I’ve been fighting with Sony Support for over two weeks now. Their documentation says that the SRS-NWZ10 cradle is compatible with the NWZ-A728. My guess is that Sony came to this conclusion by knowing that the mp3 player has a 22-pin port and the cradle has a 22-pin jack. Sure, the port and jack are compatible, but the problem is that the mp3 player is too wide to get to the jack. It doesn’t seem that Sony actually tested the player with the dock.

After going back and forth with the first level of (Indian) support a couple times, they sent me to Customer Relations for a return. Customer Relations, of course, told me the units were compatible and they couldn’t issue a return. Then, they directed me to the second level of support, the Product Specialist. This guy was American and very friendly. It seemed that things were going well and I thought I was nearing the end, but he wanted to talk to the Product Engineer, who had already left for the day. He promised to call me back the next day. Of course, he didn’t.

It might be a bit cynical of me, but I feel like they are just trying to wear me down until I give up and keep the useless thing. I’m not giving up. That system cost me an arm and half a leg, there’s no way I’m keeping it and absorbing the cost.

In other Support News, I had a pleasant experience with TomTom Support on Wednesday. I bought a refurbished GPS that was supposed to come with a free map update, but the TomTom Home program told me I was not eligible. I called up support; they were American and they took care of it pretty quickly. I should mention that it might just be a case of an easy request (enable new map download) versus a hard request (your products are incompatible, even though your documentation says they are compatible).