I'd have to disagree. I email Sony all the time and I have to say they go way out of their way to satisfy me.

It's just you.

I have to thank Sony. I was buying movies from the PSN for my PS3 and PSP. When my PS3 HDD got full, I erased over $100 worth of movies. When I tried to download them again, I found out from Sony customer service that this wasn't even an option (unlike their most direct competitor...). With Sony, you can make copies but you're not allowed to download a movie you've deleted, even though they have a receipt of your purchase.   I was pissed. On the bright side, I learned to pirate movies and convert video formats as a result.

Thanks, Sony!

Really? Because it was a friend of mine who told me I should start emailing them because he does it regularly too.

I'm not sure what he says, but he's gotten them to refund games and he's gotten them to fix things out of warranty. I've not had anything that spectacular, but I've definitely gotten insider deals that they don't give to the public at large. For example, the hack that occurred, and the welcome back program? My ps3 was broken at the time and I couldn't get the games. I emailed them several times and eventually got some psn credit to use, after the program had ended.

I've also gotten content for free from Gabe Newell.

I'll be honest, I've only ever had one reason to contact Sony London and I'll tell ya, the lady on the line had no clue what I was talking about. I called up to enquire about Firstplay and the lady had never heard of it, which is funny because she works on the store and at the time Firstplay was one of the store's most popular items,

I have no idea what you're talking about. She works "on the store"? What does that mean? She manages the playstation store on PSN? Or she works in a Sony Style store? What kinds of questions did you have?

Well luckily I never needed customer service....yet

Oh sorry, I meant she works at the Store section of the Playstation helpline, she handles things relating to the PSNstore. The fact that she didn't know what at the time was at the forefront of the PSN offering was embarassing.

Though I can't say PlayStation has good customer service it has been a target for people and judging by how many people complain about things that can't be done, like cross chat, and unpopular things that needed to be done like the removal of the other OS, I could see large dissatisfaction. The only way to really tell is to analyze the complaints that were made to determine relevancy. It's also hard to determine much of this when Microsoft includes more than just Xbox. Nintendo barely received any so it's no surprise they were able to handle addressing them. It does not look good on Sony, but this data can't determine overall consumer relations. Good for nintendo though keeping their nose down.

Oh and as for your post title...really? This isn't what determines how a company "takes care" of it's consumers. It's just one aspect. Personally on the gamer side I believe PlayStation has more offerings than the others; more events, giveaways, better community presence on Facebook/twitter and of course playstation blog. Xbox might let you build your own community more effectively between gamers, especially with cross chat, but PlayStation has a greater official community.