Saturday, May 10, 2008

My suck Microsoft experience

I'm not a happy microsoft customer right now. Let me tell you my tale of woe, starting from the beginning.

Monday, April 28th:
I'm a huge GTA fan. I rarely preorder games, but I preordered GTA IV 2 months before its original 'ship date' (before it was delayed over and over again). Finally, the big day was just one day away, I was playing GTA: VC via backward compatibility, and I got the 3 RRoD error. Suck.

Well, I called MS and as this was my third RRoD error (that's right, I've had to send my 360 in for repair 3 times now), they overnighted my shipping box to me and asked that I send them my 360, my power brick, and the plug. Well, I thought that was pretty decent. I really wanted to play GTA the next day, but since MS couldn't teleport a 360 to my front door, this was the best they could do.

Tuesday, April 29th:
Here's where things started getting bad. The next day, I wait for the package, but it doesn't arrive. So I check FedEx's website, and I find out that it was 'undeliverable.'

"What? Undeliverable?" I pondered. So I called FedEx to find out why my place of business had somehow stopped taking packages from FedEx. The answer: Microsoft's representative (who was clearly in some call center in India and spoke limited english) had sent it with the wrong address. I was pretty pissed, but reasonable, so I gave FedEx the correct address and called MS. After all, if they sent my empty box to the wrong place, God only knows where they were going to send my repaired unit. The guy apologized (again, I was in India), gave me a new number, and told me he updated the address.

Wednesday, April 30th:
The box arrives at long last! The FedEx guy is cool and sticks around while I package up the 360 so it will go out the same day. Again, it is labeled to be overnighted. "Cool, maybe early next week I'll be up and running." I wrote my reference number on it (per the instructions of the first person I spoke with) and sent it off to be fixed.

Thursday, May 1st:
I forgot my tracking number at home, but I had my MS reference numbers so periodically throughout the day I check on my status via the xbox website. According to the site, the package never arrived, and even odder, another empty box arrived at the office. The website also tells me that once the package arrives, the turn around is 24-48 hours. Not bad.

When I got home, I checked FedEx's website (the package was delivered). "Oh well, maybe the guy in the shipping dock hasn't punched it in yet," I reasoned and decided to give them another day.

Friday, May 2nd:
The website still didn't show my package had arrived, so I was starting to get a little concerned. I decided to call and brave the journey to Calcutta once again (I never spoke to someone in an American call center, by the way--they were all in India). I found that when I told them they sent my first box to the wrong address, Microsoft actually cancelled the first repair order, sent the second box (which I was still puzzling over) and that the reference number I wrote was meaningless--MS tracks repair orders via your FedEx shipping label number.

The guy told me that they would get it sorted out and my xbox would be sent back in 5-7 business days. "Wait a minute," I said in my most pleasant voice (well, maybe not), "the website promises a 24-48 hour turn around, and you got my xbox yesterday. What's this 5-7 day garbage?" The response floored me: "Our website is very out of date, sir." Microsoft, the guys who used internet explorer to try and shut down Netscape, have an out of date website? The guys whose hold message repeatedly urges users to use the website instead of calling have incorrect info on the site?

I asked for a supervisor and got someone with a slightly less thick accent who promised to get it fixed as soon as he could. That was real assuring. /end sarcasm


Saturday, Sunday and Monday, May 3-5:
I played alot of Mario Galaxy and Fire Emblem on my wii.

Tuesday, May 6th:
A miracle has taken place! The MS website now says that my xbox is coming home! My baby boy is comin' home!

Wednesday, May 7th:
Apparently they overnighted it back late in the day, because it didn't get shipped out until the 7th. Oh well, I played more Mario Galaxy (I was now up to 109 stars), looked at my GTA IV box, and made plans for the wife and the baby to get out of dodge while I killed hookers in 24 hours.

Thursday, May 8th:
The big day was here! The xbox had arrived, and I was stoked. I gingerly hooked everything back up, pushed the power button, and . . . nothing. Huh? I looked at the brand new power brick and noticed that the little light wasn't even on. I tried a different outlet. Nothing. I then tried another pc power cord. Nothing.

I was pissed. The REPAIR CENTER sent me a broken power supply. The REPAIR CENTER! Don't they even check this crap?! So I called yet again. This time I didn't waste small talk on the first guy who answered. I demanded a supervisor.

As expected, he apologized profusely. He said I should dispose of the broken PSU and that they would send me a new one in 7-10 business days. That was my breaking point.

"7-10 business days?! But I've already waited over a week and a half! You can't overnight it?" No matter how I tried to convince him of how ridiculous this 'solution' was, the guy on the phone refused to budge. So I used the last card in my deck.

"Fine. Put me through to the next level of escalation."

"There is no next level, sir. I am the highest level you can speak with."

"Bull. You don't have a boss? You own the company?"

"No, I have a boss of course."

"Well then put him on the line."

"I cannot do that."

So I asked for where I send written complaints and I got his name and employee number (for those interested, his name is Francisco, and he's employee #5112044). And then I found out something even more infuriating: Microsoft doesn't have anyplace to write in with customer service complaints. That's right. If Sanjay on the phone can't satisfy you, then MS doesn't care. He gave me the address of their legal department, but I didn't have a legal complaint. I just wanted MS to know that their customer service sucks. I guess they don't want to know.

To end the call, I double checked what I was supposed to do with the broken PSU. Francisco told me it didn't matter, they didn't want it back. Perfect.

I got out my power drill and, after a little bit of trouble finding the screws, took the thing apart. Several things about this PSU surprised me. First of all, the soldering was terrible. Now I'm no genius when it comes to wielding a soldering iron, but this was amateur at best. Huge globs of solder dotted the circuit board. Second of all, there was substantial charring on the inside of the unit (photos to be uploaded later). I'm not enough of an electrician to say for sure, but my guess is that the unit blew out due to a short which probably happened because of the solder globs. This thing could easily have caused a fire.

So where am I now? Well, following instructions found at the Llamma, I turned an old PC psu into an xbox PSU until the new one arrives (as of today, May 10th, it has not). But if I didn't have that, I'd still be waiting, now 10 business days since my first call, for a functional 360.

And right now, all I want is to make noise. Microsoft, your customer service sucks. You've acknowledged the hardware problems with the 360 and extended your warranty. That's great. But until you develop some decent customer service, you're never going to beat your competitors.