How NOT to get customer support

Yesterday as I was trying to get information from the SONY support site, I clearly found the wrong way to ask for product information. Typically when trying to find support, the desire to put up with a bad site to solve the problem at hand is very different from a shopping experience. In my case I bought my product at BestBuy but the only way for me to get help is on the SONY site as this is a brand new product and Ms. Google did not offer me any advice. Let's walk thru what I mean.

I went to sony.com and found the support site, besides the fact that side-pull menus are bad this is the menu path to the support site:

I just happened to have my product model number but the main support site is so colorful that my eye is drawn to the 6 boxes in the middle, none of which help me. The good news is that the bright orange  "GO" button also draws my eye and so I enter my model number of "SVF14N13CXB" and click on the "GO" button.

It takes me right to the correct place with every thing I need, or so I thought. Turns out I need some individualized help so I try the "Chat Now" link.

I see they have automatically filled in the model number, which is really nice:

The customer experience is just as I expected and is just about as simple as it can be. I find entering my email address a bit suspect but over the past few days I see how it is helpful in saving the chat transcript for later reference so I over look that part.

This is NOT what happened to me yesterday as I had to walk thru a horrible process of entering my product number is huge hierarchy of existing SONY electronic products. I wonder what prompted them to fix the form and allow a free form model text box entry? Too many customers complain or did someone in customer support try to help a customer and saw and reported the problem? It was definitely not useful. I saved the screens to show just how bad it can be...

Instead of a text box I have to select from a hierarchy:

After scrolling thru the manageable list, I find "Personal Computer" and click on it to see my choices under it:

At first the list appears to be alphabetically sorted, but when I see products starting with "V" followed by some starting with "S" I realized I have to take my time and look for my model number in the whole list. I finally find my model number at the bottom and then realize this list is ordered by historical release date from oldest at the top to newest at the bottom, so my model is near the bottom:

Then I see that it has filled my selections into a very interesting looking drop down menu in the chat form:

Fully expecting to be done with the torture form, I am then presented with a set of choices that are just not the best way to build customer confidence in your site:

Besides the fact that it did not help me, having a bunch of identical links definitely appears to be a bug. I give up and try the "Chat Now" button and then I am presented with yet another form:

It is kind of sad that I have spent so much time so far and gone thru three different screens and still not gotten any personalized help. The last screen makes sense as the support team wants to know the specific model number when the process of going thru the product hierarchy only filtered the model down to a family of products.

This perfectly illustrates the current solution to this for customers is to allow them to enter a model number and verify it after they entered it as it is so much easier.