Score One for Microsoft

I called Microsoft on Monday to find out the status of my RROD-afflicted 360. I've had my quibbles with Microsoft and some of its business practices, but in this case, I can say so far I'm being treated right. When my 360 failed, like so many others, it was beyond the initial one-year warranty, but its under the new extended warranty period so MS is fixing it for free, as ethically, they should. I can't argue with that, thus far. They had a poor design, they've acknowledged it, and they are trying to make it right.

Even better was that when I called, after getting past that electronic jackass Max, I spoke to an articulate, courteous and thoroughly professional customer service rep. She told me the status of the repair (It's fixed, fingers crossed), saw an important omission in the file, specifically someone had changed the case number and not notified the service center so my box would have fallen into an electronic void, and corrected it. She did this all quickly enough without putting me on hold, and confidently enough that she didn't have to read the canned script to profusely thank me for my patience and apologize for the inconvenience. She answered my follow up questions succinctly I was satisfied that when she said it was going to be shipped out in the next 48 hours she meant it. She was credible. I can't say that about too many others I've dealt with at Microsoft or anywhere else. We've all got our horror stories, and I'm at the point that I can feel the frustration start to build when I start dialing 1-800 . . . whether its because the company's policies are predisposed to stymie customer satisfaction or because the people on the other end of the phone just aren't capable of resolving my problem, for whatever reason.

What's so maddening about the whole customer service ordeal is that once I've pushed those 18 buttons to actually get to a customer service rep and then suffering through 5 minutes or more of some of the most lame-ass music or ads to buy more crappy products, I end up getting the faux-sincere speech written by somebody back in corporate and drearily delivered by someone who seems to be watching every second tick by in their miserable eight hour shift.

I don't ask for much when I call a company: Have your people acknowledge my problem, help me resolve it, and make me think they care, and at a minimum, put somebody on the phone that doesn't sound like an automaton. Pretty simple seemingly, but so rarely done.