get in the system right'. I give them some relevant feedback along the lines of 'you suck' but in nicer words. The promise to fix and overnight next day.

Two weeks more go by.. I call up, slightly annoyed that I am a month out from what should have been two days at the most.

CSR: The order is 'not in the system right' - so I should cancel my order and make a new one myself. I laughed somewhat like a crazyperson and asked for a supervisor. They said they could call me back within 3 days since no one was immediately available. I let them know that that was not acceptable and i'd be happy to talk to the CSR until someone was there, but I was not going to hang up until I talked to one.

Then magically someone appeared and the supervisor then cancelled my order and ordered a new one.

This one DID ship next day and got there fast. This was about 2 weeks ago. Thats a lot of hassle for using the official store that has prices higher than most places.

Epilogue :

Yesterday I got an email saying they shipped my MD player. They did NOT cancel the other order that somehow after 6 weeks worked its way through the system. Back on the phone with them. This is the worst operation I have ever seen. Sony may make some good things, but avoid avoid avoid sonystyle.com

Save 20% and shop elsewhere.

Man, that sucks! I ordered a PDA from them and had no trouble, but that's been over a year ago. Good information to know!

Did you order it from them specifically becaused you needed it quickly (and figured that the official store would be fairly fast)?

Thats pretty much why I used them - figured official Sony would be quick and fast. Especially when you order overnight of an instock item.

I'm sure they have better days, but the whole way they handled it, excessive wait times on hold, less than brilliant CSR's was just not very impressive.

I paid dearly, waiting upwards of 5 weeks and spending no less than 4 hours on the phone trying to get what I ordered.

I bought my 36" HDTV from them and it was a great experiance. They shipped it when they said (for free!) and the delevery men unpacked it, put it in my ent. center, and offered to hook it up. (I declined the last ofer since I'm sure I knew more about it then they did.)

Sorry to hear you had a bad experiance with them.

-Videophile

I ordered from them both by phone and online with no problem before.

I've never ordered 'real products' from them, but I have ordered a few different parts and accessories that were unfortunately overpriced (IMHO anyways, as they were the only place to buy the parts I'm sure Sony feels differently.) On all my orders shipping has always been fast. I would've bought regular items from them in the future, your story makes me think twice now.