Major bang for the buck and a great amplifier if you can get a good one.

Apparently an outrageous defect ratio and very very poor support from Sony all the way from their own outlet stores store to their USA headquarters in NJ, USA. These people have definately lost sight of what is truly important - quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty

Ok for the record, I have a STR-V444ES. This is essentially the same unit as the 555 for those of you who are unaware.
I was lucky enough to get a good one ( a refurbed unit at that! ) the first time out at the local Sony Outlet store near where I live. I love it and it is still working fine ( except for the recent discovey of all digital input being dead in the water. I had no real reason or desire to play with these inputs until recently after having picked up some DTS 5.1 Audio DVD's ) This is no major problem and will be taken care of. regarding this I am not upset.
What I am upset about is that when I decided to get a second one of these from the Outlet, it had an amplifier that died right out of the box. Re-furb or not, the products at the outlet are supposed to be AT or back to original factory spec. I exchanged this for a second unit that turned out to have all the analog inputs not functioning. This is where the trouble really began.
I called the store and told them of the second problem unit and I was told that they would prefer to just refund my money. I told them that I prefer a properly functioning unit, especially at the price ( $599! ). I arranged to "test" a unit at the store on the next visit to insure that I got a properly functioning unit, which would have been fine except for the snotty and arrogant treatment I recieved by the MANAGER himself and one of his salespeople. They stated that the situation was becoming ridiculous ( which one has no alternative but to assume that they felt I was at fualt for some reason for their product being bad right out of the box ) Remember I already have one unit that has been hooked up and operating for 5 months already! So, it's not like I did not know how to operate the unit. The Sony reps at the store obviously did not. I had to stand my ground in order to just have them hook up a unit for me to try , meanwhile taking a lot of abuse via attitudes and words. Once we got a unit hooked up ( I even had to take my own digital cables along ), right away I discovered a dead analog and dead optical input on the DVD inputs. Ok so, now this is 3 bad units out of the box in a row and I would have had no problem hooking up another ( they had 8 at the store ) except I knew what abuse would have to be tolerated and I felt the fight would now be better carried to Sony Corporate. WRONG!!!! First of all I had to go through several long distance phone calls to various sony numbers just to find somebody who could point me in the right direction to register my complaint. I end up calling Sony USA in NJ and to make a long story short, they took my complaint but offered nothing in the way of making the situation right. No apology from the Manager at the store, no help in finding a properly funtioning unit at the same price, no offer of a discount on a new model year version, NOTHING! They think the refund was adequate. It was not. Not for the way I was treated, nor for the lack of a unit.
I have purchased over $1700 of product from this local Outlet store since March of this year and told them so, they STILL do not seem to care! Now I am livid! I am now spreadind the word to all who will listen that Sony is not a company who cares much about anything except the bottom line. It's sad. Very sad. After having read the reviews here on the 555, 444, and 333 ES recievers, I think Sony owes a lot of people some serious restitution. In the meantime, I am spreading this story to all audio and video journals and magazines I can find. I am also refering the matter to Sony International and the regional better business bureaus. I am even going to take it to the media. I think Ralph Nadar is still out there fighting for the consumer. If not, someone is out there that can help. If you got "stuck" with one of the "lemons" too, spread the word. It's time Sony remembers how they got to be so big - customers and their satisfaction. They have really upset this loyal customer and I feel obligated to let others know what they may be up against if they ever have problems with a SONY product. Buyer Beware!!

Similar Products Used:

I have lots of sony products, dvd players, cd changers, turntable, mini-disc, speakers, portable cd players, etc etc

Update: I e-mailed this letter to Japan and the COO of Sony America J. Nishida with no response. I finally spoke with a customer service manager who had read the letter and basically told me to go f*ck myself. He said they were going to fix the unit under warranty (I guess I should say thank you), they are going to fix it in the way they wanted (by soldering in 7 new components), when they wanted and ship it back when they're done (ETA, another week, making a total of 5 weeks). The part that bothers me the most is that he made no effort to appease me (not even a complimentary CD). They finally shipped the unit back the other day, overnight delivery, but failed to put a delivery address so it sat at the FedEx depot for a couple of days while they tried to find someplace to deliver it. I'll test out the unit over the weekend and see how it performs. After reading other posts about this unit I hope it holds up, oh yeah, that's right, I have a five year warranty, luck me.

-Mark

Update 2: I received the unit back on May 23rd. I hooked the unit up and after 15 mins of use it, once again, burst into flames! I mean "Fire", the inside of the unit looked like a small fireplace. I immediatly unhooked it. I used a large flashlight to look through the grills on the top and saw two of the High Current transistors melted and fused to the heatsink. I'm so angry, my eye is twitching. I'm angry for two reasons:

1. I told them that this would happen. I explained in a clear and consice manner what the issues were and why I wanted a replacement unit. They disregarded my honest and expert opinion for their own reasons.

2. They disregarded my safety. I've worked on and around electronic equipment for over 25 years and I've never seen a piece of equipment ignite like that. It angers me to think that they would send a recently serviced unit back to me that could have injured me or my girlfriend and have the potential to cause a fire while I was not home.

I'm in the process of sending complaints to the Consumer Products Safety Commision and the Consumer Protection Board as well as seeking legal advice as to my right in this situation. If anyone has any advice it would be welcome. Thanks.

-Mark

Lots of fany features

Hissing sound when volume turned up past 11 o'clock. Unit won't turn my TV back to VIDEO 3 (RCA) when switching from DVD (S-Video) back to VCR or Cable.

I've had the unit for about 2 weeks. It's making a slight hissing sound when volume is passed 11 o'clock. I tried 4 ohms, no change. (Polk RT16's for front, CS350-LS center, LS/FX surround). My older receiver did not do this and was much cheaper. I don't have a Bass Boost button, as someone else suggested that would get rid of hissing in an earlier post.

Also, Auto-Decode doesn't seem to work well. It stays in 2-channel mode even when playing a Dolby Pro Logic encoded VHS tape or Dolby Surround broadcast TV program. So I have to over-ride it and choose Dolby Surround or one of the Cinema modes.

Any suggestions?

My serial number is in the 88060xxE range. Is this
considered an early/old model?

Similar Products Used:

4 year old Sony "consumer model" STR-DA805G Dolby ProLogic receiver

Stick it to The Man Mark!

WooHoo!

The burnt transistors you're looking at are deceased SAP15's made by SANKEN. I thought you might enjoy the following quote directly from Sanken engineering application note for this transistor:

"In addition, once the transistor falls into thermal runaway due to a soldering failure to the external VR added
between diodes or other failure manners, as the worst case, there may cause a resin crack or smoke emissions
by flare up."

Sound familiar? You may find the full application note for the SAP15's by digging around at:

http://www.sanken-ele.co.jp/en/

The document goes into more detail about how engineers designing audio amps with these devices must take more precautions than when using normal power transistors (the SAP15's have some extra compensation circuitry inside of them beyond the power transistor itself).

After reading this document, my suspicion is that some of the amplifiers leave the factory with the bias current set too high on these devices. The heat gradually weakens SAP15's compensation circuit and at some point let's the big 15 Amp beast of a transistor run loose until the fireworks start.

Enjoy....