Hi,
Sony-Service in The Netherlands shows that SONY doesn't care of us, despite using business-class laptops assured with "on-site" guarantee pack, as you'll see in my recent experience I have (still not solved) described below.

On 2nd December 2008 I claimed a failure on the FAN of my VGN-SZ4 laptop. Despite the "on-site next business day" guarantee pack I have, after one week, on 9th December2008, a mechanic came to fix it, and he broke the hard-drive flatband while working brutal and fast that he lost 2 screws down!
(the description of the failures are also shown by the report of the service subcontractor and attached here).
Next, after several calls in the begining of the year, and while I was writing a first post about sony-service (available http://club.vaio.sony.co.uk/clubvaio/gb/en/forum/viewthread?thread=60295), I received the repaired laptop on 21st January.
Unfortunately, another problem arised: the laptop turns-off by itself while you work on it!
After I reseted my laptop to the factory-default settings by using recovery, I have a fresh VISTA without any personal software on it, and if you do the "benchmark" to find out the rating index, the laptop turns off any time you try it!
You can see it in this movie: http://www.cristomatics.eu/papers/SONY_VGN_SZ4_failure.mov.

After many calls at Sony service Nederland, discussions where I never got a supervisor on the phone, just an "Alex" trying to listen to my claim and my frustration without doing anything fast. For example I was waiting for 12 days (Jan29th-Feb10th) to get a pickup (empty) box via DHL in order to put in and send my laptop to a repair-centre (from The Netherlands to France).
Now, I finally have news: the repair-centre was very prompt and Friday 13th sent me a repair-report (as attached), where another surprise: they reports that my FAN is broken, optical-drive, Wireless button, are broken (see atachment). In addition, they also state that the "broken" parts they found are out-of-guarantee and they charge me!? (I mention that my laptop is covered in guarantee for another 1.5 years). However, I let you judge (by looking at the movie with self-reset behaviour) if any of the reported parts could produce this effect!
BTW. The hardware test program passes all the components (including optical-drive), and the FAN reported as broken, was just replaced by the Hartman, the dutch service subcontractor company of Sony.
For those interested to check my service claim, and have the rights to check into Sony-service system, have a look at CaseRef.3551735.

Honestly, I don't believe in SONY anymore. Do you think that Apple, or Dell would let a customer for more than 2 months without laptop? I have colleagues at the University of Amsterdam telling me that they never had such bad reaction from the service of Apple/Dell, though there could be problems anytime. Nonetheless, University paid for a business laptop for me, a research scientist, including the best "on-site" guarantee pack and all accessories (dockstation, 2nd power-adaptor, backpack, mouse, etc.) from SONY.

Despite the good products SONY releases, I would think twice when I have to pay such a high rate on a brand (with lack of guarantee support) for a product that might be available to other good brands.
I am curious if this story applies to other countries than The Netherlands. Is anybody else un-satisfied by the SONY service, recently?

Best regards,
Mihai