Well, because I like to bring up old posts..
I want to share stories about Customer Service from another company in the video game industry.
Let's talk about Datel. Datel makes various products for all three major systems, generally third party memory cards, the Action Replay device and such.
I've posted before about the
issues I had with the Datel PowerBoard and their Action Replay, but to sum it up quickly, I bought an Action Replay when they first came out and later bought the Keyboard that was supposed to work with the Action Replay, but didn't work with mine because mine was too old (however there was no such note on the box of the Keyboard saying anything about needing Version X or higher). After contacting Datel, they said I'd need to mail in my old Action Replay Disc (understandable) and a copy of the receipt for the PowerBoard showing that I bought it less than 90 days ago. Well, to this day I still don't see why it matters how long ago I purchased the thing, but none-the-less, I didn't have the receipt for it - I bought it on-the-cheap at a GameStop about three hours away (there's one GameStop slightly closer however considering what I paid for the Keyboard vs. what it'd take for me to return it if there was an issue) - I wasn't too concerned about keeping the receipt... who knows where it ended up. Since I didn't have the receipt, Datel wanted me to send them more money ($12) for a new disc that would work with the keyboard (mind you, the Keyboard's box said nothing about needing a particular version of the AR disc). Now, for those of you who aren't familiar with the Action Replay product, in order to use it, you need both the AR Disc and a little memory-card type thing in order for it to work. Which means (as it's related to this story at least) there's no way I could have been just trying to get a free Action Replay from Datel - if they had just sent me a disc (and I hadn't already purchased an AR to get the Memory-Card thingee at sometime), I wouldn't have been able to do anything anyway. In my opinion, this is a crappy way to run a business, but, hey... It's their choice.
Fast forward to recently where someone over on
CAG picked me up an Advance Game Port. Now I've mentioned a few of the
problems I've had with this thing, but let me go through it all again.
Basically, the disc that came with it doesn't work. So I need a new disc. I tried looking all over Datel's website for any self-help I could find on the AGP however, aside from a few pages trying to sell the product and one page to actually sell it, there's no product support for this item on their website. So I try calling. I'm completly unable to get through to a live human on their phones after multiple tries. So I try e-mailing - typing this long-winded letter about how it doesn't work (and the various troubleshooting I tried so I wouldn't have to go through a bunch of "Did your try this..." e-mails). A short while later, I get an e-mail back (auto-reply) pointing me to a completly different website that Datel has set up for tech issues. Mind you, this hidden site isn't mentioned anywhere on their main site. None-the-less, I go there and look through everything I can and don't even find the AGP mentioned *anywhere*. Also, the e-mail they sent stated that the auto-reply was the only reply I'd be getting and if I still needed help after checking the other site, to send them *another* e-mail with a special subject and they'd get back to me.
Oh, and they didn't include my original e-mail in the auto-reply, so I had to type it all out again.
So, I sent in the second e-mail on Wednesday, January the 25th.
Meanwhile, I was getting aggervated with the whole issue and decided to try calling a few more times. Sometime on the 26th or 27th-ish, I finally managed to get a live person to answer. Nice person, walked me through all the steps of everything, still didn't work, he came to the conclusion that the disc must be bad and said he'd ship me out a new one. Now it's almost two weeks later, and I still don't have it? What?
Oh, and on the 1st of Feburary, I *finally* got a reply to the second e-mail I sent them saying that the disc must be bad and they'd ship me a new one if I'd send 'em my mailing info.
I waited to reply to that e-mail until tonight to let them know that I did finally get through to a person on the phone and that they were supposed to be mailing me a disc, but that I hadn't gotten it yet, blah blah, could you check on it, blah, blah...
Soooo... anyway, Datel's customer service, right now, gets an F. It'll go up if I ever get a working disc, but geesh...
Topic: A comparision of the big three's customer service. (Read 4580 times)
