Schaff-Blog Will Be No More
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
This will be my last post on Schaff-Blog. It's been a fun ride, but I now have a new outlet for my game-related blogging. I am starting up a new website with a couple friends: Xbox Overdose. The website will contain news, reviews, deals and more all related to the Xbox 360 and future Xbox consoles. The site is currently "live" but we aren't officially launching until January 1st. Feel free to poke around now though, as much of the site is functional. We hope to add and tweak a few more things before our official launch.
On a related note, our family blogging will now take place on our new website: SchafferFam.com. Heather and I will both be blogging there from now on.
Xbox Overdose
posted by Matt @ 12/25/2007 10:19:00 PM,
Part 5: My Xbox 360 Repair
Friday, December 07, 2007
Part 1: My Experience with Microsoft's Xbox Customer Support
Part 2: My Xbox 360 Repair
Part 3: My Xbox 360 Repair Stats
Part 4: My Xbox 360 Repair
Just wanted to give an update on the 360 repair situation...
As I stated in my previous post about this situation, I received my repaired 360 a while back and my controllers would not sync with it. Brilliant! So I spoke to my contact (Sean) and he said I would need to have my 360 repaired once again. I had to wait another 4 (business) days for a coffin and once I got it, I shipped my 360 back to them ASAP. Once it was on it's way, I spoke to Sean again and asked if I could get expedited shipping once they were done with it. He said they can't do that. Fortunately they were pretty quick to repair my 360 and it was scheduled to be delivered on Monday, November 26th. I would like to mention that for the first time in history, UPS delivered something early. I received my 360 on Wednesday the 21st.
I excitedly hooked everything up and hit the power button, and.... NOTHING! It wouldn't turn on. My heart sank for just a moment. Then I hit the Eject button and it turned on. I felt much better after that. I then noticed that the faceplate on it was not the same one I had before. The only reason I knew that was mine had a ding right next to the front USB ports. This one had no ding. So I pulled the faceplate off and hit the little power button inside and it turned off and on. Thankfully, it was only the faceplate causing the power button not work. I get all my settings back the way I like them and I was up and running. I start browsing around and making sure everything works and all looked good.
I then login under Heather's profile, just to make sure my downloadable content is still working. Problem! She cannot play any of my Xbox Live Arcade games. Confused, I check the back of the console to see if the serial number is mine or if I got a refurbished 360. The serial number is the same. My console did not change. I sign back in as myself and unplug my network cable. I am also unable to use any of my premium downloadable content unless I'm signed in. I tried calling Sean, but he was going to be out until the following Tuesday. He told me he was going to follow up with me on Tuesday anyway, so I just waited for his call.
Tuesday came around and I got my call from Sean. I told him the problem with the power button. He said he'd ship a faceplate out to me. I told him about my premium content situation. He put me on hold for a few minutes. When he came back he said I would need to recover my gamertag and then re-download the content from my download history. I have a lot of premium content, but if that's what I need to do, I'll do it. He then said he could send me a free game or accessory. He offered Project Gotham Racing 3 or Viva Pinata. I had no interest in PGR3 and I already have Viva Pinata. The accessories were: remote, 64MB MU or wireless controller. I decided I could sell the controller to my friend Victor for $40 and then I would buy the 512MB MU, which I've wanted to get for a while. So anyway, I got home that night and I did as he asked. It took nearly 2 hours to recover my gamertag. I then re-downloaded a few arcade games. This didn't fix the problem. The content is still unusable unless I'm signed into Xbox Live. I called him back the next day (The 28th) to report my findings. He said he would need to escalate my issue to Xbox Live support and they would give me a call to fix the situation.
Several days later, I received the faceplate and controller he sent me. I was under the impression that I would be getting a brand new controller. Instead I got a dirty, used, gross controller. I'm assuming it was a refurb or something, but it was nasty. It was dirtier than any of my controllers that I've been using for almost 2 years. Honestly, it looked like it was pulled straight from one of those Xbox 360 kiosks at Best Buy. I was pretty disappointed. So I gave Sean a call back the next day (a week after our previous conversation) and told him my feelings about the controller. I told him I would be happy to ship it back, but I didn't want to keep it. I also stated that with what I'd been through with support so far, I felt I deserved better than a dirty, used controller. He said he could send me something else, but the only things he can offer are PGR3 or Viva Pinata. Neither of those interested me. He then brought up Forza 2. That's at least a relatively new game, so I took that. I also told him that it's been a week so far and I have yet to hear from anyone at Xbox Live regarding my content issue. He assured me that they were aware of the situation and they should be contacting me, but he doesn't know their time frame.
So, at this point, I'm still waiting to hear from them. Hopefully they don't take too long to get back to me. I'd like to be finished with this whole ordeal, since it started back in mid-September.
So, in summary, I feel the Xbox Support system is in pretty bad shape. I will say, however, that Sean has been great. He has always called me back exactly when he said he would, he was always very helpful and professional and he always got things done as fast as he could. I understand that certain things are out of his control, so I can't fault him for some of the crap that's happened since he started helping me. Microsoft needs to find more employees like Sean if they want to improve their support situation.
posted by Matt @ 12/07/2007 03:32:00 PM,
New Blog
Saturday, December 01, 2007
So, Heather and I have been doing the blogging thing on separate blogs for a while now, but I figured it was time to consolidate. This blog will be dedicated to gaming stuff from now on, and the personal and family stuff will go here: SchafferFam.com
posted by Matt @ 12/01/2007 05:54:00 PM,
Part 4: My Xbox 360 Repair
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Part 1: My Experience with Microsoft's Xbox Customer Support
Part 2: My Xbox 360 Repair
Part 3: My Xbox 360 Repair Stats
So, here's where we are as of right now. After getting in touch with my very own RSS rep (Sean), I shipped my console out to be repaired. It arrived at the repair center in McAllen, Texas on the morning of Thursday, October 18th. I waited a couple business days to hear back from Sean that they were processing my repair. I didn't get a call from him by Monday evening, so I went ahead and gave him a call. He's off on Mondays, so I left him a message. The next morning I got a call back from him. He said they were just waiting to ship my console. I was a little confused about what he meant by that, so upon asking for clarification I was told that my 360 would be repaired and shipped by the end of the week. I was shocked! This was awesome. I know he wasn't able to promise me an expedited repair, but it sounded the repair center was going to get the job done. He said I would receive an email notification as soon as it shipped. Sweet!
So I continued to wait the rest of that week. I hadn't received a shipping notification by Saturday the 27th, so I gave him a call. He said it shipped on Thursday the 25th and didn't know why I didn't get a confirmation via email. He gave me the tracking number. It took them exactly one week to get it repaired, which is pretty good compared to other stories I've heard. So, according to UPS, my 360 would be here by Tuesday the 30th (today). Low and behold, I saw the UPS guy at our door as I was driving away this morning. Everything is finally working out!
So I get home from work tonight and hook everything up. Guess what!? My controllers won't sync. I kid you not! I have 4 controllers. and tried every single one of them. I even checked the instructions they gave with my console to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong. None of them will sync. So, I called and left a message for Sean. Anybody want to bet I have to ship my 360 back to them? Looks like I'm back at square one.
posted by Matt @ 10/30/2007 06:42:00 PM,
Part 3: My Xbox 360 Repair Stats
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Part 1: My Experience with Microsoft's Xbox Customer Support
Part 2: My Xbox 360 Repair
So, I wanted to write up some stats, similar to the guy over at Achieve360Points.com about my experience with Xbox Customer Support while trying to get my Xbox 360 fixed. You can read my story here: Part1, Part 2. So here are my stats:
Calls made to 1-800-4MYXBOX: 10
Number of reps spoken to: 10
Number of supervisors spoken to: 3
Repair orders placed: 7
Reference numbers given: 6
Times I verified my information: 13
Promised callbacks: 3
Promised callbacks received: 1
Days after first calling before shipping my 360: 27
So there you go. Not nearly as bad as the situation over at Achieve360Points.com, but definitely not excusable.
posted by Matt @ 10/16/2007 08:52:00 AM,
Part 2: My Xbox 360 Repair
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Part 1: My Experience with Microsoft's Xbox Customer Support
So here is an update to this recent post.
On September 28th, after I made that post, I made another call to Xbox Support. I asked them for the status of my repair. Low and behold, there was no pending repair order. Big surprise, right? I explained that I've been trying to get this repair since the 18th and told them I would like to speak to a supervisor again. After waiting on hold for a good 20 minutes, I had to hang up. Something came up and I wasn't able to wait any longer. Believe it or not, I actually received a voice mail from the supervisor about 30 minutes after hanging up. I decided not to try and call back that same day, since there was no number given in the voice mail that would get me back to that specific supervisor. I was surprised to get another call the next morning from the same supervisor. I explained my story again to Georgia. She apologized for everything and told me that she was going to be taking care of my repair personally from that point. She said I couldn't use any of the boxes I had received so far because they had tracking numbers that wouldn't be associated with any repair order and she didn't want my 360 to be lost. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they lost my 360. Anyway, I explained that I've already been trying to get this fixed for quite some time and now she expected me to wait another week for a new shipping box to arrive. She said there was nothing else that she could do. I asked for an expedited repair and she said she had no control over that because the repair center handles the repairs. She did promise me that she would take care of everything personally and she would contact me that week and every step of the way to make sure that everything was happening as planned. I told that this was exactly what I wanted to hear and I really appreciated her help.
Jump to Tuesday, October 9th. I never received a single call from Georgia. Surprised? I actually was a little bit. She seemed pretty sincere about wanting to help me. Like I mentioned before, I've worked in a call center. If there was an escalated customer that was promised a call back by a supervisor, I promise you, that call back was made. If it wasn't, they would get a warning and if it happened again, they would be fired. Anyway, back to my story. I called Xbox Support that night to see what the status was and ask why Georgia hadn't called me back yet. They said my repair order was submitted on Wednesday the 3rd of October. This was strange because I'd spoken to Georgia on the 29th. Why did it take her four days to submit my repair order? They didn't know. They also didn't know why she didn't call me. I told them to send her a message to call me as soon as possible. When I asked how long before I would get a call, they said within 48 hours. Fine. My repair order was submitted, so I should be getting my box any day and hopefully Georgia will finally call me.
Thursday, October 11th. No call from Georgia. I call Xbox Support again. There is no pending repair for my console! After explaining everything (the Reader's Digest version) to Vanessa, she tells me she will submit my order and then transfer me to a supervisor. After submitting my repair order, she is about to transfer me when she says that she got an error message. My guess is it's the same error that Amy had received and promised she would get fixed so that my order would be submitted. Vanessa says that she'll have to let her supervisor handle this because there's nothing she can do with that error. After being on hold for 10-15 minutes, I get transferred to the supervisor, Paul. Paul tells me that he's going to turn my case over to their "Elite" or "RSS" repair team. This way, I will get a single person handling my repair order. I will be given a phone number that will allow me to contact this person directly and they will be in touch with me every step of the way. This sounds familiar. Paul verifies all of my information and asks if it's OK for this "Elite" rep to contact me on Monday. Nope. I'm not waiting four more days just to get a repair order started. He says that they can contact me tomorrow, the 12th instead. That's much better. He asks for a two hour window that would be the best time to contact me and I tell him between 12pm and 2pm.
Friday, the 19th. I was shocked and stunned when I got a phone call at 12:30 from Sean. Sean is the "RSS" rep that will be handling my case from now on. After verifying my information once again, he informs me that the repair order I submitted online back on the 22nd is still active and that's the reference number I should use for my repair. Wait, what? The repair order that disappeared from my service page a day after I submitted it? The one that I never received a confirmation e-mail about, so I never got the reference number? The very same! Fantastic! He then tells me that I can just use one of the boxes I already have, I just need to write the reference number on the box. At least I don't have to wait another week for a box to show up. Anyway, I ask if I can get my repair expedited. He says he can't do anything about that. He gives me a phone number and extension that I can use to contact him directly.
So that brings you up to date on the situation. We'll see how things go from here and I'll be sure to keep everyone posted. While I'm on the subject, Kotaku just made a post about someone who is having similar problems with Xbox Support. His situation is worse than mine, but that doesn't excuse anyone. Fortunately, this person runs the website Achieve360Points.com, so they can bring more publicity to this kind of thing than I can. You can read their story here. I like the statistics he has listed. I'm going to go through my notes sometime and post some statistics of my own.
Part 3: My Xbox 360 Repair Stats
posted by Matt @ 10/14/2007 02:19:00 AM,
Baby Ezra Update
Thursday, October 11, 2007
So a little update is in order. All our friends and families already know this, so it's not going to be news. Our baby Ezra Mathew was born back on September 30th. He came about 5 weeks early. (About 5 1/2 if you go by our Dr's due date.) Heather posted on her blog already with some details, so I won't repeat those here. Currently he is still in the NICU and doing very well. They took his IV out a couple days ago, so he's getting all his nutrients through feeding and the tube going down his throat into his stomach. The more he eats on his own, the less he has to get fed through the tube. The quicker he gets the hang of that, the sooner he'll be home. It's really the only thing left keeping him there. We started getting help from the occupational therapist yesterday. She was really helpful and hopefully we'll get some more help from her. Anyway that's the story so far. I'll try to keep everyone updated. In case you were wondering, he is the cutest baby I've ever seen.
Here are a couple pictures:
posted by Matt @ 10/11/2007 01:43:00 PM,
