[slinkelist] Sony S-Link Litigation, your share

[MRJonesTEX@aol.com]

If you have purchased a Sony TV, DVD, CD, VCR, Tape Deck, Mini-Disc Deck, or 
Receiver with the S-Link feature (or supposedly with S-Link in the case of 
the KV-27V66) . . . you may well find that you have an opportunity to secure 
a refund of part/all of your purchase price, or a replacement with a new unit 
at no cost.

As I was replacing/upgrading my stereo-television equipment in our den with 
newer equipment several years ago, I paid the extra to make sure that all of 
the individual components had the S-Link feature.

Guess what ... when I finally finished purchasing all my components and tried 
to hook them up together so they would work conveniently, I couldn't get them 
to work.

Dozens of hours and multiple telephone calls to Sony didn't work and I gave 
up!

Some of you have been purchasing Sony A/V components with S-Link and won't 
know that it apparently doesn't work as advertised until you pay a premium to 
acquire other Sony components.

What I didn't know was that apparently there are "known incompatibilities" 
(per Sony technical rep) among Sony components with the S-Link feature ... 
that many of us were finding that purchasing components with S-Link didn't 
assure "seamlessly" integrating our expensive Sony products  .. and, that a 
complaint had even been made to the Federal Trade Commission about this 
apparently fraudulent advertising and lack of functionality.

The final straw came when I purchased a new television and DVD for our 
bedroom here in Austin - both TV and DVD from Sony, supposedly S-Link 
compatible - and discovered that they weren't.  Incredibly, despite the fact 
that the Home Theatre Planner, the Sony site, and the Fax-on-Demand service 
said the KV-27V66 had S-Link ... there was no female S-Link connector on the 
set.

Isn't the Internet wonderful . . . after hours with Circuit City and Sony 
trying to fix my problem and to make sure that no-one else was a victim of 
this misrepresentation ... I went on the Net and discovered that many of you 
had the same problems as me.

And that quite a few had complained to Sony individually and gotten virtually 
nowhere. 

Finally, a couple of us came to the realization that Sony had no intention of 
responding to us individually despite the inherent problems and apparent 
misrepresentation with S-Link connections ... that although they knew that 
they had design flaws which precluded functionality, they were stonewalling 
and not being helpful.  

We (thirteen of us now) are getting a law firm to represent those of us who 
have purchased a Sony product (supposedly with the S-Link feature) ... and 
trying to prove that ... "united we stand, divided we fall"!

If you would like to participate by joining our group (at Zero cost to you), 
please reply with the following:

Name
Address
Telephone Number/Fax (if you have one)
E-mail address
Model Numbers of your Sony products with S-Link
Approximate date of purchase and store purchased from
 
We'll keep you posted . . . Thanks

Milton Jones
mrjonestex@aol.com