F55: Sony Pro Community Forum (Gone)

Tom - I believe it's temporary - while they roll out a "new" (and hopefully improved) site. I logged in on the 4th and there was a message that essentially said the site will be down on the 5th for improvements. Let's hope it'll be worth the wait... assuming it should be back up with NAB about to start...
 
PaulReam said:
Well sadly, Sony have decided to segregate their websites geographically and locked out anyone from the wrong area!
All the collective information accumulated for the benefit of everyone (including Sony!) has been lost.
Idiots
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That's idiotic. Is there anyone we can complain about to Sony. I fear that ever since Juan Martinez and Mel Medina left, Sony has lost any sense of what customer service is about.
 
I wouldn't blame Sony too much, remember they have numerous divisions and likely this is a case where the pro division was probably talked into using their consumer "help" platform for some of it's large sensor cameras (honestly should never have been put there to begin with) then later of course some 5 years later the consumer division decides to update the website and separate the geography at the same time leaving the pro division with its pants down.

Ah well what can you do but sad that 5 years worth of discovery, information and sharing is now nearly impossibly to pull up. Even if you get to the original F5/F55 large sensor pages the site reloads automatically to the new page forcing you to try a cycle of clicking the back button until it stops redirecting..
 
LennyLevy said:
That's idiotic. Is there anyone we can complain about to Sony. I fear that ever since Juan Martinez and Mel Medina left, Sony has lost any sense of what customer service is about.
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I never thought it was the reason, but I did at least wonder if Juan wasn't fired for his having been so helpful and interactive on the Sony site. That interactive and friendly style seems to run against the Sony culture of being a cold, monolithic company that maintains a wall between itself and the customer. I always wondered if Juan's "hands-on" customer service rubbed some Sony folks the wrong way. If for no other reason than he made them look bad for their lack of direct interaction with the customer and they didn't want to work that hard.

Ever seen a Sony rep post here or on Reduser? Me neither.
 
Yeah I met Juan when he saw me post about a problem I had with the precursor to Sony Catalyst . He immediately emailed me , asked for the problem file and in a month emailed me to say the problem had been corrected in Sony Content Browser. From then on I could always contact him with any problem at all and get an answer right away. He would intervene if I had issues with Sony Repair and called me for suggestions about the FS7 before heading to a meeting in japan. Sorely missed along with Mel Medina who was cut from the same cloth.
I was not big spender with Sony but I sure got that kind of treatment.

Anyone know who the Sony US customer rep is for the FS7 now? I don't.
 
Didn't even know Juan had been let go. Big loss.

About the forums, can we really be surprised? It's Sony.

This lack of touch with the customer base is why I think Venice might fail as the F65 did before it. Arri still supports the D21. Try to get Sony to do anything about the F23 and F35.
 
Sttratos said:
This lack of touch with the customer base is why I think Venice might fail as the F65 did before it. Arri still supports the D21. Try to get Sony to do anything about the F23 and F35.
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Time will tell. However the level of thought and user-focussed design that's gone into Venice, honestly suggests a shift in approach by Sony (to my eyes at least).

I get the impression they're finally catching on to the very needy, and very specific requirements of their pro users.
 
With the Sony Pro Community, the customer received personal attention, a timeline for updates, features, useful information, helpful tips. That added value, and incentivized a purchase. It was a community, and that may have been what Sony was in fear of. It seems pretty important to Red to have one. Seems pretty important to BMD, and Panasonic. All have active communities. In fact, if Sony had anything to fear, it's that the community continues without them on a site that began with Panasonic focus, dvxuser.
 
Why would Sony be afraid of an educated User base? Anyone know a top person at Sony we could all lobby to get the community or something like it back. It really sucks to not have it.
I may have an address - I'll look for it.
 
LennyLevy said:
Why would Sony be afraid of an educated User base?
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I think there could have been two factors.

1.) A never ending feature request. The more Sony gave, the more people demanded. They were never satisfied and sometimes whined openly, "Why can't Sony give me free features to make my F5 like the F55?"
2.) Customer repair service experiences. Some were good, some were bad, most were expensive. Or a few people could have isolated issues that would escalate into demands for a recall or a fix for all, people who might not otherwise have been aware if not for the community.

I think Sony is more comfortable controlling the support than they are with users sharing experiences. My $0.02
 
You make a lot of sense. I'll bet you're right. I guess I'm guilty of posting the "never ending feature request" quite a few times, though I tried to limit myself to simple things that were do-able but would create a lot of value.

Too bad though as it no doubt made the camera itself better especially when it came out initially and had a lot of bugs. I think the user feedback improved Sony's own knowledge.
At least we have DVXuser. I hope they are smart enough to at least have someone checking user forums like this one. Stupid if they just stay inside their own bubble.
 
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