Log in

View Full Version : My Experience With Zune Support


Jason Dunn
01-05-2007, 04:00 PM
I had my first experience with Zune tech support on Tuesday, and overall it was a pretty good experience - here's what the techs had to say about each of my devices.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.zunethoughts.com/news/show/532/my-dusty-white-zune.html"><strong> The Dusty White Zune:</strong></a> After we discussed the dust, and he saw a photo of it online at this site, the tech first suggested that I return the Zune to the retail store that I purchased it from. He said there was a two to three week wait on getting it repaired, and that returning it was easier. Not wanting to reveal I was in Canada just yet, I said that I had purchased the Zunes on November 14th, so it was unlikely that any store would take back a product two months old and exchange them. The tech insisted that many stores would. That's when I broke the news that I was in Canada and there was no place to return it to. He then agreed that shipping it back for repair was about the only option.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.zunethoughts.com/news/show/480/sometimes-my-zune-just-won-t-turn-on.html"><strong>The Wonky Black Zune:</strong></a> I explained the problem, and the tech was quite surprised at the behaviour I was seeing. He suggested that it might be a software problem, so he had me do a hard reset, wiping out the content and restoring it to the 1.0 firmware (I think that's what was restored at any rate). I was dubious that would work, but it couldn't hurt to try. After the hard reset, he had me connect it to the Zune desktop software and re-flash it with the 1.2 firmware. The entire process was fast and easy, but at the end of it the problem still remained. He said I'd need to ship it back for repair/replacement.<div style="page-break-after: always;"><span style="display: none;">&nbsp;</span></div><br />During the phone call the line went dead, I think from their end. I had given the first tech my number, but he hadn't given me a case number or anything similar. I waited about five minutes for him to call me back, but he didn't (they probably can't call outside the USA) so I phoned back. I talked to a second tech, and he was able to look up my account and case number. He said I was in their database three times - and quoted me a very old address - so I knew they were looking at Xbox Live account data. We managed to find the correct account, and he added call notes to it.<br /><br />Here's how they normally deal with defective Zunes: they send the customer a box with a pre-paid courier coupon, the customer puts the Zune in the box, calls the courier for pickup, and off goes the Zune at no cost to the customer. The Zune is then repaired or replaced, and the customer gets it back. This is how Compaq dealt with their Pocket PCs a few years ago, and I was really impressed by the whole experience. The bad news for me being in Canada is that they won't allow me to ship my two defective Zunes directly to them. The tech said they'll only accept the Zunes if they're processed via their system. So here's how it would need to go down:<br /><ol> <li>I'd ship my Zunes to someone in the USA</li> <li>Zune tech support would ship that someone the courier shipping boxes</li> <li>That someone would send back my Zunes</li> <li>The Zune techs would repair/replace my Zunes (2-3 weeks)<br /> </li> <li>The Zune techs would ship back the Zunes to that someone in the USA</li> <li>That someone in the USA would ship the Zunes back to me</li></ol>As you can imagine, that's a pretty ugly scenario all around - I imagine it would take at least 30 to 45 days to finish. To his credit, the Zune tech I spoke to tried to think of a better solution for me: he suggested that a friend of mine in the USA goes to a local store, buys two new Zunes, I ship him my defective Zunes, then he ships the two good Zunes to me and returns the two defective Zunes to the store for a refund. Somewhat ethically dubious to be sure - does anyone work in retail know if the store is hit for any costs when something like that happens, or do the defective Zunes just get punted back to Microsoft and RMA'd at no cost to the store? I'd rather not have to go that route, but I might not have much of a choice. I knew buying a product not supported or sold in Canada was a bit of a risk, but I never would have bet that I'd have two defective units in two months.<br /><br />All in all I'd say that the Zune tech support was quite good - almost no wait time, polite and smart techs. They weren't able to help me out much, but it's not their fault Microsoft hasn't launched the Zune in Canada yet. I've tried calling in a favour with someone on the Microsoft Zune team directly, and I haven't heard back in two days, so I'm leaning toward taking the Zunes with me to Las Vegas when I leave tonight and trying the old retail swap there. Not ideal, but better than being Zune-less for a month and a half. Community, what do you think?

idawgik
01-05-2007, 04:47 PM
I'm not sure how the Zunes are handled, but I worked in customer service at Circuit City for almost 6yrs. With the exception of the iPods, MP3 players were just sent back defective to the manufacture. iPods however when returned defective were repaired and then returned to the store to sell as an "Open Box" at a discount.

As I said, I have no idea how Microsoft is dealing with defective Zunes from retail (I haven't worked there for a year), but there's a good chance it would just get sent back to the manufacture, so having someone buy two new ones and return them is possible. The only issue I could see would be if they checked the serial numbers against the box when you returned them.

rzanology
01-05-2007, 06:10 PM
hey jason....how did he have you hard reset your zune??? i been trying to find out how to do this for days now. I want to give it a try to see if it will solve my random shut off issues and song stuttering.

jdmountford
01-05-2007, 09:25 PM
I have worked in Wireless for years, both in Direct and In-Direct. In the In-Directs I have experience in merchandising which includes returns to the manufacturer. More often than not the Retailer has already purchased the units they sell. When a return is made as defective, it goes through some kind of claims process sometimes through the retailer, but certainly from the manufacturer. If the Manufacturer finds that the item falls under what they deem to be defective they will issue credits for the devices to the retailer.ffice

So while ethically iffy, your situation would definitely merit looking at that as a viable alternative to the MS solution. Either way MS gets the defective devices back. My only concern would be whether MS sees dust under a screen as defective, but I would assume since they were going to replace you are fine. In reply to boxes matching serials on devices. I'll bet that your receipts don’t have serials. Almost no retailer puts the serial on his or her receipt so just so long as the box and device serial match you are fine. In other words I hope you kept your boxes. Though most big box retailers will not even look for those.<O:p</O:p

Damion Chaplin
01-05-2007, 09:48 PM
I say go ahead an try the retail route. A couple things:

See if you can return them to CompUSA. They suck and I think you should stick it to them. That's just my opinion of course. ;)

That being said, make sure the new Zunes you pick up are in fact new. The one I bought was very likely a customer return that they just stuck back on the shelf... :mad:

LPD
01-05-2007, 11:06 PM
hey jason....how did he have you hard reset your zune??? i been trying to find out how to do this for days now. I want to give it a try to see if it will solve my random shut off issues and song stuttering.
Yeah, how do you do a hard reset?

LPD
01-05-2007, 11:20 PM
, so I'm leaning toward taking the Zunes with me to Las Vegas

Good idea, take them with and see if someone on the Zune team will swap them with some of their promo/demo Zunes.

And the dusty white one still works and you'll need that at the show to find other Zune owners.

Also if you do have to ship them in, send the black one in first then when you get it back send in the white one. At least you will not be Zune-less and you get two sample times on the repair process.

Jason Dunn
01-06-2007, 12:00 AM
hey jason....how did he have you hard reset your zune??? i been trying to find out how to do this for days now.

I'm going to write it up as a tip, but I didn't have time...

Press and hold the back button
Press up until it reboots
Then start pressing and holding the center "OK" button and pressing left on the control pad (you have to do step 3 when the screen goes blank but before the reboot process actually starts)

mrozema
01-09-2007, 06:16 AM
Jason man, don't hit me, but you should've gone for the brown Zune. Its been trouble-free. ;)

Jason Dunn
01-09-2007, 09:11 AM
Jason man, don't hit me, but you should've gone for the brown Zune. Its been trouble-free. ;)

Hah! Well that's good to hear man, at least one of us isn't having trouble. :D

king_of_kings
01-09-2007, 04:40 PM
can someone please help! i live in the uk, got my zune about 3 weeks ago from an ebay seller. it was all working well until today. i turned it on and saw that the screen was completly screwed up. all i can see are liquid colours, they look like ink splatters. it still plays music but the screen is now useless. if someone give me advice on how to get this sorted it would be much appreciated.

mrozema
01-09-2007, 09:50 PM
Hah! Well that's good to hear man, at least one of us isn't having trouble. :D
Did you put your's through any strenuous testing? If so, let me know what that consisted of and I'll give it a try on mine.

mrozema
01-09-2007, 11:34 PM
can someone please help! i live in the uk, got my zune about 3 weeks ago from an ebay seller. it was all working well until today. i turned it on and saw that the screen was completly screwed up. all i can see are liquid colours, they look like ink splatters. it still plays music but the screen is now useless. if someone give me advice on how to get this sorted it would be much appreciated.
Sounds like the screen got smashed. Naturally that won't be covered under warranty.

If its just horizontal and vertical lines all over the place, that would probably be a defective LCD or some sort of manufacturing defect that is covered under warranty.

The reality of the situation is that you will likely be made to pay, at least, for freight.

jdotcannon
01-31-2008, 12:14 AM
I'm going to write it up as a tip, but I didn't have time...

Press and hold the back button
Press up until it reboots
Then start pressing and holding the center "OK" button and pressing left on the control pad (you have to do step 3 when the screen goes blank but before the reboot process actually starts)


ok, well i tried this and it didnt do anything. is there any way to tell that it is resetting. im so confused

Jason Dunn
02-05-2008, 06:32 PM
ok, well i tried this and it didnt do anything. is there any way to tell that it is resetting. im so confused

Well, if it didn't do anything, then you didn't do it right. ;) Keep trying until you get it right - first press and hold the back button, then press and hold up - both need to be held for it to reboot.

jpjav
11-12-2008, 12:53 AM
Anyone know where I can email a complaint about this process to? I live in Asia and received a Zune 80 as a gift a few months back. From the onset I knew something was wrong since I was unable to sync more than 3GB worth of content before the connection timed out. (hard resets and reformatting didn't help)

Got feedback from forums that the issue might be a defective disk so I registered for and arranged for a repair (my Zune is still under warranty till Jan 2009). Since I'm overseas, I had the return box shipped to my friend's house in Texas and had her send my Zune in for replacement (she has frequent business trips back and forth from the US and Asia).

I tried calling Zune customer service following up the status once she had shipped the unit since it was showing as "awaiting for device in facility" in the support website. Two months back I followed up again and they said that it was on it's way back (to my friend's return address). They couldn't give feedback on what happened so I assumed that it had been replaced.

My friend finally got back this month and handed me the sealed Fedex box from Zune and to my surprise when I opened it I found my old Zune and a letter saying that the Zune was damaged because of tampering and the warranty was voided. The bad thing about this is that my Zune appears to be crushed (screen cracked, case deformed and opening at the seams, etc) and is no longer usable.

I called Customer Service again to complain but they insisted that the repair team received the unit as is and that's why it was not replaced. I tried arguing that in the condition that it is now its obvious that the unit was damaged so I wouldn't have gone through all the trouble of contacting them to have it repaired (it would have been cheaper to just buy a new unit). My mistake is i didn't take any pictures of the unit before I sent it out so I could show how my unit looked like before I shipped it.

I'm hoping someone can help direct me to where I can send a complaint with the pictures of the Zune as it was returned to me so this doesn't happen to others. It was bad enough that I had to wait almost 3 months for the repair but at least before I could use it to listen to the radio or a few songs. Now it a worthless piece of junk.

Jason Dunn
11-19-2008, 01:17 AM
Wow...talk about frustrating! I feel your pain. :(

Since I'm overseas, I had the return box shipped to my friend's house in Texas and had her send my Zune in for replacement (she has frequent business trips back and forth from the US and Asia).

So I guess the question is, where did it get damaged? Did your friend open the box you sent and confirm that it wasn't damaged from Asia to the USA? If she didn't, and just sent along the box, it's hard to say where it got damaged. Unless you're suggesting that the Zune repair people damaged it themselves, it seems likely it got maimed in shipping somewhere between you and the Zune repair people...and it doesn't seem reasonable to blame them for that. Did you insure the shipment in any way?

Or did your friend send it in with the box that the Zune team shipped to her for your Zune? In that case she must have seen your Zune was ok, right? If the issue here is that it got maimed from her to the Zune repair depot, using the shipping method that the Zune team uses, then we have something - I can front page this story and bring some light to this issue.