Microsoft - You Made Me Love You (even though I didn’t want to)

Source: www.codinghorror.com ©

My seven year old son has seen so much in his short life – care of technology – just like he was there at the time: Man land on the moon, Australia lose the Rugby World Cup by a kick, the “I Have a Dream” speech, the many and varied reactions that idiots have to being asked to “come on down” and other mainstays of the YouTube / Interwebs media experience. Recently, it was interesting for him to experience the other side of technology. In the middle of an intense one-on-one street car racing game of ‘MidTown Madness’ on the Xbox, the television screen flashed twice, we heard a whirring sound and smoke started to pour out of the Xbox. That’s right – our Xbox caught fire in the middle of the game.

The expected end of this story should be me debating with my son whether or not we would get a new Wii, PS3 or Xbox 360, and then negotiating how to pay for it (i.e. do we wait for a birthday or Christmas). I had no expectation that Microsoft would fix the machine. I am years out of warranty, and had already read that support for the original Xbox (also called ‘classic’) had stopped. That said, I am a consumer warrior who lives and dies by the mantra that it is always a good idea to call and ask. So I called Microsoft – more than once. The first call was to tell them about the burn out. The second call was to double check that their offer was real. Because, though they could not fix the flaming classic Xbox, they were happy to sell me a new Xbox 360 for only A$160 (RRP$399 – when bundled with a game) to compensate for my techno pain and suffering. All I had to do was send the charred ‘classic’ back for a double check (replied paid of course) and they would send me an Xbox 360 by return.

That should be enough for a ‘satisfied customer’ story. Microsoft retains a customer in the Xbox universe; I get a console upgrade half price. But there were some more little pieces that prompt me to give even more praise to a company that, as a PC user, is more used to receiving my curses and late night “damn you to hell blue screen of death” rants than blog posts of consumer satisfaction. Microsoft called me every day (until the day they received the charred classic console) to check if it was on the way. Then they called me to tell me they had received it. Then they called me again to tell me that the Xbox 360 was on the way. And (you guessed it) they called me one final time to check not only that I received the new box of ‘fun, good times and killing your mates’ but also to see if I was happy with the customer service I had received.

It pains me to write the words – but “yes, Microsoft I am happy with your service”.