Remember those articles we ran a while back about oursourced support become more of a burden than it’s worth? Guess M$ doesn’t read DU.
XBOX Screams That Month Old Unit’s 90-Day Warranty Is Expired
Brent’s friend bought an XBOX in November with a 90-day warranty. It died. When he called the Bangalore based tech support, “Steve” told him:
“I don’t care if you bought your console yesterday, we still show your warranty is expired.”
We’ve received several complaints about XBOX’s customer service recently. Perhaps Microsoft needs to find a new outsourced call center. These guys, seems like someone peed in their curry.
The rude behavior is unbelievable. The argument about the warranty is common. In my experience (HP notebook) the warranty clock starts with factory ship. You have to send the receipt and wait for verification. Not a bad idea to do this early in the warranty period so you don’t have down time waiting for them to agree that the warranty is still valid.
90 days is a pretty bad warranty for a device like that. I’m just glad my son’s 360 works properly. At least, he says it does…I’ve never touched the thing.
Yes, thats the problem. As an HP authorized shop, I have to fax in a proof of purchase for a warranty start date because people dont register the product. If they didnt buy from my shop, they have to provide me the paperwork or its not happening. It delays the ordering process by days sometimes weeks.
I heard a rumor, maybe true, that Gateway is advertising state-side tech support. What a novel idea! Not a great fan of Gateway, but not having to call India or Pakistan for a simple support call, well just makes sense.
2.
SOP. Toys for kids usually have very brief warranty periods. It’s a gimme for extended warranty sales and guaranteed defective hardware through misuse. And repurchase, if I may add
Been on both sides of this…
200 calls aday, on the SAME fault…
My record is 3 hours on hold, waiting for AMIGA computers to answer a question, and they didnt know it either.
Guy must have just processed his 50th XBOX 360 Brick being screamed at. He then got a nice, polite guy, and thought he was being ironic and lashed out.
So what’s to point of even buying these consoles anymore? The PC has caught up with more power, more functionality, more games, online play.
I just upgraded my older box with an Asus MB, AMD 64X2 3800, Asus nVidia Silent pci-e, dvd-burner, 160g sata, cool box, etc.
Same price as the PS3 or the 360 with a couple of games.
PC is way more fun, and plugs in nicely in the Samsung 32″ LCD HTDV.
#3 – Gateway has made great strides recently – might be worth giving them another look. I used to write them off too, but they moved part of the peeps back to the dakotas, and combined with the onshoring of tech support, they are making a good comeback.
Anyway, as to this thing – only a 90day warranty? That’s insane. It should have AT LEAST a year. Sounds like they set this baby up for extended warranty sales for Best Buy and the “Not too geeky squad”.
Nuts.
As people on Digg have mentioned, this sounds extremely fishy. I had almost the exact same situation happen to me. My console had problems after about a month, I called Xbox support and they said my warranty was expired. I explained that I’d just recently purchased it and they said “Okay, well just include a copy of your receipt and you won’t be charged.”
My friend called their support line when his Xbox 360 fried out, and got a call center in Texas. I was sitting next to him while he was talking to the representative, and she seemed very pleasant. In fact, by the end of the conversation he got her phone number and her Facebook info, so I guess not all call center reps have issues.
Take it back to the store where you bought it. Very few stores want an irate customer. If the store doesn’t want to help, calmly let them know that you have already been through the manufacturer tech support to no avail and now the store is letting them down. Your last recourse would be through Small Claims Court to recover.
Since corporations must be represented by an attorney in Small Claims Court, most will find it cheaper and faster to settle before it gets that far. Name both the manufacturer and the store. The one thing that can not be stressed enough, DOCUMENT EVERYTHING. Who you called, what their name is, what time, what was said, how long on hold, and anything else. Save your receipts.
what an ass.
@8: The console business is a different model. I don’t play PC games. Never do. I used to, but they’re such a hassle compared to the driver/upgrade free hassle of popping a disc into my 360 and playing some high-def, surround sound games from the comfort of my couch and big-screen TV.
I’ve had similar experience but never yelled at. 5 month old XBOX started freezing up, then bricked by the Nov1 update. They wanted to charge me $140 to repair it, when I complained that the updated bricked it I was able to negotiate it down to $70. That includes a new 90 day warranty. So I get a replacement shipped once they receive the brick, this one has a bad drive, won’t read half the disks. Call support again and told I have to pay because its out of warranty (even though I got a form letter with the replacement that they had updated my serial number and warranty). I just said, no I don’t have to pay you anything, its a replacement. I gave him the original repair order and finally got a return authorization. We’ll see what the replacement is like. I dont have a good feeling about how stringent their QA process is for repaired units.
“The PC has caught up with more power, more functionality, more games, online play.”
Was there ever a time in the last 15 years where a console was more powerful than the best available PC?!
As far as I’m concerned the PC has always been more powerful and functional, the problem is that consoles are just easier.
You put in a disc and the game plays. No need to upgrade your video card, no need to find patches, no need to find the latest drivers or DirectX download.
Have you seen some of the comments flying around at the xbox.com forums?
A software update deployed on Nov 30th bricked a large number of consoles; people have been phoning MS support only to be told “you must have done something to the console **yourself**; there’s no way our update could do that”… Adding insult to injury, they’re then being told to cough up $140USD to ship their bricks back to MS for repair!!
Was there ever a time in the last 15 years where a console was more powerful than the best available PC?!
Amen to that.
#9 – In fact, by the end of the conversation he got her phone number and her Facebook info, so I guess not all call center reps have issues.
You’re sure he didn’t just want a date?
lol – i bet if we researched it, it’d be bad pr released by sony to /thwap the competition
I’m wearied by these stories. Routinely quantified with, “I [used to] work in this business so I know something and they were rude to me so .” Need it be said these well documented transcripts are fishy?
Plenty of deeply rooted yet subtle psychological chips on the shoulders of these whiners.
9 …she seemed very pleasant. In fact, by the end of the conversation he got her phone number and her Facebook info,…
Yeah.
Name: Jenny
Phone: 867-5309