SOUNDING OFF: Ripped off? Stunned by good service? Write, blog or text your experience to us
FIONA O'GRADY got in touch after being on the receiving end of what she describes as "abysmal service" from the Nintendo service centre over the course of the summer. In early June she turned on her nearly new Nintendo Wii to discover it wouldn't start. "As it was still under warranty, I looked up the service centre number (which is in the UK) and called them. After going through some basic steps, it was concluded that the unit needed to be returned to the UK for repair," she writes.
Nintendo has a collect and return service, and she was told a courier would be arranged to collect the unit later that week. Three weeks passed during which she made "regular (expensive) phone calls to the service centre enquiring as to why the unit had not yet been collected. Each time I was told it would collected that week. Finally, at the end of July, I was given a definite date of August 1st for collection."
Five days later, using a track and trace service, she sees that the unit finally arrives at Nintendo service centre. On August 8th however, she was less than pleased to receive a bill for £70 (€88.60) for a "Wii cosmetic defect". She called the service centre to ask what the bill was about and was told that "the entire unit is cracked, scuffed and damaged (it left my house in pristine condition). Quote: 'It looks like someone's been playing football with it'." She complained "vociferously" and was told it would be taken up with managers.
Between then and the beginning of September she made more phone calls to Nintendo and each time was told a different story, the most common being that the company was chasing down the courier and that Nintendo was awaiting new stock. "I spoke to a manager during that time and explained the situation. He said that they'd do their best for me, indicated some kind of goodwill, and also that I'd be first in the queue as soon as new stock arrived."
On September 3rd she was told that a parcel was sent via Parcelforce, a next-day delivery service. Two days later there was still no sign of her parcel. "It had apparently been sitting in Dublin Airport since 6am on the 4th." She called five different courier/postal services in Dublin and "finally discovered that it was in the Fastrack office in Heuston station after a 'Could not find' on the 4th. Given that my apartment is in a well-known area, with security, maps and an information centre, and also that I was at home all day on the 4th, I find this highly unlikely. I told them I'd collect it myself from Heuston. I collected it from Heuston and plugged it in only to be horrified that the unit was broken.
"So tomorrow morning it looks like I'm going to have to start the entire rigmarole again. I'm absolutely furious at this stage, and have not received a single reply to any of my e-mails," she writes.
A company spokesman said that the "lack of communication and time taken to deal with this issue were totally unacceptable and we are very sorry for the trouble and inconvenience this has caused." He said there was "no excuse for the poor treatment your reader has received - we aim for a seven-day turnaround on all repairs from the moment the customer makes contact with us to the return of their unit and we have a 99 per cent success rate in achieving this target; we're sorry that this wasn't the case on this occasion."
The spokesman said that when we highlighted the issue the company immediately resolved the problem "and a Wii was dispatched to the customer". He said that, by way of apology, "we would like to offer your reader any Nintendo game of their choice free of charge".
