Good Service, Bad Service, Good Service
The saga of working with the Answer Desk crew at the Microsoft store (Part 1).
WARNING WARNING. LONG DRAWN OUT RANT ABOUT CUSTOMER SERVICE. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.
I am the owner of an Xbox 360 E. I am currently on my third version. I have had an up and down journey when dealing with my local Microsoft store.
My first Xbox S started going on the fritz while it was under warranty. I brought it in to the Microsoft store in Tyson’s Corner, VA. (View Yelp reviews) The Answer desk associate tried to troubleshoot the problem and ultimately told me I should go home and engage the online support. After a long back and forth I was told I could either bring it in to the store, but wait I already did this, or send it to the repair center. I chose to bring it in because it was very easy considering the proximity of the store to my office. The Answer desk associate was puzzled as to why they told me to bring it back in after I had already done it, but said that my only option was to ship the unit to the repair center. The issue cleared up and I was a bit lazy and never did send the unit away.
A few months later the Xbox was acting up even worse than before. I brought it back to the Microsoft store hoping that maybe there would be someone new who could solve my problem, and there was, Nick! Nick was amazing. He was very enthusiastic and understanding. He checked out the Xbox and said that even though I was out of warranty he would replace it because I had brought it in for the same issue while it was still covered. Nick spent a lot of time working with me to transfer over all my content, and had me complete the Bing It On challenge while I waited to get a $25 gift card. Everything went so well that when he offered me the opportunity to purchase an extended warranty for $49.99 for two years. I was feeling so good, I felt like this is the least I could do for all the great service I was getting.
Happy Microsoft customer…for now.
On March 30th, eleven months in the life of the new Xbox we began to experience the screen freezing. No problem I thought I have a warranty and the store is so amazing this will get cleared up right away, right? Well kind of.
Arriving at the Microsoft store on time for my appointment I was checked in and told they would be right out to help me. The store had a few people in for training, and a few shoppers. Not crowded at all. After 15 minutes an associate finally came to talk to me. Unlike Super associate Nick, Taki was very mellow. So mellow I wondered if he was awake or maybe he just didn’t care or share an ounce of enthusiasm of the other associates in the store.
Taki took my Xbox in back to check it out. He was gone for what felt like an eternity, but was probably only like 10 minutes with the diagnosis that there was something wrong with my xbox. He couldn’t get it to play any of the games they had in the store so there must be something wrong. I had given him the memory sticks we were using as well incase he needed them to check out the Xbox. He went to the back again this time for around 20 minutes. When he returned he told me that in addition to not being able to play any games the Xbox had no content stored on it. A bit of a shocker to me since my kids were playing games on it as recently as that morning. I had also knew that we were saving our profiles and had downloaded Minecraft directly to the Xbox, but I’m sure Taki is right, right?
As he begins to tell me about the cost to replace the Xbox I stop him and tell him I have a warranty to which his reply was it was expired. Weird because its only been 11 months and the standard warranty is 12, but I had purchased the extended warranty so we should be all good. That seemed to really take the last ounce of energy out of him, as he looked up what I said and saw I was right. He began to type up the exchange when he turned to me and said “would you like to purchase the extended warranty for $69.99?” I was a bit surprised because I already owned this which I was sure to remind him. He then proceeded to explain to me how the extended warranty would no longer be valid because the warranty stays with the old Xbox. This makes no sense to me as a consumer. So you mean your product is defective under the manufactures one year warranty, you replace it, but then tell me the additional product you sold me is no longer valid? What? Now I can repurchase what I already owned for $20 dollars more than when I bought it the first time. Isn’t life grand.
I was already an hour in to this, and was late to meet someone so I figured I had to buy the warranty because this was the second Xbox to crap out in a year. I asked Taki to hold on to old Xbox because I had a feeling the content was actually on the Xbox and not on the flash drives as he insisted.
I left there really feeling bad about my in store experience. Very different from the first time. When I got back to the office I decided to take my feelings to Twitter like any scorned consumer does.
Great everything will be resolved via DM. This has worked out brilliantly before Verizon, yes that Verizon, so I am glad that the Microsoft team is on top of things.
DM #1
Ok they asked for it…
DM#2 — 4
DM#5 — 7
DM#8 — 9
DM#10 — 12
DM#13 — 15
The next morning I went to set up the new Xbox. Was Taki right? Would my content be on the memory sticks? Nope, nada. I got stuck setting up the Xbox because I was not able to login using any of our previous profiles that were saved on our old Xbox. As expected, and now dreaded, back to the dreaded Microsoft store. I arrived early, checked in and was promptly greeted by a different associate, Nick. Nick, the Nick, the amazing associate that had me on cloud nine last time Nick. Oh how happy I was. This is Nick he can do anything, and he did. Nick listened to my story and explained that Taki was incorrect. My warranty was not gone, and Nick refunded me my money. He said he would educate the other associates on the policy since it was confusing. He remembered me from before took the new Xbox, my memory sticks and said he would work on it. I left the store hoping for the best, and hopefully I will get the good word from Nick that all is well.
When I returned to the office I decided to check Twitter and see if I finally received a response. Nope nothing. I decided to re-engage the social media team and send them a tweet.
I then received a DM. The first response from the Microsoft Social Media team comes 16 hours after they instructed me to DM them.
DM#16 — 18
DM#19
Helpful? Is it ok to say “kind of?” They never really explained why the website says three years and the store says two years. Don’t they have access to this service center? Why offer to help if you can’t?
DM#20 — 21
DM#22
An hour later I received the following DMs
