this is a rant--stop here if you don't care
Just like hundreds of thouosands of other people, I got an xbox for xmas. I read the forums, blogs, and articles, so I knew there was a considerable chance that it might be broken.
Plug in to power - check
plug in AV cables - check
power on - check
dashboard - CHECK
Wow, it worked!! Yeah right...
call of duty - distorted
perfect dark zero - distorted
halo 2 - stalled
Okay, so I'm not terribly surprised or upset. I mean it's MS. Could we really expect it not to be half ass?
<off_topic_rant>
In fact, I'm still amazed at the number of original xboxs that worked. Of course back then MS had to beat the quality of the PS2, this time the goal is to beat PS3 to market. So slack a bit on the HW, what could it hurt? (i know the retort: "slack? slower cpu but faster gpu...blah...unified shader architecture...blah blah...100% pipeline utilization...blah blah blah...easier development environment" -- fanboy excuses[i used to be an xbox fanboy so i can say that])
Furthermore, what consumer products survive the market with as high a failure rate as the 360? I can only think of one -- PCs (MS comes to mind again). So now we have the maker of some of the most unstable SW making HW...in a rush. Much like apple is the more stable (though not much) alternative, we have the PS3 to look forward to. Only difference is sony has a larger market share and a more powerful product. It should be interesting to see just how finicky console users are--but in my opinion MS has positioned itself so Sony can easily pick up the tens of thousands of users who have been vastly disappointed in the way they have been treated by MS.
</off_topic_rant>
Back to the point--I called MS and expected a long wait on the phone, but there was none. Got through right away. After the usual pointless customer service suggestions I was told they would overnight me the infamous repair box. Okay i said, that's fine. I asked if MS had any policy to compensate owners of broken consoles and was transferred to a supervisor. So far so good. Okay not good, but as good as can be expected for the situation.
Then I was put on the phone with Pedro Salazar (aka Pete) with customer service. I don't know what happened to this guy (disappointing holiday maybe?) but he was not in a good mood. He became irate when I asked about compensation for those of us who now had nothing to show for xmas. He told me that there was no compensation--that was MS's policy. He told me there was the end of the road for me and there was no one else I could talk to. And he also told me that any other questions I had were irrelevant. I'm paraphrasing in a much nicer tone than him. When I told him he was being rude and condescending--whcih he was--he just got more irate. He told me ther was no one I could complain to about him. I said okay, asked him to note this in my file and hung up.
I called back to make sure he had noted it and got into a conversation with the customer service rep i spoke with. He told me that the customer service reps work for a staffing company that is contracted by MS. He then gave me MS's complaint address. This is really just their product registration address so i don't expect my complaint to even be read (though i will mail one).
So, it's clearly inferrable that the customer service reps can be as rude as they want with no real way to complain.
Anyway, none of this will affect MS's bottom line now. But this disappointed mentality is spreading and it will be interesting to see what Sony can do use it to their advantage.
Conclusion: MS sucks, they know it, they don't care becuase they are rich.
I wonder how long until google makes a video game console--that's a different rant
if you read all this, you must be bored.
Author
Topic: Defective 360 And Customer Support (Read 27 times)