Customer Loses Xbox 360 Artwork During Repair

An anonymous reader writes "The Consumerist is reporting that one unlucky individual had to send his Xbox 360 in for repairs. The catch is he had spent a great deal of time getting signatures and artwork on the outside of the console from notable members of the gaming industry. He specifically asked and even sent a letter along with his console requesting that the outside of the case be returned intact. When he got it back it was once again, plain white. Assuming that this is a genuine claim, regardless of the circumstances surrounding the missing/cleaned case Microsoft should at least apologize to the guy."

He's an idiot

If the signatures on the outside of the box were so valuable, he should have bought a brand new XBox rather than run the risk of having the "valuable" one stolen, damaged, or defaced.

As for the concept behind getting signatures in the first place, it may be cool to get XBox developers to sign an XBox, but what's the point of getting "notable members of the gaming industry" to sign a product that has a guaranteed maximum lifespan? Wouldn't taking a polaroid and having them sign that be a better way to preserve those memories?

Re:He's an idiot

The "notable members of the gaming industry" presumably have a guaranteed maximum lifespan as well (medical advances not withstanding).

Besides, haven't polaroid stopped selling their instant cameras/film now?

Re:He's an idiot

Personally, I'd have him autograph one of his inventions. You know, like his now-obsolete flying machine.

Having an artist autograph their current chosen medium seems reasonable to me. Yes, the XBox 360 is going to be obsolete - but that won't mean that, retroactively, Red Vs Blue wasn't made on an XBox 360. That way you get both the autograph and a nice slice of history.

"Yessiree, this is an actual autograph by one of the creative minds behind Red Vs Blue! And even better, you're looking at a real XBox 360, just like the one Red Vs Blue was made on!"

Same argument goes for any game developer or designer, obviously.

Re:He's an idiot

The value of an autograph is arguable, but the medium upon which it is recorded is important as well.

Plastics have a lifespan of several hundred years, which is considerably longer than the paper on which autographs are signed. Longer than acid-free archival paper as well.

It's also longer than oil based paint used on the great paintings by the masters, which often sell for millions. Longer than the canvas used for those paintings as well.

Re:He's an idiot

They still sell them, they just don't make them. They're selling off existing stock, which is expected to run out before the end of 2009.

Re:He's an idiot

To me, an XBox is the equivalent of an engineer's "work of art". I see nothing wrong with getting authors to sign their books (paper doesn't last forever), or artists to sign their paintings (the paint does all sorts of nasty things over time), musicians sign CDs (don't let CDs near small children, or leave in sunlight), so the development team signing their final product (which is quite a marvel technologically, even if it may not be functional for 100 years) seems reasonable to me.

Now, on the issue of whether he should have sent it or not, you're probably right in that he should have kept that one and bought a new one. But maybe he couldn't afford a new one at the moment and made an unwise decision.

Re:He's an idiot

Engineering works of art don't break as often as an Xbox 360.

Re:He's an idiot

Kit Kat bars don't break as often as a 360.

Re:He's an idiot

I found this comment on another sie reportingthe same story: All repairs and maint are done through a third party company, Jabil, in Renoysa, Mexico. They have a specific set of instructions that they follow assembly-line style, and one of the first steps in that is they scrub the unit down with rubbing alcohol and remove all stickers and so forth that are on it. Any letter with the console would have been disregarded since the workers don't speak English, and are much more concerned with keeping up with the mass amount of work to be done, because they can be fired very easily if they don't. Even in an unusual case like artwork and signatures, the workers have better job security just pushing it through like usual than stopping to ask.

Re:He's an idiot

Sounds like a Microsoft phone droid did his job, saying "yes, yes" to everything over the phone so he could close the support ticket in minimal time and keep his manager happy. And then the Mexican repair shop droid did his job, treating the Xbox just like all the others so as not to annoy the manager or otherwise engage in troublesome independent decision-making.

Does anyone expect otherwise from Microsoft?

Re:He's an idiot

does anyone expect otherwise from any big corporation?

You Don't Even Need a New 360

Just buy a second case.

You're intending to keep this for a long time, so for a couple of years you just have an empty case. When the XBOX 720 or whatever comes out, 360s will be a lot cheaper and you can put your old 360 in there or buy a new one to fill out the case.

I haven't looked into it deeply, but I saw that custom clear cases were $50 or so. How much could a stock case really cost?

Just poor planning, really. If you wanted to get signatures of all major developers and felt it important to preserve that, then, y'know, put that thing in a protective box and never open it.

Re:He's an idiot

and your comment makes a /. trifecta.

They didn't tell him...

...that it was an entirely new console.
I just can't decide if the old one was discarded or some repair guy decided that he really liked the case and kept it.

Re:They didn't tell him...

If it was a new console, the serial numbers wouldn't match up.

dur

maybe I'm missing something here but what repair could possibly justify the work of scrubbing signatures off of a gaming console? If somehow the repair did require that they not have ink/signatures on the case, why not take the case off, so the repairs, put the case back? For that matter, who thought it was easier/more efficient to take all that time to scrub it off when they could have used another case and returned this one?

Can't believe Agents

I really feel for this guy. I really do.

However, you can never rely on an agent for anything. They really can say anything, and generally are not held accountable. You have to go up to supervisor level and above, get employee identification information, and to some extent, get a written letter of intent from the company.

It's like asking the sales guy for technical information on how stuff works. Bad Idea. Go to tech support to talk to the guy instead.

That being said, it seems pretty clear from the article that somebody at Microsoft may have been mean and spiteful to "wash" the case. I say that only since we do not know what processes go on inside. It may be possible that multiple people are responsible for the repair, and the person taking the unit out the box and reading the letter just lacked the appropriate standing or ability to communicate anything down the line. The person that washed the case, may have been simply doing his job, and may have even had reservations about doing it. That employee may have had nobody to talk to either, or even the time and the "empowerment" to do so. It is entirely possible that the whole operation is so big, that expecting this kind of interdepartmental communication and cooperation is just unreasonable, and a little naive.

That is what I believe. That kind of operation must be so huge, given the volume, that for the systems and policies to be implemented to track this incident from its creation to its conclusion is just too costly of an undertaking. You would have to believe that they could create a RMA and from the very beginning include dynamic handling instructions that would be passed throughout the entire process. Most business fail at this already.

If anybody is truly responsible, it is the agent for making that representation in the first place. That agent, by their representations, implied that such abilities do exist.

Of course it would be interesting to know if there are policies in place to retain cases and artwork. On the surface, it is easy to condemn M$ overall for this, but there are just too many unknowns in the story.

Re:Can't believe Agents

No, it's easy to condemn MS in general, even without the unknowns.

Someone asked a specific question of a customer service representative. That representative gave a clear and unambiguous answer. Either that answer was incorrect, or a serious mistake was made internally.

It doesn't matter which of those was the case. If you bring a car to an auto shop, and they rip out your engine, do you let them get away with "oh well someone made a mistake"? "Our customer service representative wasn't authorized to make that promise"? "Our company's just too big man, there's nothing you can do about it! These things just happen."

Fuck that.

Microsoft support screwed up. I don't know what section they screwed it up in, but I honestly don't care. The details don't matter. Microsoft support screwed up and should take responsibility - figuring out where the mistake was made is their problem.

Re:Can't believe Agents

Honestly? It's still the company's fault. If the company says "yes we can do this" then it means they should do it, I don't care if it was person #1 or person #20.

If you ask me to sign a contract, and I say no, and you ask another 20 times and I finally sign it, am I exempt from it because you asked me a lot? Not in the least. Same deal here. If the company said they'd do X, and they didn't do X, I don't see any excuses.

(I don't actually know if they did say so. But I'm assuming that they did.)

I don't know that it was spiteful

Probably was just bad communication. So I'm guessing under normal procedure, you don't necessairily get your old Xbox 360 back. They may send you a different one they reconditioned (or perhaps a new one if that isn't available). That way if your problem ends up being something that takes longer to fix, or ends up being something unfixable, you aren't sitting around waiting for a long time as they figure that out.

Now that'd be pretty normal procedure for returns. Quite often when I've had to return something, I've gotten a different unit returned to me. They recieve the part, verify that it is defective, that the warranty does cover it, and then ship out a replacement so I don't have to wait. The one I sent in then gets sent over to the repair shop to look at and they do with it whatever they wish to. I'm happy since I have my item back quickly. In fact some companies even allow for cross ship. eVGA will allow you to buy enhanced warranties so that they'll ship you out a card, then once you get it you ship the old one back. Cuts down on your downtime that way.

So, I'm guessing that is MS's normal procedure. Now in this case, they got it noted that the guy wanted his orignal box back and said "no problem, we can do that." However, the reason he did, or maybe even that he did, never got sent down the line. So it goes to repairs, gets fixed, and then there's some guy who's job it is to clean them up and make them look nice. He hasn't been told this picture is supposed to stay, for all he know somebody's kid was scribbling on it. His job is to clean up the boxes, which he does.

The shipping department then gets the box back from repairs, matches it up to go back to the original owner since they have instructions to that effect, and he gets his unfortunately cleaned 360.

I really doubt that anyone would have done this out of spite. All other MS conspiracy theories aside, they LOVE the Red vs Blue guys. They've had them do promotions for launches and so on. This isn't a case of a Tux penguin or something that might go against their corporate culture, this is something that is supportive of MS all the way.

I'd just bet on bad communication in trying to do something that isn't normal procedure.

MS doesn't repair your Xbox 360 for you...

... they repair it for someone else.

FYI, if you mail-in your 360 for "repairs" your going to get a previously refurbished 360. MS does this in order to accelerate turnaround. Moreover, what you get back could very well be an older model that is more prone to failure.

This is too easy!

Come on marketing and PR department of Redmond, even I know the answer to this one and I haven't ever taken a class in marketing or sucking up.
1. Issue a statement of apology explaining that you will get to the bottom of the problem.
2. Go ahead and look for the Xbox (but secretly you know this is futile and the box is next to the Ark or was really cleaned).
3. Contact the complaining customer and ask him what signatures were on the Xbox.
4. Contact the artists that signed the box. Make a big PR festival out of it! Have Bill Gates (or heck...anyone famous will do) take a brand new Xbox to each artist and have them sign it.
5. Send the Xbox back to the kid. No wait, have Bill Gates deliver it in person. Film the whole thing and put it on youtube, etc.
6. PR disaster averted and gold stars for everyone.

The media would eat this up and the free publicity would be worth its weight in cheetos.

Too boring and predictable

It would be better if Sony jumped on this and gave him a PS3, signed by Bono, The Pope, and bunch of other A-List celebrities. That's called a PR coup.

As a gesture of goodwill...

...they should give him a free HD-DVD drive

Should have bought a new one...

It's as simple as that.

The whole idea of sending a customized anything to a central repair place screams out for a "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag. The box may be special to you, but it isn't to them. You can't expect major manufacturers to spend extra time/money on you just because you decided to paint your box a different color. The world doesn't work that way.

Buy a new Xbox, swap the innards. Xbox all fixed.