Microsoft Service 'Sucks' Xbox 360 Australia Boss Told Options

[Xbox-Scene]

Microsoft Service 'Sucks' Xbox 360 Australia Boss Told Posted by XanTium | November 6 23:53 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From smarthouse.com.au: [QUOTE] The head of the Microsoft Xbox operation in Australia, David Mclean, who is becoming famous for what he doesn't say rather than what he does, is set to hear from yet another very "angry" Xbox 360 customer who is so angry with Mclean and his operation that he has packed up his second broken Xbox and shipped it directly to him with a letter that says: "Microsoft sucks you can keep your busted Xbox". He also said that he will never deal with Microsoft again. Marcel Ollmann of New Zealand claims in a letter to Mclean that he is now on his second Xbox 360 and like a lot of other Xbox 360 users who have had problems with Microsoft over their gaming consoles, it is not the failure of the Xbox that galls him but the "shocking" service that Ollmann received when he attempted to get his first Xbox 360 fixed. "Rather than following New Zealand law and providing replacements at a point of sale I was forced to call the Xbox support and get a resolution through a toll-free helpdesk. After jumping through various hoops over the phone with representatives that struggled with basic English I boxed my Xbox360 and at my expense sent it to Microsoft. From this point on, my xbox360 was never seen again. The helpdesk had no record of my console being received or processed for repair. I wasted countless hours trying to get a resolution from Microsoft. The calls to the Microsoft helpdesk were so frustrating that I never wanted to deal with them again". [/QUOTE] Full Story: smarthouse.com.au (3 pages)

[ILLusions0fGrander]

its beating a dead horse, but it is dead on.

i understand consoles fail. i kinda understand (but not really) that i had three fail on me personally, with the fourth (knock on wood) performing great so far.

for my troubles? a "supervisor" tells me he can ship me shadowrun for compensation and i get pgr3 in the mail.

i get angered just thinking about it really.

[no0b123]

Good man. I once wrote a nice lil' letter to Microsoft inside my X360 console when I told them what I thought about the repairs..... trust me, they don't read anything you send. And also, this guy's console was probably boxed in a storage place (garage, or small room) where it will probably will never be opened.

The customer support center does suck, and I was not pleased with the time it takes to have your 3rd system repaired. And also, they keep NO track of the number of repairs. They only know if you give them a reference number. And the shipping times decrease only when you have had at least three repairs. On the third repair, you get a free game (PGR3 or Cameo). And as usual, they give you a free 1 month code to XBL, and two XBLA game download tokens on your second repair.

And also, they do not fully test your console after the repairs. If your system overheats, they do not check for the DVD drive. If it cannot read game disks, they will replace the drive, and never even boot up the system. Sucks for us gamers

[majik655]

GOOD FOR HIM!!

Too bad he lost the investment...


What is funny.. is this is PURELY over customer service.

He stated he did not really mind the failure... just the service.

I would have to agree and would probably do the same thing...
customer service is what it really is about. There are those of us that think investing time is the same as investing money, people do not want to hear excuses they just want a resolution.

Again good for him, hope more people do this if they think they have been ripped off.

[88 Ecko Unltd 88]

LOL


Xbox Service Center sucks, took me like an hour just to speak to one of the reps and another hour to get them take my info and a couple of months to recive a box to send it in and another couple of months to get it back. Appoxemet time to get my xbox back 4 months

[boob1966]

frist call had to spell my name "David"
after sending a bad email received replied saying that repair had to be done over phone (replied) told them if they had some one that Spock English to ring me guess what no call so i say no one Spock English
second call well three calls later i received my email to were to send it hung up on first call. call center in Bombay i think
boy across the road mother did the same hangup then called them back till she got someone she could under stand

[Looouky]

I can feel this guy. I don't mind my 360 broken either it is the service, that i hate. I call October 3, 2007 to start my repair. Still have not even recieved my empty box. I have spent a total of at least 10hrs on the phone, always getting an excuse about a system update. Supposedly my box has now been shipped, but you would think that since this is probably my friggin 6th repair they could do overnight shipping. So I have written a letter to the BBB complaining about MS service. Anyhow we will see what happens.

[BoNg420]

not do do with 3ROL 360s, but I called yesterday about an xbox 360 live issue with my brothers account.

My CC expired on the account and they kept charging it. We didnt know his time was up. So they kept trying to charge my card. So they finally suspended his account.

I called because we couldnt get a 12+1 month card to apply. The first lady was helping me out, and she was supposed to connect me to someone else, but I got dropped. Called back and I got some guy. Gave him the ref. # and he started trying to help me. He said then there was nothing we could do except put a new card on the account. I could barely understand this guy. His accent was really strong. I kept telling him no, no no I dont want to put a new card on the account. From what I could make out from his bad English is that they wanted to put a new card on the account, charge me for a year, then apply the 12 month on that so I would have bought my brother 2 years of live.

I just got so fed up with this guy, since I could barely understand him. I said "F#$% it, we will just make a new account, Im tired of trying to understand what you are saying." Then he goes on, no dont do that, we can make this work...click..

I got so frustrated with not being able to understand him, I hung up and we just made my brother a new account. He didnt really care, he only had like 2-3k achievements and thats about it. He could add people to his friends list again.

I am tired of all these damn customer service people and their horrible broken english. Its hard to understand what they are saying. I got a call from one of my credit card companies and the lady wanted me to do a balance transfer or something. I told her I didnt want to. Then she went on and on about some other shit, but I did not understand one word except security. I interupted her rambling, and said Listen I can not understand a damn word you are saying, I do not want to do anything with my account and do not call me about this again. I could understand her say goodby though.

Companies should require their employees to take language and grammar classes if they are gonna use phones. As a consumer, I get angry when I cant understand what these people are saying.. Im sure its like this for tons of people. They often leave out words and their speech is broken.

Best thing to do, please hang up and try again.

This post has been edited by BoNg420: Nov 7 2007, 07:12 AM

[Lone Wolf]

Sadly, there are some of us out there on the 'customer service' that speak fluent English, help the customers out, even if it means going around the Supervisor's 'directions', and just doing what we can.


However... Good Customer Service isn't as cheap as foreign non-English speaking customer service, and thus a large chunk of us English speaking Helpful ones, are now being laid off so they can use the cheaper over seas.



Heh oh well.

[steveju]

1) If you buy something from a store and the store doesn't want to follow the law and you just accept it, then it's your own damn fault.
2) Why did he pay for the shipping of the Xbox 360. I'm unfamiliar with the NZ law, does it suck on that part or was this guy just a tool?
3) His Xbox 360 got lost somehow and he just gave up on it... I know if I bought something worth over $200 I would definitely be asking it back.

Anyways, I've never had that kind of trouble with the Xbox Service or any other tech service to be exact (I've seen much worse, if you think the xbox service sucks, you really have no idea what bad service means), even if I had to speak English to someone who clearly doesn't. Just keep your cool and make sure you understood what you were told, eg. by repeating it in your own words, what you think you heard to whoever told it to you. It also helps if you ask for the reference/case number for the conversation and write it down. If they tell you that you should get an email in the next few days, don't wait for a week to call them back if you didn't get it and if you don't unsderstand the person talking to you, ask for someone else and so on. Basic things really that you might have to deal with, usually with products bought from abroad.

I'm living on the other side of the world though, so there might be a slight difference on how things are done. Just my 0.05€.

This post has been edited by steveju: Nov 7 2007, 08:41 AM

[Tortuga2112]

I can feel this guy. I don't mind my 360 broken either it is the service, that i hate. I call October 3, 2007 to start my repair. Still have not even recieved my empty box. I have spent a total of at least 10hrs on the phone, always getting an excuse about a system update. Supposedly my box has now been shipped, but you would think that since this is probably my friggin 6th repair they could do overnight shipping. So I have written a letter to the BBB complaining about MS service. Anyhow we will see what happens.

that's F*@Ked up in itself that people don't mind the damn things breaking down. its pretty much a given that its gonna fail and ya just gotta accept it!!??

I remember when the first one failed on me , and I was saying that they're a piece of crap for reliability.

I got flamed to high hell from the fanboys defending M$'s honour. well, I hope all those "well, I've got a launch box , and its still working fine" smug f*@Ks are well entrenched in the revolving door console program that microsoft has is spending lots of time on the phone with these broken english speaking CSR's

This post has been edited by Tortuga2112: Nov 7 2007, 08:52 AM

[fahrenheit]

"Rather than following New Zealand law and providing replacements at a point of sale I was forced to call the Xbox support and get a resolution through a toll-free helpdesk"

Wrong. New Zealand consumer law allows for the goods to be replaced on or before 15 days from purchase, after that, the retailer can decide to replace, repair or refund.
No retailer in NZ can tell the customer to go and deal with the manufacturer. The retailer must remedy the situation. Yes the customer can choose to go directly to MS for servicing, but if the customer so chooses, the retailer must deal with the manufacturer (MS) on their behalf.

"After jumping through various hoops over the phone with representatives that struggled with basic English I boxed my Xbox360 and at my expense sent it to Microsoft."

The boxing is at the customers expense, but MS sends a paid label to cover the shipping cost.

"From this point on, my xbox360 was never seen again."

Sadly this does happen, but its not exactly common. NZ repairs have to be send overseas to Australia, the consoles pass through many hands and sure enough, thefts happen. It sucks, but MS do sort the customer out, as is the case here. He was sent a replacement, sight unseen.

"Recently my Xbox live account was suspended so I called the dreaded helpdesk to resolve the problem."

Why was the account suspended?
He most probably broke the contract he entered into when he undertook the service. If you fail to cancel the service, you are breaking the contract. If you let your credit card lapse, you are breaking the contract.
I don't agree with all the sneaky methods MS uses with their billing model, but I know what I signed up for and what is required of me inorder to continue using the service.

This post has been edited by fahrenheit: Nov 7 2007, 09:50 AM

[g8crapachino]

lol....all I imagine is a guy with a heavy Australian accent talking over the phone to a guy with a heavy Indian accent and neither one can understand the other


I'm not defending MS but to be honest some of the so called repair service stories being posted are a little questionable. I used to work for a company that I care not to mention so I have a little expereience being on the other end of a phone. Take my advice, if you ever need to call into any tech support line for any company try not to be @ss. Being an @sshole towards the person on the phone doesn't help. That's how calls get dropped, information is lost, etc. I find it no small coincidence that the people always complaining about lousy tech support tend to also have lousy interpersonal skills.
Like anything else, you only hear about the bad, nobody goes out of their way to complain about having a good experience as it doesn't make for a compelling news headline. ...things to think about it.

[flashfreak]

Like anything else, you only hear about the bad, nobody goes out of their way to complain about having a good experience as it doesn't make for a compelling news headline. ...things to think about it.

Very true. I remember once I had a good experience with suttin to do with the xbox so i went to the forums and made a good point of it.

I remember when i first got my xbox (original) and needed help, i rang MS and everyone there were locals, it was great and i got my slight non hardware problem fixed. Now, its all overseas and its really poor compared to what it used to be. If they have a problem like the RROD, they could at least have good phone support.

Same with apple support. Need help with your ipod? Call up and you cant understand a damn word the overseas call centre person is saying.

Its STUPID and good companies need to keep their centres local, no matter how much cheaper the overseas labour is. It just aint worth it.

[Farbrorn]

Take my advice, if you ever need to call into any tech support line for any company try not to be @ss. Being an @sshole towards the person on the phone doesn't help. That's how calls get dropped, information is lost, etc.

You are totally right, I have the same approach to people that tend to demand more than ask nicely.
People who are bastards get the minimum help from me, and people who are kind and humble I walk through fire to help out.

Anyhow, I've been in contact with Xbox support, and that was the most horrifying experience in my life.
That poor girl I talked to had the worst trouble speaking Swedish, and could not even say "gamertag" in english right. It took her 4-5 attempts and me trying to help her say it. I could argue that if Microsoft sells a product in one country, they could at least have support personell from the same country rather than being redirected to some development country with underpayed staff.
Second time I called I specifically asked for someone who talked english instead, that went a little better if it would not have been for the piss poor audio quality of the phone line abroad.

MS Support is a joke. I was so amazed that one of the largest companies of the world had the most unprofessional support I ever have dealt with. Screw them from now on, selling my originals and buying DVD+DL discs.