I really gotta stop trusting Sony to hold up their end of a bargain in a basic retail transaction. What with recent debacles like the spyware, the exploding batteries, the I-can-get-two-Wiis-for-the-price-of-one PlayStation3, and their overall blind faith that everything they do is for the public good, I still figured they were sold in the TV department...

We recently purchased a 46" Sony Bravia TV in Miami and shipped it to the Bahamas, an idea which sounds more ominous now that I type than it did when we went through with it. It shipped and problems started in week one. In the first couple of days, we noticed a ticking noise in the top right hand side but that seems to have gone away.

What hasn't gone away is a three-inch stripe along the right edge of the screen. It's colour varies depending on what's on the screen. When the screen is black, the stripe is a dark red. When the screen is green (i.e. for football/soccer games), the stripe is yellow. You can still see the picture underneath but all the same, we've taken to viewing things in normal mode rather than widescreen.

Give them credit: their voice response system is pretty good, even if it follows the recent creepy trend of having a computer pretending to talk to you. ("Hmmm....I can't seem to find your order.") I made my way to an agent relatively quickly. She was polite and friendly and ran me through a minimum of troubleshooting before deciding that I needed a technician, which I already knew. (On a side note: I think I've said this before but every home should come standard with a portable phone with speakerphone and a mute button in the handset.)

But according to Sony, the Bahamas is part of Latin America. This struck me as odd because while I always knew Bahamas spoke a different language (to take two quotes from recent political pamphlets of a federal party: "Ain't Long Now" and "We Votin' Dem Out!"), Spanish it ain't. And unfortunately, this meant having to call Sony in Mexico, just to find a licensed Sony service centre in the Bahamas. And guess what? Sony Mexico's voice response system is all Spanish. As in, there is no: Press 2 for English.

I got two levels deep in their system before chickening out and deciding to waiting for Mrs. Hillbilly who speaks Spanish. That's kind of where it stands now but I'm not holding out hope that a Sony centre exists here. There is a bit more to it but that's a post for the technical arm of the Bahamian Hillbilly which will be forthcoming.