God destroys young man's PS3 with dust [update]

by Griffin McElroy { Nov 10th 2007 at 7:15PM }

It seems like having thorough, consumer-focused customer support is a huge deal in this iteration of the console war, which is why we were surprised to hear the woes of Ive, a Sony fanboy and owner of a broken PS3. According to Ive's story, he sent in his faulty system to be repaired, only to be told that his warranty had been voided by the massive amounts of dust that had accumulated within the casing.

Here's our favorite part of the story: When asked what part of the warranty says that a dusty system cannot be replaced, his helpful customer service representative told him that dust collection could either be considered customer abuse, or an act of God. We'd like to think that if the Lord did destroy Ive's PS3, he would do so with a plague of locusts, or perhaps a well-placed bolt of lightning. Dust collection just lacks that celestial panache, you know?

Update: The Consumerist has more on this, an apparent confusion within the realms of customer support. Dust obviously doesn't void your warranty, but it seems it was cited as evidence of neglect in this case (and forms of neglect do void the system's warranty).

[Thanks, SickNic]

Tags: Customer Service, CustomerService, Playstation 3, Playstation3, PS3, sony, warranty

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)

Kazi @ Nov 10th 2007 7:18PM

LOL

FrankTheCrank @ Nov 10th 2007 8:02PM

how about cleanng your house once in a while?

Ive had mine since launch and its clean inside.

F@cking slob!

Ethan @ Nov 10th 2007 8:06PM

And this is a reply to Kazi how exactly?

The1 @ Nov 10th 2007 8:20PM

I have called Sony for assistance with my PS3 and I see they will do anything not to cover their crap. I am glad I keep my consoles in excellent conditoon because Sony is full of it like MS.

Negativecool @ Nov 10th 2007 10:57PM

God hates your PS3 LOL!

Rob Accomando @ Nov 10th 2007 11:53PM

FrankTheCrank, you periodically check INSIDE your PS3 to make sure it's clean?? haha

superaktieboy @ Nov 11th 2007 4:48AM

lmao @ PS3 & customer services..
Sony's customer service is getting crappier by the month :O last month that guy with the surge protector (or whenever it was :P) and now this :O

gonk @ Nov 10th 2007 7:21PM

pwn

also in before sdf mentions rrod

Smoke_Dawg_187 @ Nov 10th 2007 9:35PM

I always find Gonks comments amusing!

Keep 'em up Gonk! = )

Flashover @ Nov 10th 2007 10:58PM

Yes, Gonk please enlighten us with your clever M$ fanboy comments...You really need a hobby, dude. Your incessant trolling is really getting old.

jorojoserojas @ Nov 10th 2007 7:21PM

God has sure become soft.

jorojoserojas @ Nov 10th 2007 7:22PM

I almost threw one out there, but I decided against it.

I can't stand the heat, so I don't bring on the fire. :P

jorojoserojas @ Nov 10th 2007 7:24PM

Stupid Reply syst...ah, well, you guys know the drill.

The comment above was meant for Gonk.

Ranus Studios @ Nov 10th 2007 7:30PM

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

That's funny.

Morisato @ Nov 10th 2007 7:33PM

EL-OH-EL!

Synner @ Nov 10th 2007 7:32PM

Not even god likes PS3...

fischju @ Nov 10th 2007 7:34PM

Sony is really desperate to save money, eh?

James @ Nov 10th 2007 7:42PM

hahahhahahaha

Chrispy @ Nov 10th 2007 7:34PM

How do you get a PS3 so dusty to void a warranty in a year?
It's not Sony's new marketing plan is it? The PS3 Hoover! Aimed at housewives...

Synner @ Nov 10th 2007 10:28PM

except that office 2007 is awesome and has just as many games as the PS3.

oh, and youare a tool. Still using that gamer math logic shit. Guess you need to buy a 1080p HDTV to go with your $399 PS3, add $2000. Oh, don't forget your cables sony doesn't include for $80, And now you need to buy 15 blurays so it has something to do other than collect the dust that will kill it and void your warranty, that's $450. Oops, forgot, you need a couch to sit on to play it, that's $1000, and a house, so that's another $250k,

Stupid ass

Synner @ Nov 10th 2007 10:30PM

That was supposed to be a reply to frank the douche

Jerk Face @ Nov 11th 2007 6:13AM

Well, it can get PRETTY dusty without any good games to play. : )

Kamall @ Nov 10th 2007 7:45PM

Speaking as a Sony fanboy, its no surprise that their customer service on a whole sucks, and with good reason.

But, I don't understand you morons always talking about the SDF, how much of jerks they are when all I see here are the NDF and MDF? There's no SDF here at all, this is so an anti-Sony baised blog, what are you crackheads talking about?

If anything, I think that the SDF has shut up now and become humble whereas its the Xbots and Wiitards that are in full swing around here. Sheesh.

James @ Nov 10th 2007 7:49PM

Yea your REALLY humble calling them Xbots and Wiitards.

FrankTheCrank @ Nov 10th 2007 8:16PM

The Sony bashing is so redundant that people dont even bother answering to the barrage of attacks from Microsofties.

Even one of the guys that runs this blog Chris something, the name escapes me. Anyways, on his last blog he said if you dont own a 360 your a loser. Check the latest podcast.

Go ahead, buy into the Microsoft. You still cant convince me that a 360 is technically better. Even after you buy a dvd based gaming system, you pay an additional $50 a year for multiplayer and $179 for hddvd. $578! Sony charges you $399.

And now their saying Falcon is doing the RROD cha cha. Fucking unreal!

gonk @ Nov 10th 2007 8:44PM

only dummies buy hd players or addons while the "war" is in stalemate

FrankTheCrank @ Nov 10th 2007 10:12PM

Even without the HDDVD, your at $350. Throw on Live and your at $399, year one. And every year after its an additional $50 a year. So by year 5 you've paid $600. And your most likely to have to shell out for another box because your warranty ran out on your original box.. That's at least another $279.

Oh yeah, XBOX is arsome allright. Keep telling yourself that. Microsoft loves guys like you. They also got this thing called Vista Ultimate Edition and Office 2007.

Wake up sheeples!!!

i_hate_mtv @ Nov 10th 2007 10:37PM

He has a point. I haven't seen phattie around here in ages.

Blast Processing Megadrive @ Nov 11th 2007 12:06AM

Ooh, "Microsofties." I like that. [writes it down]

And I think Phattie has been banned (thank God).

And, Frank, you do know that the Xbox division is a seperate part of Microsoft, right? They're not the ones responsible for Vista, and the Windows division is not responsible for 360.

$50/12 = ~$4.17 per month. Not a bad deal for the top-notch CONSOLE online service (I praise Live, even though I don't even have a 360, because I know all of what it does).

Brello @ Nov 11th 2007 12:41AM

I love when people make up stupid words with a console in the name to describe its fans. Too bad it screams "I'm a moron." It's the games that count, not the friggen console.

Synner @ Nov 11th 2007 7:43AM

ssuk @ Nov 11th 2007 9:58AM

Clank's argument became invalid the second he used "M$". Go back to 1991 when that was cool.

Steve @ Nov 11th 2007 11:22AM

Man, the irony in that post is STUNNING.

Slaziman @ Nov 11th 2007 12:29PM

1. It's about the games, and as of now the 360 still wins
2. The online is so much better on 360 that the 50$ is worth it.

Who cares which console is better technically? It's about which one offers you more value. And Frank, didn't you say you would stop trolling? You are the biggest Sony troll around! Sheesh, your posts sound fucking angry, it's just a game console dude, relax!

James @ Nov 10th 2007 7:46PM

See, at least if the 360 breaks then you're guaranteed a new/fixed one at no cost with that lovely free guarantee thingy. I don't have a 360 but I'd feel comfortable buying one with the godly brilliant policy they have at the moment.

Flashover @ Nov 10th 2007 7:50PM

You're also "guaranteed" to have it break down.

gonk @ Nov 10th 2007 7:55PM

no you're not

Clack @ Nov 10th 2007 8:02PM

"no you're not"

Well, speaking as a person who would absolutely have an XB360 by now thanks to their great game library if it wasn't for a soul-devouring hatred of shoddy electronics devices, I beg to differ.

It seems like there is a pretty damn good chance that if you own an original 360, it IS going to die on you at some point. Yeah, sure, chime in that you have a launch 360 thats still running, just be sure to knock on wood afterword. As for the new SKU, by the time its been around long enough to verify that the problems have been corrected this generation of consoles will be more than half over.

gonk @ Nov 10th 2007 8:09PM

everything breaks eventually (including humans!), a 3 year warranty seems good enough to me to play all the great games this gen, and your console should still last after the warranty ends anyway, i've had my current 360 for 2 years now

Clack @ Nov 10th 2007 8:23PM

" a 3 year warranty seems good enough to me to play all the great games this gen"

The 3 year warranty was a good move by M$, but its not enough for me. I'm the type that when an expensive electronics device fries itself after a year or two I go all Hiroshima on it, chunk it in the trash, and take a sacred vow to never buy anything from that company again.

tmacairjordan87 @ Nov 10th 2007 8:31PM

"everything breaks eventually"

well yeah, but 6 systems in 2 years doesn't say that. It says "shitty hardware"

Nick @ Nov 10th 2007 8:35PM

Oh, so you have anger management issues then. I see. Might want to get some counseling, Clack.

Grey Acumen @ Nov 11th 2007 12:27AM

My original NES still works. Which is lucky for me, since I think its warranty period expired a while ago.

sheppy2.0 @ Nov 11th 2007 12:26PM

Well, Gonk... you technically are right. They do fix the system free of charge. However, they neither test the system nor further support any DLC purchases made.

Factoid 1: It's not exactly uncommon for someone to get back their ringed console, open it up, hook it up, only to have it ring immediately. Happened to me once and it's common enough to be a known issue. And besides, you said a three year warranty is good enough for you this generation but here is my issue. What happens at the end of those three years? $140 for every repair. Considering I sold my to a friend recently because it was a five time refurbished machine, look at the long term for me. Two years, 5 repairs. An additional cost on that machine of $140 every four-five months. This is, of course, if my situation was typical. Now think of a friend of mine, who is honestly on his 14th repair right now. That warranty that you think reassures customers is actually the ONLY think preventing a mass abandonment of that system.

Personally, I think my favorite moment dealing with MS was when the guy who got the call from the immediate ring made the statement "How in the hell can you break a 360 that fast?" He shut up the moment I told him even my Turbo Duo and CDX work like new.

ill trooper @ Nov 11th 2007 1:21PM

"See, at least if the 360 breaks then you're guaranteed a new/fixed one at no cost with that lovely free guarantee thingy."

No, you're off on that one - the warranty is only covering red-ring-of-death failures, if this 'dust' failure had happened to your 360, you might be asked to pay for repairs too. Actually, Sony doing this gives M$ the precedent to say dust is an 'act of god/customer abuse' issue too, so this might be bad for everyone.

And one story about Sony dust isn't equal to the tsunami of 360 RRoDs that is so commonplace people don't even write about their experiences anymore, it's just part of the overall "360 experience." An experience which I love, by the way, but even as a fan I won't act like the RRoD hasn't been an annoying problem.

lawlersauce @ Nov 11th 2007 2:56PM

The three year warranty also only covers the RRoD after 1 year, doesn't cover if the 360 is in possession of anyone besides the person that bought it, and it can take anywhere up to 8 months to receive the 360 once you send it in.

Oh and there is no guarantee that you will get a new 360, it will probably be a refurbished one, so it is bound to happen again.

Yeah, 360's warranty is ALL the safety i need...

NoK610 @ Nov 11th 2007 3:41PM

Wasn't the PS2 defective when it was first released?

Kamall @ Nov 10th 2007 7:49PM

Good for us Microsoft put that policy, bad for them losing a lot of money on it, their fault for making at least the first batches of 360s so ****y. On the whole, the PS3 is at least better built, runs quieter and cooler.

But whats the point when there's no games to play on it? LOLZ!!!! At least you could run FoldingAtHome on it all day! ZING!!!

FrankTheCrank @ Nov 10th 2007 8:25PM

hey asshole have you ever heard of Resistance, Motorstorm, VF5, Dirt, Warhawk, Ridge Racer, Oblivion, Calling All Cars, Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Tekken5 and a bunch of other third party stuff.

You guys that keep saying there is nothing to play are just lying. You know the shit is about to hit the fan. From here on out, its nothing but more great games.

Hope your 360 melts on you!