This is going to be a rant blog, probably, so leave now if you can't put up with whiny Scots.


Earlier today my PS3 broke. When you try to boot it up, I get a white light quickly followed by the three beeps and a never ending flashing red light. Fuck.

No real biggy, I thought, right? Sony has gladly replaced my Dad's PS3, my mate's and also our very own Clancy's without any hassle. It'll be cool, I'll phone Sony and it'll all be fine.

Hell no.

After taking all the relevant details about me and the PS3, the phone operator (a fairly reasonable chap, he wasn't a dick anyway) informed me I could get a refurbed PS3 sent out after various stages of testing...for £145 (about $200, I guess). I was enraged, how come everyone I knew gets theirs for free, but I have to pay around a third of the original price I paid on launch day? Balls to that. I politely tried to explain that to him, and after no luck asked for a reference number and hung up the phone, infuriated. Quite simply, as a final year student already into my overdraft with the bank I can barely afford £50, let alone £145.

So, I scoured the interwebs for some help or more information. Seems Sony (very quietly) stopped taking back launch 60GB consoles for free outside of their warranty on February 11th. Everyone who phones up after this date gets told the same bollocks, that they won't repair or replace for free.

Even better than that, the refurbed consoles are often working but blatantly mishandled units, and the warranty you get on them only lasts 3 months. 3 FUCKING MONTHS. Meaning if that shit breaks after 3 months and 1 day, you'll have to pay another £145 to get it replaced.

To make matters even better, I can't go back to the retailer, since they've gone bust.

So the way I see it, is that I can take one of a few options:

1) Trade in all the games/blu-rays I have and get a 360 (oh, the irony...).
2) Wait and see if Sony ever admits to the launch consoles being of crappy build quality (everyone I know bar one person has had theirs fail at some point).
3) Suck it up and accept their bullshit terms and pay the money.

Repairing myself or in a small independent retailer are not options; 'soft' fixes like removing the HDD don't work, and small retailers apparently can't do shit as Sony won't release the PS3 blueprints.

I will, obviously be on the phone to them again but I doubt I'll have any success - most people that do somehow get help outside of the 1-year warranty seem to be getting told that if their console was older (i.e. 2 years, like mine) that they would've got no help at all. I'll update the blog with any progress made, or otherwise.

Yes, I didn't have an extended warranty. Yes, I didn't have this Continuous Play insurance taken out. But is this really any way to treat a customer who chose your machine over direct competition, buying it on launch day? Surely it is only reasonable to expect a PS3 to survive 2 years of moderate usage? If not, then I think it's fair to say I'll be intentionally avoiding any more Sony gear in the future. I expect far better.

Have any of you had similar problems? What were the results?