XBox Customer Service Rep Says, “I Am Laughing At You”
By Ron on Sunday, May 13th, 2007 at 8:30 AM PST In Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Microsoft
Everyone reading this should be at least passingly familiar with the fact that the XBox 360’s hardware is…problematic. Horror stories can be found all over the net of failing boxes. Now, it appears that the only thing that fails more than the hardware is the customer service team that supports it.
An XBox customer named Richard has a horror story of his own. Seems his 360 crapped out on him not long after the warranty expired.
He contacted customer support after the announcement that Microsoft would include shipping and a 1 year warranty with all repairs, even those that were not under warranty. Unfortunately, he was not to be satisfied.
After getting the runaround from the customer service, he finally got to speak with a supervisor. After explaining his problem, the supervisor told him nothing would be done for him. Then came the surprising part.
I’ll use Richard’s words, because it’s hard to believe this happened.
“The supervisor said, ‘Is there anything else I can help you with… and by the way I am laughing at you.’ I responded, ‘you are what?’ And he enunciated, ‘I am laughing at YOU.’ And then he hung up.”
You can read the whole story here. It’s a shocker, and shows just how much the support people actually care about the customer.
The manager sounds like a real jerk, and I’m shocked that anyone would do that in the first place. But I do have to say one thing — people treat customer support even worse on a daily basis.
Yes, I agree that the guy was rude. But you know if you open it they’re not going to work on it. That’s common sense for a gamer. If you had someone open it don’t tell them that…lol. Also, why see if you can have it fixed if you don’t have the money to have it fixed? Just doesn’t make sense to me.
It’s also stories like this as to why I don’t have a 360 yet.
xbox 360s suck to me there fine i play games 30 mins to 1 hour max but if you play longer then 3 hours at a time then YOU WILL HAVE A PROBLEM cause thats when you get the red lights
and for poor richard dont take microsofts shit get even they will have phone records and you should take them to court and dont settle for a little pissy amount
i wanna go break microsofts windows physical and software we can throw our $500 bricks through them lol
Ha…. well well well well….
Unfurtunatly i work for the xbox 360 customer support and do you wanna know something? DON’T BUY THAT PIECE OF SHIT….IT’S A BIG CRAP… We have to tell the customer WONDERS about microsoft…and microsoft is a big shit… when u call to the support line and i have to say u “THANK YOU FOR CALLING XBOX COSTUMER SOPPORT MY NAME IS XXXXXX, MAY I HAVE YOUR NAME PLEASE?” i wanna say you, please… go to microsoft and get fired the entire building please….
We’re working in bad conditions in that call center, and the biggest part of the people of your country are really rude with us. what if u work in a call center in USA and u have to care spanish customers…would u be happy if i treat u like a bug? like a stupid? you don’t have any modals!
You are a degeneration of the human race… even you don’t know how to speak in english!…. the real english is from UK…AMERICAN ENGLISH SUCKS..
MEXICANS ARE REALLY NICE WITH US….THEY’RE GOOD PEOPLE, WITH FEELINGS AND EDUCATED, NOT LIKE U.
A ver..quieren que te hable en español?… me tienen las pelotas por el piso, lo lamento por las personas q si son copadas y tienen aguante con nosotros, pero no para todos los negros y negras hijos/as de re mil puta de BRONX, TENNESE, LOUISSANA, ETC… que no saben ni ellos mismos hablar ingles… son una gran mierda, que se piensan que viven solos en el mundo, que no hay otro pais que no sea el suyo….si los cagan a bombardeos los iranÃes, MEJOR…. POR HIJOS DE PUTA….OJALA Q LES EXPLOTE EL PAÃS ENTERO…. EGOÃSTAS, ARROGANTES, Y MAL EDUCADOS DE MIERDA!!!!!!!!!!!
WOW that Luxar guy has issues. Dont blame us for living in poor conditions or some sweat shop call center. Yes there is problems with the Xbox 360 for customers. I am one of them. i had the 360 ruin one of my disks.
As for Customer service, Ya I would have been pissed off too, but i wasent. This lame customer service guy told me that it was Ubisofts fault my disk got scratched because of a defect in the Disk. I say Bull S*!t. They only feed one line answers they are told to say. And as for English? I had to use the Alpha, Bravo code to get this guy to understand my address. A- as in apple, etc…
So dont cut down people that alteast can speak english. You are only sterio typing people because of a few bad calls.
Ya i would never work in a call center because most times people call have a problem and are pissed off why it dont work. thats the job. So if you dont like it get another job is all i can say. I am not Americian or Mexician but im sure no matter where you are from if its broke you will be upset.
But i can agree with you it is a poor product and has lots of issues. there shouldnt be so many complaints if the Xbox 360 was a better product. And i bet you would have a better work enviroment because of this. Hope you get your issues resolved.
just goes to show, crap system, crap service, crap choice
microsoft customer support is appauling. i work for the royal bank of scotland in customer services and know what good customer service is, microsoft obviously have no idea.
ive had loads of problems with my xbox and out of about the 10 times i called, one person was generally really helpful (although tellin me i had to get a new controller cos my headet wouldnt sinc. out of the blue) one time after telling the advisor what my problem was he clearly had no idea and said there were system problems and to call back in 20 mins!
anyways they never take enough info from u to record anything said and they never give u a name. if they wanted to they could tell you to f*ck off and theres nothing you could do. supervisor, ha it was prob his colleguw sitting next to him lol
hey
i will soon be on my 4th xbox within a year. it seems every few month im calling them to get my system fixed. you think by now they just send you a new one but nooo. and for the support poeple, almost all of them sound like they have no clue about xbox, i know more then they do it seems. like if you are going to work in a xbox call centre, why wouldn’t you know more than the costumer does?? I called two days ago with the problems and the supervisor said she will phone me back the next day to get some info to get a brand new xbox but she never did so i phoned them and of course they said they rarly rarly send out brand new ones. right now i want to deal with that call centre as little as possible.
Well that sucks iv’e just had problems with my xbox 360 ( ring of death ) and am still waiting for the pre paid box to come, my friend let me borrow his 2nd 360 and i tried to recover it last night at his house ( my profile ) and got a message saying that it is currently unavailable i was like… what the F*** unavailable? how is that possible? are they sleeping or something wtf? so i decided thats okay i’ll just play at my house. It is now December 29 and i’m typing this at 3 am to try to blow off some steam. when i got home and tried to sign in it said that it had to be re-recovered because it wasn’t fully recovered. I was like okay lets do it. so i type in my info and then. the first update box fills up and then the secound like last night says the same freaken thing unavailable. So after constantly trying i read forums and blogs and they say delete ur profile so i delete it ( not the items ) and after about 20 mins i say to myself…. shit did i just kill everything i’ve worked for? ( deleting it did nothing ) then it said format ur hard drive and im not doing that so i call customer support 7 PM December 26 and this is how the call went…
Recorder: Hi we are currentally experiencing sign in difficulties with xbox live. If you are calling about this problem we are already aware please hang up and try again in an hour.
Yah… no im not hanging up because im recovering not signing in…
so after going through this recoder i get put on halo music and wait for about 3 min
until somone answers
Support: Hello my name is kelly what seems to be the problem
Me: uh… when i click recover xbox live account it says its currently unavailable
Support: Is there a—
Me: What? ( it was really loud in the backround )
Support: Is there an error message?
Me: ( didn’t i just say this ) yes it says “Xbox live signup is currently unavailable please try again later”
Support: Okay yes thank you, this is another problem with the signing in we should have it fixed in 2-24 hours
Me: Are many other people having the same problems i am
Support: Yes many of them are having problems with it not letting them sign in and join xbox live and also recover it like your case.
Support: I see you have a repair order issued. is your Xbox fixed now?
Me: No my friend let me borrow his, i have my xbox right next to me waiting for that box
Support: O, Okay the box should be there in about 3-4 more days
Me: Thank you for your help kelly
Support: Thank you for your co-operation
( im 14 years old i wonder if they were nicer to me because i sound young )
it is currently 3:23 am and i have just tried to recover it and still get the same message so i guess its gonna be 24 hours…..
hey Zach, no I don’t think they were nicer because you are young, I find whenever I call and get a female they are always pretty nice and helpful.
What you could do to find out if xbox live is working is go on the xbox website, they have a xbox live status in the top corner of the page.
Yah and whenever i do that it says the same thing….
and i talked to somonetoday ( yes another story )
Okay I called and noticed the recorded message of “we are experiencing sign in issues yadadada” was gone so i tried to recover didnt work well f me…
So i call back talk to somone heres how it goes
S: Hello welcome to bla bla bla
Zach: My problem is that I can not recover my account and aparently its fixed
S: okay lets run at test
run a test — it works
S: okay go to the system dashboard and click memory
Z: okay im there
S okay click Y and then i need you to push these buttons as fast as you can
X,X,Lb,Rb,X,X
Z: okay now it says maintenence updates
S: click yes
it downloads and then she leaves me after i am at 50% of recovery
20 sec after that it says the oh to firmiliar message of “Xbox live signup is currently unavailable.
i have also deleted my profile but not items. are my saved games gone?
i don’t care as long as i can play COD4 ( it says the same message for making a new account ) god help microsoft
FOR COD4!!!
Jeff , JEFF HELP ME JEFF I WANA PLAY JEFF HELP ME!!!!
MY ACCOUNT IS ZACXX2011 HELP ME JEFF
hey Zach
I can tell you that when I played live yesterday it was messed up like with the sign in, I went on the website 2day it says its working fine.
since you already deleted your profile from your memory all you need to do is go to recover gamertag. and it should work, at least it did wih mine. all your saves will still be their since it was a xbox live acount. Now the acount wrote down is that your xbox acount or email acount. if you still having trouble you can email me at jeffwelds@hotmail.com
i work at xbox call center and suggest dont buy xbox its not worth it….itscrap…….we are not paid too well even though we r based in europe….plz be patient with us we r trying our best
I would like to say in a formal manner, FUCK YOU ASSHOLE YOUR 3SHITTYS ARE SHIT JUST LIKE YO MOMMA
Same thing here. Reps will only give first name and they will lie to you just to get you to hang up. They lost my cocsole in there repair center in Texas and we had to go to the local Microsoft offices in Puerto Rico and they gave the people in Microsoft an attitude . They told there own company person “you don t work for Microsoft your just a friend of his” they started to argue.At the end the people from here had them send the machine IT TOOK 8 MONTHS!!!
They also sent my 120 gb and ups lost it and they wouldn t help because basically they sent it but all I needed was for them to give ups the desciption and they said no.
I hope the 360 tanks!!!
for the last two days ive been sick w a cold so i felt like sitting at home and playing bad co online. my last gold membership subscription was cancelled because I had to replace a lost credit card w a new one and hadnt gotten around to updating it w xbox. i tried to enter the new valid card on the console but it said “the transaction could not be authorized’. i called my card co and they said the card is good. so then i called xbox customer support and they took my new info and said that i’m all good. so i re-entered my info on the console getting the same ‘could not be authorized error’. then i called customer support again and they told me they didn’t know what the problem was and it had to be on my credit cards end. i told them it wasn’t so then they put me on hold again. after waiting someone told me that all i needed to do was enter my new info on the billing.microsoft website. so i did and got the same ‘could not be authorized message’. called back, put on hold again (each time having to explain the whole situation and then getting transferred to billing), and then was told that thier system is updating so they cant accept any new credit cards even though they have authorized my card as a valid card. i asked if there was anyway they could activate my account and process the payment tomorrow and they said they couldn’t. then someone told me that the problem actually has to be w my credit card and that i can go get a pre-paid visa and it will work for sure. being sick and bored i did and after activating the card, and registering the info, i entered the card on the microsoft billing website i got the same message as usual (the card cost me 3.95 just to activate it). then i called back and someone told me that my account was in collections and that i had to call them but it was after business hours so i needed to wait until today to call. so i did. at 3:00pm pacific time i called collections and got a recording that said: “our offices are currently closed, please call back during normal business hours which are M-F, 6am - 8pm, pacific time.” i called back and got the same message. so i called xbox customer ‘care’ again, put the phone on speaker, and waited to get another non-american to supposedly help me. they told me that there is a violation on my account because it was cancelled due to non-payment, i told them (again) that i am trying to pay my balance as well as reactivate my account. they said that the system locked me out because i entered the card too many times (three times all b/c they told me to) and i need to wait 24hrs from when i last entered it and then try again. i’m 100% sure it wont work again but they will do nothing more for me so i have to wait until later and try again.
this all took about 5 hrs w no real help. no one was rude, just EXTREMELY incompetent. i have a mark on my credit for the outstanding balance ($7.99) which they are preventing me from paying, which I’m pretty sure is illegal.
i treat customer service reps well, but this is f-ing ridiculous. i’m so stupid for not getting a ps3. please if anyone knows how to fix this, b/c they don’t, let me know. also, what other sites are there where i can post this review, people need to know what they are getting into w xbox live ’support’, thanks.
Microsoft customer service is beyond horrible. I would rather slit my wrists than contact them.
OMG i hate microsoft sooo bad!!!!…i love my console,,its been through the stuggle and no rings yet….my situ sounds a lot like rigglers except i tried to call and cancel my auto. renewal(from 3 month subs.)so it wouldnt charge my card because i needed to cancel the credit card linked to my live account..so i find out 2 months later, when my account doesnt let me on and is suspended, that they not only charged my invalid card 2 more times(month-month)but whoever i spoke with didnt document and confirm my cancellation call…so everyone(outta probly LITERALLY 11 cust. service reps and 5 supervisors)refuses to believe that i tried the propper way to shut off my account and refuse to remove my credit card info(even the one that came back declined twice)until my balance of 15-something is paid,im a big spender, i got the 15 bucks, dont get me wrong, its just the point they cant take care of such a small customer service situation of which i am not at fault for…so i say screw em, burn through a couple free-trial subscriptions,then after that, like a dumbass put another card on my live account ( DONT EVER DO THAT!!!!!!! BUY THE CARDS!!!!!IT TAKES 30 DAYS for them to remove your credit card info from your console/their system!!!!Depending on if your AMAZINGLY UN-Technical support person can handle the ticket !!)..so i called 18004mybox (they’re gonna charge me for putting that # in this post probly) aprox. 4 hours before i posted this….reason being: to once again make sure they dont renew my account…after dealing with “Max” -the worlds most psyched recording youll ever get to listen to- i get connected to a lovely chick named Gem..very nice, so i tell her why im calling, and after every pause in my speech she reassures me she can def. help me out with my problem, we get through all the security ?s then “well it seems u have a balance of 15-something. we can settle that amount now before i disable the automatic renewal.” So i tell her the deal…she is one of those 11…she wants to get microsofts $15 back so bad after it is apparent to her that this whole issue was a service rep.s fault and that i want the balance gone with no intent to pay…so she tells me (which i found out later is a lie)that she cant stop the auto renewal until i pay my balance…so i ask to speak with her supervisor, not to get gem in trouble, but to try and get at least one step closer to resolving my issue..and we all should know by now that if you want something credited, u need the supervisor..i wait literally 20 min every few she would get back on and say she was still trying to transfer my call to her supervisor..bogus- u dont have to hand-crank anything!sticky buttons? i felt like morpheus in the matrix like “stop trying to transfer me and transfer me!!!”no biggy, i was polite yet there was a lot of stalling getting her to let me speak with her boss…enter Carlo…if u ever have the pleasure to speak with this man..make him cry!like whatever it takes, im chill and mellow myself but,be blatently rude to this guy…we talked for about 15 nice long monotinous minutes before i was just irritated that he wouldnt stop repeating questions id answer the sentence before, and this all was pertaining to this flippin balance i shouldnt have…he was trying everything he could to catch me in a lie, and it was seeming more like an interrogation rather than the simple fix that could be…so as i get pissed i let a “shit” slip out…not at him just thrown into some regular speech…this man asks me nicely not to cuss - cool- now this man wants nothing to do with the resolution 5 months in the making, i can tell hes done helping ya know..so when this guy says “with all do respect” for the some 15th time then ending with “I understand” i dropped a f bomb out there, not insulting , just volger, this guy says ” im giving you a second warning to not use that language” i say “a warning? my mother doesnt tell me how to talk buddy” he gets loud “sir! im telling you to not to use language like that!!”im flamin..and he probly doesnt even remember why i called anymore, so i got loud too, the g rated version was ” thanks for wastin my time. im sorry we couldnt talk longer” but wwwaayyyy worse ok…he hangs up…this is where i remind u that i called just to make sure my account didnt renew…so i call back 25 minutes after that call because i realize “hey- i didnt even do what i wanted” so i go through, and get this guy, i didnt hear his name right, he seems like the companies biggest asset how helpful he sounds and thats after i explain what i had just went through earlier.hes chill, “ok let me help u”, we get to the part about the old,and as far as im concerned, fraudulent charges…and just like those before him, he starts acting like he is the sole guardian of bills vault…then he real quickly offers me 3500 microsoft points if i upgrade to an annual account..then, in the same breath asks me why would i wanna upgrade to an annual account if i am worried about 15 dollars.. im like are u kidding me??but im cool with this guy until he says “i must tell u that when u called before, the answers u got will be the same as mine”…WHAT??!! i say “well that wouldnt be very helpful since i didnt get any answers last time” he gets rude, trying to talk over and interupt me.so i say ( cuz i have HAD IT WITH ALL THESE terrible ppl) “look, do u fix electrical devices? NO!!! u listen to ppl, why dont u try that out!! you know.. your job!!!” then he says ” i understand you are very confused now” i was in shock! i said “no u must be confused , your company robbed me, billed me for it and are holding my credit card info while i dont want u to have it. thats illegal-bottom line-regardless of what it says in your sweet terms of use!!” he goes “well from a customers point of view i would know what i was getting into.”
ME: “let me ask u this, from a customers point of view would u feel obligated to pay 16 dollars that was taken from u for nothing in return?”. he got flustered then before he could say anything i said “look i know u cant answer that cuz its being recorded, so ill answer for u, NO, no u wouldnt pay microsoft either. i understand you are very confused right now!”
him: “now i see why you asked for supervisor, so to u cant pay the balance of 15whatever”(talking about the notes from the earlier call)
ME: “no i talked to a supervisor because the customer rep was repetative and couldnt clear what i needed anyways”
him: “yes, now i know why u were hang up on your last call with supervisor because u use strong language” like it was gonna tear me up or somethin, like i felt bad i dunno,so once i heard him say he went ahead and disabled the auto renewal, i just got -oh man, -i let him have it when the mother of my child got up and yelled that shed call em tomorrow to let it go, and i hung up…sorry bout the length and detail of this, i dont want it to look so one sided because i was heated, and they were idiots!….again i love my console, but service from its company is the worst ive ever delt with and ive only heard bad things as well! no removal button for credit cards even tho every screen has an option to spend money(on the marketplace)-UNETHICAL! im white ok, but i feel almost discriminated against every time i call the customer service line, like they dont want to help me if they could… i can def. be a dick when it comes to customer service reps,but non are as unhelpful, misleading, or just plain rude as those at microsoft…i miss you tmobile!! shouts to my fav. customer service reps… sweet sweet ppl, if u take anything from this, :
dont put credit/debit cards on your console, buy the prepaid cards
get your info off and outta their system ASAP!!heres how, u have to call and tell them thats what u wanna do,give them the usual info, someone will call u in the next 2 days(which u must answer), then it takes 30 days from the call,
worth the trouble if u dont want them clenching your credit information till they drop a call center in the states, i wish i could have every persons job i talked to, microsoft holla at me!! im 10 of your reps in 1!!! and 3 supervisors!! im as productive as your whole call center, but i dont take pottery as payment. and they call americans stupid!
ha thanks guys