Mad at Sony

5 months ago I bought a Sony Handycam DCR-HC23.
Unfortunately the noise of the little engine that winds the tape gets recorded loud and clearly on the tape.
So, when playing the tape there's a terrible background noise that is really annoying.
We had the retailer send it back to Sony with a recorded tape demonstrating the issue. They checked it and sent it back saying nothing is wrong with the Handycam. So we asked the retailer to take it back and they refused. They say this is an inevitable problem with small videocams because engine and microphone are in close proximity.

My sister in law has a similar small Canon that does not produce any noticeable noise.

So we're stuck w/ a 380 euro videocamera that produces a terrible background noise.


This thread is not about slating Sony products in general because we have many other Sony devices that do perform properly.

Does anyone have any suggestions re. solving this problem?

Write a letter to the corporate head office for NL basically stating that you have been a long term customer who bought a badly designed item that you are dissatisfied with. Provide a copy of the receipt (with banking information covered up ofcourse) and ask them to take the camera back and write you a refund cheque, thus bringing their customer service up to the level of their other products. Good luck.

yeah, you don't have to put up with things like that....and if you really hate it I'll take it off your hands.....no charge at all :D I've been looking for a videocam and I'll edit the sound out anyway...

Not sure how far you want to take this...I am the kind of person that believes when a megamillion-dollar corporation tries to screw you, you should screw them right back. Here's some nice tips on how, from a lawyer no less:

http://www.badsoftware.com/alienware...ad-vendor.html

Disclaimer: I owned an Alienware for a year and loved it. I only sold it because it was a laptop and I used the cash to build a more powerful desktop. But in the time I owned the lappy, I BROKE the screen, and my harddrive failed. (This was during my 1st deployment). Alienware fixed it all for free, no questions asked, AND paid for FedEx 3-day shipping both ways.

Just writing a letter, sometimes to several people, has gotten me good results. I broke a Gerber multitool using the pliers to attempt to bend the links in a jammed Mark-19 once. 40mm grenade links are beefy. I wrote Gerber and they sent me a new tool for free, as well as a free Ranger folding knife and mini-red LED flashlight for free as well. I give most companies a nod just for shipping to FPO's so this was a pleasant surprise.

Thanks TomlinAS,

I am going to write a letter to the management of Sony and and see what they got to say.