An Open Letter to XBox Customer Advocacy

This is the reply that I just sent to "Dave" on the customer advocacy team. Not one word of the email I sent is a lie or an exaggeration. The events I list in bullet form span almost a month.

Dave,

Thanks so much for your email. I was beginning to think that you guys had forgotten about me. As of now (8 hours later) my bank account does not show any credit from your company.
I want to take this opportunity to relay to you what an awful customer service experience this has been for me. I placed an order that I immediately tried to cancel almost a month ago. Your data system wouldn't process the cancel request and that set
off a chain of events that would be comical if it wasn't so frustrating. I won't go into every brutal detail but here are some highlights:

• I contacted Xbox customer support at once and was repeatedly assured that my order was canceled and refund would be processed.
  
• I check my bank records and see that the money was taken out of my account, but no refund processed.
  
• I contact Xbox customer support and again I'm assured that the order was canceled and a refund will be processed soon.
  
• I then receive an email saying my order has shipped.
• I call again and speak to someone who promises me that the order will be canceled and not to worry it won't actually ship.
  
• I wait for a week to get my refund and nothing happens so I call again.
• Again I'm assured that if I was just a little bit longer, the refund will be processed.
  
• A few days later, the hard drive shows up on my doorstep. In the box there is no packing slip and no instructions on how to return it.
  
• I call you guys AGAIN and ask what to do. I'm told that someone from your "escalation team" will email me.
  
• I wait a few more days and I get an email from someone with a packing slip to ship the hard drive back. I have to figure out what the tracking number is by guessing that it is one of the numbers under the barcode. I guess right on my second try.
  
• I'm thrilled to find out that the shipping label is for ground shipping to Texas so it will take a week to get there. I write back to request a two day shipping label but expecting no reply I mail the box the same day.
  
• I get no reply to my request for a two day shipping label.
• I track the shipment daily until it arrives in Texas.
• I wait two days before I email back to find out where my refund is. A day later I get a reply (from the person that sent me the label) saying that since I didn't supply a tracking number, you guys can't verify that I sent the hard drive back.
  
• I reply saying that I used the shipping label supplied by you guys, so you should already have the tracking number but I supply the tracking number anyway.
  
• I receive no reply to that email either.
• I wait a few more days and inquire again.
• No reply.
• Today I get an email from you saying my refund has been processed. I note that nowhere in your email do you say "We are sorry for all of the trouble we have caused you" or "we're sorry that we've kept $105 of your money for a month for no reason at all."
  
• I log into my bank to verify that my refund has been processed. There is no record of the refund there.
  

You'll have to excuse me if I'm just a little bit doubtful that this matter will be resolved anytime soon. Please do not consider "this particular item" resolved.
Sincerely,
[MOD REMOVED]
PS - The closing of your email, "Thank you for your continued support of xbox!", almost made me choke. Our Xbox is four years old and due for replacement soon. Prior to all this we were torn between getting an Xbox One or a PlayStation 4. I don't think
that there is much of a decision to make anymore.

PPS - Do they give you guys telephone's there at the Customer Advocacy Team? This whole thing could have been resolved with a phone call a long time ago.

:)

 

Open Letter to Microsoft on Customer Support

What I imagine Microsoft would wright back...

Left blank intentionally because I believe there is a 1/1,000,000 chance support is monitoring these forums.

 

Open Letter to Microsoft on Customer Support

Dear Xbox,

My name is Grant Groomes. I wanted to inform you of a recent experience I had with your product and Customer Support Team. I purchased an Xbox one X on launch day. I was excited and looking forward to playing on the world’s most powerful
console. However, after only a week of having the console it started to have severe problems. It refused to play games and would always give me an error message saying “the game took too long to start”. I decided to get in touch with Customer Support to resolve
the issue. The following list is a brief account of the past 4-5 weeks of events.

1. Sent in Xbox to have it serviced.

2. Received Xbox after roughly 2 weeks of waiting, the SAME problem existed.

3. Contacted Support and was offered an advanced exchange for a New Xbox.

4. Received New Xbox and went to drop off defective Xbox at FedEx the SAME day.

5. FedEx refused to take the package and insisted that a new shipping label was needed.

6. Contacted Support the next day to sort out the issue, was told I would be sent a new label soon.

7. A few days go by, I follow up with support and was ensured that a new label was coming and that I would not be charged for a new console in the meantime.

8. Around 2 weeks go by, no label has been received nor was I contacted by Support.

9. Received email from Xbox informing me that I was going to be charged for a new console due to the defective console not being received.

10. Contact customer support, was transferred 5 times to multiple departments, put on hold for over an hour, was told that I would be contacted the next day with information about a new shipping label.

11. The next day came and I was NOT contacted by any means.

12. The following day I contacted support again, this time the representative was able to contact the necessary people and I received a new shipping label within minutes. This rep. was helpful and the whole process took
less than 30 minutes.

I have been a customer of Microsoft and Xbox for all of my life. I have purchased many products and have spent thousands of dollars over the years. This experience has caused me a lot of stress and anxiety over the past month, and has left me questioning
my future loyalty to your brand. I felt like I had to take the initiative every step of the way, and that I went above and beyond on my end. I am very disappointed in the way I was treated and in the way this issue was handled.

Sincerely,

Grant Groomes

 

Wow, what a horrible experience. I just had an issue forwarded to the Xbox Advocacy team and found this by searching to find out what exactly the Advocacy team was. I hope they resolve this for you. Perhaps even offer you free points or something for your
trouble. I am a bit nervous about whether or not my issue will be resolved now.

 

This is what I always fear when it comes to using any tech support ever. I hope everything gets resolved, because usually, Xbox is pretty good about getting things settled.

Have you considered contacted Xbox support through twitter? I've used them for a lot of things and they have helped me a lot;
twitter.com/XboxSupport

 

I'm fairly certain that Xbox doesn't do retail itself, you probably made the purchase through the Microsoft Store, if so you would have been better off contacting Microsoft Store support.

Refunds take up to 3 days to get to your bank, then your bank can take up to a month to get it to you if they feel like it. This is not an Xbox thing, it's how credit card refunds work.

 

Also, they don't have a phone number because a lot of time the answer they give is "NO", and if they had a phone number their lives would be a living hell of manchildren screaming at them.