Wii - disc scratches and customer service experience

[robot_parade]

Hey,

Just thought I'd share this.

We've had a Wii since Christmas, and mostly pretty happy with it. However, a month or so ago, a couple of the games started having problems where the unit couldn't read the discs. At first I assumed the kids just hadn't been handling the discs properly, but, upon further inspection I noticed that there were scratches around the perimeters of all of the discs. The scratches were perfectly circular, and seemed the same on all of the discs. Discs we played more had more scratches.

So, I called Nintendo customer service...the rep seemed skeptical, but went ahead and sent us a shipping label and told me to send the Wii in, along with the discs. (Nintendo paid for the shipping). After a week or so, I got an email asking me to contact them (at a different 1800 number). Fearing the worst, I called.

They essentially admitted the unit was at fault ("this can happen sometimes, especially if the unit is moved while the disc is running, but it shouldn't happen.") For the Nintendo licensed games, they said they would just replaced the discs for us. For the other, non-nintendo games, they said they did not have those discs to replace, but they offered to replace them with Nintendo games of our choice from their catalog. I didn't press the issue, so I don't know if I could've gotten some other form of satisfaction (cash?) if I didn't like that option. So, now they are sending the discs and unit back to me.

On the whole, I'm mostly very happy with the situation. Unfortunate that the unit scratched the discs, but, hey, things happen. Their customer service was pretty excellent, and no charge for the shipping was very good of them. A little annoying that they couldn't work something out with their licensee's to replace those discs, but on the other hand, we're getting new games. If we really want to play one of the other games we had, we can just buy it or rent it.

So, on the whole, a very good experience. Anyone else have Nintendo or other game system customer service experiences?

[Shauk]

Nintendo has been kicking microsoft and sony's ass in the customer service dept .

I don't own a wii, but my friend had a defective unit and his experience getting it replaced was fairly pleasant according to him, My last customer service being Sony, over the ill-manufactured Sony PSP LCD screens, they basically tried to blame me 15 different ways for it being defective, then play off the "well its normal" card, before letting me get to a replacement phase in thier customer service mantra (fortunately it was all well documented as a normal procedural dose of bullshit by the digg community and I knew what to expect) It didn't inspire much confidence in me to have them say "be aware that the unit you receive in replacement may have the same symptoms or worse"

All of a sudden my 3 dead pixels looked good at the prospect of getting one with more than that.

fook sony.

[Jetée]

Your story warms the cockles of my heart.

As does this one:
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3157317

This one's been around for a few days now, but you might not have heard it yet. Here's the deal: a few days ago (Valentine's Day, actually) a woman in Redmond, WA broke her Wii after a marathon session of gaming with her 6-year old son. The Wii was about a month old at this point, and the kid was pretty upset to be without his Wii Sports.

We've all been in tech support hell, so you're probably expecting the next part of the story goes badly. The crazy part is that it doesn't.

So. Lady calls Nintendo customer care (in her blog excerpt, she's quick to give props to the big N for having the cajones to place their actual phone number up on their website). Lady gets customer service rep on the phone and explains the situation. Rep says "Oh, you live in Washington? Bring it on over to Nintendo HQ then. We'll fix it right up."

For serious. In her blog entry, entitled "Customer Service Gone Shockingly Right" the woman in question even mentions that Nintendo apologized profusely to her because the repairs "were going to take 30 minutes... sorry!". As she says, only a Japanese company apologizes to you for a 30 minute wait when you were expecting weeks of Wii-less misery. Just as an experiment, ask yourself whether you feel lucky enough to expect the same treatment if you happen to get the dreaded red ring of death.

Anyway, It's an interesting eye-on-the-street piece, and it calls into question just what the term 'customer service' should mean in a world where most of us are thankful just to get an English speaking rep on the troubleshooting phone.

Bonus points: Did you know that Nintendo's Wii O.R. has a waiting room just outside, full of consoles, games, and a vaguely creepy lifesize statues of Mario to keep you company while you wait? Now, if someone could only convince the Nintendo techs to branch out into obstetrics...

Go Nintendo Power Customer Service!

[The Faba]

I had my XBox eat a DVD I was watching. After complaining to Microsofts Indian Service Reps for like 300 minutes I finally got them to send me a 'random game'. I got Halo 1.

Did I mention that they knew I had the 'Halo special Edition XBox'? That comes with a special edition Halo disk?

I hate customer service, they should have just sent me a 360. That'd have been sweet.

[CyCo PL]

Yeah, I'm really surprised that they offered to replace the non-nintendo games with nintendo games. That's almost like a trade-up, considering nintendo makes the best Wii games.

[jorgelito]

Um, Sony is a Japanese company too.

[stevie667]

Originally Posted by jorgelito

Um, Sony is a Japanese company too.

Japanese by blood, american by nature. Its...Japanican!


Ninty customer service has always been top notch (baring the odd bad spell). Its pretty fair that they didn't replace the 3rd party discs imo, especially if they're giving you ninty original games. That way they can do it for free, instead of going out and buying you new games.


I don't have any consumer relations stories, never once had a problem that i hadn't caused myself (e.g. throwing a wavebird against a wall so hard it exploded, so i had to buy a tri-wing screwdriver to try and salvage parts to put in another wavebird i broke, but the transplant failed).

[Jetée]

Originally Posted by jorgelito

Um, Sony is a Japanese company too.

What in the blue blaze's are you referring to?

[jorgelito]

The article claimed that only a Japanese company apologizes to you and further implied that only a Japanese company has great customer service.

Now while the Nintendo story is cute and charming the OP said that he had a horrible experience and bad service at Sony, which is a Japanese company.

I was merely pointing out the irony.

[snowy]

Reading stuff like this makes me feel even better about my Wii.

[bendsley]

I had a Wii for two months and after one of the unit updates was downloaded, I could no longer get onto the Wii Channel for purchases. Anyway, called Nintendo and they sent me a label to send it in.

I send in the unit and a week or so later, I have a new unit (new serial number), and, AND!!! they saved my data from my old and put on my new. How badass is that??

Excellent service as far as I'm concerned.

[Vlad]

Originally Posted by onesnowyowl

Reading stuff like this makes me feel even better about my Wii.

Yup. The constant stories I've read about Nintendo's customer service really do take a lot of the worry out of a potential hardware failure, especially compared to the all the negative press revolving around the 360 at the moment.