Xbox Support's Response

I received the following reply from xbox.com yesterday.  I'm please with the response.  Still, it bothers be that I have about a 50-50 chance of either getting a total jerk that keeps me on the phone for 2-6 hours (seriously) without a resolution or getting someone great who has me off the phone in 10-30 minutes.  There's a real quality assurance problem that goes back to LIVE support for the original Xbox console.

Hello Benjamin,

 

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Online Support for Xbox!

 

This e-mail acknowledges our receipt of your message to Xbox Customer Care. We appreciate you taking the time to write us with your concerns and value you as an Xbox Customer.  We do apologize for any inconveniences that you might have.

 

I understand that you would like to file a complaint with one of our phone support agents regarding the misinformation of reactivating your premium content or to restoring the Digital Rights Management (DRM) licenses with your content. This is indeed unacceptable and we, at Microsoft, do not tolerate such behavior.  We will look into this.

 

You may also choose to call Xbox Phone Support.

 

For US and Canada customers, you may call Xbox Customer Service at 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.

 

For international customers, please contact Xbox Customer Service in your local region. (To find the correct Customer Service number for your region first use this link http://www.xbox.com/en-US/ChangeLocale.htm to select the appropriate country and then use the contact number found under the support menu). You may also choose to call international assistance (direct dial to the US) by dialing 425-635-7180.

 

To expedite service, please provide Service Request Number [removed for blog] when you call.

 

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.

 

Kind Regards,

 

Eljay

Microsoft XBOX Support Services

http://support.microsoft.com/

bad customer service: where to complain?

I sent this to xbox.com tonight:

I would like to register a complaint about a customer service representative. He repeatedly gave incorrect information that he insisted was official Microsoft policy that could have cost me $60 in new charges in addition to not solving my issue. He also did not listen to what my issue was, as evidenced by the half dozen to dozen times that I had to re-explain it to him in detail during the 1 hour and 35 minutes that I was on the phone with him before he finally let me speak to a supervisor. I ask that you please check to see if this conversation was recorded for quality assurance purposes, and that if it has you review our conversation.

I called this evening (Thursday, November 20, 200 to follow up on the call I made yesterday (ref # [removed for blog].) The issue is that one and only one of my LIVE Arcade games (Shotest Shogi) will not let me play it even though I am signed into Xbox LIVE at the time. (All of my other Arcade purchases work just fine.) He told me that before he could "escalate" my issue to the next level up (and before I could speak to anyone else,) I had to create a new LIVE account, repurchase the game under that Gamertag, and see if it worked before any solution to the DRM problem could be found (at a cost of $10 to me.) He then told me that in order to access LIVE Marketplace, I would have to purchase a Gold subscription (at ~$50.) He said that Netflix can be accessed with a Silver Account, but in order to go online and use Marketplace I had to have a Gold account. He also said that Shotest Shogi had a different license agreement than any other game offered through LIVE Marketplace, and that it was the only game on LIVE that does not allow access to it on anything but the original purchasing console even when the purchasing profile is signed in to LIVE. He said that because it is a license issue, there is nothing Microsoft can do about it and I should create another profile to repurchase the game through.

The agent was polite in his tone and demeanor, but it was repeatedly made abundantly clear by what he said that he not only did not know what he was talking about, but that he would rather make up incorrect information than refer me to an agent who was more familiar with my type of issue. I concisely gave only what information was necessary for the resolution of my issue, but he kept asking irrelevant questions that I answered several times before he would put me on hold for 10 minutes only to come back and ask me again. He then got confused by the extraneous details that he had asked for (such as why I had at one time sold an Xbox that I used to own) and kept trying to answer questions that I didn't ask. He also repeatedly forgot the answers to the questions he had asked.

When he finally let me speak to a supervisor, the supervisor was able to hear my issue, try a resolution with me, and then explain what they needed to do next and how many days it would take. This conversation (I think the supervisor's name was Jim) only took about 20 minutes. My issue is now being worked on under the new reference # [removed for blog]. Jim confirmed that the information the previous agent had given me was incorrect.

Perhaps the most troubling instruction that the first agent today gave me was to sign into my brother's account and repurchase the same game using his MS Points. It was not the agent's intention that I steal, but nevertheless his complete lack of familiarity with Xbox LIVE, its membership levels, the MS Points system, Gamertags, LIVE Marketplace, and DRM management led to his instructing me to use his account (and his MS Points) to make a duplicate purchase. This level of ignorance of Microsoft policies is inexcusable in a customer service representative for the Xbox 360 console. More outrageous was his unwillingness to listen to anything but the questions he thought I was going to ask him and his propensity for making up wrong answers and claiming that they are official Microsoft policy.

Please write to me to let me know how Microsoft is ensuring quality customer service experiences.

Gamertag: Case Legal
support reference # [removed for blog]

Sony recalls Little Big Planet

10,000 Crappy Drawings: The Plan

There's an allegedly ancient proverb that Go teachers tell new students when they are trying to learn how to play the game. It reads something like, "Lose your first 100 games of Go quickly." I never got the hang of Go, but I like the proverb. The gist of it could be that whatever new thing you are trying, you will only get good at it by 1.) actually doing it rather than worrying about doing it "right," and 2.) you will only learn if you go ahead and make mistakes.

I'm fed up with myself for acting like I'm some kind of super genius when it comes to video game, film, and comic book design simply because I can recognize a good thing when I see it. Months ago I stopped writing reviews for this reason (among others.) Since then I've mostly complained about customer service and shoddy products, but I still have yet to actually produce anything of my own other than vague concepts that start with, "You know what would be cool?" I have always ended up getting too frustrated with the difference between the drawing/writing/film in my head and the one that I actually make to get very far in doing anything.

I'm also realizing more and more that I'm part of a generation in which the importance of ideas has been emphasized so much that the absolute necessity of actually making stuff has been marginalized. In reality, a sanitation worker is more important than an artists. A sanitation worker could always collect the garbage without the existence of an artist, but an artist would be buried too deeply in his own day-to-day waste to have time to create art if the sanitation worker didn't show up every week. Yet somehow we value the artist more than a garbage collector.

Yahtzee Croshaw's Zero Punctuation video about web comics (embedded below) really hit home for me. I am "that guy." The one who has seriously thought that, despite an underdeveloped ability to create visual art, his ideas are so brilliant and the details of actually making something are so unimportant by comparison that artists should be lining up to illustrate my shit. I am "that guy" who thinks that College Humor is a bunch of unfunny, distasteful crap, but hey, if they can make money off of it why can't I?

I'm sick of criticizing shit. Even the worst film director of all time has one up on me; he's actually completed at least one film. I want to start making shit. I'd prefer to make great art, but lets face it, I'll have to work through what might eventually be known as "Ben's Shitty Period" before I ever produce anything worthy of getting my work classified into periods. If I ever make one thing that's even worth getting noticed by the general population, I'll be luckier than most people. Post-Modernism be damned. Asshole, rich man-children whose parents own galleries be damned. "Work" is the operative word in a "work of art," but it seems like most people have forgotten that. There's this myth that art is the product of genius that flows forth without effort.

Saying, "That's just CG," or,"They Photoshopped that," is a way to dismiss talent that I don't have. I might as well criticize and marginalize all of the Flemish masters by saying that all of their work was "just" done with oil-based paints, as that was a new technique at the time and considered by many to be "cheating."

Buying the same tools as the greatest artists in the world today use does not make you equal to them, despite what various Apple and other ad campaigns may have told you. As Eek the Cat once said, "It's a poor carpenter who blames his tools." Like plans, a good work of art today is better than a perfect work of art tomorrow. If I'm too scared to put pen to paper because it doesn't turn out like it "looks" in my head, then I'll never get good enough to render my imagination.

It is out of this slough that I plan to pull myself with my "10,000 Crappy Drawings" plan. In short, I can't draw well right now and even when I tell myself I'm only practicing, I get frustrated and quit quickly when I'm not great right away. The plan is to force myself to make drawings that I know will be no good even though I'm trying my best and that around my 10,000th drawing I might actually end up with something good. I will have to keep working on bad drawings until they are finished even when I think I already know that they are crap. Without this disciplined practice, I will never improve. I believe that my story ideas are great, but if I don't believe they're great enough to warrant this kind of hard work on my part, why should anyone else invest their time and energy in them?

I plan to blog a lot less, if at all. This will make effectively zero impact on the world. What might make an impact is if I actually follow through on my plan and get good at something other than criticizing the work of others. Below is the Zero Punctuation video that gave me the painful kick in my balls that I needed to get off my ass and start doing something worthwhile. Maybe someday I'll create something worth getting on NPR for.

MS Point Cards No Longer Scratch-Off Cards?

After my DRM transfer worked, I did something I said I'd never do again; I bought an MS Points card. I never understood why, in addition to the oversized clamshell packaging, there also needed to be a scratch-off coating over the code on the back of the card. The card becomes non-negotiable and un-returnable as soon as the packaging is opened,and there's no way to open one of those suckers without it being obvious.

Lots of people were reporting that when they scratched off the coating, part of the 25-digit code rubbed/scratched off as well. Microsoft's official position in the past was that consumers should go back to the place of purchase and, "Maybe ask for a manager," to see about a refund for the opened, non-returnable, non-exchangable item. In other words, we were all SOL. They also insisted that consumers were "scratching it off wrong," but they refused to provide instructions on the correct scratching procedure. The free 48-hour LIVE trial cards that came with Burger King Pocket Bike Racer, with their cardboard pull-tab to reveal the free code, worked better than the $50 "for reals" cards.

I never understood why they didn't work like, for example, iTunes gift cards. They have very little packaging and would be easy to steal, but they are not activated until they are scanned/swiped at the checkout counter. Stealing them is pointless. (Much like an "over-scratched" MS Points card.)

Microsoft seems to have been telling us to screw off with their right hand while working on the problem with their left. The card I bought and activated yesterday had no film layer to scratch off, so I had no difficulty reading and entering the code and there was no possibility of the code getting scratched or rubbed off by accident. I'm wondering if this is a new policy or if I just got lucky.

Have you bought any MS Points cards recently? Did you still have to scratch off to reveal the code, or were they like mine with no scratching involved? If this isn't just a manufacturing fluke, it's a great move on Microsoft's part. If it is a fluke, then they should call it a "feature" and run with it.