Xbox 360 repairs – when customer service red-rings
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 | consoles, consumer culture, design, gadgets, gaming | No Comments
A couple of weeks ago, my XBox 360 suddenly stopped working and displayed the Red Ring of Death (RRoD) – anyone who has been playing a game and forgotten to save in the last little while will totally understand my anguish and the loud, heart-felt cursing that followed.
Still, Microsoft made it pretty easy to send the console back:
- Watch XBox 360 red-ring and despair.
- Call XBox 360 people.
- Get free shipping label.
- Pay $13 for UPS to box it up nicely and send it to the repair centre.
- Wait and rejoice at its speedy return.
Today the good people at Purolator brought me a new XBox 360 – I plugged it in, practically humming with excitement at getting to play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion again. I followed every instruction to the letter about setting it up again and – more despair; no Oblivion for me.
I got an error message telling me the downloadable content (DLC) for the game was not available to me. I found this pretty puzzling since I used to have access to it with no issues at all.
I called XBox 360 Customer Service and set up a ticket to document the issue. I was told to wait three to five business days for the problem to corrected. Annoying, but OK.
I looked on the XBox LIVE site and discovered that my LIVE account still had the serial number for the previous XBox associated with my account. This got me worried – what if the repair centre hadn’t registered the XBox correctly at all?
I called again and was treated to a woman reading straight off cue cards who was unable to tell me if either mine or Joe’s account was associated with the new XBox’s serial number, but a second ticket was issued under his name and gamertag.
To make matters worse, during this second call the supervisor admitted that my issue is a frequent and ongoing issue with repaired XBox consoles and that they’ve received many complaints about it.
Anyway, Joe discovered a few hours later that the new XBox was listed under his gamertag and account, but not mine – so I called again to cancel his ticket and keep mine open with a note cross-referencing his now cancelled ticket.
This was apparently beyond the scope of the script; the third customer service person I talked to was not able to answer my questions with yes or no answers and interrupted me several times to repeat the same stock phrases over and over again from his script.
I understand that Microsoft wants to keep answers consistent – that makes sense. However, not everyone processes information in the same way and forcing your call centre staff to repeat the same things over and over again doesn’t make them more intelligible.
I admit that I was frustrated with the responses I got during my second and third calls – I spent nearly two hours in total on the phone with people who are not allowed to tell me things, don’t know the answers to things and either can’t or won’t rephrase anything from the script in a way that makes sense.
I also found it very annoying to have my name used repeatedly throughout the conversations; for instance: “Thank you for your patience today Renee. Now, Renee, we are going to escalate this matter to a higher department and we assure you, Renee, that everything is being done to correct the issue. Is there anything else you’d like to bring to my attention today Renee?”
I’m sure they think this will calm frustrated customers, but honestly, it’s sort of creepy. Even Joe rarely uses my name, so to hear someone reading off a script and putting my names in the blanks is just weird. Also, it’s very annoying – I had a moment where I just wanted to yell “I know my own fricken name!!”
If anyone in a position of being able to do and know things at the XBox 360 Customer Service centre reads this: please, please, give your staff a little leeway and let them think outside the box just a tiny bit. Let them answer questions in plain English. Tell them not to use my first name so much and NOT call me ma’am either – I hate being called ma’am.
And most of all – if customers are calling frequently about a specific problem, you need to find a better solution than scripted answers that your staff can’t really understand or explain.
How to find your WordPress API key
Monday, March 2nd, 2009 | WordPress, blogging, how to | No Comments
I recently migrated a blog from being a free WordPress blog to being a self-hosted blog.
Today, I noticed that my WordPress.com Stats plugin wasn’t working and my dashboard was sporting a shiny new warning about needing an API key to activate the plugin.
I immediately turned to WordPress.com – unfortunately, the information regarding API keys has not been updated to include where to find it using the new dashboard for WordPress Version 2.7.
So, to save other WordPress users the frustration, I wrote these instructions based on the new dashboard:
How to find your API key
- Log in to your WordPress account.
- Click Users > Your Profile.
Your API key is at the top of the screen:
You can copy the API key from there and paste it into any field where it is required.
In my case, the API key wasn’t there when I looked, and after frantically searching Google I discovered the issue: I migrated my free WordPress blog (http://myblog.wordpress.com) to a hosted account (www.myblog.ca) – so my API key was still associated with my free WordPress blog.
And here’s the really important part: the API key that was assigned to your free blog is the API key you will use for all of your WordPress blogs – hosted or not – if you want to activate plugins requiring an API key.
Retreiving an API key from a free WordPress blog
- Login to your free WordPress account.
- Click Users > Your Profile.
- Copy the API key.
- Paste the API key into the field where it is required on your hosted WordPress blog.
- Follow any remaining instructions laid out by the plugin or enhancement.
Your API key is at the top of the screen.
I found two great blog posts over at WordPress Max that go into even more detail than this post:
An API key is a useful thing to have to take full advantage of all the plugins and enhancements that WordPress offers – and there is a lot of great stuff!
Special thanks to WordPress Max for making API keys clearer!
Would you work for free?
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 | Technical writing, consumer culture, content, websites, writing | No Comments
I recently corresponded with Company X regarding a job writing game reviews.
Game reviews are not my normal venue, but what the heck; I like gaming, I like writing and it seemed like a fun way to make some extra cash occasionally (plus, a cool addition to my portfolio).
So I sent an email in with my details and some questions and received the standard response asking for a sample review. It was this part of the response that concerned me:
“Submitted articles become the property of Company X.com, Inc. and may at some time be published in its submitted form or altered by Company X.com, Inc and subsequently published at some later date.”
The “submitted articles” are actually the writing samples they require to make a hiring decision. In other words, you send them a sample review written to specification based on an actual game and they get to keep it, alter it, and use it whether they hire you or not. Bonus for them, they don’t have to give the writer credit or pay them.
I emailed to confirm this interpretation and got the following reply:
“That is correct”
That was the entire reply – no lead-in or sign-off.
I replied that most places requiring samples asked for mock-samples but in the cases where proper samples were required that there was usually something in place to ensure the sample would never be used without full permission of and recognition to the author.
This was the reply I received:
“Thanks for your comments, however, that is our policy. The choice is in the hands of potential freelance candidates whether to submit their sample or not.”
Admittedly, he’s got a point. Anyone reading that ‘policy’ can always make the choice to not work for free. They can choose to write for a company that does not use ill-gotten content.
I was still a little appalled at how much they devalue writers – as though writing isn’t an actual occupation or, for some of us, the only thing we want to do for a living. If you write for a company, you should get paid a fair and decent wage for it – not find it published in an altered form where you get no credit.
Writing for free doesn’t pay the bills – so always read the fine print and ask questions!