So, last week, some people sat down and put together a list, that they call the Gamer's Bill of Rights. Which addresses a few of the concerns that the gaming community has been voicing out for the past 10-15 years. The 'bill' won't tell you anything new. It's simply another exercise at saying 'stop messing around' and hoping someone, somewhere will listen.
There's one thing left unsaid on the list, although it's echoes lurk all around the edges of the 10 points of the proclamation. Customer service is still a lottery. For the most part, there's telling what you'll get. Will it be real, actual help or just an even bigger headache?
I have a couple of stories for you today. The first one I've had lying in my feed list for a while and it's titled "EA rocks customer service, gives customer a free game". The title itself should be a pretty good indication of what the article's about but have a paragraph anyway:
Destructiod community blogger Tino decided to follow up on his request for a replacement Rock Band guitar as his broke after 3 hours of use. He wondered where his replacement guitar was after a week out, as it was supposedly shipped via 2-day shipping. He came home today to find an email from the "Rock Band Team," which offered an apology for the delay and a free EA game for his troubles." It only takes a bit of googling to find similar stories. It seems that getting good customer service out of EA is something people really want to mention. I wonder why, ho-hum. And then, you ran into this: "Electronic Arts immediately forwards all pre-orders to a secretive processing facility, so if you happy to change your address after ordering a game eight months in advance, well, tough. At least that's what Electronic Arts told Micah when he asked to update his pre-order for the now sold-out limited-run collector's edition of Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. When Micah pointed out that it might not be the best idea to sell games eight months in advance without a way to update addresses, Electronic Arts canceled his order altogether and told him to find another copy somewhere else." What a mess. Roughly 2 weeks before Warhammer (which I'm rather excited about) drops, they go and piss everyone off. If you read the comments to the story, you'll find that people are also more than happy to share the bad experiences they've had with the subjects. Snowballing anyone? So there you have it - a lottery. Which is a shame because nowadays, news gets around pretty fast (see above). And bad news seem to travel faster than good news. So will you people stop hiring utter morons?
customer experiences // EA // gamers
Leave a comment