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By Eli Green
July 22, 2008 - 19:30
It appears I have lost my battle against Electronic Arts' Rock Band support team in attempting to negotiate for the replacement of my defective Rock Band wired guitar for Xbox 360 with a wireless one. If you happened to read my review on the game, you already know that I have already had a total of three Rock Band guitars, each of which came defective. What I did not tell you, mainly because I didn't feel right publicizing it at the time, was that the support representative I was dealing with at the time had gotten permission to send me a wireless guitar as my third replacement/fourth guitar. The fact of the matter is that this kind of a replacement is by no means normal, and I had managed to negotiate it because of the poor level of support I had been receiving before dealing with this representative. What neither he, nor I knew at the time, was that this kind of replacement is actually completely impossible to do.
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By January 2 nd , a timely response, I had received an answer telling me to contact Rock Band support by phone. I did so and had my first replacement guitar within a couple of weeks. EA was kind enough to let all of the people from that time frame keep their original guitar instead of sending it in. For those people, like me, whose guitars were only partially defective, this wasn't too bad of a deal. Unfortunately, this second guitar had a sticky blue fret button – not very useful when it doesn't spring back after being pressed. After waiting about a week to see if the problem might just fix itself – it didn't – I once again called Rock Band support to ask for a replacement guitar. The fact that my drum pedal cracked around that time might have also helped me get around to making the call.
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I wrote a thorough email explaining the whole situation, which I saved to my hard drive, and sent it off to the address, only to find out that this address did not accept emails. It only sent them. Now slightly more agitated, knowing that this particular representative was just trying to get me off the phone, I sent in a new question to Rock Band support with the complete email attached. The response I got back was another answer that did not address the concerns I had raised. Once again, I wrote back asking for a real response and, after being passed around between two more support representatives, finally got a confirmation notifying me that the warranty for replaced Rock Band accessories is, indeed, indefinite.
By the time I had received the response, now late February, my new guitar had arrived – also defective. I immediately contacted the support representative who confirmed the warranty to inform him that I would, again, need another replacement. By now, I had already found out that EA would be introducing a wireless guitar, so I said I would wait until they were available to ask for my third replacement. It was quite some time until they were to release, but I didn't care. I didn't want yet another defective wired guitar, when I could hope that I'd get a replacement guitar and have the extra benefit of it being wireless. I had gone through so much trouble already anyway.
As it turned out, there was far more trouble waiting for me, as I would have the wonderful experience of trying to locate a ghost drum pedal, learn that there is no tracking on Electronic Arts' warranty shipments once they cross the border into Canada, and that, according to the support team's records, someone had indeed received and signed for my new drum pedal. As it turned out, the representative who was supposed to order my replacement drum pedal never did so, and neither did the next representative who was supposed to order the replacement for the missing one. I finally received my replacement drum pedal in mid-March.
The Rock Band wireless guitars for Xbox 360 finally started hitting Canadian retailer's shelves in late April. In mid-May, I called to check in and see if I could finally get my new replacement guitar. Apparently not, so I finally took the time to make a phone call to Rock Band support today, to try and get in touch with the representative and see if there were any updates on the status of the replacement. Last I had heard from him, back in May, the replacement wireless guitars were on back order for Canada. I didn't manage to get to speak to him today, but what I ended up finding out was that what he said was not quite true, not that I'm blaming him. While there were no replacement wireless guitars for him to send out to Canada, it was not because they were on back order. As the representative and supervisor I spoke to today told me, there were none because EA does not ship replacement wireless guitars to Canada.
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With all of that in mind, consider this. Let's say you live in Canada, like myself, and you've purchased a Rock Band wireless guitar so you can have the full band available. Now let's say that the return policy date for the store from which you purchased the guitar had passed (as an example, Future Shop has a 30 day return policy), and you began having problems with your wireless guitar, only to find out that it is defective. Officially speaking, continuing with Future Shop as the example store, you've still got 29 days to contact EA to inform the Rock Band support team that you have a defective wireless guitar and ask for a replacement.
Of course, as you've likely figured out on your own already, EA won't send you a replacement for that defective guitar, because you live in Canada. So what can you do? You could try taking the guitar back to the store you purchased it from. They could be nice to you and replace it for you, but officially speaking, they have no obligation to do so, and you know that. You''ll have to try calling Rock Band support and see what they say, aside from, “We don't send replacement Rock Band wireless guitars to Canada.” What will likely end up happening is that you will have to submit your complete receipt information, including the location and phone number for the store, and hope that the Rock Band support team gets the store to replace the guitar. If they don't, who knows where that will leave you.
Speaking of which, if anybody has actually had to go through this already, we'd love to hear from you. Email us, leave a comment or make a YouTube or Revver video and send it to either of our channels to let us know. We'd like to know what you had to do and how long the whole process took.
If you live in Canada and are looking to get a Rock Band wireless guitar, pray that it both works right out of the box and stays working or, if you find out it's defective, that you find out while it's still during that return policy date. Dealing with Electronic Arts' support is difficult enough as it is, save for a few representatives. You don't want to have to deal with something they won't deal with in the first place.
But what about the kind support representative who managed to get permission to send me the wireless guitar as a replacement in the first place? Why didn't he know that he wouldn't be able to send replacement wireless guitars to Canada? As the supervisor I spoke to today told me, Electronic Arts' electronic support system accidentally considered my case number as coming from the United States, not Canada. When the representative tried to begin the process of allowing the replacement, the system allowed it. He didn't bother finishing processing the shipping information because he saw there were no wireless guitars allocated for shipping to Canada. Had he tried to input a Canadian address in the system though, he would have been unable to do so. Why does EA not send replacement wireless guitars to Canada in the first place? We'll have to wait and see what the company's spokespeople have to say about it.
