EA Rock Band screw up

[RDBRaptor]

This is just a bit of a rant, with a slightly happy ending me.  I suggest skimming since I'm mostly just rambling anyway. 

So, I got Rock Band a few days after the game was released.  Low and behold the strum on the guitar dies the next day.  Not having a credit card I went to the EA Rock Band customer support page to have them send me an empty box so I could ship my guitar away.  It took about two days to get here and then I sent it in expecting to have my replacement in one to two weeks.  In actuality it took a bloody month.

First of all, NEVER use e-mail feature on their site.  They just give you round about answers and tell you to read e-mails that they already sent you that you did not find helpful at all.  After about five e-mails, and receiving another empty box (yes, an empty box), I gave up and called them directly.  Guess what?  They sent my guitar right away.  I received my guitar about three days after my call (nearly a month since I sent it in).  I felt pissed, which is pretty rare for me, that it took so long and so many e-mails before I finally got my guitar back. 

The story doesn't end there, I received another e-mail from EA, this looked like it WASN'T automated saying that they were sending my guitar.  I'm thinking to myself 'WTF are they talking about?  I already have it now.'  Three days after that guess what's at my front door?  Another guitar from EA.  They had apparently made a mistake and had somehow decided to actually read my e-mails while completely ignoring the fact that they had sent my replacement.  Did I feel bad?  No.  Did I feel obligated to inform EA of their mistake?  Hell no.

Long story short, I had to wait a month for my replacement guitar because of EA's horrendous e-mail support but winded up with two guitars instead of one.  I'd say the experience was worth the reward.