I no longer fear hell, for I have dealt with Xbox support
Apr 26, 2010 | Filed under Games, Rants
I recently purchased an Xbox 360 Elite, partially to relieve the burden of my first-gen 360′s crowded hard drive, and partially to serve as a Media Center extender for my impending conversion to a Media Center DVR. And I was quite happy to have a brand new controller, one where the joysticks centered properly and the nubs hadn’t been worn off.
Except the controller that came with the Elite was broken. The left trigger squeaked and stuck, which means I’d be stuck with my face in my sights in Modern Warfare 2 while being shot to death from the side. When something affects a man’s kill/death ratio, I think it should be considered a serious flaw.
The object of my hatred, sitting on a throw pillow.
On April 1, I called the 1-800-4MY-XBOX line and spoke to a friendly, if heavily-accented woman after navigating my way through the voice prompt system (“Representative. No. REPRESENTATIVE!”). She registered my new console and asked me if I’d be willing to pay a shipping and handling fee for a new controller to be sent to me. I said, no, that’s dumb, I’m not paying for a replacement for the defective product that I already paid for — although I said it much more nicely. Honest. She put me on hold for a moment, and said she’d waive the shipping and handling charge, and it would take about 5-10 business days to process and send me a new controller.
That to me made sense. Why frustrate customers, especially one whose first 360 got sent back twice due to RRoD errors (twice!) — and whose original Xbox had to have the DVD drive replaced out of warranty? The controller itself costs Microsoft at most $11 (and that was in 2006, it’s most likely much cheaper now), and that’s a pretty low price for customer satisfaction.
Twenty days later, there was no controller.
I called Xbox support again.
“Yes. Hardware. Representative. No. REPRESENTATIVE!”
I spoke with another heavily-accented gentleman and gave him my ticket number from the previous call. He then proceeded to tell me that the service center never received my damaged controller and they need that before they can send a replacement.
I’m sorry. Back up a minute. What?
I told him exactly what happened on the last call and he told me that no, the only option was to send in the controller, at my own expense, before receiving a replacement. That means I’d have to buy a box (because I don’t keep xbox controller-sized boxes just hanging around) and pay for shipping. And, you know, good luck proving they got it if you don’t pay for signature verification or insurance.
After telling him multiple times that this wasn’t acceptable, I was put on hold while he tried to obtain an ‘escalation specialist’ for what was probably 15 minutes but felt like 45.
Finally, I was connected to ‘Mark’, who sounded about as much like English was his native language as I look like my name would be Rajij. Mark pretty much just repeated what the other guy said and told me that there were no other options. I asked him what the record on my ticket said, and he said the representative ‘educated me’ on how to get my controller replaced. Even though she said she’d send me one. And never gave me an address to send my controller to. And initially asked me to pay a shipping and handling charge for the controller she was going to send me. This time, I was less nice.
Frustrated and getting nowhere, I went to the xbox.com site to fill out a support email. The form on the website limits you to 1000 characters, so I tried to cram as much information in as possible, in addition to my ticket number. I received a prompt response:
We are sorry for the inconvenience and as I understand, you were being charged for the replacement of your controller. It is advisable that you call Xbox Customer Support. Your concern requires personal information for verification which cannot be divulged over email.
Remember the time on The Simpsons that Homer sent Bart and Lisa away so he could swear, and Flanders poked his head out and said it was the loudest profanity he’d ever heard? Yeah, that level of frustration.
Exasperated, I tweeted my frustration. Then, a response from @xboxsupport! Hooray! Someone who actually wants to help! 140 characters isn’t exactly enough to summarize the problem, though, so I sent a direct message asking for an email address where I could send the whole story. No response.
The next day, they pinged me to see if my issue was still outstanding. I responded:
@XboxSupport I DM’d you, but hard to fit in Twitter message. Thanks
The response?
@randomragenet You’re welcome ^JM
Open palm, insert face.
After more tweets, I was finally able to get this response from them:
@randomragenet Unfortunately we don’t have a contact email. We’ll check the DMs though. ^KS
And that was it.
So, brilliant. The people who actually want to help, can’t really. And the people who are supposed to help, don’t. If you can even understand them. I mean, seriously. It’s pretty much a given that you’ll be calling India if you need phone support for anything these days, but COME ON, Microsoft! The good phone centers actually train their staff on American English — didn’t any of you see that 60 Minutes episode?
I really don’t know why one of the biggest and most valuable companies puts some of their most loyal customers through this agony. And yes, if you had an Xbox 360 die on you twice and you still bought another one, that qualifies you as a loyal customer. Why should anyone ever have to pay a cent to have a piece of defective electronics that shouldn’t have even made it out of the factory replaced? What if this was my only Xbox and only controller, and I did what they asked? Would I have to just wait patiently for them to send me a new one, without even a broken controller to play games with?
What I do know is this: if this issue isn’t resolved very soon, I believe I’ll buy another black wireless controller from a local retailer, one with a return policy. And I have a feeling that controller may have a defective left trigger, too.
May 5th, 2010 at 11:07 am
My blood pressure was rising just reading what happened to you.