It seems like Plaza Lama is notorious for lack of service. Here's something culled from the Playa Vista DR1 blog:
Playa Vista Archives: June 2005
Friday, June 3, 2005
Rumor has it that Plaza Lama - one of the larger department store chains in the DomRep - is not good at handling repairs of electrical goods that fail after purchase. We would like to scotch that particular rumor, based on our recent personal experiences, and state that they are unbelievably and deplorably atrocious at handling repairs ?even begging the question as to what is their function if as a repair center they don?t in fact affect repairs?
We purchased a Sony stereo unit for use in the Playa Vista Bar and unfortunately well inside 12 months it very disappointingly and surprisingly broke down. We naturally took the unit back to Plaza Lama?s repair service center where they startlingly and immediately departed from the norm of accepting liability for component failure within the first year, and in a customer not-so-friendly way declared that if we went off and bought six specified transistor components at the other end of Santo Domingo they would ?try? repairing the unit. We should have smelt a rat at this point? firstly because of the oddness of us, the customer, being requested to search for the necessary parts ourselves and secondly because of the half-hearted promise that this ?might? result in a repair! The time consuming and inconvenient purchase and delivery of the components back to the repair center, followed by a few days of grace for the technician to try his hand, left the unit precisely as it was: not functioning. Plaza Lama then instructed us to take the unit to ?Curacao Trading Company? who we later found out were the only genuinely authorized Sony distributors in this country. When reaching the Curacao service desk they informed us that only with a direct internal request from Plaza Lama, which they certainly had not received, could they take on such a situation. So we were left embarrassingly clutching the unit and facing the further time consuming extremely irritating journey back to the Plaza Lama repair center. We deposited the unit back where we started and felt so extraordinarily frustrated and insulted we got in contact with Sony International directly.
Sony in Puerto Rico - the closest Sony office - immediately took hold of the situation and sent two circuit boards with a CD containing circuitry manuals at the request of the Plaza Lama technician. The boards were fitted? and again the time consuming operation yielded absolutely no improvement in the performance of the unit. Amazingly the technician could not be deterred from his track: after the first two completely incorrect diagnoses he boldly made yet another ?secure? diagnosis and request to us for yet another part? which again was not available in this country, but valiantly once again couriered by Sony Puerto Rico for the ?technician? to fit. By this stage we were not the least surprised to discover that this, his latest and third diagnosis and repair attempt was not the solution either! To the praise of Sony in Puerto Rico it should be said that they never gave up, but just like us gave up believing that Plaza Lama would be capable of ever fixing the unit. They therefore agreed to send us a replacement unit, again by courier service, so that we, in spite of the astonishing incompetence and downright rude treatment from the technical department at Plaza Lama we suffered for an unbelievable seven months, should be able to maintain the high quality of music we have always craved for the Playa Vista Bar.
A very big thanks to Sony in Puerto Rico? we presume that they will consider very carefully who they will appoint to replace Curacao Trading as their representative in this country, as that particular organization has gone into receivership. If there is any justice Plaza Lama will not even figure on their short list!
Posted by Playa Vista @ 12:04 PM CST