Global Geek News Blog

Today I want to vent about my recent experience with Vivendi Technical Support.

First, to give a little background, I have been a big fan of F.E.A.R. since the day it came out. Due to my love for this game, I bought the expansion back, F.E.A.R. Extraction Point. I hadn’t gotten around to playing it until recently when I heard another expansion was about to come out, so I wanted to play through it to stay up with the story. If only I was so lucky. I was unable to get the game to install on my gaming machine. Thus began the horror of Vivendi Technical Support.

After disparately searching the internet for answers to the error code I was receiving, I had to give in and contact technical support. At first, the technical support representative seemed very willing to help me solve my problems. The only complaint I had at the time was that for every response I sent to their troubleshooting suggestions took a day for them to reply back to me. Eventually, the tech support representative by the name of Ethan deemed my disk defective. I had figured this out before even contacting them. That wouldn’t have been so bad had it not taken them a week to make that determination. I could have forgiven these inconveniences had I not felt scammed by Vivendi.

Why did I feel scammed you ask? In my final email with technical support representative Ethan, he told me my disk was defective and revealed their replacement policy. He stated I would have to return the game and pay $10 to get replacement disks. What the… Why should I have to pay to ship the faulty disks back as well and pay an additional $10 just to get a set of disks that had no guarantee of working when it was faulty to begin with?! I might as well buy the expansion pack again and receive all of the goodies it has for just a couple dollars more. If you thought this was insane, to replace a console game it is a $15 charge. Oh, and before I forget, they also state it takes 4-6 weeks to deliver the replacement.

Replacement disks cost mere pennies. Why should I have to pay a $10 penalty for their mistake? Why does it take 4-6 weeks to copy two disks ship them? Last I checked, cd replicators nor the USPS was that slow.

Until Vivendi makes this situation right and changes their policies, I am calling for a boycott of their games!

Tell game manufactures to treat you right!