Monday, January 7, 2008

hating xbox360/microsoft

yes, this is a rant/vent/whatever post... i've just spent hours and hours (over the past few days) trying to help drew get results from the xbox360 repair center. i can't remember ever having such frustration with a company before. i am so angry that i want to rip someones hair out!
i took up calling because they kept giving drew the run around. after a number of calls and LONG waits for my calls to be answered, i finally reached a supervisor today. she (whose name was "george") was completely unhelpful as she simply repeated again and again the "policy"... that would be that they can't "advance" on an order without a tracking number for the order. um, that would have been a good thing to mention to our teenage son when he called for instructions for mailing his defective disc to them! instead, they gave him a reference number, which he dutifully marked on the disc and on the envelope before mailing to the repair center in TX. when i mentioned that drew hadn't been instructed to get a tracking number, she told me that in order for her to help me, i would have to come up with one. oh, okay, i'll just run over to my local post office and ask them to track a package we sent in october... that should be no problem, right?! i actually asked her if she'd mailed anything from a post office recently (she had), then i asked how she would go about tracking her mail after it has been sent. (shockingly, she had no response.)
anyway, she got a little frosted and said that "everyone else sends packages with tracking orders" so i replied that drew's should be easy to find - his would be the one WITHOUT a tracking number! she didn't like that. then, i asked what the policy was for handling packages that arrived without a tracking number and she told me that they can't share that information with me. so, i'm guessing that the answer is not "we process them in the order in which they arrive"... my guess is, they just toss them and assume they won't be held accountable if one can't prove they received it.
the sad thing is, after i started making these calls (foolishly assuming that there was some misunderstanding and that i could get it cleared up and get their disc returned), i started looking online and almost everywhere i went (related to xbox 360, of course), there were frustrated complaints about the repair center. okay, if we got a defective disc, isn't that their fault?! and if we followed the instructions given for returning the defective one and receiving a replacement, shouldn't that have been enough?! i know it shouldn't be a big deal to just go out and get another copy of the game for them, but now, my faith in their company is zilch. and what happens if we have another problem??? how much money should we toss away before we finally quit xbox360 altogether?! besides that, i am so angry with their "customer service" - which isn't service at all. and they certainly don't care much for their customers!! i spent hours being nice and friendly and got no where. finally, when i got good and angry, i got to speak to a supervisor and she was horribly unhelpful! oh, every time i think of her, i want to scream. at the end of our call, she told me to have a nice day... i was so mad that i actually told her that i hope her day is bad because she's effectively ruined mine. hello, am i four years old?!?!