To be fair, that speaks more about the quality of Sony's assistance in the US than about the phones themselves. Though it's bad publicity, admitedly.
Unfortunately, I've heard similar things about Nokia's Care assistance over here. So I think it depends on the idi...the representative that you deal with.
I've never ever had a single complaint about Nokia's assistance. And to be honest I never had to use Sony's assistance on anything since the Sony TV I have is 20 years old and still going strong (admittedly my LCDs are from LG), a Sony Stereo I have is 17 years old and still going strong, and none of my PlayStations ever gave me any problem. The only assistance I had a less than good experience with was with Microsoft, actually, because I always have to send the things to the Netherlands as Microsoft doesn't have any sort of technical assistance in this country.
Sony's poor assistance in the US may also be connected to the fact that Sony isn't that concerned about the US martket I'd guess? I highly doubt they'd be as popular as they are in Europe if their assistance was like that here.