“Thank you for calling PlayStation. How may I help you?”
by Susan, HSM team writer
Not too long ago, while chatting over coffee with some friends at Acorn Park and waiting on a new race challenge to emerge, someone who apparently had waaaay too many cappuccinos blurted out the absurd question, “What would all we do if PlayStation Home (PSH) went away?”
As utterly preposterous this sounded to me at the time, the latter part of the question — Home going away — actually happened for me the in past month or so. And, because of how things are always evolving in this world we survive in, this Home, I found myself rethinking the former part.
It must be the acidic volcanic air we live in, but since moving here to Hawai’i we have gone through a total of four PlayStation 3 consoles in the past seven years. There must be a virtual vortex in that particular corner of the room that just sucks the memory and life out of our PS3’s HD drives. That thing designed by Microsoft called some weird name like Xbox 360 used to occupy that spot, so who knows what voodoo that green Halo-inspired paperweight may have left in its wake.
No, I did not get banned or placed in a time out by the Home moderation team. Instead, I was forced off the network once again by what appeared to be a failure in the HDD. I called the Sony help line — 1-800-345-7873 — when it became clear on that morning the PS3 had other ideas than what I paid for it to do, which was to keep me happy and amused.
This was a day I was neither happy or amused.
Once again I have to go through the process of following the directions of the customer service specialist, even though prior to calling Sony, I had already done everything they were asking me to do. Once they completed their complex analysis of my situation, they determined that it needed to come in for repair. (No, really?) The screen says, “Unable to locate software” and that I need to re-install the software. It won’t even go into safe mode, and it took them an hour to determine that they needed to look at it.
I hope the agitation I am feeling is becoming clear in my words.
My third PS3
Almost all of our electronics in this house are Sony. On O’ahu there is a Sony warehouse and facility, and that has been a major factor in deciding what brand we buy. It is easier and less expensive to get the parts or service here instead of sending it off to the mainland. I argued that point to the specialist I had been talking to about this whole thing. Ain’t gonna happen, he says in so many words, and then wants to know how I will be paying the one-hundred-dollar fee.
Under a restrained breath, I advised him I bought a two-year warranty plan from Sony when I registered my console.
“Well, we don’t show a record of any extended warranty coverage for this console,” comes the reply.
With blood vessels bursting, I pull up financials and give him even more data that to be honest I would think would already be included in my account — extended warranty coverage, for starters. After what seemed like two weeks, we finally got everything worked out and they would be sending a box my way for pickup. I was to follow the directions inside, and once they received it, turnaround time was usually seven to ten days. Thank you for choosing PlayStation, and please complete a short survey if you don’t mind.
One ringy dingy, two ringy dingy
I checked back a couple weeks later because I had not yet received the box I needed to ship out the PS3 to them. I was reminded by the service specialist that it is not actual days when talking about delivery and pick-up availability, but business days. I called in the problem on what apparently was a late in the day Friday for them. (It was 7:30am for me.) And my service request wasn’t processed until sometime the following Tuesday, and I should be receiving it any day now. I followed up with questions about my PS Plus account and how would it be affected since because of the console failure I am not able to use it at this time. After his pitch about how I can have faith in the knowledge that everything I purchased will be there for me to re-download, he finally said that basically I am SOL. Thank you for choosing PlayStation, and please complete a short survey if you don’t mind.
The console eventually went out on August 1st, and on August 8th it made it to those whose skilled hands would delicately operate on my console, as if humanity itself was at stake. A couple weeks later I again called because I checked my status online and was advised there was a problem and I needed to call a number. Apparently there was a warranty issue, and they had no record of an extended warranty on this device. After I cleared up that mess, I asked for emails from now on regarding this service and please advise what went wrong and when it is ready to ship. Of course and thank you for choosing PlayStation, and please complete a short survey if you don’t mind.
ARE YOU ******* ME!!
On August 16th I called back because — you guessed it — I had not heard anything yet and it was going on the weekend and remember, those are not work days for some of those elite technicians. I had to call back because they all went home already and the service specialist did not understand some wording on my account — damn time zones. On August 19th, I am told that it will be shipped out today or tomorrow, but probably today. He has no idea on how it will be shipped, but it will be faster than usual. I called back on the 22nd because something just didn’t feel right, and I am glad I did. After an extended conversation, I was told that their system just updated and they will next day air it and I should be receiving it tomorrow — which is today. I asked if they knew what was wrong or what did they fix, I got an I don’t know answer and they didn’t know how to get that information. At the end I did not get a thank you, but I did receive a goodbye.
It never arrived. I called, and they never sent it. They said it was just now getting repaired. I actually screamed at that moment. One again, Sony’s right hand did not know what the left was doing. Another two weeks went by. No email. I called again. They said its en route, and will be there tomorrow. I responded with profanity, I must admit. I asked again what work was done, and they had to call me back on that. They did, and they replaced the HDD.
So it takes over a month to replace an HDD? When I can do it in five minutes?
Thank you for choosing PlayStation, and have a great day.
Every time I spoke with someone about my issue I asked them if they owned a PS3, and everyone said yes. I asked if they ever tried out PlayStation Home, and out of twelve people only three had ever tried it and those times were awhile ago, they said. One lady stated that because I was the fourth person to bring Home to her attention she was going to try it. I was a little saddened by all of this, but I am understanding more and more now that the Home user base isn’t as big as I/we would like to believe it is.
All of this takes me back to the top of this article, and the question: what would we do if Home went away.
R.I.P. PlayStation Home, my love
I spent more time working, preparing for my return of our console, and exploring Lockwood’s new social MMO called Avakin. But the longer I was away from Home and with all these PS3 issues, PS4 not having Home, blah blah blah, the less interested I became in spending money on Home. With all the equipment and Home purchases, we are probably one of those one-percenters who spend expendable income that easily goes into the high four digits. But now I was rethinking that. Home will go away, but is it disappearing so soon that it is altering my thought process? I came to terms with myself that life does and will go on after Home disappears. We will go forward and find something else to occupy our minds. We will survive.
The extended warranty cost $142. We bought it because we burned up two consoles already and they said it covered anything. I could easily have gone out and bought another console for a hundred, I’m sure, but do I need two PS3’s again if Home is on its swan song? The ordeal that I just went through had me frustrated, but it also had me rethinking a lot of things. I have made great friendships and accomplished things never even thought possible through those friendships. And I will always be truly grateful to them for that. If Home does leave us at some point soon, I take comfort in the knowledge that it is a game and every game has an ending at some point and it is the best game I have ever played.
But, for right now, Home is still around, and so am I — and I am going to continue to support and promote PlayStation Home till the end. I just won’t be buying any more extended warranties.
If you find yourself in a place where you have to call Sony for assistance, remember this: back up your PS3’s HDD frequently, and if you’re looking for any empathy from Sony’s customer service reps, good luck. Sony knows how to make a good product, and there are good people involved throughout many levels of all of the companies that make up the Sony pantheon, but I had never truly bought into the stories of their breathtakingly poor customer service until I had to go through it myself. I’m only one customer, sure, but all it takes is one negative experience to have that customer motivated to start exploring other manufacturers and gaming experiences.
October 13th, 2013 by Susan | 7 comments
Susan is a team writer for HomeStation Magazine, co-founder of the award winning media group-AvatardProductions, a PlayStation MVP and a Home Guide. PSNID SCEA/xx96791DEATHxx-SCEE/oXx_EnIgMa_xXo. An avid PlayStation Home user, she is most often found setting land speed records at the Sodium 2 velocity racetracks, sitting at the Pier Park or playing with the R/C vehicles at Acorn Meadows Park.
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I have three Sony customer service experiences. The first is when my PS2 died. I called Sony and they were full of nice and fixed it for free and shipped it back to me in seven days.
The second is my Sony Vaio laptop was making a funny sound and they actually sent a tech to my house and fixed it free of charge.
The third is my first PS3 optical drive stopped working and they told me sorry even though this was a huge problem for the first “fatboy” PS3s and many had this problem.
Nice article Sue, I loved the picture of your PS3. Man, are you tough on your consoles, you are a serious gamer!
I have had mostly good experiences with Sony as well, but they were for minor problems so far that were easily remedied by phone. Sounds like you had a bad time because what the issue was had to be done long distance and they needed to get their act together. I agree that customer service for any company is their public face and it needs to be very carefully handled. Sounds like they dropped the ball here a bit.
I have never dealt with Sony on this level as my PS3 is an old fatboy and nuke resistant (hope I didn’t just jinx myself), but I have dealt with the post office and believe me, I have gotten very used to the concept of weak and poor customer service. It is frustrating and infuriating, and makes me fearful because I know people and worry if I will ever need to contact them. I guess one can just be persistent and keep plugging away and making enough noise that they want to silent you with finishing your fix. Great article,good read, and I hope that the HDD killer vortex left by that xbum console can be exorcised.
Thing is, I typically experience friendly customer service reps when calling Sony but this time the entire experience was seemed to be peppered with sour notes. I never received any emails/phone calls regarding my service as asked for and was told I would. I still haven’t gotten a receipt for the repair nor have I received the survey in the email asking about my experience-Now they can read about it here. I did purchase another PS3 from Gamestop-$199 for 18GBs..and no I did not get an extended warranty. Remember to back up your HDD’s frequently
Hard drives are damaged usually by crashing during the time something is saving to your hard drive. Or turning off your playstation during a save. Home was the cause for a lot of hard drive issues when users were freezing other users cauusing them to crash. Your right the user base as theres no real figures apart a few old out of date ones, that didnt really make good reading to be honest but were better than before.
The latest fiasco actually happened when I was downloading GTA4 from the store. After 12 hours it still had not completed the download, so I turned it off and and when I turned it back on, I got the message that the software could not be found.
Very well written tale about Sony’s lack of care..
Trying to get any joy from Sony’s customer service is like pulling teeth out, extremely painful experience !!