Nintendo Rules!

For Christmas my daughter, Tilly, got a Nintendo DS Lite. I bought it from Amazon. I picked the super cute Ice Blue with a little patten leather carry case. She loved it. We all loved it. The whole family got hooked on playing Brain Age, trying to out intellect each other in the brain games.

In April, Tilly's DS would not turn on. We charged it and it still would not turn on. We tried plugging it in to different outlets to see if that was the problem. The charging light came on but it seemed as though it was not charging at all. It was just dead. At the time we were just getting ready to move back into to our house after being displaced by the fire and figuring out what was wrong with the DS was not high on the priority list. I knew I could not return it to Amazon as they have a 30 day return policy. We had not kept the box and I was not sure what the warranty was on the game system.

One evening in the beginning of June I went on Nintendo's website and started the product trouble shooter. After the website could not recognize the serial number from Tilly's DS (turns out when you buy a product online the serial number is not reported with the purchase, unlike when you buy a product at Walmart and the number is registered as it is scanned) the trouble shooting ended with a phone number to call. As I dialed I was thinking "oh great, I will be on hold forever and then end up talking to someone who barely speaks English..." Nothing peeves me more than bad customer service.

But surprisingly I was about to be impressed with Nintendo's customer service. I was directed by a short automated answer system to a real live human being within a minute of placing my call. She was nice and helpful and American. She ran me through a couple of simple, quick tests - like plugging it in and asking which lights came on. After about 2 minutes she told me that she was emailing me a pre-paid Fed Ex label and asked me if I could provide a box to ship it to Nintendo's service center. She gave me a service tracking number and told me I would be able to track the progress of the repair. It took 13 days from phone call to receiving the DS back. That is pretty darn good considering it took me a couple days to mail it and it had sent to California and back.

The DS works perfectly again. And my year long warranty started over from the time it was repaired. Now that is customer service that keeps customers! Even though I had a problem with the product I am still raving over the manufacturer! I am officially a Nintendo Fan.