Amazingly Bad Xbox 360 Customer Support
Last week, Microsoft released a new dashboard update for the Xbox 360. I don’t use mine for much except Dead Rising and Fight Night, so I never bothered to hook it up to live or anything like that. My options in doing so either involved running a length of cat5 downstairs through the wall, or picking up the $100 wireless adapter. Since the concept of playing games online with prepubescent kids with webcams didn’t really appeal to me, and you needed WMCE to stream video, there was no good reason to do either.
Now, included in the update is the ability to play WMV files off a CD or USB drive, which sounds very convenient for watching my Lost and Battlestar Galactica episodes I’ve downloaded from bittorrentlegally obtained. Unfortunately, I could find no way to obtain this update with a disconnected Xbox, so I contacted Microsoft’s customer support asking if there was a way to download it on a computer and burn it to a CD, as their website even offers instructions to do. This morning, I receive the following response:
Hello Ben, Thank you for writing Xbox Customer Support! I do apologize for the inconvenience. I understand that you have some question on how you want to get the new Fall Update on a Windows Based Computer so that you can install it on your Xbox 360 console. You need a high speed internet connection and has a Xbox 360 console. But if you want to install a New Fall Update on a disc to a Xbox 360, it is not possible because Fall Update is only updates the Xbox 360 console and it is not possible to do it. Thank you for your time and understanding. For further assistance, please don't hesitate to write back or call Xbox Phone Support at 1-800-4MYXBOX (1-800-469-9269) at your earliest convenience, and we will be happy to help you. We are open everyday from 9am to 1am EST/ 6am to 10pm PST. To expedite service, please provide Service Request Number ########## when you call. For more information about Xbox or Xbox360, please visit http://www.xbox.com. Sincerely, Norman Xbox Customer Care Team
Of course, I had already schlepped my Xbox upstairs and hooked it up to my monitor for the update days ago, so this information was too little, too late. But the worst part is how utterly incomprehensible the email is. Let’s look at that again:
You need a high speed internet connection and has a Xbox 360 console. But if you want to install a New Fall Update on a disc to a Xbox 360, it is not possible because Fall Update is only updates the Xbox 360 console and it is not possible to do it.
This nifty Firefox 2.0 spell checker informs me that those are in fact English words, but when I look at them together, they mean next to nothing. Last I checked, Microsoft was based out of Redmond, not Tokyo. Maybe they’re trying to gain a little extra foothold in their failing Japanese market by offering Engrish as the default customer support language?
Oh, and for the record, the dashboard update was completely ineffective. It wouldn’t play the WMVs I burned to CD for an unknown reason, and my totally standard USB mass storage device wouldn’t even show up. Thanks, Norman!
