My Wet Coast Life

With some pride, I can say Mission Accomplished.

Apparently, my 3,400+ letter of complaint on the terrible customer service I received from Xbox Support, which I sent in over the weekend to Xbox Support, did get seen by the right people. Before I had a chance to print and mail the letter in to the Head Office on Monday, I got a call from Xbox Corporate, not the support department. Unfortunately, I was not home at the time of the call but I got a kind message and an email stating they had tried to call. The rep provided a direct line and extension and asked me to call back at my convenience. Perfect, direct line and extension = no holds or menu system. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it was not a train.

For a quick background for those wondering what has lead up to this, my initial article was on December 26^th outlining my initial terribad call in experience. It was followed up on December 31^st by me fixing the issue myself but still no call back. On January 6^th, I finally got a call back but was blindsided by the lies and false promises that were told to me. And finally, on January 15th, still with no contact, I wrote a letter of complaint with my utter disappointment with this service I received, as my last attempt to right this wrong. That will now bring us up to today.

When I submitted my letter, I hoped maybe some action would be taken but I was not expecting the response I got. I tried to layout as much detail so they could see where the issues occurred and leave it up to them to correct it in the best manner they see fit. So I called back the corporate rep (leaving names out and will explain why later). We had a good conversation and he apologized for my experience, informed me my letter definitely got their attention and by multiple people in various levels of management. He informed me they would be using it for training purposes and enacting changes so my experience is not repeated. They even gave me a small form of accommodation, which I was not expecting and that was not the intent of my letter. My intent was to fix the wrong so others don't go through the same and so far, it appeared I have reached success. The accommodation was just a bonus for my effort.

Before we ended the call, I offered my assistance if they had anymore questions on this issue to ensure the best possible outcome for all. Based on that offer, the rep informed me an executive may want to call me later that day as he may have more questions on this issue and I accepted. This was not a guarantee as they already had the information and we ended the call on a good note.

Later in the afternoon, I did receive a call from an executive. Once again, I will leave his name out of it. We also had a positive conversation and went over the issues and possible causes. He restated the amount of stirring the pot my letter did which pleased me as it was all worth it now. They were glad they got feedback and especially in the detail I provided. I emailed him my screenshots on when I got the errors and based on them, I was even able to assist him with possibly tracking down the cause of my issue and possible remedy. Bonus.

So in the end, even though it took a couple weeks, my steps to correct this wrong hopefully will make all future calls to Xbox Support a better one for anyone else. Hopefully it will also reduce the Invalid Code errors others may be receiving, saving them from calling in, as they could fix what is causing that issue.

For those who have been wronged or received poor service and feel it necessary to speak up; I offer the following tips and steps to right your wrong. There will never be a guarantee of success BUT you will never know until you try and at least you did your diligence, so regardless, feel good about that. For those wondering why I have not provided the names, direct lines and emails of the Xbox corporate rep and executive, you do not need it in my opinion and I was successful without it. If I provided the contact info and names, you would just jump the process thus defeating the escalation process. A lot of issues you may have do not require the involvement of the people I got to deal with. I did it in the proper order of escalation in my opinion and recommend you do the same for positive results.

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10 days and still waiting. We left this issue off waiting for a manager's call back from Xbox Live Support. My true value as a Microsoft customer has now been shown courtesy of Xbox Live Customer Support. Normally I would have dropped this issue and moved on but once again, Maria, the stellar employee I got to deal with on January 5th let me down again. Instead of getting that promised "guaranteed" call back from one of her managers, Sam or Grace on January 6th, I sit here in utter dissapointment writing this article. It is January 15th. I even tried to give them benefit of the doubt and gave them 10X the promised time to contact me. Sadly they continue to drop the ball.

On January 12th, not hearing anything from Xbox support, I decided to use the email form on xbox.com to see if I could get an update or hopefully get someone to finally call me back. A day later, I at least get a Zen response from Xbox email support, literally. The support person's name was Zen but sadly he could not help me.

Thank you for contacting Microsoft online support for XBOX. I am Zen and I will be helping you today with this issue.

As I understand it, you are still waiting for a callback from us, about unable to redeem your prepaid xbox LIVE subscription code. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and for the limited capability of our support team (email) to rectify your issue.

Unfortunately, due to the sensitivity of the information required to review your query, our support team will not be able to assist you further through email. This support line does not have an access to a customer's account information for verification or even allowed to divulge personal information over email. I know how bothersome this can be, but, we may need your patience to contact us via our phone support option. When you call, appropriate resolution will be provided to your inquiries or request.
- Zen (Xbox Email Support)

Well that was not the Zen answer I wanted. If they cannot provide me support due to privacy, why not at least schedule a call out to me to avoid further incoveniencing me? Would that not be proper customer service? Sorry, that would make sense and apparantly Xbox Live support lacks some.

Once again, Xbox provided a supposed means of contacting support to get assistance only to be told to call in. 2 out of 3 ways of contact them apparantly are useless for my situation. Why even offer it as support option in the first place when they cannot fully support the customer? Instead they should rename it to common question help desk and stop misleading customers and wasting their time. Even an easily visible disclaimer or notice stating they can only assist with A,B and C and for any other issue just to call in would have saved both mine and those support people's time. More or less, if you're dealing with Xbox Live support for any account related issue, just call in to avoid delays. Noted. And as G.I.Joe puts it, "Knowing is half the battle..."

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It's another typical wet coast winter day with a heavy rainfall warning for 50 to 80 mm of the wet stuff. Mother Nature is making a concerted effort to turn my backyard into a temporary swimming pool and tempting me to go out lawn skimboarding. If it was only a bit warmer. Rather than go skimming, I am sitting here annoyed with the service I have received so far from Xbox Live's customer service and technical support department.

Today is day 11 since calling in to Xbox Live's support with my issue regarding a prepaid Xbox Live Gold card stating "invalid error" when trying to add it to my account. Time for me to explain what has happened so far since my last post and the interesting conversation I did have with an Xbox rep this week. Multiple lies were the theme. To me, customer service is key to many companies and I am aware it can be hard to train and retain staff. But by this point for any large company dealing in end user support, there should be an expected level of service delivered and I have not received that in the slightest from Xbox. Microsoft has pressed my small red button of annoyance by conveying epically poor customer service to me. Now for those unaware, you can read my first article here and the first update here to get up to speed. And now the saga continues....

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It is New Year's eve and a chilly -5^oC outside. Just as cold as the service I am getting currently from Microsoft's Xbox Live customer service. Does Microsoft even value its inconvenienced customers? So far, it appears NO. Tomorrow will be 1 week since getting a Xbox Live Gold 12 month prepaid card on Christmas and not being able to use it. I called Xbox Live's customer support on Boxing Day and based on my issue with the card's code being invalid even though it showed on there side as unused and available for redemption, it required an investigation. WTF? Did they offer a temporary gold account or anything for this inconvenience while they investigated? No. Even when asked if anything can be done as temp solution, they only offered workarounds on their own system, which anyone could find on the net by googling... If I wanted to do that, why would I have called?

So based on my conversation with the specialist (at what, I don't know as surely he wasn't specialized in customer service or fixing anything right away), I had to wait up to 5 days for them to complete the investigation. 5 days and no guarantee of resultion? Plus I have to call back if YOU have not contacted me in those 5 days? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!

So I bit my tongue trying to be civil over the holidays but annoyed that I have to wait. Luckily we got a bit of an unexpected snow dump the other day. Perfect time to put the harness on the dog, my son in his sled and go for a run. Not sure who had more fun, my son or my dog but both of them enjoyed it and made every other kid we went by envious. Maybe they can ask Santa next year for their own sled dog? Sadly the batteries were dead on my small camera so no footage but will get some next snow event. Based on my prediction, if I am right, should be February for next big dump. But we could always get a small one like the other day and that was enough for sledding action.

Yesterday, I checked my email and still no response from Microsoft and still no call either. I decided to go to a site and while typing the URL, the xbox.com URL showed up so I decided to check Xbox Live online to see if my account had changed or if there was a message or update. I logged in and alas, no gold account. So for shits and giggles, I decided to enter the code again. What harm can it do? They have not responded to me, I want to use Live Gold and I am not looking forward to having to hold again through the barrage of Kinect messages and terribad menu sound effects. It is a phone system, not a game. Why should I waste more of my time inquiring why their product which only they can fix is still not working. If my update call prompted the tech working on my incident to be zapped with a cattle prod to work faster, maybe I would consider the call but so far, they appear to be moving slower than a herd of turtles in peanut butter. Damn Skippy slow.

So I pull out the card that has cost me over an hour of my time entering over and over again. Hopefully this would be the last time, for at least 1 year until I go through this again. As I punch in the last digits and scan all the characters to make sure "they are exactly as they appear on the card", my son comes up to me and distracts me with one word, "Lego?". Assuming my code is going to tell me it is still invalid I say sure to my son's request. As I am about close the lid to the laptop, I decide to move my mouse down to the submit button and click it...

Processing...

Processing......

Processing..........hmmm, this is taking a bit longer than before to error, maybe, just maybe it is going to work?

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It is the day after Christmas and all the shoppers are out in force grabbing up deals. As for me, I got what I asked for and had a good Christmas day with family and friends.

Now one of the things I asked for this year was a Xbox Live Gold membership. The main reason for me was to be able to use Netflix in HD on my TV. Unlike Nintendo's Wii or Sony's Playstation 3 which allow you to access online gaming and Netflix for FREE, Microsoft needs to milk as much money out of the consumer as possible. This is one of my biggest issue with the Xbox 360 that grinds my gears, having to pay on top of a game's cost play online or use services like Netflix. If you want to either play online multiplayer or use Netflix, you need to spend $60/year for a Xbox Live Gold account to access that content. I can understand for online gaming as that covers server and bandwidth costs. But to be required to use already paid for services like Netflix is just absurd in my opinion. I am already paying Netflix, now Microsoft wants to charge me a toll to access it (but nothing to watch trailers and download demos on Mircosoft's Zune..hmmm).

I got Netflix a couple months ago when it came to Canada and just happened around the same time to setup my 360 for internet access (which Microsoft gave me a free 1 month trial for Gold). Using Netflix on the 360 was great until my Gold trial expired and I lost access to Netflix. I found out the hard way by not being able to access Netflix on the 360 but I could on the Wii. WTF? After checking Xbox.com and Netflix, there it was, Gold account required. Fine Microsoft,I will use my Wii as only loss is HD content and my current TV was only a 480p CRT. As a note, when I added Netflix to my 360, I was not aware you needed a Gold membership to access as was already accessing for free via our Wii and was currently in a 1 month Gold trial.

Now from a marketing point of view, why would someone want to buy a console, only to have to pay more to use features when the competing consoles do the same or very similar for free? Wouldn't it draw more users to buy a 360 knowing they could use Netflix for free and not require a Gold membership? Just seems baffling logic to me. Especially as more games are now released on both 360 and PS3 where before, certain games were available only to certain consoles. This was my main reason for buying a 360 over a PS3. Games I like to play tend to be 360 only and I was willing to lose a built in Blueray player and go with Microsoft's product to be able to play them.

My TV recently died and got replaced with a HD model. So for Christmas, I asked for a Gold membership so I can access Netflix in HD as the Wii can only output a 480p resolution. This was fine when the old TV only supported max 480p but now that I can do 1080p, I wanted Netflix in HD. My brother kindly got me a 12 month Gold subscription prepaid card for Christmas. Stoked to be able to watch Netflix in HD again, I logged into my 360 console to redeem the code like a little kid excited to test out the new toy. This kid was about to get what no one wants on Christmas, an issue with the gift with a side of terribad customer service...

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