During that massive trip I took, something unexpected happened. I had made a warranty claim on a PC controller that broke well within the three years of the warranty.

Needless to say, getting a reminder of it in the middle of the trip was poor planning on my part. I probably wouldn’t have minded it so much if I wasn’t sent an obviously pre-written message asking me (rather coldly, I may add) to mercilessly destroy the defective device.

Now, this makes sense, coming from a company as large as Logitech. It’s a way to minimize false claims, but the way it was sent. That was the real kicker. I had started with an actual human being on the other side of the emails, but with the same candy-colored background to each one.

After a series of 12 emails over the course of 20 days, a resolution was finally reached. I’m not exactly certain if I found a loophole in their system, or if this was a one-time thing. A replacement was sent with no need to destroy the defective one.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the defect turned out to be one snapped wire. One out of the 4 that make up a USB cable. This should be a simple fix nonetheless. So, I ended up getting another one for free basically.

In this case, everything worked out fine, but it reminded me that a bunch of major companies really could spend some time re-working their customer support system. My best example would have to be with Netflix. After a simple device disconnection, we called them up to help sort this out.

But, for some reason the “support” guy thought we wanted our account terminated; and that’s what ended up happening. No more Netflix. Although, it’s not like it was the end of the world. It was, however extremely annoying.

Support. Help. They’re one in the same.