Farkin Micro$hit
Hey all, I've been having a very frustrating time dealing with my latest Xbox 360 failure (4th one I might add), and decided to share with all of you exactly how much fun it is dealing with Micro$hit's customer support.
That's it. No big entry. No long winded Moloquin bantering on about the lack of foresight of the common horse, or the price of cucumbers in Zimbabwe. Just one pissed off Reverend and his dealing with the modern age whore of Babylon, Microsoft.
The email chain is inline below...Next time they send me another form mail, I'll add it.
--- Original Message ---
From : moloquin
Sent : Monday, July 07, 2008 9:03:31 PM UTC
To : XBOX_.XBOX.NA.00.EN.HAH.MNL.HW.T01.SPT.00.EM
Subject : Xbox Hardware:repair inquiries/question
Service:
Xbox Hardware
What type of problem do you have?
repair inquiries/questions [repair inquiries/questions]
Full name:
The e-mail address for us to send a response:
moloquin
Be specific when describing your problem. The details that you include enable us to promptly send you the most likely solution to your issue.
To Whom it May Concern:
I am writing this in reference to my service request xxxxxx.
This is now the 4th Xbox360 I have sent in for service due to hardware failure since I bought my first one in the initial launch in the winter of 2005. The current one I am sending in has lasted a while, but did scratch a copy of Grand Theft Auto 4 to the point where it was unplayable. It resulted in me buying another copy so I could play the game only to have it RRoD a few weeks later.
I was actually sent one direct from your repair center DOA. I plugged it in and it red ringed as soon as it was out of the box. In a month (minus shipping times back and forth) I went through three 360's.
A failure rate of four of the same product within this time period is horrible and unacceptable as a product model. I have enjoyed using the 360, but with the amount of down time I have incurred due to failure, I have found myself leaning toward buying games for my Playstation3 rather than the 360, as I don't feel I can trust the 360 to be stable enough to play games on for any extended period of time.
I still have my initial Xbox from 2001 and it has never had any type of technical issue.
With being the early adopter that I am I had no problem in waiting in lines to get one of the first launch models of the 360's, and seeing the track record of my original xbox I didn't feel there was any point to waiting for a later model. In retrospect, I wish I would have waited for the launch of the Falcon motherboard so I wouldn't have to go through multiple repairs.
The customer service representatives I have talked to when returning my failed 360's were always pleasant, but even they had a sense of disappointment that I was now calling to return my 4th 360.
When I do receive my 5th 360, I don't know how much I will use it as I don't want it to fail again, especially considering my warranty will soon be up and I WILL NOT pay to have one repaired if it goes past it's warranty status. I don't think it's fair to pay for repairs due to an inferior product that has such an alarming failure rate. It seems wrong to not want to use something out of fear it will fail again but that is how I feel about the Xbox360 and my experience with it so far.
With all of the failures of the 360, I don't know that I will buy the next generation of console from Microsoft. If I do, it will only be after other early adopters have beta tested the units so I know I will get a stable one well after the launch date. I, along with many other's I'm sure, feel like we have be used as a beta test market for the Xbox360.
________________________________________________________________________
From: XBOX_.XBOX.NA.00.EN.HAH.MNL.HW.T01.SPT.00.EM@css.one.microsoft.com
To: moloquin
CC:
Subject: RE: SRXxxxxxxID - Xbox Hardware:repair inquiries/question
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 07:07:48 +0000
Hi!
Thank you for writing Xbox Customer Support!
I understand you are concerned about the quality of your Xbox 360 and some other issues. We appreciate your concern and we are glad to assist you.
The vast majority of Xbox 360 owners are having an outstanding experience with their new systems. There have been a few isolated reports of consoles not working as expected. The call rate is well below what you would expect for a consumer electronics product of this complexity. As a percentage of the total number of Xbox 360 systems already in the field, these calls represent a very small fraction. There is no systemic issue with Xbox 360. Each incident is unique and these customer inquiries are being handled on a case-by-case basis.
If you need to reply to this e-mail, please reply 'with history' (include any previous e-mail) so we can expedite our service to you.
You may also call Xbox Phone Support at 1-800-4MYXBOX (1-800-469-9269) at your earliest convenience, and we’ll be happy to help you. We are open everyday from 6am to 10pm PST.
To expedite service, please provide Service Request Number xxxxxx when you call.
NOTE: You may now check repair status for your XBOX console by going online at http://service.xbox.com/ using your Windows Live ID account.
Thank you for visiting Xbox.com. If you should have future questions on Xbox products or services, please be sure to revisit our Web site as we are continually adding information to enhance our service.
Sincerely,
Jim
Xbox Customer Care Team
______________________________________________________________
To Whom it May Concern:
In my initial email I was merely frustrated with my 360 experience, but after reading the quite obviously form letter which was the reply, I am angry.
Not a single thing which I raised was addressed in any fashion other than a blanket response.
As for a few isolated reports of consoles not working, I beg to differ. Out of my office of eleven people, seven of us own an Xbox360. Of the seven of us, six have sent them (at least once, with myself being 4 times) into the repair centre, all with the exact same issue. System lockups and graphical glitches, shortly followed with the RRoD. The only one of us that hasn't had the issue yet is the one person who's 360 is only two months old. Given enough time I am sure it will show the exact same behavior.
How can this not be systemic with this kind of ratio? How is each incident unique when every last one of the failures that I personally know of have all shown the exact same issue before going off to the repair centre?
I said in my last email I wished I had waited until the launch of the Falcon motherboards, which, by all reports I have seen, have a much lower failure rate, or the upcoming Jasper model, in which the inherent flaws are supposedly fixed, but now I can guarantee I will not be buying any improved Microsoft console product in the future, and I will NOT be buying the next generation of Xbox. When you send blanket response email's to customers that have repeatedly experienced the same issue, it is insulting to both the customer and the company. Customer satisfaction is quite obviously not a high priority within the Microsoft Xbox division.
When they go back to the repair centre, are the parts which have died replaced with known faulty parts? In my experience I'd have to say yes. With 4 failures that is the only way I could explain it. If this was any other product, the faulty product would not be repaired with another product in which a known issue exists. When my car has a faulty part and it is replaced, it is not replaced with the same faulty part, but is replaced with an improved part in which the inherent flaw does not exist.
A product model in which you replace garbage parts with other garbage parts, is not a product model at all. It is a travesty. How else could you explain people on the Xbox.com forums with three or five or even thirteen replacements of 360 consoles? Thirteen replacement consoles? How is this a few isolated reports?
In closing I have to say that I am extremely disappointed in how poorly Microsoft is treating their customers with this issue. Yes, the warranty was extended to three years, and thank you for that, but as customers, along with a guarantee that our devices will be repaired, we also SHOULD be guaranteed that when they are repaired, the ARE repaired, and not just band-aided back together and shipped out, only to fail at a later date. This just makes the customer feel used, and makes Microsoft look worse than they already do from the fallout surrounding this "isolated issue".
All that the previous correspondence I received did was Guarantee that I will never buy another Microsoft console again.
__________________________________________________________________
From: XBOX_.XBOX.NA.00.EN.HAH.MNL.HW.T01.SPT.00.EM@css.one.microsoft.com
To: moloquin
CC:
Subject: SRXxxxxxxxID - Xbox 360: How to respond to questions about the Xbox 360 console quality and other console related issues/1st email/
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 12:21:42 +0000
Hello,
Thank you for writing Xbox Customer Support!
We appreciate your feedback. I understand that you are unsatisfied with regards to the issues that you are having and it sounds like this has been a very frustrating issue for you.
As of the moment, we are constantly tweaking, fine tuning, and improving our manufacturing processes for Xbox 360 console.
We are committed to you, our valued customers, and are taking immediate corrective steps to regain your confidence in us. We have begun putting a comprehensive plan in place to provide better and timelier information to you, more tools and resources for our crewmembers and improved procedures for handling operational difficulties in the future.
We are confident, as a result of these actions that Xbox Customer Support will emerge as a more reliable and even more customer responsive support than ever before.
Again, In behalf of Microsoft Xbox Customer Support, we deeply apologize for the inconvenience.
Thank you for your time and understanding.
If you need to reply to this e-mail, please reply 'with history' (include any previous e-mail) so we can expedite our service to you.
You may also call Xbox Phone Support at 1-800-4MYXBOX (1-800-469-9269) at your earliest convenience, and we’ll be happy to help you. We are open everyday from 6am to 10pm US Pacific Time.
To expedite service, please provide Service Request Number xxxxxx when you call.
NOTE: You may now check warranty and repair status for your XBOX console by going online at http://service.xbox.com/ using your Windows Live ID account.
Thank you for visiting Xbox.com. If you should have future questions on Xbox products or services, please be sure to revisit our Web site as we are continually adding information to enhance our service.
Sincerely,
Martin
Xbox Customer Care
______________________________________________________
To Whom it May Concern:
In your last correspondence you write that you appreciate my feedback and understand that I am unsatisfied with the issues that I am having, but yet you failed to reply to any question I posed in my previous email. I directly address concerns I had with your original reply to my first email and still there is not a single response to any concern I raised.
This further enforces the fact to me that these emails are not being read and are simply answered by some form email that is systematically sent out to your disgruntled customers as a way to try and placate us, not to mention the subject line of the reply reads exactly as a page out of a "how to deal with angry customers" manual.
As customers we do not appreciate the fact that we are being treated like we don't matter, and as long Microsoft gets our original money, we have to sit back and accept the fact that we will continually receive inherently flawed refurbished consoles from the repair center.
In the last correspondence you write you are "constantly tweaking, fine tuning, and improving our manufacturing processes for Xbox 360 console". Does this mean that we are now receiving refurbished machines using the 65nm form factor? Are we getting the latest consoles to repair our broken ones? It's great that you have figured out what is causing the repeated failures but how does that help all of us who are getting the older units back from the repair centre? I have been through 4 of the returns from the repair centre, and I have always received back the inherently flawed consoles.
You want to my confidence in Microsoft to return like you say in your email? When your customers ship their broken 360's into from the repair centre, how about you ship us fixed consoles instead of patched together old consoles that are destined to fail in the near future? How about you send us a console using the newest revision of the motherboard that has fixed the inherent flaw in the GPU that causes the excess heat that kills the console?
Or, how about this? You send us emails that aren't simply forms where you fill in the name of the customer and send it out as is.
You ask us for our feedback, then promptly don't read all the things we send in, or if you do, the blanket emails you send in return do not instill confidence in the customer who reads them. I have received spam that feels more genuine than the default replies I have received from the Microsoft customer support centre.
I'm glad that you are confident that your customer support will emerge as more reliable and more responsive, but I am not convinced. My confidence is not restored, and is likely to stay that way until I actually see that someone has read this correspondence and replied without using some blanket statement and actually addresses the issues I have tried to get answers to since my original email.
Don't thank me for my time and understanding. I fail to understand any of your current customer support practices, other than insulting your customer base by sending out repetitive form mail in the hopes that those "few" of us who are not having an "outstanding experience" will stop writing emails and just accept the fact that we will always receive flawed consoles back from the repair centre.
Hey all, I've been having a very frustrating time dealing with my latest Xbox 360 failure (4th one I might add), and decided to share with all of you exactly how much fun it is dealing with Micro$hit's customer support.
That's it. No big entry. No long winded Moloquin bantering on about the lack of foresight of the common horse, or the price of cucumbers in Zimbabwe. Just one pissed off Reverend and his dealing with the modern age whore of Babylon, Microsoft.
The email chain is inline below...Next time they send me another form mail, I'll add it.
--- Original Message ---
From : moloquin
Sent : Monday, July 07, 2008 9:03:31 PM UTC
To : XBOX_.XBOX.NA.00.EN.HAH.MNL.HW.T01.SPT.00.EM
Subject : Xbox Hardware:repair inquiries/question
Service:
Xbox Hardware
What type of problem do you have?
repair inquiries/questions [repair inquiries/questions]
Full name:
The e-mail address for us to send a response:
moloquin
Be specific when describing your problem. The details that you include enable us to promptly send you the most likely solution to your issue.
To Whom it May Concern:
I am writing this in reference to my service request xxxxxx.
This is now the 4th Xbox360 I have sent in for service due to hardware failure since I bought my first one in the initial launch in the winter of 2005. The current one I am sending in has lasted a while, but did scratch a copy of Grand Theft Auto 4 to the point where it was unplayable. It resulted in me buying another copy so I could play the game only to have it RRoD a few weeks later.
I was actually sent one direct from your repair center DOA. I plugged it in and it red ringed as soon as it was out of the box. In a month (minus shipping times back and forth) I went through three 360's.
A failure rate of four of the same product within this time period is horrible and unacceptable as a product model. I have enjoyed using the 360, but with the amount of down time I have incurred due to failure, I have found myself leaning toward buying games for my Playstation3 rather than the 360, as I don't feel I can trust the 360 to be stable enough to play games on for any extended period of time.
I still have my initial Xbox from 2001 and it has never had any type of technical issue.
With being the early adopter that I am I had no problem in waiting in lines to get one of the first launch models of the 360's, and seeing the track record of my original xbox I didn't feel there was any point to waiting for a later model. In retrospect, I wish I would have waited for the launch of the Falcon motherboard so I wouldn't have to go through multiple repairs.
The customer service representatives I have talked to when returning my failed 360's were always pleasant, but even they had a sense of disappointment that I was now calling to return my 4th 360.
When I do receive my 5th 360, I don't know how much I will use it as I don't want it to fail again, especially considering my warranty will soon be up and I WILL NOT pay to have one repaired if it goes past it's warranty status. I don't think it's fair to pay for repairs due to an inferior product that has such an alarming failure rate. It seems wrong to not want to use something out of fear it will fail again but that is how I feel about the Xbox360 and my experience with it so far.
With all of the failures of the 360, I don't know that I will buy the next generation of console from Microsoft. If I do, it will only be after other early adopters have beta tested the units so I know I will get a stable one well after the launch date. I, along with many other's I'm sure, feel like we have be used as a beta test market for the Xbox360.
________________________________________________________________________
From: XBOX_.XBOX.NA.00.EN.HAH.MNL.HW.T01.SPT.00.EM@css.one.microsoft.com
To: moloquin
CC:
Subject: RE: SRXxxxxxxID - Xbox Hardware:repair inquiries/question
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 07:07:48 +0000
Hi!
Thank you for writing Xbox Customer Support!
I understand you are concerned about the quality of your Xbox 360 and some other issues. We appreciate your concern and we are glad to assist you.
The vast majority of Xbox 360 owners are having an outstanding experience with their new systems. There have been a few isolated reports of consoles not working as expected. The call rate is well below what you would expect for a consumer electronics product of this complexity. As a percentage of the total number of Xbox 360 systems already in the field, these calls represent a very small fraction. There is no systemic issue with Xbox 360. Each incident is unique and these customer inquiries are being handled on a case-by-case basis.
If you need to reply to this e-mail, please reply 'with history' (include any previous e-mail) so we can expedite our service to you.
You may also call Xbox Phone Support at 1-800-4MYXBOX (1-800-469-9269) at your earliest convenience, and we’ll be happy to help you. We are open everyday from 6am to 10pm PST.
To expedite service, please provide Service Request Number xxxxxx when you call.
NOTE: You may now check repair status for your XBOX console by going online at http://service.xbox.com/ using your Windows Live ID account.
Thank you for visiting Xbox.com. If you should have future questions on Xbox products or services, please be sure to revisit our Web site as we are continually adding information to enhance our service.
Sincerely,
Jim
Xbox Customer Care Team
______________________________________________________________
To Whom it May Concern:
In my initial email I was merely frustrated with my 360 experience, but after reading the quite obviously form letter which was the reply, I am angry.
Not a single thing which I raised was addressed in any fashion other than a blanket response.
As for a few isolated reports of consoles not working, I beg to differ. Out of my office of eleven people, seven of us own an Xbox360. Of the seven of us, six have sent them (at least once, with myself being 4 times) into the repair centre, all with the exact same issue. System lockups and graphical glitches, shortly followed with the RRoD. The only one of us that hasn't had the issue yet is the one person who's 360 is only two months old. Given enough time I am sure it will show the exact same behavior.
How can this not be systemic with this kind of ratio? How is each incident unique when every last one of the failures that I personally know of have all shown the exact same issue before going off to the repair centre?
I said in my last email I wished I had waited until the launch of the Falcon motherboards, which, by all reports I have seen, have a much lower failure rate, or the upcoming Jasper model, in which the inherent flaws are supposedly fixed, but now I can guarantee I will not be buying any improved Microsoft console product in the future, and I will NOT be buying the next generation of Xbox. When you send blanket response email's to customers that have repeatedly experienced the same issue, it is insulting to both the customer and the company. Customer satisfaction is quite obviously not a high priority within the Microsoft Xbox division.
When they go back to the repair centre, are the parts which have died replaced with known faulty parts? In my experience I'd have to say yes. With 4 failures that is the only way I could explain it. If this was any other product, the faulty product would not be repaired with another product in which a known issue exists. When my car has a faulty part and it is replaced, it is not replaced with the same faulty part, but is replaced with an improved part in which the inherent flaw does not exist.
A product model in which you replace garbage parts with other garbage parts, is not a product model at all. It is a travesty. How else could you explain people on the Xbox.com forums with three or five or even thirteen replacements of 360 consoles? Thirteen replacement consoles? How is this a few isolated reports?
In closing I have to say that I am extremely disappointed in how poorly Microsoft is treating their customers with this issue. Yes, the warranty was extended to three years, and thank you for that, but as customers, along with a guarantee that our devices will be repaired, we also SHOULD be guaranteed that when they are repaired, the ARE repaired, and not just band-aided back together and shipped out, only to fail at a later date. This just makes the customer feel used, and makes Microsoft look worse than they already do from the fallout surrounding this "isolated issue".
All that the previous correspondence I received did was Guarantee that I will never buy another Microsoft console again.
__________________________________________________________________
From: XBOX_.XBOX.NA.00.EN.HAH.MNL.HW.T01.SPT.00.EM@css.one.microsoft.com
To: moloquin
CC:
Subject: SRXxxxxxxxID - Xbox 360: How to respond to questions about the Xbox 360 console quality and other console related issues/1st email/
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 12:21:42 +0000
Hello,
Thank you for writing Xbox Customer Support!
We appreciate your feedback. I understand that you are unsatisfied with regards to the issues that you are having and it sounds like this has been a very frustrating issue for you.
As of the moment, we are constantly tweaking, fine tuning, and improving our manufacturing processes for Xbox 360 console.
We are committed to you, our valued customers, and are taking immediate corrective steps to regain your confidence in us. We have begun putting a comprehensive plan in place to provide better and timelier information to you, more tools and resources for our crewmembers and improved procedures for handling operational difficulties in the future.
We are confident, as a result of these actions that Xbox Customer Support will emerge as a more reliable and even more customer responsive support than ever before.
Again, In behalf of Microsoft Xbox Customer Support, we deeply apologize for the inconvenience.
Thank you for your time and understanding.
If you need to reply to this e-mail, please reply 'with history' (include any previous e-mail) so we can expedite our service to you.
You may also call Xbox Phone Support at 1-800-4MYXBOX (1-800-469-9269) at your earliest convenience, and we’ll be happy to help you. We are open everyday from 6am to 10pm US Pacific Time.
To expedite service, please provide Service Request Number xxxxxx when you call.
NOTE: You may now check warranty and repair status for your XBOX console by going online at http://service.xbox.com/ using your Windows Live ID account.
Thank you for visiting Xbox.com. If you should have future questions on Xbox products or services, please be sure to revisit our Web site as we are continually adding information to enhance our service.
Sincerely,
Martin
Xbox Customer Care
______________________________________________________
To Whom it May Concern:
In your last correspondence you write that you appreciate my feedback and understand that I am unsatisfied with the issues that I am having, but yet you failed to reply to any question I posed in my previous email. I directly address concerns I had with your original reply to my first email and still there is not a single response to any concern I raised.
This further enforces the fact to me that these emails are not being read and are simply answered by some form email that is systematically sent out to your disgruntled customers as a way to try and placate us, not to mention the subject line of the reply reads exactly as a page out of a "how to deal with angry customers" manual.
As customers we do not appreciate the fact that we are being treated like we don't matter, and as long Microsoft gets our original money, we have to sit back and accept the fact that we will continually receive inherently flawed refurbished consoles from the repair center.
In the last correspondence you write you are "constantly tweaking, fine tuning, and improving our manufacturing processes for Xbox 360 console". Does this mean that we are now receiving refurbished machines using the 65nm form factor? Are we getting the latest consoles to repair our broken ones? It's great that you have figured out what is causing the repeated failures but how does that help all of us who are getting the older units back from the repair centre? I have been through 4 of the returns from the repair centre, and I have always received back the inherently flawed consoles.
You want to my confidence in Microsoft to return like you say in your email? When your customers ship their broken 360's into from the repair centre, how about you ship us fixed consoles instead of patched together old consoles that are destined to fail in the near future? How about you send us a console using the newest revision of the motherboard that has fixed the inherent flaw in the GPU that causes the excess heat that kills the console?
Or, how about this? You send us emails that aren't simply forms where you fill in the name of the customer and send it out as is.
You ask us for our feedback, then promptly don't read all the things we send in, or if you do, the blanket emails you send in return do not instill confidence in the customer who reads them. I have received spam that feels more genuine than the default replies I have received from the Microsoft customer support centre.
I'm glad that you are confident that your customer support will emerge as more reliable and more responsive, but I am not convinced. My confidence is not restored, and is likely to stay that way until I actually see that someone has read this correspondence and replied without using some blanket statement and actually addresses the issues I have tried to get answers to since my original email.
Don't thank me for my time and understanding. I fail to understand any of your current customer support practices, other than insulting your customer base by sending out repetitive form mail in the hopes that those "few" of us who are not having an "outstanding experience" will stop writing emails and just accept the fact that we will always receive flawed consoles back from the repair centre.
posted by Reverend Moloquin at 12:45 PM
1 Comments:
Very good......
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