Nintendo: the company that cares
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A Nintendo DS owner recently wrote into the Consumerist about his experiences with Nintendo’s customer service.
After being on hold for all of 20 seconds a very nice gentleman answered, and asked why I was calling. I explained that my son’s DS would not power on and before I could go any further he asked me to provide me with the serial number and after looking up my information (I register all my Nintendo products online) he told me that they would be sending me a replacement DS and all I had to do was ship the old one back to them, they even provided a shipping label. Already happy beyond belief I was even more surprised when they sent it 2 day UPS air!!!! GO NINTENDO!
This is in stark contrast to last weeks dusty PS3 affair when Sony gave another gamer the run around. What’s even more shocking are the other stories flooding the comments sections of various Web sites about the quality of Nintendo’s customer service. One user on the DS Fanboy site said:
We bought a used DS from family-in-law, they said nothing was wrong with it, but you know how it goes, they’re liars. The top screens color was off, only noticeable in game, and the touch screens sensitivity was screwed. Unplayable. We called up nintendo, explained what happened and they said they’d repair it. We get it back, the top screens fixed, but the the sensitivity issue was unsolved. One more call, they apologize and send us a brand new one.
Greatest customer service ever.
Even though Nintendo’s customer service is being highlighted right now, apparently this is nothing new, according to one comment left at the Consumerist.
Whatever your thoughts are regarding the ethics of the consumer mentioned in this article, Nintendo has a very long track record of superb customer service. In the last two years I have come across at least two dozen or so articles praising Nintendo’s treatment of their customers and I have no doubt that reports like these go back even further as I once had to return my old SNES for repairs way back in the day (they ended up sending me a new one instead of replacing a few minor parts that would have been much cheaper).
Now it is possible that the CSR in this article was “lazy” or “new” as some people have suggested, but if you had walked into one of their branch headquarters with the same problem and told the front desk (as many have), you would have probably received the same treatment–if not better, so I’m inclined to say that this is just how their customer service works.
Of course, I take everything I see on the Internet with a grain of salt, but what’s really amazing is that similar incidents were claimed by nearly every poster on both of these sites. Of course, there are a lot of posters arguing that it’s abuses like the original story that cause companies to start strictly enforcing their policies, but it seems to me that Nintendo not only knows about the abuses but is deliberately very flexible and accommodating with them. It seems as though good customer service, the kind which gives the customer the benefit of the doubt, is quickly disappearing, especially now that it’s easier to simply assign complaints a number, and make it easier to ignore those complaints, than ever before. It’s refreshing to hear at least one company knows how to work with it’s public and earn their loyalty instead of just expecting blind obedience.
Tags: customer service, DS, nintendo
