Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

One of my standard rules is:

Do not spend more time fixing something than your time is worth.

In other words, I won’t spend a couple of hours on the phone to get a $5 overcharge fixed. It’s literally not worth my time.

Of course, that’s harder to quantify now that I’m retired, but when I was working as a senior software analyst/developer/project manager, I frequently let the small stuff slide. After all, people make mistakes, and if I bought an $8 item that turned out not to be exactly as described, it was easier just to take the loss and buy another item that did meet my specs.

There have been exceptions, however, and for the last ten months, I’ve been making one.

TL;DR: Never underestimate the power of doggedness, and do not dismiss something that it wouldn’t hurt to try.

It began in November 2023, when I bought myself a birthday present.

I was pretty keen on Bethesda’s new video game, Starfield, which I’d been playing for free via Xbox’s Game Pass since its release a few months prior. I liked the game so much, in fact, that I was considering purchasing the game outright so that when it eventually left Game Pass, I’d still be able to play it. (It’s an “open world” game and one can literally put hundreds of hours into gameplay.)

So, in November, when I decided  to purchase the game, I saw that Bethesda had a Starfield “Constellation Edition” on offer. It was pricey (300 USD), but in addition to the game itself, it came with access to the first DLC expansion, some extra in-game cosmetics, a few physical game-related trinkets, and—most importantly—a watch made to match the Chronomark watch worn by the main character in the actual game. The watch, in addition to simply telling the time and date, had all sorts of features, analogs of the in-game functions the watch performed (weather readings, compass, fitness tracker, accelerometer), plus some real-world functions when paired with a smartphone app (music control, text notifications, etc.). And it all came in a big fancy-schmancy case. In short, it seemed a great birthday gift for me.

So I bought it.

That was November of 2023.

And thus began a long saga of failures and delays and frustrations that ended only this past week, mid-August 2024.

I will not torture you with all of the details, and will only sketch out the main points.

• The watch failed on Day 16 (in late November 2023), heating up when being charged to the point where it was too hot to wear, after which it died. This was two days after GameStop’s two-week return policy expired, which meant I had to seek satisfaction directly from Bethesda.
• Getting a response from Bethesda took months, but I eventually got a replacement watch in February of 2024. This watch began to fail immediately. It would go to “sleep,” and would not awaken without a soft reboot, which reset everything, including the time. Not great when you have to reset your watch a couple of times every day.
• Bethesda wouldn’t send another replacement until I sent them the non-functioning watch back, but after two months, I still had not received their proprietary “return kit” (i.e., two nesting bubble-pack envelopes to protect the broken watch . . . go figger), so in May 2024 I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. To be honest, I didn’t think the BBB would make a difference in the outcome, but hey, nothing ventured . . . as they say.
• Three weeks later (mid-June 2024) I received the return kit and another replacement watch. Sadly, this third watch began to fail also, resetting the date/time every 6–8 hours. Again, not optimal for a watch.
  • At this point, a replacement watch was no longer acceptable; I wanted a refund.
• With the BBB bird-dogging Bethesda (senior customer service management at Bethesda was now involved, asking at every turn if I accepted their response and would close the complaint—Spoiler Alert: No), and by 01 July 2024, the third broken watch was en route to Bethesda.
• After some more back-and-forth between myself and Bethesda, and more cage-rattling by the BBB, last week I received a refund (for my purchase price minus the cost of the game): about 240 USD.

Now, back to my standard rule.

Even at Washington State’s minimum wage, I had long ago spent more hours than my 240 USD refund would cover. I’d obviously broken my standard rule. Why? Why was this so important to me that I spent hours and hours trying for a remedy?

• Well, at first, it was because, hey, I wanted the watch. As geeky and cheap as it was, it wasn’t all bad, it did some cool things, and I would have liked having it.
• But then I got angry. Having to wait 4–6 weeks to get a response to a customer service complaint is just plain stupid, and it seemed to be more than incompetence; it seemed calculated. Calculated to wear me down, calculated to frustrate me, calculated to make me just give up and call it a loss. It seemed manipulative, and I do not like being manipulated.
  • Yes, I know that according to Hanlon’s Razor (i.e., “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”), incompetence is the more reasonable cause of Bethesda’s abysmal customer service, but it just didn’t feel that way.
• And finally, once I realized that my complaint to the Better Business Bureau was actually making a difference, and that Bethesda’s customer service management had sat up and was taking note, it mainly became about achieving something approaching a fair outcome (with a side-salad of poking Bethesda in the eye).

In the end, I have added a new arrow of earned wisdom to my quiver, to go along with others like “Never underestimate the power of a handwritten letter,” “Do not speak until you’re sure you want to be heard,” and “Small kindnesses are the currency of a lasting relationship,” to wit:

• Never dismiss the effectiveness of an ally before you’ve given them a chance to help.

Bethesda’s games are notoriously buggy, but some of them are absolutely beloved (e.g., Skyrim and Fallout). And while this whole episode has left me with a sour taste as regards Starfield, I have been enjoying the recently upgraded version of Fallout 4. I’m sure I’ll eventually get back to Starfield, especially since it has been patched and the DLC is imminent, but in this episode of breaking one of my standard rules, I have reinforced another:

Never get sucked into being a first-adopter.

k