Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased a Sony a5000 in May 2014 and loved the functionality and quality it put out even with my amateur photo skills. However, I noticed that the stock lens was "stiff" to rotate. I wish I would have contacted Sony sooner. This June (13 months after purchase), the lens started giving a "Lens Not Recognized" error message and quit working with the camera. My father in law has the same camera and I tried swapping lenses. It was definitely a problem with my lens as his lens worked on my camera body, but my lens would not recognize on his camera. I contacted Sony knowing that the 12 month warranty was expired, but hoped they could help me resolve the problem and/or point me in the right direction for repairs. To my surprise, they offered an "accommodation" to the warranty and offered to cover the repair costs. I received an email with instructions to send the lens to Precison Camera and promptly sent it off. Included in the instructions was the phrase "Sending the lens under accommodation warranty. :- Warranty: Yes" After almost 6 weeks, I tried to contact Precision Camera. After several weeks of no one answering on their service line, I decided to contact Sony. Since that point, it has been an absolute nightmare. I received a call back saying that they had contacted Precision Camera and they were waiting for payment on the repair. That took me by surprise since Sony had promised to cover the repairs. After explaining this, they requested proof of purchase of the camera (even though it was out of warranty and they were accommodating it anyways). I sent this, along with the original email stating they were covering it under a warranty accommodation. Since then, they've given me the runaround during a dozen phone conversations and finally today (a month after I contacted them to check on the status and 2.5 months since the initial contact!) they told me they wouldn't cover it because it was out of warranty. Explaining they had promised to cover the repairs and the fact that I would never have sent the lens to them in the first place fell on deaf ears. After 10 minutes of back and forth with the rep, I then asked them to send the lens back to me so I could pursue repairs on my own (for a much cheaper price than the quoted $126.50). I then received a call from Precision telling me I need to pay $12.50 shipping to get it back! I can't believe the runaround I've received from Sony regarding the repairs. While disappointed my lens stopped working after 13 months, I accepted I would probably need to pay for repairs. When they offered to cover the price, I was extremely happy with their customer service, but since then my respect for them has sunk to rock bottom. The fact that they tricked me into sending my camera to their "repair center" that in actuality is a 3rd party vendor with absolutely terrible online reviews is despicable. Then to retract their offer and require me to pay for shipping both ways is downright horrendous. In the future I plan to steer clear of Sony products (both cameras and otherwise) for their incredibly poor customer service.