Absolutely.  I mean, I can't blame the customer service rep, as she likely followed policy, and possibly went above that, but I don't see how they can expect to keep customers like this.  Yes, technically it's his fault, but it's an awful system that seems almost designed to trap parents who have no idea what they're getting into when they buy their kids a Wii U to replace their Wii.  Isn't Nintendo supposed to be family friendly?  This is not family friendly.

Digital purchases should be linked to accounts, not harddrives.  It's as simple as that.  That's not rocket science, either, as others have been doing it for years.  It would probably actually be cost beneficial for Nintendo, as it would likely cut back on support service overhead and keep them from losing money on new games from handing out credits in situations like this.

I hope I am not one of these diehard fans you speak of   ;).

Sure a better solution should be called for.  But valid arguements should be used.  Such as pezus mentioning what if the Wii U was stolen?  Because thats a good question and valid concern.  Or where ECM seems to be saying he had trouble in the middle of the transfer.  I see that being a problem as well.  Or just the plain inconvienece of the process to customers.

But this instance of 'Jon' blatanlty ignoring warnings and proper process to retain his $400 of digital content and then loosing that digital content and whining about it, that is fully his own fault.  The fact that he'd have to wait a period of time to get access to his content if he followed the proper process is a valid arguement for a better solution.  And that the whole process of propably having to ship it to Nintendo is inconvienent is an arguement.  But 'Jon''s loss of $400 of digital content is his own fault.

I agree that Nintendo should've gone with linking downloaded games to accounts but remember, this is Nintendo's first time with Online like this. I hope they learn to fix it, though.

I agree with pokoko, it's true this guy made a big mistake in returning the console to the store, but the point is that Nintendo's transfer system is terrible! I bought a lot of games for Wii VC even before the Club Nintendo thing, so if my console breaks, is stolen or something I'm not able to demonstrate I bought those games.

Also, NOT EVERYBODY IS FROM USA!, even if you can send your console to Nintendo, what about people that lives in other countries? People that don't have Club Nintendo accounts or things like that. We're all screwed cause we're not sending our consoles to another country to fix it, at least not me. Ironically, the only option we have is to hack it to keep all our games.

Things like this should never happen, when the Wii was released we all assumed for the next console there would be an account system. It was tolerated then but it shouldn't be now. There's no excuse. I hope it's true they're fixing it, but until then I'm not in a hurry to buy one, and even if I do I don't think I'll be buying much stuff from the eshop.

A shoddy policy and account management model is still shoddy, though, not to mention an awful way to run a business.  If you open an account with a bank and find out when you get your statement that they were charging you fees that no one else in the banking industry does, you should probably say, "yeah, I should have read the fine print," but you should ALSO say, "this sucks," regardless.  I mean, this is a next gen system, shouldn't we demand better?

I'm not saying people should boycott, or anything like that, but customers need to tell businesses what they like and dislike.   The Wii U should have shipped with better.

Yes, it was his fault

Yes, it's an absurdly stupid policy

Sums it up

Yep, Wii U should have shipped with better.  Yep, customers should tell businesses what they like and dislike.

But customers should not swap consoles with the retailer, knowing they will only be able to access their digital content on the broken one they are trading in.

What pearljammer said...

Oh, Nnintendo...