RANT:Microsoft REALLY sucks at customer support

Like almost every other person that owns and XBOX360, it broke in under a year, and it needed to be sent back to Microsoft in order to repair the dreaded, "Red ring of Death". Having a broken console sucks, but the real lemon juice in the wound it the shameful technical support that Microsoft offers.

It all starts with a phone call, after dialing the support line you get a automated guy name "MAX" who shouts instructions at you about which console you would like to try and repair. Supposedly this phone system uses voice detection, but i have found no truth in that so far. After continually telling the system that I wanted to get repairs for the XBOX 360, and being told that it could not understand what I was saying, I decided to start screaming at the phone spurting out strings of profanity. Eventually "MAX" had enough and defaulted me to a live agent.

Well after the only Hindu woman named "Sally" answered the phone I knew that I was going to be in for a truly delightful experience. In order to get your console service you need to register the unit with Microsoft over the phone, simple enough right? Well not if the person that you are talking to has no concept of the English language. IT TOOK SIX MINUTES TO GET MY NAME, and as you will learn later on it was still spelled wrong. The registering process took about 15 minutes total, and was extremely frustrating because they spelled everything wrong every time! At this point I am getting annoyed and "Sally" is starting to see that. The rest of the process was a little bit better and they told me that they would send a box to my home with packing instructions and padding in order to send the console back to their service center for repairs. The whole process can take up to 35 business days! Oh well at least at this point the process is started.

I received the box four days later in the mail, so I unhooked the XBOX and prepared to pack it in the box. When I opened the box there was one sticker in it which is the return postage, that's it! No instructions, no padding, nothing! So it was back to the phones. After screaming at "MAX" again and finally getting a Representative, they informed me that they were very sorry about this mistake and in order to correct it I would need to get the console packed at a local UPS store or pay the shipping for a new box to be sent to my home!! Because the screwed up they are going to make me pay for it...WHAT THE F*@$!! I asked for the manager at this point in which the person that I was talking to insisted that they were the manager. Fed up, I told them I would go to the UPS store and have them package it if they will reimburse the packing fees, which they said they would.

The next day I went to the local UPS store and paid ten bucks for them to pack it and ship it, finally I felt like the hassles would end. Why am I always wrong?

Online at the XBOX 360 website you are suppose to be able to track the progress of your repair, so I waited four days and logged on to check it. It asked for your name and serial number associated with the damaged console. Remember when I said they didn't spell it correctly? Well shit, its time to talk to "MAX".... again! "Sally" managed to spell both my first and last name wrong, I'm not joking she really did! After fixing that I inquired on the status of the repair, and the Representative told me that the repair had been cancelled! Now I am livid! Eventually a new repair order was processed and it seemed it could only be smooth sailing from there. Again, I am wrong....

Five days pass and I logged onto the service center website to check the progress of the repair, and nothing has changed. So its back to the phones AGAIN! Cursed out the automated "MAX" and talked to a Representative who said that they never received the console! Now I am having a full system melt down! The representative must have been terrified and transferred me directly to the service center, which was clearly in the united states because the person I talked to spoke clear English, not engwrish. He found the console, told me that it was repaired and this it would be in the mail back to me within a day.

So this has been going on for over three weeks, I still haven't received a console, and every time I call I get the same answers, it is an endless cycle of stupidity, because of this I will most likely sell the XBOX 360 when it arrives and buy a Nintendo Wii. I hate you Microsoft, I hate you so much!