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A porting shot

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by WilHarris, 25 Oct 2006.

  1. specofdust

    specofdust Banned

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    Perhaps, because scan, by virtue of being the best UK retailer(they've taken that award from some magazine for like the last 4 years) are who most of us buy most of our stuff from?

    That's because it doesn't have to be advertised, it just has to be honoured, and it's in most companies intrests not to advertise the fact that you can make them give you a replacement product any time in a period of 24 months after you buy the thing. It's EU law though.
     
  2. BioSniper

    BioSniper Minimodder

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    Are you sure its 2 years? Last time I checked it was only a mandatory 1 year on generic electrical goods and 5 years on white goods (fridge, washing machine etc) ?
     
  3. specofdust

    specofdust Banned

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    I read somewhere that it was EU wide mandatory 2 years on all non-perishable goods. Cannae mind where. If that was wrong it's 1 year min on all non-perishables. Better then the 90 days crap you get in the US, but then, RMA services suck here so I guess we're even.
     
  4. Da Dego

    Da Dego Brett Thomas

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    That's a good point. For the record, Bit-tech (to my knowledge) has no real affiliation with Scan. I used that store because of its popularity with our readers, nothing more. Being on the editorial side, I have no knowledge of or interest in any business relations we may have with the company - we keep a very strict divide. Apologies, though, if anyone thought it was intentional.
     
  5. sheepdog

    sheepdog What's a Dremel?

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    I guess everyone is forgetting the fact that Lik Sang was selling mod chips, in fact my understanding is that they were the largest distro for them.

    While they themselves may be legal, Sony hates them. This was just a way for Sony to take out a big distro of them. They tried other methods and failed.

    Consider it a pre-emptive strike for 2 reasons, the first is they will not have to worry about Lik Sang taking a bunch of PS3'saway from the initial markets, and they will not have to worry (as much) about mod chips being as widely available for the PS3.
     
  6. Da Dego

    Da Dego Brett Thomas

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    For those who are unfamiliar with EU warranty law:

    http://www.cedarrapids.org/_includes/fileblob.asp?I=16&table=content&ext=pdf

    That is a US document explaining export law to the EU...so for all those who would like the specific document, you may find an HTML rendition of it here:

    http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache...l=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&lr=lang_en&client=firefox-a

    The law was amended in 1999 (I'm showing 2001 as another revision of it, but this didn't change) under CELEX #: 399 L 0044. This extended all warranties sold on non-perishable goods to a term of 24 months. Violation of this would be against EU law. :) I probably should have put a link to that directly in the article.
     
    Last edited: 25 Oct 2006
  7. animeguru

    animeguru What's a Dremel?

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    While I can see where you're going with your argument, to think that the average person who's buying a PS3 in the UK is going to be looking to import it seems a bit off to me. Of course, I live in the United States, but honestly, if I asked my casual gamer friends if they knew they could import games and hardware from overseas, most of them would have no clue. Additionally, how many of those people would also know that any hardware they bought was region locked and how to circumvent it? Hell, how many of them probably have any idea what the regions are?

    Honestly, the people who were buying from Lik-Sang knew exactly what they were getting in to. You don't buy gear from an importer without a little knowledge of what you're getting in to. The argument that a person who bought from Lik-Sang wouldn't realize their product would not be covered by Sony Europe is really stretching it.

    Sony went after Lik-Sang not because of their I/E business, but because of their mod-chip business. Of course, that's just my opinion, but I'd say it seems a whole lot more likely than your "We're protecting EU customers who wouldn't have a proper warranty (and when their gear breaks we can say tough crap, guess you're ponying up for another unit)." An extremely brief foray onto any gaming forum will quickly reveal that, while the 360 had plenty of problems with defective units, Sony branded merch fails far more regularly. I personally know a number of people who are on their second, third, or in extreme cases, fourth PS2. When you've invested in a number of titles that are only playable on a single console, you're a lot more likely to rebuy it so you can continue to play your favorite games.



    Also, I can't believe you ignored Nintendo in your column. Thats just plain ignorance. Maybe they're not at the top of the console business, but to write them off completely (give all your money to Microsoft quote) doesn't exactly lend much credence to your article.
     
  8. Stevedroid

    Stevedroid What's a Dremel?

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    Actually no. Selling new systems, with a significant loss on each unit as they do, is the greatest cost to the electronics unit. We're talking game consoles here, not TVs, money is not made on the hardware.

    This is conjecture. You don't have any factual basis to suggest import sytems were a significant problem for Sony. Additionally, don't assume companies can't make stupid decisions just because they're large. How do you think big companies become smaller companies or ex-companies? If the company culture is right, it's not impossible this whole incident is childish vengeance for the mod chip altercation from years past.

    ---

    Let's revisit the point that profit is made on the games not the console hardware. How many systems do you think Lik-Sang sold? What percentage of those sales resulted in warranty claims? I wish I knew and didn't need to engage in the same baseless conjecture. However, when pressed, I'd have to guess that it was not a significantly large enough number to be any more detrimental than in-region warrany claims.

    Now how many games do you think Lik-Sang sold? More games sold = profit for Sony. Were the warranty problems caused by import systems costing Sony more than the profit made by the additional games sales? If they're sane I guess we can assume yes, but I'm not willing to assume they're sane.

    In any case, I realize you were just showing things from the other side, but we really need some facts here (which we'll never get unfortunately) before we can deduce Sony's motives with any degree of certainty.
     
  9. Phil Rhodes

    Phil Rhodes Hypernobber

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    Hi,

    About a year ago, I bought a Fostex FR-2 compactflash audio recorder in LA. It's a piece of film and TV production gear, okay, but it's really just another lump of electronics.

    It was about half the effective price.

    That most certainly does not have anything to do with guarantees.

    Phil
     
  10. TheoGeo

    TheoGeo What are these goddamn animals?!

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    good article, but what i was hoping you would raise is how the judge could have gone on sony's side. I understand why sony did it and i'm not happy about it, but why did the judge even consider it?

    edit: not only that but what will be the impact on future imports?
     
  11. ChiperSoft

    ChiperSoft What's a Dremel?

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    Sony. Sony. Sony is on fire. We don't need no water, let the mother F-er burn.

    I've hated Sony ever since they killed Virtual Game Station (never heard of it? Gee, I wonder why). Then the PS2 muscled out the Dreamcast, granted not directly Sony's fault, but I still want to put the blame on them. But killing Lik-Sang, that's a whole new low.

    While I can see the point this article is making, I think it's misdirected. Every person that bought merch from LikSang knew exactly what they were getting and what the risks were. I get why they would delay the euro release (now that I know about the 2 year warranty thing), but all Sony has to do is throw a condition into the warranty legal text stating that it isn't valid when bought from an importer. Viola, problem solved, and you piss off only a few individuals instead of an entire customer base.

    I'm very sad to see LikSang die, mostly because they were the only place I could buy a replacement GD-ROM drive when my Dreamcast died on me.
     
  12. peteer01

    peteer01 What's a Dremel?

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    A good article, but...

    A good article, but...please don't over look the potential for the PS3's gaming ability to be a Trojan Horse for Blu-Ray.

    Sony wants to make sure that if you buy a PS3, you can buy/rent Blu-Ray disks at your local store. See, unlike HD-DVD movies, Blu-Ray is region coded, similar to DVDs. They're stripping away the consumer's choice to import to protect their proprietary formats. (Think BetaMax, MiniDisc, MemoryStick, MemoryStick Duo, UMD, Blu-Ray, etc.) That's why they don't want people importing their systems, particualrly the PS3.

    Denying choice to your end users by putting your resellers out of business in the name of their "safety" because you want to protect your proprietary formats is pretty low. I wish the Blu-Ray aspect of this debacle had been mentioned in the article. Otherwise, good job.
     
  13. Skullmonkey

    Skullmonkey What's a Dremel?

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    Actually I think its obvious this is the reason. Being an Australian, as you know we allways get bundled in with your release schedule, and before every major release just after we find out that we will get thier new hardware months after everyone else, Sony make a scrificial lamb out of someone.

    Sony Australia have been extremely vocal about trying to make parallel importing illegal, and in Australia at least have failed misserably. When trying to push this point in thier last few court cases here, they ended up with the Judges upholding the current wording of our import laws. In Australia it is LEGAL to import games and or hardware movies and music reguardless of format, PAL/NTSC as to stop this is anti-competitive and ILLEGAL. The reason is to try and make sure that we don't have to pay exorbitantly higher prices than say the Americans for the identical products. So parralell importing means that those Australians that wish to import, to either save money, or to get unreleased items, are free to do so; taking on the obvious risk of no warranty if something goes wrong but at least retaining choice.

    Whats more, the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) has pushed very hard to have region codeing itself deemed illegal in Australia. Although the Judges wouldn't go that far (yet), Sony seem unwilling to push their luck further in case that changes, at least at the moment.

    This is why I see this shortsighted ruling in the UK case such a worry, as Australian courts are perfectly willing to look to overseas courts for precedence, especially the UK. Now it may still take Sony's Aussie arm a while to move on this, (I doubt it) but the reason for Lik-Sang being the target is to remove the biggest HK I/E from the equation, making it that much harder for any Aussies to LEGALY obtain their PS3 at Japans launch window from a reputable dealer. With the dual plus of giving Sony Austalia "precedence" to work with.

    On a final note, I find the whole repair problem that was stated in the article BS, as even in Australia it is easy to find reputable repair agents that service consoles. The reason for this is twofold:

    1) After warranty expires (1 year for electronics min. by Federal Law) the big 3 are so damn dear, that the non authorised repair agents are able to do the job much faster and cheaper buy buying and butchering whole NEW units if need be, and then offering the same 3 month repair warranty that the big three offer.

    2) Sony in particular are so damned overpriced for repairs, and everything that is most likely to go bunk in the first 12 months is NOT covered due to being "high wear" parts, ie. the laser unit in the PS2. In the 3 months after the PS2 launch the repair cost of IN warranty units that weren't DOA (which do get replaced) was a set fee of in excess of $400AU (reguardless of what the actual problem was, which they didn't have to say), when it cost $700AU to buy!!

    Also Sony WOULDN'T honour any repairs or even DOA's if the customer wasn't able to produce the original sales reciept, even though there wasn't a single Australian PS2 that was over 12 months old at the time. They were sod out of luck and just had to buy a new unit. Sony made a LOT of unhappy customers back then. Can you imagine how much it will cost to repair if your PS3 dies in under 12 months but isn't DOA, and its the Blue-Ray drive thats dead!!!! Theres another $1000AU right there!

    I used to be very fond of Sony before they started to worry more about getting the laws in Australia crafted into something that would suit them, instead of keeping customers happy. Time they moved back OUT of politics, and into being a full time electronics manufacturer.

    Skull

    PS: Sorry about the insanely long first post, and hi there everyone :D
     
  14. rupbert

    rupbert What's a Dremel?

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    A well written and thoughtful first post, welcome to the forums :)
     
  15. Darkedge

    Darkedge Minimodder

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    Thanks for that link about 2 year warranties in Europe, I'll be using that when my 360 blows up..
    Interestingly MS do claim that the 360 only has a 3 month warranty and you have to pay 60 quid to extend this to 2 years. What a gyp!
     
  16. Havok154

    Havok154 What's a Dremel?

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    I think the problem doesn't lie in the mandatory 2 year warranty not being applied to the imported units, but the fact that they have to worry about it causing a backlash. If they made a quality product, they shouldn't have any problem lasting 2 years, warranty or not. But as we all know from the PS1 and PS2 launch units, Sony has trouble making systems that last that long. (The 360 also suffered from poor launch units) I honestly would not buy a Sony game system without some form of extended warranty because they honestly never go well, especially their lasers. Funny thing is that Nintendo doesn't have an issue with people importing, and for good reason, their systems don't die within the first year.

    Also, if Sony doesn't like importing, shouldn't they have curtailed that by using the infamous region coding, which is oddly missing from their new systems. Why? Because they like touting it as a feature, they just don't want/expect you to actually use that feature.
     
  17. zoot2boot

    zoot2boot What's a Dremel?

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    you say this but then spend the entire article appologising for the actions of the people who send you products to review. seems like there's some back scratching going on here. staggered product launches for movies and games etc. allow corporations to maximise profits. that's what they're there for. imports annoy national distributors because it's profit they're missing out on, when you import a psp from lik sang the european sony distributor misses out on a sale. they complain to sony, sony stamps it out. that's what's going on here.
     
  18. Shuriken

    Shuriken same christmas AV for a whole year

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    I thought it was a good article, it explained why buyers should be wary of imports and why companies do staggered launches, but I don't feel at all convinced that sony were justified in squishing Lik-Sang.
    Sony still make all their profit on launch day, and don't have to deal with any extra DOA units than they would have, due to Lik-sangs 10 day warranty policy.
    I truly believe with Lik-Sang out of business the launch of the PS3 will be exactly the same as if they were still trading.

    Matt
     
  19. Oclocker

    Oclocker What's a Dremel?

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    Yes well written article - but maybe more apt for conglomerates-r-us forums than a users forums??
     
  20. Nezuji

    Nezuji What's a Dremel?

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    A couple of people here have mentioned that Lik-Sang were a major reseller of mod-chips. I'd just like to point out that -- at least technically -- this is not true. Lik-Sang went through a massive upheaval several years ago due to a joint lawsuit issued on the behalf of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo against Lik-Sang for selling mod-chips.

    The directors of Lik-Sang removed all such items from the company's sales listings, changed their entire management team and even relocated their primary distribution warehouse to another country in order to allow the company to continue trading without incident while the lawsuit proceeded.

    That being said, Lik-Sang did continue to sell other items (such as boot disks) that allowed import software to work, but they have not sold actual chips for a long time.

    Nezuji :)
     
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