I just feel like sharing this terrible recent experience with SONY. My PS3 fails to read blu-ray discs and games, and it's only about a year and a half old. I take really good care of my electronics and have it protected from dust (since that machine seems to attract so much of it), and even though I've dropped hundreds on games and movies I don't have time to play with it as much as I'd like to.

I must say that I also own a Wii and a 360, a console that has gotten a lot of flack from apparently having high return rates. All I can say is that all of my machines are much older than my PS3 (bought them - just not the PS3 - on release), and when I got the red ring of death from my 360, 2-3 years after having gotten it, I had a really good experience with Microsoft's Customer Service, and my machine was fixed free of charge.

I called SONY only to speak to a surprisingly rude employee (it must have been the end of a bad day for him or something like that), which was particularly surprising to me since I'm always very courteous on the phone myself. I heard nothing but a mechanized scripted talk, read in a very RUDE manner, in which I was informed I had to pay 161 dollars for them to send me a box to send my machine for service. The funds would be immediately held from my card, even if not actually charged until after the machine was fixed. My questions were barely (and rudely) answered, and I sincerely almost felt like hanging up and calling again at a later time and speak to somebody else. Since I really want my machine to be serviced as soon as possible I bit the bullet and gave out my cc info. (it had to be done on the phone since for some reason sony's service website isn't compatible with any of my mac browsers and I keep getting errors after filling out the forms.)

I'm very disappointed at the fact that a 500-600 machine fails after a year and a half of use only to be met with rude customer service plus a 160 dollar fee. I'm tired of reading that the PS3 has a low return rate - the disc freeze problem seems to be prevalent enough among the first batch of 60 gig PS3's. In any case kudos for Nintendo for making such a sturdy machine and for Microsoft for having such excellent customer service and buyer protection guarantees. It's a shame that I personally tend to prefer PS3 games (not much of a FPS fan), otherwise I'd probably steer clear from SONYs products in the future. BUYER BEWARE

Nope, that doesn't work for me. Obviously tried that, it takes me to a "you are leaving gamespot mobile to regular gamespot" page, I click ok and it takes me back to the freakin' gamespot mobile. Gamespot is not the only one doing this, even google does it, but I don't seem a way to deactivate it. Anyone help? Gamespot?

Thanks