Some cool online electronics images:
Sparebots, the book
Image by Pedro Moura Pinheiro
Lenny is a very nice fellow. He sent me a signed copy of his Sparebots book (signed twice, on the book, and on a sheet of Muji origami paper!) just because I was able to photograph a few UFOs, which through the magic of online friendships and Creative Commons, managed to find their way onto this fabulous book.
How can mere electronic components make us laugh and cry like they were real people? It's a unique experience, with a staggering amount of imagination and countless hours of work. It's a great gift to yourself and to your friends (and to your enemies, if they're Amish). You can buy the book online at Blurb.
Blinking with fiery rage.
Image by hfabulous
On Saturday, October 13, approximately one year and one month after I received it as a gift, the moment I had been waiting for arrived:
My 360 abruptly jostled me from a gaming bender with ferocious crimson blinking; the segmented lights appearing as deep cuts into the very heart of the machine.
For those who don't know, the 360 has a rather high "general system failure rate" that Microsoft acknowledged by extending each and every Xbox's warranty an additional two years. This was done to avoid any messy recalls during this turbulent time of next-generation game console warfare between Sony's Playstation 3 and Nintendo's game-console-for-all Wii.
At first, I was ecstatic. Why, you ask? Well, gentle reader, my brothers had the foresight to purchase the console with an extended über-warranty from the Futureshop not two minutes from my home.
I had read the horror stories and tribulations, but was confident that my 360 would be swiftly and instantly exchanged by the friendly customer service staff.
Bracing myself against the elements, I tucked my beloved machine under my arm and headed to the surprisingly un-trafficed customer service line. Confidently setting the 360 down on the counter and producing my extended warranty plan, I proclaimed "red ring of death" while asking Jennie to scope out how many Xbox360s they had in stock, musing that if all they had were the upgraded Elite models, I'd just have to insist they replace my moribund machine with one of those.
The staff behind the counter looked at me and chuckled. Oh, they had received far, far,far too many of these crippled machines during the last year to simply do a swap anymore. They would be happy to fill out the paperwork and deal with Microsoft on my behalf. However, they looked at me soberly– as soberly as any doctor looking at the relatives of an ailing patient- and suggested that if I were to deal with the problem myself, it would be handled much faster.
Mustering up my most noble "hey, it's no big deal" smile, I raced home and went online to search for Microsoft's customer service number. By this time, it was 6:30 EST on a Saturday and I had resigned myself to the fact that I would likely not be speaking to anyone until Monday morning. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the number on the Xbox Web site said I could "call anytime".
Upon dialing, I was swiftly connected to a young man with a bit of Texas twang to his voice; patiently waiting for me to answer his questions as I berated him with mine– I'm in Canada, is this the right number?! Am I getting a new machine to replace mine that oozes red rings?!
He calmly asked me to run some tests and provide some information where he then informed me that I had indeed received a "general system failure". Microsoft was going to immediately courier me an empty box to ship back my Xbox to them. They would then courier me a "repaired, replaced or new machine" as deemed appropriate with 7-8 business days.
With a heavy heart, I agreed to this and proceeded to wait.
But I didn't wait long! On Tuesday, I came home to find I had missed a package from Purolator and that I would be able to pick it up at a local Purloator centre by 5:00 p.m. that evening.
Over eager, I went in at 3:00 p.m. and asked if my package had arrived. The woman at the counter informed me that it wouldn't be in until 4:30 p.m.
I said: "Great. Delivered AFTER the pick up for today's shipments."
She said: "Not at all, we get a pickup at 6:30 p.m."
She looked at me again and asked: "Xbox?"
Shocked, I exclaimed "indeed, it was for my disabled Xbox."
She said: "bring it with you when you come in, we'll pack it up for you and send it off for you."
"You get this a lot," I asked? She smiled. "Oh yes."
I came in later that afternoon and there was an additional staff member behind the counter. He grabbed my pickup slip, fetched my empty box, proceeded open it up, grabbed my Xbox and, with the assuredness of a Microsoft employee, asked me I had removed all DVDs, memory cards and hard disks.
He looked at me slyly: "I do this dozens of times a week. Maybe more."
I nervously smiled, hoping that these were all one-time affairs and not the serial replacements I had read about online.
Then I waited.
But again, not long! Today at 1:00 p.m. (Friday, October 19), I received a knock at the door and my Xbox360 was returned in fully working condition; the eye its usual "come hither" green brilliance, its CD drive making slightly less noise than before (at least, I believe it's a different frequency of hum now, anyway). A letter accompanying the unit informed me that my replaced unit was a "refurbished" one, containing the latest production techniques. I'm not sure what that means, but it definitely didn't involve grafting on an HDMI port.
Those MS folks even threw in a one month Xbox Live Gold membership card. Score.
I admit, I fell a bit prey to the very vocal horror stories I had read about the headaches associated with dealing with this issue and, yes, it shouldn't have been an issue at all, but I wasn't expecting this. I was very impressed with the whole process. Microsoft moved quickly and clearly didn't want me to lose much time from buying the latest Xbox Live Arcade games and downloadable content.
I'd say the experience ranked very close to Nintendo's recovery of our Great Wii Fiasco earlier this year and, in someways, may have edged them out by giving us something for our trouble with the inclusion of the membership card. Although, Nintendo sent us a working Wii immediately, before having us send back our lemon, so it's a close call.
In both cases, this sort of customer service goes a long way to fostering goodwill and evangelism towards a company's products (just look at all of these words!) and that's going to make or break the victors of this generations console wars.
