If you have read some of my previous posts within the past year, you may have noticed that I am a big fan of the music games, in particular Rock Band. I have always found Rock Band to be a personal favorite over the likes of Guitar Hero: World Tour. However, what they have in game quality, is not matched in peripherals.

The only thing that I have found to not like about the Rock Band games is the guitars. I can’t quite put my finger on the problem but they are just not the same as the classic Guitar Hero 3 ones. As for the drums, I love the drums, they are a brilliant piece of gaming kit. That is until they break, and then break again, and if you’re lucky, maybe once more.

My first problem came with the Rock Band drum pedal, which is not an uncommon problem. It’s so common that they have a special phone number for replacing them, and you don’t even have to have a proof of purchase, just hand over an address and you’ll have one in a matter of days. However, once I got onto my third pedal, I decided to repair my previous broken ones by metal plating them. This has worked rather well and I haven’t had a problem ever since, that’s one problem fixed.

Same problem that I had with my pedals

However, this now leads me onto my most recent problem which has taken, and is still taking, a very long, long, long time to resolve. The problem I have is with the pads. I noticed back in June this year that the yellow and blue pads would sometimes not register hits, with the problem becoming slightly worse as the month progressed, although songs were still playable but no high scores could be achieved.

So with this problem becoming more of an annoyance, I tried to contact the publishers of the game EA, just like I had done with the pedal. First I found their online site, which is brilliant and once you have filled out the details, it says they will mail you one, until you find out that it’s actually the United States site. Unfortunately, this service isn’t the same in the UK and they simply tell you to contact the retailer that you purchased the kit from. So I thought, fair enough, but then my next problem kicks in, the shop I bought my kit from was Zavvi, which at the time had shut down and was not returning products, fat lot of luck I would have with them.

So in a desperate attempt to try and get replacement drum pads, I called the number for the replacement pedals. Surprisingly, these people were quite helpful, they said that they would contact a distributer of the game and get them to send me a new set of drum pads, that was in the middle of June, which I should say WAS when my warrenty was valid. However, weeks passed and I heard nothing, so another call to the pedal people was my next step.

They were very understanding about my problem and how at that stage my warranty was now expired and that it wouldn’t matter, and what they were going to do is pass it higher up the chain of command and get a manager of some sort to help me. That sounded great, might get a result back faster. But once again, weeks passed and I still heard nothing. This could go on for a very, very long time and involving a large number of 20 minute long phone calls. In the end I am still no closer to getting my new set of drum pads. Every time I call them, they simply say that they will be making the problem more serious, but it will take time.

Could these be my only alternative?

Now I’m an understanding person, they obviously have alot of games to manage as they are a big game publisher, but really, it’s been almost 3 months since I first called. Within the past few weeks, the problem has actually got worse and now the yellow pad only registers every other hit, making playing on expert basically impossible.

This now means that for the past 2-3 weeks I have been unable to play Rock Band drums, which is a right pain, and although I wouldn’t really want to, considering a brand new kit is coming out with Band Hero, I have considered buying a Guitar Hero: World Tour kit simply because with the amount of problems that I’ve had with the Rock Band kit, I really can’t face having all those problems again if I just buy a new Rock Band one.

EA, although you may be one of the biggest game publishers in the world, I’m not impressed by your customer service!

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