Beside Myself

And on the seventh day, I thought, my power supply and ac cord had finally gotten here. There was a note in my mailbox telling me I had a package at the front desk. When I got there, I noticed in the log they keep that I had not one, but two packages. Maybe, I thought, I was getting some extra compensation for my inconvenience. That would be too good to be true, and it was. The boxes they handed me were exactly the same size and weight. Maybe, I thought, they had sent a duplicate shipment. I once got two televisions that way.

But this being the ordeal that's its been, it wouldn't be that easy. Nothing has been to my advantage yet, and with the track record so far, I got very suspicious that I was on the cusp on yet another Microsoft fuck-up that was going to keep me from getting back to gaming. And sure enough, I was right.

Today, I got two power supplies, but no ac cord. Now mind you, I didn't ask the customer service rep just once to verify that I was going to get a power supply and an ac cord. I asked twice. And then I called back the next day when the calls were being routed to a call center in the U.S. to confirm that in fact a power supply and ac cord were being shipped, even going to far as to say, in a bit of foreshadowing, that one without the other wasn't going to work, and I would hate to have to call back because it had been over a month without my console. This is the point when I was transferred to a supervisor with the suggestion to ask for a little extra something for my trouble. I was put on hold, and I hung up after 15 minutes because my lunch hour was over.

I called back today as soon as I opened the boxes, and after the usual profuse apologies, was assured that my ac cord will be shipped promptly, which translates into about a week from now, even with Priority Mail. So I'm still off line unless I can find a power cord or if I just break down and buy a new console this weekend.

Trying to get my console fixed has been a process that makes government bureaucracy look cutting-edge efficient, and I can say that without any exaggeration because I am a federal employee. To recap all that's gone wrong so far, it took 10 days for my console to get to the service center (blame UPS), someone somewhere screwed around with the info in the data base, wasting about 4-5 days before a refurb console was shipped, the refurb console arrived without the power supply and ac cord, and then two power supplies but no ac cord were shipped to me, which even with Priority Mail, took one week (blame USPS).

So what's wrong here? (Multiple choice. Select all that apply.)

A) The customer service representatives handling my calls were poorly trained and did not input the information into the database correctly.

B) The database software being used is poorly designed and confusing, leading to duplicate orders and other mistakes.

C) The warehouse crew doesn't read things carefully and made mistakes in filling the orders.

D) Nobody involved in this process gives a shit.