My experience with Microsoft's Xbox Customer Support

So as stated in a previous post, my Xbox 360 died a while back. In case you were wondering, I still haven't been able to send it in for repair. You're probably thinking to yourself, "But Matt, isn't your 360's problem covered by Microsoft's extended 3-year warranty?" Why, yes, it is. "Well, then shouldn't you just have to call them up and get a repair request started?" You would think so, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong, however.

My 360 died on Tuesday, September 18th. I called Xbox Customer Support that afternoon to get my repair started. I got lucky the first time I called because the person on the other end spoke English. I would not be so fortunate in some of the calls that followed. They took my serial number and information and said I should get a shipping box within 3-5 business days. He gives me my reference number. After the call, I checked the new Xbox Service website and saw that my 360 was listed and a repair was pending. Perfect!

Two days later, I check the website again and strangely enough, the status now reads "No repair pending." Odd, I thought, but maybe they're just having issues with the website. So I give them a call again. This time I got to speak with someone in India. English skills were not so great. Now, I'm not trying to make a racial thing out of this. I'm sure someone will still be offended, but I don't care. The bottom line is, if the majority of your customers are English speaking (which I believe is the case for the Xbox 360) wouldn't you want to make sure your customer service could communicate with them? This guy could barely spit out a complete sentence. On top of that, they don't even try to hide the fact that their support is in India. The hold music was Indian Hip-Hop! Are you kidding me? But, I digress. This topic could be a whole post on it's own. I'll suffice it to say, I sympathize with Dell customers. Anyway, back to my rant. Well, back to my first rant. So the language barrier made explaining the situation difficult, but the representative was helpful and setup a new repair order for me. I had to give him all of my information again, from the very beginning. I needed to repeat my address multiple times, again due to the language barrier. Then he gives me a new reference number. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell me why my first one magically disappeared and he didn't make any effort to try and find out. Even with my repeated inquiries as to why I needed to setup another order, he would simply say, "I'm sorry for the inconvenience" over and over. He promised me, however, that this time my order would be fine. He lied.

The next day, I still was unable to see my repair as "pending" on the Service website. So I figured I better check again. I called their support. I hung up on the first person that answered and the second time I got someone who spoke English. Note to Microsoft: This is what people will do if you continue to outsource your Customer Support to India. This representative said that he could see my order in the system and he didn't know why the website wasn't showing that. He said sometimes it takes 24 hours to update the website. Fine, I think. I'll check back tomorrow.

The next day, still nothing. This time, I figured I'd give it a shot using their online tool for requesting a repair. I stepped through all the options, filled in all my information, yadda, yadda, yadda. After all was said and done, the Service website showed "Repair Pending." Fantastic! Things are looking good, right? Wrong!

Monday, I check again. "No repair pending." What in the world is going on? I called their customer support again. I don't know what the odds are, but once again the person didn't speak English. I stayed on with him because I was going to ask to speak with a supervisor anyway. After about 5 minutes of explaining what I had been through up to this point, he explained that my repair request was canceled, but he can submit another one for me. I tell him that I've already done this multiple times and submitting another request won't do any good if it's just going to be canceled. He doesn't know why it was canceled and he doesn't seem to care about my frustration with dealing with their Customer Support. Finally, I ask to speak to a supervisor. He asks me to hold while he gets one on the phone. 5 minutes later he comes back and says that no one is available and asks if I'd like to continue holding. Obviously I would, so back on hold I go. This time, about 10 minutes. Back he comes saying still, no one is available. Would I like to wait or would I rather he have the supervisor give me a call back. Now, I work for a company that does a lot of customer service. I've worked in several departments in the company that speak with customers on a regular basis. When I was in the Support department, we would promise callbacks from a supervisor within one hour. That seems reasonable to me. Back to the story. I ask him how long before they give me a call back. "24-48 hours," he responds. I laughed and told him I've already wasted a week trying to get my repair order placed. I'm not going to wait two more days just to talk to someone about it. I will continue to hold. Another 10-15 minutes goes by and he comes back. This time he has his supervisor on the line. Not really, though. He had to put me on hold again to bring the supervisor on the line. But that's not important. So from here I spoke with Amy. Fortunately, Amy spoke English very well and she was quite helpful while I was on the phone with her. I explained the situation again. She apologized for the inconvenience, but never offered anything in the way of an expedited repair or anything like that. Finally, after voicing my concerns, her only resolution was to submit another repair request. She verified my information again and submitted the request. She gave me yet another reference number. Luckily, I kept complaining about what I've had to go through so far, because just before she thought she was done with me, the repair request gave her an error. Apparently, it wasn't able to validate my address. I verified that what they had was correct. It better be after all the times I've had to give it to people. She put me on hold while she looked into the issue. After quite some time, perhaps 15 minutes, she came back and said that there was nothing that she could do. She would have to escalate this to another department that would be able to fix the address validation issue and submit my request. I ask her how long this is going to take. She said 2-3 days. I remind her that I've already spent a week dealing with this. She apologizes again, but says there's nothing she can do about it. She says that someone will contact me once the order has been placed. Fine, at least they know what the issue is now. They should be able to fix it, right?

Yesterday was day 3 and still no phone call and no updated status on the website. But guess what! A shipping box showed up at my door the day before. So now I have a shipping box, but no valid repair order. Since I need a valid reference number, there's no point in shipping my 360 to them. Based on my experience so far, they'd probably lose it. So, I give Customer Support another ringy ding. This guy speaks English, but sounds pretty new. That's fine, I was extra patient with him while he put me on hold to look things up and find out answers to my questions. So again, I explain everything up to this point. Someone was supposed to call me back by today and I haven't heard anything yet, but I have a shipping box now. What do I do? After putting me on hold for a really long time, he came back and said that there was an issue in their computer system that was causing the problem I was having. That issue has been fixed, so my repair should show up soon. How long? 1-2 more days. I explain that it's been a week and a half at this point and everyone just keeps telling me to wait. I ask him if there's any way to expedite my repair, since I'll have wasted 2 weeks by then. He puts me on hold and checks and tells me there's nothing they can do. Fine, I'll give it another day. Side note: When I got home yesterday, there was yet another shipping box sitting on my doorstep. Anyone need to buy a brand new Xbox 360 shipping coffin? I'll probably have dozens of those things show up in the next week.

So that brings us to today. Still no order pending on the website. My 360 is in a shipping box waiting for a reference number. I will call Customer Support again today and escalate until I get a guarantee that it's OK for me to ship it in.

Feel free to leave your own horror stories Xbox Customer Support in the comments. I have a feeling I'm not the only one...

Part 2: My Xbox 360 Repair
Part 3: My Xbox 360 Repair Stats

digg this