Borked base station and shoddy customer service from Vive.

[Wallaceprime]

Here's my situation

 

Had my vive setup, was enjoying the VR experience and noticed the little ! firmware update available, so I dutifully applied the update, controller 1 and 2 fine, basestation 1 fine, basestation 2-uh-oh.

 

base station was now a brick, a bit of googling on here showed that apparently the firmware update can detect issues the old firmware didnt, the base station probably had an issue, which it identified as a fault and bricked the unit.

 

I tried to roll it back, using the advice on this forum, no joy, it was a paper weight, a vive staff member on this forum acknowledged "the update procedure is a bit mysterious, and rolling back doesnt always sort out the problem"

 

Well thats a bit of a **bleep**ter, I had a working Base station, it may have had an issue, but that in no way affected its functionality (that I could see)  I installed a recommended update and now I dont have a working basestation.

Even worse, it was about 14 months after purchase so - out of warranty.

 

I fired this off on the live chat, the rep was pretty sympathetic and said he would escalate this so it would be repaired as an in warranty repair as the issue only happened after I installed a firmware update.

 

It took a bit of time to send the unit off as we were moving house, had to get a new label issued.

 

I then get an email back saying "repair not authorised, out of warranty, please pay money"

 

Back on live chat, basically told "tough, it wasn't the firmware update which did this, the unit had an issue already, suck it up"

 

yes it may have had an issue, but the critical thing for me is, it wasnt an issue that stopped me using the Vive, it worked fine, I installed an update and now I dont have a working Vive.

 

"tough, I can arrange to have the non working base station sent back to you free of charge, thats it"

 

The rep was pretty patronising, insisted on correcting me on minor points that were not really relevent to the case, basically felt like he was trying to score points, he told me he'd escalate it, but didnt expect much as it was out of warranty, I'd hear in 2-4 days what the outcome is.

 

2-4 days is a surpsingly long time frame to respond, seeing as their "engineers" diagnosed the problem and sent me an email with the bill 15 minutes after the base station was signed for at their warehouse, seems their engineers work faster than their customer service managers.

 

 

All in all pretty poor customer service from Vive, pretty shoddy build quality as well.

 

 

 

[Wallaceprime]

I'd like to add, had the base station just failed, out of the blue, I could stomach an out of warranty repair fee, I wouldn't like it but, these things happen.

The fact that I had a, as far as I could see, working unit, installed a recommened update then immedietly didnt have a working unit, is whats causing me the issue here.

[Synthesis]

 

I've sent you a PM.

Thank you,

-John C

[Wallaceprime]

Thanks john

 

I've sent an email in detailing it, all in all I'm not holding out much hope for a resolution