UPS lost my Xbox. That’s right. It was moving in a timely fashion from Texas all the way up to the New England sorting center in Massachusetts. The anticipation was growing. I ordered a couple HD-DVDs to celebrate. Then I noticed something odd. 8 hours after the arrival scan of my console in Massachusetts, it was out for delivery. Not in Bangor, Maine where I happen to live, but in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. There was no departure scan from Massachusetts or an arrival scan in Hawaii, but there it was, out for delivery in some tropical paradise while I was rotting, 360-less, in near-arctic Maine.
Somewhere. Somehow. Something when terribly wrong.
This inspired me to call UPS. Their support person admitted that it looked like something had clearly gone wrong, but they couldn’t do anything until the package had missed its delivery date. I called back after midnight. In the mean time I had called Microsoft and let them know of the situation (my most frustrating call of the whole lot, 90 minutes and I was never sure they got my request). I finally conned the UPS person into letting me speak with a supervisor and getting a tracer (UPS lingo for an oops-we-screwed-up) put on my package. She also called Hawaii to confirm if they had the package. They did not.
This brings us to the 26th of September. Halo 3 has launched, I even own a copy. My Xbox is still somewhere in UPS limbo (no tracking updates since the 18th). I called Microsoft again to explain the situation. The first person I spoke with had never heard of UPS losing a system (yeah, I’m special), so he bumped me up (after about 40 minutes) to Janet, a supervisor. Janet could do nothing for me (this seemed to be a trend for all the low level customer support people). She did setup a “call back”, which, to my understanding, means that after waiting two more days, someone with the authority to actually send me out another unit will call me. Yippie.
So, after something over 6 hours of my life spend talking to badly qualified customer support personal, what have I gained? I still don’t have my Xbox back. No one has admitted any fault. I cannot even speak to a human with any authority to get my case moving. I’ll update this as new news comes in. Someday I may even have a 360 to call my own.
Least my PSP is still functional. Jeanne D’Arc might not be Halo, but it does dull the frustration.
