Now I'm REALLY Upset - Bad Guitar, Red Drum Pad, and Broken Bass Pedal!!!

[B18C5 Tom]

First of all I thought I'd qualify my complaint by stating that I'm an adult (28 years old) with no children in the house, and none of my games or controllers are being abused in any ay, shape or form.

Okay so my wife and bought Rock Band for the 360 on Thanksgiving Day, which is what, three weeks ago? We paid $180.00 with GA sales tax for the bumdle pack/special edition.

All seemed well with the game at first...

Then the bad pedal cracked in the middle a week ago - I "fixed" it with a small plastic half circle piece with sticky on one side to brace the center of the pedal, and it took the flex out from the cracks.

Then our strum bar on he guitar stopped working on the down strum/stroke a few days ago.

Now I do a simple "test" to see if I've also got the dreaded red drum pad problems, and sure enough I do.

I play drums in real life, and there are certain songs in this game that I am 100% sure I know how to play in real life. I always seemed to miss fast rolls on the "snare" drum/red pad in songs like "In Bloom" and on the end of the bridge in "Say it Ain't So" and I thought maybe I was rolling too fast - like the programmed beat was half as fast as it should be because thew programmes knew the pads wouldn't be that precise at fast rolls.

So I try a simple test - go to practice, pick "Won't Be Fooled Again" by The Who since it has a long intro minus drums. I do some fast rolls on each pads and sure enough the red pad only picks up 1/4 of the hits if that. Sometimes it doesn't pick anything up. The other pads seem to be much more accurate.

Then I try a better test - go to practice. pick "In Bloom" on expert and choose "Chorus 1A" that has the fast snare drum/red pad roll to kick off the chorus as Cobain screams "Hey" - on the red pad I cannot register even half the beats. I switch the mode to "lefty mode" to change the snare drum hits to the green pad and low and behold I NAIL it very time.

I'M PISSED.

I love drums, and the only reason I got this game was to play the drums, and now I find out that bascially any song with fast sname hits (read well over half on expert) will now be impossible to get high 90's % not because I suck at the game, but because he drum pads are DEFECTIVE.

Do a Youtube search on "Rock Band drums red" or "Rock Band drums broken" and see just how many vids you find - it's staggering.

Combine the crappy drums with the already malfunctioning guitar (my wife plays with it, or played with it until it stopped working) and also the super annoying laggy vocals and drum fills (see the 1 page topic stickied in this very forum) and I'm super pissed about it.

I love the game, but the flaws and frustration in the instruments breaking/not working right are starting to outweigh my enjoyment from the game.

I'm due to get my replacement guitar tomorrow if their 2 day thing even holds true, but then what? Send off fo replacement drums...another $125.00 hold on my card. Then send off for a new bass pedal...a third installment of a $125.00 hold on my card.

It's ridiculous.

Has anyone had any luck complainin and getting anything satisfactory out of this?

I just want a guitar that doesn't break, and I want drums that have responsive heads that equally count notes/hits, and I'd also like a non broken pedal to boot.

I guess I'm going to try and type up a more official looking complaint and e-mail as many higher ups as I can about this, because as of right now (keeping in mind the sorry vocal processing in the game and its effects on hard and expert vocals timing) the game is unplayable in terms of GOOD scores due to missed red drum notes, and obviously a broken guitar.

Has anyone else experienced multiple failures such as this?

[AMartin56]

My friend John had to replace his guitar and drums for similar reasons. Only difference is he never had any pedal problems.

[swamy72]

Well, I just had my replacement kick pedal break. I just received it Friday. :(

[Toddi2993]

wow i never thought that the quality was so bad, but i hope the new ones come "stronger" and without failure thanks for the news

[Lord_Beelzebub]

Forgive me for not reading all of your lengthly post but I have one question for you.

Are you a 'aware consumer' ???

Meaning, do you research products and seek consumer reviews of products before you buy them??? Or do you just blindly buy things because they look cool and because they have features that you think are cool??

Not to take away from your issues and your right to be pissed about them, but I'd think you could and would have saved yourself all this greef if you had come to these forums first and others like it and researched about this game and it's equipment problems before you bought it.

If you did do that and you still bought the game anyway, then you screwed yourself really.

You said you was 28...I'm 35 and at my age I buy NOTHING until i have fully researched a product and read consumer reviews from people who actually own the product. The internet is a wonderful thing and full of endless information to inform a potential buyer of anything. Thus one of the reasons why I'm here on these forums. I want this game, looks awesome, but I'm not going to buy it now until Harmonix makes the equipment better and more durable which I've read they are working on. Now IMO, that's being a 'aware consumer'. I'm not bragging, I'm just saying.

If you didn't research before hand....lessoned learned and now your a more educated consumer.

I don't know what to tell you about your situation. With so many others out here having the same issues as you, get in line is all you can do.

[B18C5 Tom]

First of all don't post in a topic that you didn't bother reading the entire post - that's rude. Anyways...

How much research can one do when buying a game at it's launch?

Seriously?

How many hundreds of people posted about these issues within a few days of the game hitting the shelves?

As a consumer I look to Harmonix and EA Games to do the R&D for these periphials - I don't expect to get charged $180.00 to be a BETA TESTER.

So let me ask you why are you even lurking on this forum if you don't intend to buy the game until the poorly designed instruments are upgraded? Is it to simply add insult to injury to honest people like myself and others who paid top dollar for a game that has faulty equipment right out of the box?

If nothing else I'm doing a much better job helping the public than you are by me posting about my troubles.

Basically by your logic nobody should ever buy a new product until they've let thousands of other buy it and post their experiences online - is that it?

My "research" included playing the game on its launch date at a friends house, and being thoroughly impessed by the song list and the (at that time) percieved accuracy of the drums. Like I said I love drums, and until Rock Band came along I've never been able to use my drumming skills in a video game environment.

How dare you post in such a condescending manner - you sir are certainly the wiser I suppose, for not buying a new product - ever.

I have been he first in line to purchase many electronics from the X Box 360 itself, the Ms steering wheel, Forza 2, the LogiTech steering wheel for PS2, etc. etc. - all items that by many acounts are horrible in quality, yet for some reason I never experienced the same until this Rock Band game came packed with poorly designed equipment.

Do you own a 360? What about a PS3?

By your logic you certainly would not buy a 360 due to the overwhelming hardware failures and horrible customer service. People have been getting 4 360s in a row with the red rings of death!

By your logic you would not own a PS3 either with the numbers of people posting on forums about hardware failures, the horrible online gameplay and lack of features, and overall slim and sorry list of games to play on it.

If you want to pour more salt in my wounds by all means do it, but you might want to make sure it's a tried-and-true brand - do some research first.

;)

[Visceralguy]

If you did do that and you still bought the game anyway, then you screwed yourself really.
.

Talk about a classic case of "blaming the victim". That's ridiculous. Who do you think is posting in these forums with all the complaints about hardware: PEOPLE WHO BOUGHT THE GAME. You must think all these people whose testimony you rely on are idiots. The OP is right: we're not beta testers, we're not cannon fodder so you can make a more informed decision.

I for one read quite a few reviews of this game: local papers, Xbox mag, online etc. All of them outstanding and none of them aware of the technical problems that plague the instruments. The professional reviewers seem just as ignorant of the troubles, lavishing solid review scores on the game.

[shaybo]

Yeah, my red drum pad doesn't register half the time after a few days of playing it, same with the kick pedal. I got the game at launch but I've been doing vocals mostly. On day 3 my guitar stopped registering downstrums and double-strumming. I just got the replacement guitar and the green notes miss constantly RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX. I ordered replacement drums also, I've just about had it already. Yes, my lag is calibrated fine and I'm driving myself crazy with plugging and unplugging the controllers at various times trying to get them to work.

On the bright side, at least the stupid microphone works, I'm in the top 2 or 4 on the leaderboards.

I was hoping if I waited a little while to replace them they'd have fixed all this. And the worst thing is I'm on PS3 so I'm sitting here with a perfectly fine GH3 guitar that I can't use and there's not a single different guitar I can go to since these are obviously garbage.

Whew... nice to finally vent. :)

[shaybo]

I don't know what to tell you about your situation. With so many others out here having the same issues as you, get in line is all you can do.

This is disgusting.

[Maggot_Brain]

I've got the same three broken items. Red drum, pedal and guitar. Extend the warranty, EA!

[BigSalams]

I'm starting to get pissed as well. I think my guitar (and maybe even the drums) are starting to go out. I'm just learning the the whole GH/Rockband thing.... can beat medium (yeah, yeah I know I stink :D), but I swear some of the fret buttons don't register half the time. I know I'm not that horrible, so I went into practice mode, picked out a variety of songs (basically the first 2 tiers) and tested my theory. Sure enough, I would have to say a good estimate of the number of notes not registered would be around 25%. To further test and see if my equipment was faulty, I called a friend over. Not that it was hard to get a friend over to play the game. Almost immediately, he was complaining of the same thing, that some of the frets weren't registering. Then I started to notice the same thing happening with the drums; that the notes weren't registering. Went into the practice area again, and sure enough, missed notes galore. And that's with the speed turned to really slow so I knew that I wouldn't miss any notes.

Pheeeew. That feels good to finally vent that frustration. Thanks for letting me do that.

Now on to the *****ing segment of this post. I'm EXTREMELY upset that all the companies involved with this game allowed it to be shipped in such a shoddy state. To have this degree of equipment failure right out of the gate is in-excusable.

It's not like we're a little fansite with a dozen fan-boys yapping about the game. We're hundreds if not thousands of people that are having legitimate frustrations and complaints about faulty equipment. How they could have let this happen, I can't even begin to think why.

[B18C5 Tom]

I guess nobody from EA/Harmonix even browses these forums, so essentially it's just us the consumers *****ing to each other about how crappy these instruments are.

:mad:

[B18C5 Tom]

So I called EA and talked to someone who had to leave a message for me with a supervisor, and I got this e-mail today:


Greetings,
Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts Customer Support. The question that you submitted has been updated in the 'My Stuff' section of our support site. To access the 'My Stuff' section of our support site, please follow the link below and provide your EA Account login credentials.

If this issue is not resolved to your satisfaction, you may reopen it within the next 7 days.



To view or update your question from our support site, click here.



Subject
ROCKBAND WARRANTY_ ESCALATIONS

Discussion Thread
Response (Jamie N.)
12/11/2007 09:32 AM
Dear Tom,

Thanks for contacting us. Can you please give me a better time when a call back would be best?? We are opened from 8 am to 8 pm Monday through Friday pacific standard time.

Once you can give us a good time to call, we can get this worked out for you.

Thanks for your patience with us.

Sincerely,

GM Mallant
RockBand Support

Customer ( shiela.migallen)
12/10/2007 10:26 PM
FIRST NAME: Tom
LAST NAME: Hornsby
PHONE #: ###########
EMAIL ADDRESS: b18c5eh2@hotmail.com
CONSOLE: XBOX 360
ISSUE: The customer wants to return the entire package of the console because as of now he has a faulty drum pedal and drum pads. But the return policy of the store is only for 14 days whether sealed or not sealed copy of the whole console. Its already more than 14 days since he bought the console package so he can't simply return the package to the store even if we will be sending him a sealed copy of it. Please do give him a callback at 6am EST or 3am PST. That would be the best time that we could possibly reach him.

My reply to them:

Dear GM Mallant:
I can be reached on my cel phone at (555)555-5555 :) any time between 8:00am and 10:30pm EST. The issues I am having with my Rock Band instruments may be too involved to fully discuss online or via back and forth e-mails, and that is why I prefer to speak to a supervisor via telephone if possible.

In a nutshell my guitar strum bar stopped working on the downstroke, and I'm currently waiting for my replacement to arrive - I've already put the $125.00 hold on my credit card for this.

In addition my drum pads, specifically the red and possibly yellow pads are unresponsive to fast rolls required by expert difficulty levels on many songs, if not most of the songs which makes it unplayable/impossible to achieve desired scores/multipliers.

Also my bass drum pedal broke on the drum set, or I should say cracked in the middle and is currently being supported with a plastic half circle piece so that it doesn't snap in two.

Basically if following procedure to a "T" you would place a total of $375.00 of held charges on my card to secure shipment of replacement guitar, drum pads, and drum pedal; which case I think is unreasonable to ask seeing as how the entire game itself costs $180.00 to begin with, and that includes the software and a microphone.

I understand that they are not actual charges until 28 days passes, but I still have a problem with having such defective equipment in less than three full weeks of usage since I purchased the game on Thanksgiving Day.

If you or another supervisor could contact me I'd appreciate it. I'm a dedicated EA customer, and have been since your original John Madden Football days on the 16 bit systems. I currently own 10 EA titles on my X Box 360 and feel as if my loyalty would certainly be greatly depreciated if this situation can't be resolved in an acceptable manner. I am the biggest advocate for any company that provides ample customer service, but I'm also a loud voice of opinion if treated porrly as well. I'd love to be able to post a positive experience on the various message boards, including www.rockband.com.

Thanks for your time, and I hope to hear from you soon,
Tom Hornsby

We'll see what happens...I'm also expecting my guitar any day now hopefully.

[Kincade]

Tom, you do know you can get it replaced absolutely free, no charges put on your card at all right? Yes, you'll be without an instrument for however long it takes to get to them and them send you one, but there's no hold.

Also, keep in mind, for every one post of "my equipment broke," there are 100 people who DON'T post "my equipment is fine."

HMX made the equipment at the quality levels they did to keep costs down. I believe they knew there would be a percentage of players who really use the instruments and break them, but they also knew the vast majority (remember, for every one complaint you read about, there are 100 people who like it and don't post anything at all) of people would never push their equipment past the breaking point.

Why would they make the hardware strong enough, when only 10% of consumers would use it that hard? It's much cheaper to be willing to replace the equipment of those 10%, and only piss of 50% of that 10% because at least half of the people who have faulty equipment are fine with being able to replace it for free, than the expense of making every piece of hardware that level of quality.

You're getting your equipment replaced for free, what more do you want? I think it's a bit much to ask for anything more really.

I for one do not feel like a Beta tester. My software AND hardware have been working flawlessly from day one for almost a month now.

[LongDarkBlues]

Tom, you do know you can get it replaced absolutely free, no charges put on your card at all right? Yes, you'll be without an instrument for however long it takes to get to them and them send you one, but there's no hold.

Also, keep in mind, for every one post of "my equipment broke," there are 100 people who DON'T post "my equipment is fine."

HMX made the equipment at the quality levels they did to keep costs down. I believe they knew there would be a percentage of players who really use the instruments and break them, but they also knew the vast majority (remember, for every one complaint you read about, there are 100 people who like it and don't post anything at all) of people would never push their equipment past the breaking point.

Why would they make the hardware strong enough, when only 10% of consumers would use it that hard? It's much cheaper to be willing to replace the equipment of those 10%, and only piss of 50% of that 10% because at least half of the people who have faulty equipment are fine with being able to replace it for free, than the expense of making every piece of hardware that level of quality.

You're getting your equipment replaced for free, what more do you want? I think it's a bit much to ask for anything more really.

I for one do not feel like a Beta tester. My software AND hardware have been working flawlessly from day one for almost a month now.

Except that's not the case at all. Besides the fact that you have no idea what percentage of users are experiencing equipment failures, given the game relative scarcity, it's clearly unbelievably high. You make up a number and say only 10% of users are that hard on the gear - my friends are all adults who play drums calmly on Medium with just socks on and the pedal split in 2 places. I play the guitar downstrumming with a feather touch - even the Xplorer barely clicks when I strum it - and the guitar was broken after 8 hours of play. The microphone is crappy to the extent that singing loudly can cause to become so confused it won't register anything for 5-10 seconds even after much twiddling with the sensitivity controls (not even counting the massive lag on the vocal processing compared to the rest of the instruments).

Right now, less than a month after the game was released, the only thing I have that works properly is the Xplorer from GHII and not a single one of my RMAs have been completed (I went with the no-credit card option - anyone going that route should prepare to not have their equipment back until January, btw). It's a damn shame because despite all this the game has been a lot of fun - I think it's time EA bit the bullet and offered a total package recall or they should start preparing for a class action suit. Surely someone is putting one together.

Dismissing the huge volume of complaints here - which doesn't include people who went right to the support page forgoing the forums or simply returned the game to the store or are saving their doomed preordered copy for Christmas morning - is foolish. I really wanted to believe that the people who purchased this weren't being intentionally screwed, but that's clearly not the case. It's not as if they just designed a new magnetic strumbar and put it into production over the last 3 weeks - haven't we seen 3 different guitar designs opened up here so far? - they absolutely knew the equipment was faulty and sent it out anyway. The consumers should clearly be reimbursed - if you sell an unusable product, then you refund the cost to the purchaser - it's that simple.

[Aldous]

Kincade is just a fanboy. Don't read his posts.

He loves to tell people that bought the game all problems that occur are the consumers fault

[B18C5 Tom]

Wow I got a phone call from that same manager who e-mailed me literally 15 minutes after I sent that e-mail and posted this message!!!

First of all he offered to remove the charge, and he started the process of sending me new drums and bass pedal with no extra charges on my card - he even told me to keep my cracked bass pedal!!! Now I can reinforce it with no worries about returning it!!!

Also just for you Kincade:

I discussed the issue of instruments, Harmonix vs. EA is terms of who is responsible for what, etc. etc.

He told me that there is a VERY high percentage of instrument failure for the first production run of instruments. We're not talking 10% here. He said that it's been a huge problem for Ea since they are handling the warranty claims. He also said that Ea's involvement as a parent company had nothing to do with the actual manufacture/design of the instruments, and that it was Harmonix who designed them. Basically EA gets to deal with the huge mess this has created.

Anyways as far as my situation goes my guitar is due to be here today, and I ordered it on Saturday - given that it probably didn't process and ship until Monday I'm happy with the turn-around.

I will be sure to post a follow up and a stand-alone topic such as "Very pleased with customer service" or something to that extent once I get my replacement instruments that hopefully work. Mr. Mallant also said that in the event I happen to get a faulty replacement instrument (which he says happens) just contact him and he'd promtly send out another.

So far the chain of communication is very encouraging, and it seems to me like he's doing everything in his power to make the situation right with me. That's all i'm asking for, and so far I think the customer service has been great.

[Visceralguy]

Tom, you do know you can get it replaced absolutely free, no charges put on your card at all right? Yes, you'll be without an instrument for however long it takes to get to them and them send you one, but there's no hold.

Also, keep in mind, for every one post of "my equipment broke," there are 100 people who DON'T post "my equipment is fine."

HMX made the equipment at the quality levels they did to keep costs down. I believe they knew there would be a percentage of players who really use the instruments and break them, but they also knew the vast majority (remember, for every one complaint you read about, there are 100 people who like it and don't post anything at all) of people would never push their equipment past the breaking point.

Why would they make the hardware strong enough, when only 10% of consumers would use it that hard? It's much cheaper to be willing to replace the equipment of those 10%, and only piss of 50% of that 10% because at least half of the people who have faulty equipment are fine with being able to replace it for free, than the expense of making every piece of hardware that level of quality.

You're getting your equipment replaced for free, what more do you want? I think it's a bit much to ask for anything more really.

I for one do not feel like a Beta tester. My software AND hardware have been working flawlessly from day one for almost a month now.

If I can rock out on a les paul up to hard difficult for a month and have it work just fine, why did my rockband guitar crap out after an hour of playing on EASY? I'm not in some freak 10% margin that goes into a Hulk rage when I use the guitar, in fact based on how my friends play their gibsons I'm probably the gentlest player I know.

I think your post has been thoroughly responded to above, but let me just reiterate that not everybody who has faulty equipment posts either, many will never see this forum, or come here only to find the link to their replacement and then never return. Many are still waiting to open their bundles under the Christmas tree and won't have a clue until then. I'm not bitter about this problem, I actually love the game and I've been playing through the tours on my drums/mic in the meantime. I just can't stand fanboys who try to dismiss the situation like it's not really happening.

[HMXJohnlok]

We are aware of the issues: you should be able to get replacements through our warranty plan with EA. Sorry for the trouble.

EA (Rock Band) support phone number: (650) 628-1001
Web: http://support.ea.com/rockband