Videogame Customer Service is Unacceptable

You know what? It's true. I went out for my birthday dinner tonight to Bucca de Beppo - the waiter was *fantastic* to me and my girlfriend, he explained all the dishes, brought us wine, hooked us up for dessert on our next visit, and made the experience great. Then we went to a bar called Beluga, where the bartender made me a delicious Sidecar (I apologize for my current state of intoxication and any spelling / grammar errors that are resultant...) while his female companion brought us delicious potato chips, skins on crisps with a delightful mixture of seasosnings, fresh out of the oven.

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Can you *ever* name any situation where you've been treated this way with your console? You go to the store and camp out, begging employees when your console will come in, on release day of any game, if you didn't pre-order, you're treated like dirt, you're lucky if you can get a copy. If your console breaks - hah - good luck gettting a repair / replacement without an hour or two on the phone.

And yet - your whole console, videogames, et cetera cost a fortune load more than my pleasant dinner. Why is it that despite our spending $60+ on games, and $250+ on consoles, not exactly small change, our experience with customer service is so low-class. Why do we accept getting treated like **** by Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo when they charge us first-class prices for their products?

Customer service should be pleasent everywhere, but in this case the 2 are very different. At a restaurant, you're buying food made right there in the restaurant, and they need to ensure the customer is happy if they want them to return. At a game store, they're selling somebody else's product, and while it's annoying, many of the reps there don't feel as compelled to please due to the fact they know there are many, many other customers that will be shopping there.

I work in sales for a cable company, and in my past 2 years of experience, I've had tons of customers who are complete **** and don't even deserve the respect they think is owed to them. We won't treat them poorly of course, but we won't go out of our way to help them either. There's nothing wrong with that. If they don't want to listen, and have help provided, they won't get it. You would be amazed how many people call in just to B***h and moan.

Customer service should be pleasent everywhere, but in this case the 2 are very different. At a restaurant, you're buying food made right there in the restaurant, and they need to ensure the customer is happy if they want them to return. At a game store, they're selling somebody else's product, and while it's annoying, many of the reps there don't feel as compelled to please due to the fact they know there are many, many other customers that will be shopping there.

I work in sales for a cable company, and in my past 2 years of experience, I've had tons of customers who are complete **** and don't even deserve the respect they think is owed to them. We won't treat them poorly of course, but we won't go out of our way to help them either. There's nothing wrong with that. If they don't want to listen, and have help provided, they won't get it. You would be amazed how many people call in just to B***h and moan.

_AsasN_

Their paying customers thou. I really am dissapointed with service in the video game indrestry, and have made that fact known more than once, on past ocasions.

You know what? It's true. I went out for my birthday dinner tonight to Bucca de Beppo - the waiter was *fantastic* to me and my girlfriend, he explained all the dishes, brought us wine, hooked us up for dessert on our next visit, and made the experience great. Then we went to a bar called Beluga, where the bartender made me a delicious Sidecar (I apologize for my current state of intoxication and any spelling / grammar errors that are resultant...) while his female companion brought us delicious potato chips, skins on crisps with a delightful mixture of seasosnings, fresh out of the oven.

-

Can you *ever* name any situation where you've been treated this way with your console? You go to the store and camp out, begging employees when your console will come in, on release day of any game, if you didn't pre-order, you're treated like dirt, you're lucky if you can get a copy. If your console breaks - hah - good luck gettting a repair / replacement without an hour or two on the phone.

And yet - your whole console, videogames, et cetera cost a fortune load more than my pleasant dinner. Why is it that despite our spending $60+ on games, and $250+ on consoles, not exactly small change, our experience with customer service is so low-class. Why do we accept getting treated like **** by Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo when they charge us first-class prices for their products?

subrosian

Simple really, they don't expect you to tip them no matter how nice they treat you. Call me a pessimist for thinking that way but I'm sure that's it.

Customers as a rule treat retail staff like dirt. If you give that attitude out, you can only expect it to be returned. Try being nice to them for once, you'll be surprised at how far this gets you.

As far as the resteraunt comparison goes, you tip a waiter. You don't tip the sales assistant at GAME. Who has the bigger incentive to be nice?

You must have not dealt with Nintendo. They have treated me better then any company, period, and I'm not talking about just video games, I'm talking about all customer service I've ever had to use. Recently, my Wii would show some green artifacts when I would play for a long time. I'm told it was due to overheating of the GPU which has happened to a select few who purchased launch Wii's. It makes sense sense since I have Wiiconnect24 on which means my Wii stays on 24-7 and also I had it sandwiched in a little corner between my TV and DVD player.

Anyways I called customer support and I was on hold for 0 seconds. Yup, after I made the correct menu selections, the phone rang and someone instantly picked up. I was greeted by someone who actually sounded American and spoke perfect English. The girl was very nice. They e-mailed me my FedEx shipping label which I recieved that same day. Sent out my Wii and I got it back in about 8 days. I was all but certain that I was not going to get my Wii back in time for Super Mario Galaxy but Nintendo really impressed me.

Microsoft on the other hand had me pulling my hair out during my 360 return process. It took nearly 2 months to get my system back from Microsoft and that time was spent trying to figure out what the hell was going as I discussed the situation with dudes from India whose English wasn't the best.