Just before Christmas I purchased a rather expensive Sony digital camera and had a problem with it as it stops recording video after 10 minutes. At first I thought this must be a fault but looking at the technical support site it appears to be a "feature" which was odd because I always research thoroughly before making an expensive purchase and wasn't aware of this limitation. Revisiting the Sony website and the "10 minutes cut-off feature" isn't mentioned and so I contacted customer service and I received a very standard type reply which basically suggested that I was a fool as this was a digital camera and not a camcorder! Like a lot of people I know I always prefer to buy Sony as I have found them to be good value and reliable but after this customer service experience they no longer get preferential status in my purchasing decisions.

Contrast my Sony experience to a recent Amazon customer service experience. I purchased a number of items and took advantage of the free delivery promotion but after placing the order I realized that I had missed an item. As this was Amazon, I thought they might have a way of adding my missed item to my existing order and sure enough I found a combine order feature and proceeded to use it. This didn't seem to work as expected and they sent the £1.25 item separately and they charged me £2.75 postage. I emailed Amazon customer service explaining that the web site indicated that when I combined the orders that the £2.75 postage was no longer required and they sent me a fast response and refunded the postage. Exactly what I wanted!

So, congratulations to Amazon for good customer service. Boo! Hiss! to Sony for being so poor.

Actually thinking about it, the Amazon customer service was good but if the email has been sent to Red Gate I would have expected (and surely received) a response similar to Amazons but going on to explain what had gone wrong and what steps were being taken to resolve it. Maybe this is the difference when customer service is provided by technical support people.