A friend called me yesterday to tell me that they’d finally upgraded their Xbox to an Xbox 360. Turns out that she’d made the decision just as the Elite was released in the UK and that the nice guy’s at Game Station had convinced her that all Xbox 360’s are a bit crap but that the Elite is a different machine altogether.
Now I’m not too sure if there is much of a difference between the two except for the HDMI socket and the 120gb HDD but still, I was impressed that she’d gone and bought a 360 at last and hadn’t tried to save money by walking away with a core system.
The only thing that didn’t impress her was that she’d paid £325 in total as she wanted Bio Shock and after leaving the store and crossing the road to GAME (a shop I dislike enormously and yes I know Game Station is now owned by GAME) and had see the same deal for £309. Anyway, she gritted her teeth and picked up a used copy of Burnout Revenge and Oblivion at £20 each and made her way home to set it all up. I got the call, firstly to boast about the Elite and secondly to ask why her picture looked crap compared to the one my ‘still-broken’ Premium showed.
After explaining that she has a HD Ready TV with a spare HDMI socket, and that’s what the extra cable in the box was for, she was really happy to be an independent HD 360 owner.
Fast forward 3 hours… After 2 hours of Bio Shock, Burnout Revenge is popped in and off she goes for a bit of road rage. I in the mean time have popped over to my local GAME and picked up the £309 deal for an Elite and Bio Shock. My Premium system is still sitting on the side whilst I get my act together and send it back to have the Ring Of Death extracted. Anyway, I wasn’t going to be out-done and figured that I could persuade her to set up Xbox Live so we could go head-to-head online.
As I get home my mobile rings and I hear ‘My Xbox has frozen… When I turn it off and on again, I sometimes get 3 red lights on the front’. Wow, after 3 hours of playing the brand new Elite has the Ring Of Death! What the hell? Anyway, I popped over to see it and sure enough by the time I get there there’s no picture at all, just 3 red lights.
Now it gets really frustrating; we pop it all back in to the box and I suggest that she should go back to Game Station and get it replaced. Its 6pm on a bank holiday so it’ll have to wait for tomorrow which gives her time to think about the offer I got in GAME and so she decides she’ll go back to Game Station, get a refund and pick up the £309 deal.
As you can bet Game Station were not happy. Sales assistant takes one look at it and this is what happens:
Sales Assistant: No problem, we’ll replace it.
Friend: No. I’d like my money back thanks.
Sales Assistant: But we don’t normally do that.
Friend: Yeah ok, I’d like my money back because it’s faulty.
Sales Assistant: But we’ll give you an unopened replacement.
Friend: No thanks, I’d just like my money back.
Sales Assistant: I’ll just get the manager.
Manager: Hi, how can I help you?
Friend: I’d like a refund on my Elite that I bought yesterday; it’s faulty.
Manager: I’m sorry, but we can only really replace it for you.
Friend: No, you can give me a refund; you have to if I ask for one and the item I’m returning is faulty.
…
At this point the manager is actually looking angry and the queue is building up. My friend says once more that she wants a refund because the 360 is faulty and she’s firm enough let him know that she doesn’t want a replacement. Then the manager says something quite amazing in front of a store full of customers. ‘Well all Xbox 360’s are faulty. Everybody knows that’… What? My jaw hit the floor. You could see the amazement on the faces of the hardcore gamers in the shop.
The obvious reply to this, and the one my friend used, was ‘well why the hell would I want a replacement then?’ At this point she got her refund and we left the store. He's lost our business, I was very loyal to his store, spending about £2,000 there this year alone.
The story doesn’t have a happy ending either, we’d spent the best part of 20 minutes in Game Station and my friend was on her lunch break. Being as impatient as me she rushed in to GAME only to come out with Blue Dragon instead of Bio Shock because they’d sold out. The manager has told her she can do a straight swap when Bio comes back in but I reckon that’ll be one hell of a battle…
No comments:
Post a Comment