I'm more than a little angry right now. A few days ago, I was playing Madden 2002, and a screen popped up saying "Game disc could not be read. See Gamecube instruction booklet for details." The booklet said that the disc was probably dirty. It wasn't but I cleaned it anyway. The next day, the same thing happened with Rogue Leader, and then it happened with Wave Race. I called Nintendo and they said it sounded like a problem with the Cube (duh).

The one thing I am happy about is the way Nintendo has responded. They had FedEx pick up my Cube within 2 HOURS of the time I was on the phone with them, and it seems that they are moving ahead with it very nicely. Anyway, I can't spend my time playing video games any more, so I thought I'd share my not so fun little story.

Keep us updated as to how they handle this. 2 hours seems like a tremendous turn around. Remember the true test of a company & product is how they handle problems, not if you have never had a problem with them ... I'd also be interested if anyone has to return an X box and how that is handled. I regard $200 or $300 as a fairly large investment in this type of equipment, and am glad to see Nintendo handling it like one so far.

Not to be nitpicky, but I have to disagree with this. Given his situation, I would be much happier as a consumer if it was never busted in the first place. Given a choice between a company whose products never suffer manufacturing defects and one whose customer service is impeccable, I'd take the first.

Nothing against Nintendo, though. Manufacturing defects on a new system are a fact of life, and it looks like they are responding admirably.

wow, makes me feel better if my cube breaks. The FedEx thing is something no company has ever done for me. That's a lot of support. Especially for a "kids toy."

so the 90 warranty isn't honored in the store of purchase? I mean if you bought a cube at Best buy and a month later it screws up, you can't just exchange it at BB? Do you have to go through Nintendo?

Well, Nintendo's had a tremendous track record in product quality. Not only have they traditionally worked flawlessly, they've even worked after substantial trauma. I used to (and still do) read all kinds of stories about Game Boys left in the backyard for 4 months, cartridges in the washer, Game Boys and home consoles dropped onto hard tile, etc.

With their first disc system I've been hearing several cases of product failure, but I'm glad to see it's being handled well. One of my controller's rumbler stopped working and Nintendo also had FedEx pick it up for me. It didn't take two hours, though, as I called at 6 PM EST on New Year's Eve. They had someone come on the next business day, though, so yesterday bright and early the FedEx guy was there. Nintendo rocks!

I thought all stores were like this? If a product breaks within the allowable time that a store allows returns or exchanges, then they would handle it. But, once that period has expired, you have to deal with the manufacturer from that point on.

No, the 90 day warranty(1 year limited) is the warranty of the manufactor of the product. you have 14-30 days(depending on what store u purchased it from) to return it back to the orginal store for an exchange. Only exception is if you purchase an extended warranty from the orginal store of purchase, than you can bring back to that store for the life of the extended warranty

The cube was purchased on launch day (although I didn't get to play it until Christmas), so it's been about 1 1/2 months. It came from K-Mart, and I assume their return policy wouldn't have allowed it.

Also, I called Nintendo to see if they knew how the problem could be corrected. It apparently needs service, and there are no authorized service providers near where I live. Oh well.

Couldn't have hurt to try. I betcha they would have swapped it out on the spot. Purely speculative speaking now though.....

Wow, this exact same problem is happening to my Game Cube... I knew it wasn't the games when I bought Super Smash Brothers, put it in the drive for the first time, and it still didn't work! It starts for a little while sometimes, and then just goes to the screen you are talking about. Other times, after the GC intro screen comes on, either that screen comes up, or it shows a screen with the clock and memory card manager among other things, and says that there is no disk in the Gamecube. Please keep me updated with what happens, and perhaps what I should do...

you just said you would rather choose a company whose products never suffer manufacturing defects and then a few sentences later you said manufacturing defects are a fact of life.....which is it?

i was wondering why i was getting so many people calling in at work lately to have a six pound box shipped back to Nintendo. I schedule the pickups at FedEx.

if this was the xbox we'd definitely be in a flaming thread by now

Wow, where do you you live that they had a guy on your doorstep in two hours!?!?

And Duran come on, things break. The worlds an imperfect place, screws fall out all the time.

My and my friends GC's have worked great.

MY reason for my post however is to share a story of Nintendo's customer service. Back when Mario Party came out me and some friends actually beat one of the controllers to death.

It was the one that came with the system so it had probally been used the most. Anyway, I managed to break the center analog stick. More like "eat through" it by rotating it so much. There was literally shavings from the stick laying around. I alos managed to begin rubbing through my hands skin.

So, mostly out of concern I called Nintendo, and informed them that some people might end up doing this at well if they weren't careful. (Both breaking the stick, and hurting their hands. During the call they had asked for all my info, and assumingly wrote my incident down.

Within 3 days I saw a commerical warning customers to be careful playing. Then Nintendo sent letters to everyone that registered the game warning them. In addition the follow up games came with warnings in the manuals and suggesting players use gloves to play if necessary.

I'm not saying I'm resposible for Nintendo's quick actions, I'm sure other called in as well. PLus Nintendo always trys to have good PR.

However, where the "true" customer service came in was when I recieved a box from Nintendo also 3 days from my call. It didn't contain a controller, but 4 brand new multi colored ones with matching leather "gamers" gloves"!!! It was truely amazing. To this day I still have an un opened controller box from the package. The really interesting thing is that my controller was way past the warranty. Anyway, it was awesome.

Play much?

Play much? Yeah you can say that...

Really it was just the strength i think i was putting behind it. My friends and I are VERY competitive. It wasn't uncommen to be a god 20-50 bucks a game, pending our pride. Seriosly though, we didn't play that much... I don't think.

If you played this game, and get into it, i think you might know a bit better what im talking about.

A new evil has rose however, Monkey Ball...

They're just video games

I had (almost) the same thing happen with my Xbox. System powered on, but a message would come up saying their was an error and that I needed to contact customer service. When i called, the tech said the HD was corrupted and scheduled a pick -up. The next day Airborne Express dropped off an empty box that had detailed packing instructions. Once I had the system packed up, I called a 1-800 number, and Airborne came back and picked it up that day. The VERY NEXT day Airborne delivered a replacement Xbox console. So I only had to do with out for 2 days. How's that for customer service?

That's pretty good for Microsoft. But then didn't you lose your saved games?

If I had had any on the system I would have!

Huh? PS2 and Gamecube use memory cards that are separate from the console, the Xbox uses a harddrive that is built in. I don't understand this statement.

First of all, you can get memory crads for the Xbox and put/transfer saves to them. And my statement meant that I didn't have any saves on the console because I hadn't saved anything.

Sorry, devilboy95...I shouldn't post whilst drunk. I misread your statement as "If I had had any other system I would have!"