I stood in line opening day to buy a PS2(ended up on the evening news and got my fifteen seconds of fame), and enjoyed the heck out of it. A couple of years later, the laser mis-aligned and it wouldn't read DVD games. It gathered dust for a while; then in the summer of 2004, I called Sony to ask them about it, since no electronics store would fix it for less than $70. They told me that it was not an uncommon problem, that I should ship it to them and they would fix it for me. Two weeks later, they shipped me a new system for free, which I still have. ~shrug~ I didn't really feel screwed by Sony.
