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XBox Defects Draw Ire
jeffy124 writes: "An article at CNN indicates that the XBox is having problems with defects. But the defects aren't the problem, the issue is lousy customer support from Microsoft's repair contractors, which is really what's more annoying to those who got defective units. Customer support has been giving out conflicting advice and some customers are having their support records lost."
I can't possibly understand why they would go through the trouble of calling customer support when they could go back to the store and get an exchange. Even software (which is notorious of being a 'No Refunds' purchase) can be exchanged for the same title if defective.
Even if I purchased online I'd call the people I bought it from; not MS customer support. Ugh, some people...
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
I doubt MS has budgeted too much money to after sale support of XBox. Reasoning as follows:
XBox sells for $300.
Here's where it get's tricky...quoting consumer prices here, I'm sure MS buys this stuff by the truckload for a lot less...bear with me.
Processor inside cost $75-100.
Memory cost $50.
Hard drive cost $75.
Misc. hardware cost $50.
Worst case, that's $275. Add to that the BOX itself, packaging, controllers, docs, etc...we're talking an item with a VERY low profit margin. MS spent some quingillion dollars developing this thing, so obviously, some money will need to be directed to recouping development costs. When all is said and done, I don't think that MS is making a lot of money on each unit.
Is that an excuse for poor after market service? No, it's a lousy excuse! But, they had a price point they believed they had to hit, and something had to slide for them to hit it. As a tech geek, ask yourself, "Would I rather have a faster processor and more memory, or real good support that I'll probably never need?". Me, I'd pick the hardware and roll the dice on the support.
Now, I don't believe that MS has tried to make a faulty product...they dove into the console war headfirst, and HAVE to shine right out of the gate, if they don't, major egg on the face. So, it behooves them , as it does any manufacturer, to create a quality product. I'm just stating the facts as I see them, not defending or accusing.
couple of things here...
I am not a pro-MS person by any means but some defective units and some whiners about poor customer service does not mean that their shit is really bad. Everyone in the world whines about CS. People sometimes need to understand that just b/c you paid $300 for something does not mean that it is going to work and it isn't going to get repaired that instant. Chill.
As far as Gamecube having games that people want. I just don't see it. I like sitting down in front of my PS2 (or I guess XBox from what I have seen) and firing up my copy of GT3 or Madden 2002 and looking at some sweet as stuff. The Gamecube reminds me of Barney. Purple and cartoonish.
Sorry but GT3 makes the PS2 a must buy. There is no car driving game out there that is anything like it. The graphics are amazing, the gameplay is great, and it never gets old (hell I have been playing GT1 for 3 straight years).
Playing XBox, PS2, and Gamecube in stores is what made me decide what I liked. The controllers for XBox and Gamecube are pretty poor. The PS2 is the only one that is actually comfortable and makes sense. Yeah, this is my opinion but honestly the others are just too bulky and overdone.
I enjoy my PS2. It has the time behind it and the games that are great. You just can't beat what it has.
"SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- Hundreds of people who bought Microsoft's hot new Xbox game console over the holidays received defective systems, and some say they waited for weeks before the devices were fixed. "
I didn't get past that paragraph before I had to stop reading and go "what?" I think there is just a little melodrama here. At least on my Calendar the date is only January 5th. Which puts us almost at a mere two weeks after Christmas. Not even quite yet.
I know everyone is in a rush to get the holidays in and over, but I think this is seriously starting to stretch it. Pretty soon when there is an article double posted on slashdot, people will be saying "oh come on, I just read that story 10-15 days ago! Right after my cup of coffee!"
I know, I'll probably get flamed/modded down for saying anything in defense of MS, but... So what? The article is anti-MS FUD.
So, out of 1.5 million units, a few hundred are bad. As the article even states, this is in line with the industry average, even compared to Nintendo who has more console building experience than anyone else in the market hands-down.
XBox has been out about what, 7 weeks? Is it so surprising that the new player on this market might have a few snags with third-party customer service companies? Haven't you ever chosen to do business with someone only to find out your needs are not in harmony with their service? That is the real issue here. If MS had been in the console business for at least a year or two and people were have endless problems with customer support, then maybe it would be a big deal. Just because it's Microsoft doesn't mean their problems with third party CS companies equate to a poor product or a general neglect of their customers. This molehill is not that mountain.
Blame is placed correctly on Microsoft. Yeah, NVidia made the graphics chipset and AMD made the processor, but Microsoft put their name on it, not NVidia or AMD.
What you're saying is that we shouldn't blame the business that claims to have created it, whether or not they actually did. If I claim to have created something and put my name on it like Microsoft did, I will try to at least make sure I know how it was created and how it works.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Besides, Microsoft will realize the current support contractor sucks, and pay out some cash for a better one. From the article it dosen't sound all that bad anyway.
This is anecdotal eveidence of certain individual's problems - not a big deal.
Jesse Wolfe Sr. Manager Systems Integration
Well, defects are a part of life. You can't ship 100% of your units at 100% of functionality. If you read the article it says they are estimating a 1% failure rate. Which, according to Nintendo, is pretty common. Well for game consoles anyway. Its understandable that they are going to have some defective units. This isn't a story about a stop shipment because of a serious design flaw. They are talking about defects from (most likely) manufacturing. The issue is the fact these people are getting what appears to be poor support from those defects.
Remember, in business how you handle a bad customer is everything. If you have a bad experience and a company goes out of its way to make it up to you, you will become more loyal. However, if the company further screws you, then that's probably twice as bad.
How come the people who actually use the Xbox controller generally say it feels great unless you have the hands of someone under 12?
:)
I've used it, and personally I find it great. I can reach all of the buttons (very easily). I don't get nintendo thumb.
I like all of the controllers, PS2, GC, and Xbox. The vast majority of the people who hate the Xbox controller tend to be PS2 and Gamecube fanboys who are used to smaller controllers. Once you actually spend some time with it, your opinion may just change. Try it sometime.
Just because Athlons are cheaper than Pentiums doesn't mean that the cost to produce an Athlon is less than that of the Pentium. Intel gets a price premium because of their name, while AMD was sell with smaller profit margins to attempt gain marketshare.
Microsoft most likely went with the company that gave them the lowest bid, which may well have been Intel over AMD, regardless of consumer pricing of their products.
Over the years, I've come to accept the unfortunate fact that >80% of 'production' desktop software I'm going to run will crash on a regular basis.
However, I have zero tolerance when an embedded system crashes, be it a consumer box or a commercial/industrial process controller.
When was the last time the firmware in your Sony Flatscreen screwed up? VCR? Microwave? Granted, we're talking about way less lines of machine code, and a lot less data/processing flying through the pipes...
I guess my major concern is that the almost inherent buggyness that plagues computer software becomes "acceptable" in embedded systems. M$ has been the catalyst in more than one "slippery slope" over the years...
Ken.
An OPEN mind is a beautiful thing...
We're just seeing what happens when the US market gets a product first. Remember all those faulty memory cards and DVD drives that didn't work in the PS2? No one really cared since it was all fixed by the time the stuff came to the US. Now we're the testers for the stuff.
Reading the story will tell you that the Game Cube had a simaler defect rate.
The problem has been support, not the XBox.
mlk
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
When my original NES died after only 2 days of play it took 2 months to get a replacement from Nintendo. The store wouldn't take it back, they said I had to deal with Nintendo directly.
When my Princeton Graphics monitor died I went through three remanufactured replacements before I got one that worked. Well worked well enough that I didn't feel the need to deal with those people any more.
It seems today bad customer service is the norm. I'm not sure why, but it might have something to do with the fact that I never formaly complained to Nintendo or Princeton Graphics. I mean when was the last time you did anything but yell at the poor sap making $7/hour answering the phone. Do you think he reported your frustration up the managment chain? He sure as hell did not. He just noted your trouble ticket as completed in the computer and move on.
If anyone is to blame it is the consumers for puting up with this and continuing to purchase goods from these people. I know I'll never buy a Princeton Graphics monitor again, but I did by a Super Nintendo and a N64.
"Failure is not an option, it's part of the standard package"
Works fine :)
www.lonseidman.com
Maybe you don't expect your new $300 acquisition to work correctly out of the box. Most of us do. Maybe you expect to get to wait weeks for repairs/replacement, most of us don't.
Go to your local Circuit Shitty tomorrow. Ask the people looking at TV's if they expect it to work when they get it home. And ask how many expect it to work a week later. And ask them how long they expect to wait for a replacement/repair if it breaks next week.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Contrary to popular mythology, the idea of selling a console at below cost
is a rather new phenomenon. It it not an ancient practice handed down
through the ages.
If you're going to take him as word of Go(r)d, at least understand his philosophy.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
f^ck that pal. I pay 399+ bones for something, you're godamned right I expect it to work and if it doesn't, to be fixed. I don't care if it's M$ or GM or fucking SHARP. I pay that kind of money retail, it better fucking work.. Jebus, it's not like Beta testing, jeez.
---------- You are not the contents of your sig.:-p
For 10 dollars more than the price of project gotham alone you could pick up a Dreamcast and Metropolis Street Racing (same racing system as Gotham).
I'm more concerned about the detractors, like the parent post. These people go to the store and play the demo units with the stationary controllers, and then bitch because they don't feel right. Well, news flash -- you generally don't play console games standing up, nor do you keep the controller at waist level (or lower, depending on what store the demo unit is in -- those machines are often sized so younger people can access them, which means it's awkward for adults). Find a friend with an XBox, go play with the system for an hour or two. Hold the controller in a comfortable position (which very likely is different than the fixed position on the demo units), and see what you think. I can personally say that I've not experienced any problems reaching buttons (I'll agree that the black and white buttons are a little out of the way, but they're also smaller, and not meant as main action buttons), nor have I had any cramping during long hours of play (I can't say as much about either my PSOne or my Dreamcast, or my NES or SNES from years earlier. Since the PS2 controller is the same as the PS1, and the Gamecube controller is roughly the same form factor, I expect to experience cramping from those as well after long periods of play).
Agreed.
A 1.3% problem rate for customer service is pretty damn good, and much better than what some companies I've been invloved with consider an acceptable rate. Just like the delivered product, there are bound to be failures in service. Restaraunts try to deliver a meal the same way each time it's served, but sometimes the steak is overcooked, and every now and then a ride is down at Six Flags. Get over it. Mistakes happen.
The real solution to this is to put more bloody RAM into the consoles. RAM is cheap, it lets the programmers pull more tricks, it'll give you nicer textures...
But while I own a old original Game Boy myself, you are definitely Nintendo-biased.
The N64 was a bad technical idea. That's just how it is. If you want cinematic sequences that are realtime-rendered a la N64, then *do* so. Just read them from the CD and precache them. You're complaining about FMV on the PSX...when you can't *store* all that FMV on an N64.
"Nintendo has always been about efficiency". Oh, bullshit. All console coders delt with constraints. Should Atari get a cookie for working with jack shit game hardware?
Load times have nothing whatsoever to do with Nintendo's choice of a disc size. It was, very simply, to avoid piracy. You can't burn 'em on a stock PC in a CDR drive. Furthermore, if their disc has a data transfer rate greater than that of the PS2 drive, I'll be amazed.
Nintendo has done very little that I'd consider "groundbreaking".
Finally, the GameCube was made as it is (less powered than the Xbox/PS2) to save money. Nintendo wanted to have a more reasonable price point than the PS2 without burning through money. End of story.
The only thing that I will give it is that the GameCube really is more elegant. It's more power efficient, is PowerPC-based, and is compact. But consumers buy consoles for games, not to poke at the innards.
Don't forget the other thing that killed the DC: PSX.
PSX was out for a while, and the library of games reached about a million it seems when the DC was starting out. It wasn't that the games were great - many sucked! Even good games sucked, like Quake II.
PSX, from what I saw got all the shelf space [you DO need to pay for that] at major retailers, game 'shops' pushed PSX because they had so many games and their general love of Sony.
Even now I can see the PS2 killing Xbox and GC. Not because it's better or the games are greater or anything along those lines. It's marketing! When Wal-Mart dedicates 2/3rds of it's games case to Sony games, Sony will win.
When you walk into Funco Land and ask about that new GC and they laugh, point and yell saying you should get the PS2 - you might think twice.
The fall of the DC were two fold: Sony Fanboys, and No product exposure.
[in fact, I'm seeing more Sega commercials now than ever. If they would've kept making the broadband adapter, and going after those online sports games like World Series Baseball 2K1 etc - they wouldn't have had to go to software only business.]
Get your Unix fortune now!
> Is there really anyplace the provides good customer service anymore?
If you're rich, yes.
There's nothing especially cold-hearted about the practice. Manufacturers are giving the consumer exactly what they demand - the lowest possible price. Handling and refurbishing a product, in many cases, costs more that the wholesale price of the product itself, so you can bet it's in the best interests of the manufacturer to make the highest quality product they can, in spite of the cost constraints. Software is an exception - most consumers have incredibly low standards for even the most expensive software. For those of us who demand quality software, the stringent return policies give us no choice but to try a pirated copy before we buy, or switch to OSS.
So people usually don't get pissed off when they have to return something, if they can do so without too much hassle. However, selling a product that has been previously returned and not properly refurbished (Fry's) is deplorable.
I put it very simply to the sales weasel. It went something like, "I, your customer, spent over $500 of my hard-earned cash this morning in this very store. The product you sold me is defective. Are you refusing to exchange it for a replacement product, which presumably will work? Oh, you are? Get the store manager here, now."
I explained the situation to the store manager, and outlined what I felt were acceptable options at that point... 1. Exchange the console and make me happy, or 2. Take back the whole lot, games and all, and give me my $500 and change back.
Funny thing? 5 minutes later, I was walking out of the sture with one of the 3 xboxes that were left. Went home, hooked it up, and the DD5.1 worked great. Bottom line? Stand up for your rights as a customer.
The unsig!