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Many PS4 units dead on arrival

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Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#121

Post by VLM »

floatingatoll wrote: post #13
simias wrote: post #10

The problem with those reviews is those whose console is working are not complaining. Are there any hard numbers on the proportion of dead consoles? Have Sony commented on this issue?

As of right now, there are 323 1-star reviews. Sony sold "81,639" PS3 consoles on that unit's launch day. So if Amazon shipped 81,639 PS 4 consoles, this would be a failure rate of 4.0 units per 1000, or 0.4%. Microsoft noted at one point during the Xbox 360 launch that the industry standard failure rate was between 3 and 5%. Presuming that same 3-5% is the failure rate for the PS4, and that 100% of DOA customers pos…

"Presuming ... that 100% of DOA customers posted a 1-star comment"

Compare the stats on Dec 24th to Dec 26th, I bet they'll be an interesting change.

Christmas is only like 5 weeks away; its not like they released in June or something. A very large fraction of PS4 shipped probably are covered in gift wrapping paper right now.

Bonus points if they had the sense to ship a one month warranty five weeks before christmas... it might be bad, but it can't be that bad, or can it?

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#122

Post by nkg »

VLM wrote: post #120
easytiger wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only two of those reviews are Verified Purchases. That looks fishy to me.

I found a few more verified but not many. The really fishy part is I clicked thru to see all of a reviewer's reviews, and of course 9 of 10 of the non verified purchases have this as their only review ever entered in the system... its mostly an astroturf campaign, and not a very well run one. The only non-astroturf non-verified review I could find was a guy who was VERY complimentary toward a bluetooth headphone from…

True!

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#123

Post by _pmf_ »

whalesalad wrote: post #62

Apparently it's an overheating issue[0]. The 'red line of death' is not a sign that your PS4 is dead, but a sign that it needs to shut down to cool off. If that is happening immediately on boot, then hopefully the temp sensor or overall temp system is flawed and can be fixed either by a Sony patch or really quickly in their manufacturing process. Hard to believe something like that slipped through the cracks. Reminds…

> If that is happening immediately on boot, then hopefully the temp sensor or overall temp system is flawed and can be fixed either by a Sony patch or really quickly in their manufacturing process.

Which does not change the fact that it is dead on arrival for the customer.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#124

Post by panacea »

xtracto wrote: post #104
mcpherrinm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the 5 star system on Amazon useful. I don't always look at the average rating, but rather the distribution graph of ratings. For example, one common shape looks like this: 5 stars: ||||||||||| 4 stars: |||||||| 3 stars: |||| 2 stars: || 1 star: ||||||| There's way more 1 star than 2 or 3. That usually indicates the product shows up DOA for a lot of people, or is otherwise probabilistically totally unsuitable f…

A lot of times, the 1-star ratings are only "knee-jerk reactions". The 5-star ratings are sometimes added by people related to the product (or people who for some reason have an agenda). I usually drop those two and focus on the 2-4 reviews.

Who rates something 3? Why bother to interact with a UI to express utter meh?

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#125

Post by thaumasiotes »

mcpherrinm wrote: post #46
idProQuo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always bothered me, both on Amazon and the iTunes app store. No lie, when I published my first app, one of the comments was "I'd rate this zero stars if I could." and my first thought was actually "wait, why can't you?" Overall, I think YouTube was on the ball by switching to a "Thumbs up, Thumbs down" rating system. "Out of five star" rating systems are always sabotaged by the fact that most people think in…

I find the 5 star system on Amazon useful. I don't always look at the average rating, but rather the distribution graph of ratings. For example, one common shape looks like this: 5 stars: ||||||||||| 4 stars: |||||||| 3 stars: |||| 2 stars: || 1 star: ||||||| There's way more 1 star than 2 or 3. That usually indicates the product shows up DOA for a lot of people, or is otherwise probabilistically totally unsuitable f…

> most people think in absolutes: Either something is the bee's knees or it's fried shit on a biscuit. (Yes, this is from two levels up.)

There was a fascinating post to the OKCupid blog discussing the distribution of attractiveness ratings (also on a 1-5 scale).

Ratings of women by men looked like this:

    5: ||||
    4: ||||||||
    3: ||||||||||
    2: ||||||||
    1: ||||
Ratings of men by women looked like this:

    5: ||
    4: ||
    3: |||
    2: |||||||
    1: ||||||||||||||||||||
EDIT: As you might expect when working from memory, I got some details wrong. Post is here: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dati...

Obvious corrections:

Scale is 0-5, not 1-5

Curve for women is not as steep as depicted in my comment. However, the modal rating is 1, followed by 0. In the words of the post, "women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh."

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#126

Post by thaumasiotes »

brownbat wrote: post #60
mistercow wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might work, but I have doubts. Interestingly, it's the opposite approach the the one taken by pre-employment personality tests, in which each question has no partial credit and exactly one right answer, which is either "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree".

Oh right! I think Barbara Ehrenreich mentioned that in Nickel and Dimed. At Walmart, one of the hiring surveys included some question pitting personal considerations or ethics against loyalty to management, and the only correct answer was absolute loyalty to management. When she debated the point, she was not offered a job.

In college, I got a part-time job for a stretch of some months grading exercises at the local Kumon center. The job consisted primarily of comparing a filled-out exercise booklet to a printed list of answers and marking incorrect answers. (The other part, the good part, was talking to the kids and trying to help them with problems they didn't get.)

My boss was never happy with the speed at which I worked. Eventually she told me I was too smart for the job and should aim higher. In a vaguely similar way, I don't think Wal-mart is looking for their lowest-level employees to make a lot of independent ethical decisions on the job. If you're going to be hiring unskilled labor, you might not want them to exercise a lot of discretion, on the theory that they're at least as likely as not to screw it up.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#128

Post by nnnnni »

VLM wrote: post #120
easytiger wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only two of those reviews are Verified Purchases. That looks fishy to me.

I found a few more verified but not many. The really fishy part is I clicked thru to see all of a reviewer's reviews, and of course 9 of 10 of the non verified purchases have this as their only review ever entered in the system... its mostly an astroturf campaign, and not a very well run one. The only non-astroturf non-verified review I could find was a guy who was VERY complimentary toward a bluetooth headphone from…

...or maybe they never had a reason to post a review until paying hundreds of dollars for a DOA console for which the company is apparently not being very accommodating?

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#129

Post by mitchty »

w0rd-driven wrote: post #77
Nerdfest wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the RROD with an XBox and they were _very_ quick getting it back. I think it was a couple of days. It's still an inconvenience, but it was also after more than a year of use. Ctl-Alt-Del is referring to this as the "Pulsing Blue Dick-Punch of Death". I think everyone should do everything they can to spread that term. It's too good to pass up.

Unless you lived right by, and I mean next door, to the refurb place I believe in Texas, it was never a few days. A few weeks maybe. I've had a Xbox 360 since launch go through 2 rrod's (so not really the same console) and at best it was 2 weeks to Georgia. They handled everything but shipping was never 2/3 day or better either way. I haven't had a return in 2-3 years now so maybe they got soooo good at the end that…

I must not play my 360 enough but I have one of the originalish white 360's bought at the same time as others (not day one, but before any of the fixes) and never had a RROD.

But now that I say that online watch it die the next time I turn it on. Glad I never had to send it in because Minnesota is a skosh farther than Georgia.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#130

Post by jedrek »

w0rd-driven wrote: post #77
Nerdfest wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the RROD with an XBox and they were _very_ quick getting it back. I think it was a couple of days. It's still an inconvenience, but it was also after more than a year of use. Ctl-Alt-Del is referring to this as the "Pulsing Blue Dick-Punch of Death". I think everyone should do everything they can to spread that term. It's too good to pass up.

Unless you lived right by, and I mean next door, to the refurb place I believe in Texas, it was never a few days. A few weeks maybe. I've had a Xbox 360 since launch go through 2 rrod's (so not really the same console) and at best it was 2 weeks to Georgia. They handled everything but shipping was never 2/3 day or better either way. I haven't had a return in 2-3 years now so maybe they got soooo good at the end that…

I live in Poland and had a white one RROD after about 11 months. Everybody told me: it'll take weeks. So I sent it in and went out and got myself one of the slim ones. Five or six days after a courier came to pick it up, another one came to drop it off. It'd go to Germany, been fixed and sent back to the Poland in under a week.
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