Nintendo customer service continues to go “above and beyond”
Another heartwarming story before the end of the year. This one, detailing John’s experience with a troublesome Wii, just goes to show us that even though Nintendo has shifted their focus to marketing games like Wii Sports and Wii Play, they’re still the same company with the same kick-ass Customer Service center they’ve always had. Have a read:
I’ve had a Wii for 2 years now and had my first problem with it about a month ago. When playing a game, specifically Resident Evil 4, green digital artifacts would show on the screen. It was also happening with Guitar Hero World Tour. I [went] to the Nintendo website, looked up my serial number, and was informed that it was out of warranty (which I expected) and I would have to pay $75 for it to be fixed.
I decided to call the customer service number and see if anything else could be done. I spoke to a very friendly woman who was in California. She looked up my serial number and informed me that it was, in fact, “still under warranty” and promptly took down the problem and e-mailed me a printable Fedex shipping label. I sent off the Wii and anxiously awaited its return. The next week my Wii came back, and on the paper detailing the repairs, it stated that they were not able to duplicate the problem. “Oh great” I thought to myself, but upon further reading I discovered that they had replaced the motherboard because it was the “suspected cause” of the problem, and also sent me 2 brand new copies of Resident Evil 4 and Guitar Hero World Tour, all at no cost. For my 2 year old Wii, I would say this is above and beyond the call of duty and wanted others to know.
It’s kind of weird that they would give him a free repair for no real reason. Though I did the same kind of thing a bunch of times when I was doing customer support for Xbox.
They replaced my Gamecube for free even though the warranty expired, and they knew it. For Sony, well, two weeks of waiting to replace one of the wires for my PS2, which everything was still under warranty, and they never did it.