I'm pissed about losing my SF4 data too... perhaps even moreso my Rainbow Six Vegas 2 data. Unlocking all those weapons again will take forever. And of course I lost a Demon's Souls save of about 25 hours too... 360 owners just get a ton more of them... SquareTrade is a 3rd-party warranty provider you can use as an alternative to a store warranty (usually cheaper, but coverage isn't as good), and it's your only option if you buy something off eBay. If you bought a warranty at Walmart already, it will be just as good or better than a SquareTrade one, but it was probably pricier.
Well, I had to manipulate them into giving me the deal they gave me. Plus, it should never take 2 months and 4 tries to get a working product in my hands, not to mention probably 5 hours on the phone.
True. But it's a warranty. Of course they're going to make you jump through hoops before completely reimbursing your $400+ for your kindly contribution of $50. But I don't really blame them in your story. Maybe for being cheap on who they select as a repair center - but I suppose at the same time you could have asked those questions prior to it. (I wouldn't have either.) They initially sent it to the repair center. And from what you say, they worked hard to find somewhere else when that place wasn't acceptable for you. They even tell you that if it doesn't work after (3) repairs, they will fully refund you.. something that probably wasn't in that warranty agreement you signed. You send it back, and the crap company tried to cheat you. You call them back and complain - and they end up letting you refund your entire purchase amount after only (2) attempts at repair - something even more than the extra deal they agreed to with you. And they let you keep the accessories because of the hassle of putting them back into the box. I don't really think they were that bad in this case - I was expecting you to end the story being out of your money or a working PS3. Instead you got your money and extra accessories. Enjoy.
Yeah, it wasn't so much SquareTrade that was bad, it was more PSR that was bad. And Sony too, when I bought the other unit. I know what you're saying, and I agree that I got a good end result. But the "fail" DOES come in to an extent because no warranty should submit the customer to a repair that lasts three days, and it especially shouldn't try to cheat its customer, no matter who does the cheating. That never happened to me with my HP products under warranty. They were only forced to finally refund me rather than sending it back again because (1) the magnitude of the place trying to cheat me, and (2) I sat on the phone for over an hour insisting that I wouldn't send it back to PSR, and them insisting I needed to. They cracked first. Which is great... I got a good end result. But I shouldn't need to play "chicken" on the phone for an hour to get what was coming to me... and I'm 99.9% certain that if I hadn't insisted on getting this deal in writing the first time (which was very difficult in itself), they would have reneged when it came down to it and only given me my remaining balance. I did come out ahead in the end... but only by one heavily-used controller and about $50. Which, if you consider all my time on the phone... I was basically getting paid minimum wage to talk on the phone for all that time. Not really the most fun use of my time.
