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Posts Tagged “

Video Games

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bad customer service

Target Employee Says Whatever She Feels Like At The Time

Abbey is annoyed with a woman who works at the new Target store in Washington, D.C., because the woman lied to her and wasted her time:

One of my roommates just got a Wii, so I decided to go to Target and get "Wario Ware: Smooth Moves."  Before hitting the store, though, I gave their electronics department a call to see if they had the game in stock.  A woman in electronics picked up the phone and when I asked her if she had the game, she quickly said, "Yeah, we've got that in stock."  So I got up off my couch and walked over to the Target to buy my game.

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6:18 PM on Wed May 14 2008
By Chris Walters
26,198 views, 124 comments

bad company

New Shooter Video Game Charges Gamers For Better Weapons

UPDATE: EA has backed off, and has decided to offer the weapons at no charge. Kotaku has more. This is what I get for leaving a post in Movable Type purgatory for a week.
Electronic Arts's "Battlefield: Bad Company" is aptly named: the new first-person shooter contains several locked weapons, the purchase of which disadvantages those who only pay for the game. Unlike most purchasable extra content, such as additional songs in Guitar Hero, the weapons for sale in Bad Company give the buyer a competitive advantage over other users, which sort of spoils multiplayer mode for gamers who only bought the standard version of the game. More »

9:23 AM on Fri Apr 11 2008
By Alex Chasick
4,740 views, 50 comments

Latest by Trai_Dep: @armour: don't whine simply because you've fallen out of the gamer demographic. :) more »

customer service

Executive Email Addresses For XBOX Complaints

If you have a problem with your XBOX and you want it heard by senior executives, here are some dudes to blast it to:

robbieb@microsoft.com- Robert (Robbie) Bach- PRESIDENT, ENT & DEVICES DIV
donm@microsoft.com - Don Mattrick- SVP, INTERACTIVE ENT. BUSINESS
jabell@microsoft.com - Jeff Bell - CVP GLOBAL MKT INTERACTIVE ENT

(Photo: Milkham)

3:00 PM on Fri Feb 8 2008
By Ben Popken
3,384 views, 19 comments

866-506-3826 is an escalated XBOX support number where they all speak English.

5 comments

new business models

EA To Release "Free" Video Game In U.S. This Summer

Electronic Arts saw crazy profits in South Korea over the past two years from distributing its FIFA soccer title online for free, then charging an average of $1.60 per transaction for character clothing and accessories. Now EA has announced it will release a free online version of Battlefield Heroes in the U.S. and Europe this summer. If it proves successful, more titles will follow. Unfortunately, in addition to micro-transactions EA will also include in-game advertising to support the business model. Suddenly we're picturing a surreal NASCAR battlefield... hey, that sounds like a new game idea! Pay up, EA! More »

7:42 PM on Mon Jan 28 2008
By Chris Walters
3,093 views, 51 comments

Latest by n/a: They have flash games like this on the internet already. Everyone is free to roam about the game as they please, doing missions or fighting other players. They have 2 types of game currency. Regular money and "special" money. All the best more »

success stories

Emailing Bill Gates Results In New XBOX

Jon writes:
I was one of the first to get an Xbox 360 when they came out, paying way more than I should have. I had problems with the console right out of the box and after weeks of haggling with their normal customer service department, I was contacted by their escalation department. Within a week, my problems were solved and they sent me a bunch of free stuff (games & controllers). Fast forward two years, and I'm having the same problem. I emailed both Bill Gates and Kathleen Hogan(Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Customer Service, Support and Customer and Partner Experience) yesterday...
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7:20 PM on Fri Jan 25 2008
By Ben Popken
22,282 views, 25 comments

Latest by n/a: Same here, Orionsaint. They just ship it back without actually fixing ANYTHING, and then they tell me that I won't get a replacement because they can't find the problem. So, basically, I bought a $400+ paperweight. Microsoft more »

repairs

Xbox 360 Breaks Down 5 Times In A Row, But Microsoft Refuses To Replace It

Greg writes in to tell us that on January 2nd, his Xbox 360 unit broke down for the fifth time—it lasted eleven days this time, setting a new record for Shortest Period of Functionality. In the past year, it's been out of commission for over 12 weeks total. He's now asking for a new or refurbished unit, or else a refund, but Microsoft is determined to keep him in an extended warranty repair cycle indefinitely and won't negotiate. Surely by this point it's just cheaper to replace the defective unit, isn't it? More »

1:48 PM on Tue Jan 22 2008
By Chris Walters
57,394 views, 88 comments

Latest by HawkWolf: I just had to repair my xbox for the E74 'red light of death'. Guess what happened TWO DAYS after I received it back: red ring of death. That's a joke. more »

mistakes

Activision Accidentally Introduces 860 Customers To Each Other

Consumerist reader chrismar was one of the Guitar Hero customers who requested a Wii replacement disc from Activision last month. On January 18th, the company sent out an email to its customers with an update on the disc replacement program. The problem is, they copied 859 other customers on the email. "As a result, my email address is in 859 unknown hands, and I have 859 email addresses I don't want." More »

10:38 AM on Tue Jan 22 2008
By Chris Walters
3,854 views, 32 comments

scams

Someone From Arkansas Is Selling Wiis For Only $99!!!

Quick, type in all of your credit card information before he runs out of inventory! Omgwtf $99 Wiis! The website, www.wiifor99.com—which is being advertised on Facebook, according to a reader—consists of the two screens shown above and that's it. What a lazy con. Since the site no longer exists, here are two screencaps we took of it on Wednesday night. Index page. Order form.
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10:43 PM on Wed Jan 16 2008
By Chris Walters
53,223 views 86 comments

complaints

Best Buy Forbids You From Buying Assassin's Creed, Insists You're Buying It For A Minor

Matt writes:
Yesterday I went through the horror of taking my 15 year old brother to the Best Buy in Orland Park, IL on LaGrange Ave. I had close to $100 in Best Buy Gift Certificates given to me for Christmas. My brother and I were en route to dinner and we decided to swing by the aforementioned Best Buy to pick up a video game, Assassin's Creed, and XBOX Live Gold. We entered the store. I browsed the camera aisle looking for a cable to possibly purchase for our flat screen then headed to the video game section. I picked up the said items and headed to check out where hell will shortly ensue.
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4:23 PM on Mon Jan 14 2008
By Ben Popken
156,971 views, 278 comments

Latest by xDimMaK: @Vecha: Absolutely true. The notion that video games breed killers is completely absurd. I've played violent video games every day of my life since I was about 5 years old (and watched plenty of horror films and the likes). I more »

Researchers found that playing a Wii doesn't burn a whole lot more calories per hour than an Xbox, 167 vs 107, respectively. [icWales via The Raw Feed]

25 comments

video games

Nintendo Officially Disapproves Of "Bundling"

Bundling may be a popular tactic retailers employ to force customers to spend more money, but Nintendo of America's celeb-President Reggie Fils-Aime has come out against it, finally: "Retailers have already been given feedback that we are not big fans of that," he told Reuters this week. Is the pre-purchase deal with GameStop one way Nintendo is preventing that from happening this December? If anyone actually buys one of those empty DVD cases, let us know if they try to upsell you to a bundle. More »

10:39 AM on Tue Dec 18 2007
By Chris Walters
2,914 views, 37 comments

Latest by superdewa: Why is it still so difficult to get a Wii and it's halfway through March? And why am I not reading news stories about this or hearing anything about when this might end or about the creeps who buy up more »

"Shoppers who pay the full price of about $249 for an out-of-stock Wii on December 20 and 21 at retailer GameStop Corp will get a certificate promising a Wii 'sometime in January,'" sez Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime. Only at GameStop, urg. [Reuters]

28 comments

success stories

6 Months Later, Reader Gets New Xbox After UPS Loses His

Dan, whose Xbox360 was "lost in transit," spent the past six months trying to get either UPS or Microsoft to give him what he had paid his hard-earned money for, has finally succeed in his quest. After we posted his story (see Microsoft Presents: UPS And The Case Of The Vanishing XBOX 360) and he sent executive email carpet bombs (EECBs) to both UPS and MIcrosoft, they are shipping him a brand new Xbox360. We briefly spoke with Dan over IM about his harrowing journey... More »

7:06 PM on Thu Dec 13 2007
By Ben Popken
10,876 views, 47 comments

Latest by ffmariners: I have worked/am working at hubs for both FedEx and UPS. Stealing is near impossible for large items such as game systems or tvs. It is possible for smaller items such as phones, but they have a clean-in clean-out policy more »

video games

Namco Bandai Won't Sell Accessory Separately

Some non-game playing exec at Namco Bandai has decided that the gun controller that ships with Time Crisis 4 for the Playstation 3 cannot and will not be sold separately, even though there's a 2-player mode in the game. Their CSR's helpful suggestion? "You will need another copy of Time Crisis 4." It's as if the game is a license to use one gun controller—if you want more gun controllers, simply buy more licenses! More »

9:40 AM on Wed Dec 5 2007
By Chris Walters
7,124 views, 38 comments

video games

The Wii Shortgage Continues, Might End Next Spring

Not even Nintendo anticipated how the market would react to the Wii, which is why they're still hard to find a year after launch, even after Nintendo almost doubled production of the console from 1 million to 1.8 million units a month, writes Wired. "Last week was Nintendo's best since the Wii's launch, with 350,000 sold in the United States alone. In comparison, Microsoft sold about that many Xbox 360s last month." More »

1:54 PM on Thu Nov 29 2007
By Chris Walters
3,593 views, 54 comments

Amazon will supposedly sell a unspecified but large number of Wii game consoles on Wednesday, October 31st at 10 am PDT (1 pm EDT). [NintendoWiiFanboy]

21 comments

complaints

Valve "Deactivating" Customers Who Bought "Orange Box" Internationally

According to reader Todd, there are quite a few customers are finding their "Orange Box" games have been deactivated by Valve because they bought them from a seller that wasn't authorized to do business with US customers. More »

3:48 PM on Wed Oct 24 2007
By Meg Marco
41,431 views, 140 comments

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