I can see Bill getting a gmail right about now.

hehe. I emailed Bill Gates when I was in 10th grade asking him for a job. I also emailed Rosie O'Donnell.

LOL! since when was J allard the extreme guy?

So someone high up did a good deed, and their reward is to be endlessly spammed by email.

Is it me or does this seem exactly like the Steve Ballmer news here: [kotaku.com]

So much for those e-mail addresses.

Here's the writeup from the Ballmer one for the lazy:

Sometimes (actually, all the time), it pays to be a savvy consumer. Example: Guy by the name of AlteredBeast, a reader over at Kotaku blood-brothers The Consumerist, was having Xbox 360 troubles. Like, he was on his sixth unit after things like the red rings of death and poorly-handled refurb units (they'd arrive having been broken in the mail). When he called MS support to complain, he was bumped all the way to the top of the customer service chain, at which point he was told there was nothing he could do. Oh, wait, there was something he could do. He could email Steve Ballmer. So he did, and two days later got a new, working 360. Let's hear it for the little guy!

interesting...!

That's not going to work now....

of course a company will give someone free product who is annoying enough to find out your e-mail/complain endlessly to web sites.

Linking his email worldwide will surely speed up his retirement.

@bloog: I was thinking along the same lines. I wonder how much longer before email is filtered and checked a little more closely now.

@ethic:
Ah, you are young. E-mail wasn't fashionable when I was in school until like the last two years of high school.

I know have a way to contact the richest person in the world. muh hahahahahahahahaah

I'm torn about Msoft and how they deal with customer issues. I had an RROD about four months ago and it took three weeks before I had a nice new console in my living room. That said, they were really nice about it all, paid for everything and apologized profusely.

However, the hardware failure rate is still unacceptable. Good thing we've got all those amazing games to play in the meantime.

If everyone starts doing it it'll lose its effectiveness <_<

@rateoforange:

"So someone high up did a good deed, and their reward is to be endlessly spammed by email."

good deed? you mean fixing a problem created by their own company is a good deed? I thought it was called being responsible.

Thats an awesome story.

My launch Xbox crapped out last month but I opened it :(
I tried the "X-Clamp fix" a couple days ago and it works fine now.

Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

hmm, may be the dude's 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th Xbox? Kotaku wants it done...Xtreme.

Yes, make them suffer! :D

Dear Mr. Gates,

My parents died leaving me with no money and my Xbox just red ringed. May I please have some of column A and a new of column B?

Thank you,
Little Johnny

its not his email anymore lol

@NeoAkira:

a customer service representative fixing the problem is called being responsible; the friggin billionaire boss actually reading your e-mail and responding to it instead of blowing you off is a good deed.

so if you go to [www.microsoft.com]

hoding the mouse over a pic gets you an address "http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/default.mspx" example for steve ballmer, so you take whatever name is after exec/ and /default add a @microsoft.com and you get that person's email address.

Wow that is stupid IS management for a company specializing in IT/IS products...

Im gonna look for these types of pages on other annoying companies in the future, I might just tell Hector from AMD that his lack of competence is running the company into the ground.

id have emailed jallard too. with the image of his reggae wig attached. whether my box was broken or not. if only i knew his email.

@bohlberg:

You have Carlos Slim's e-mail address...?

I have basically the same problem right now: I'm on my 4th box since my original purchase two years ago and now this one is having video problems. Initially it just showed strange discoloration but now it's gotten so bad that the image doesn't even show anymore. Support was no help as they simply told me that my warranty was up so I would have to pay for repair which sucks because I did nothing wrong to cause the problem.

Wonder if I should try shooting Bill an e-mail begging for a new 360?

He's not that smart. I thought of emailing Bill Gates. I just couldn't find his email. So now I emailed Bill Gates. I gave him my reference code.

It's been 3 months since my 360 broke. I got back a broken 360. On sending it back, some confusion happened and it was assumed by the idiot on the phone. That my power supply was the problem. So they sent back the same broken 360, but a brand new power supply. This time I sent it with a note that reads the following,

THIS SYSTEM IS BROKEN!!! PLEASE STOP SENDING IT!!! SEND ME A NEW WORKING 360!!!

Can they do something about my repair that's taken over a month now. It's been under repairs longer than I owned the thing.

You'd think that if someone wanted to email Bill Gates...billg at microsoft would be one of the first email addresses tried!

Or maybe it's cleverness is concealed in it's obviousness!

Umm... guys...

Chances are that these email addresses are carefully filtered by a legion of temps, and the communiques are forwarded as needed to different departments--escalation, CS, tech. Gates' real email address is probably well-hidden. I mean, it's all pretty standard OP in almost every large/major company.

It's not like these email addresses aren't public knowledge to begin with, and millions of folks probably already knew them--they're not hard to find.

@JustThisGuy: That said, skipping past normal CS procedure like this will generally be more effective than jumping through the hoops.

KIRBYMORPH, always ask for tracking numbers. When they send you the empty box, ask for the tracking number. When you send them the 360, ask for the tracking number and when they send ya back the supposed repaired 360, ask for the tracking number. They have to give it to you. Keep track of everything. It's what I've done and it helps to keep me from not going insane.

This isn't any different than those people who claim they e-mailed sjobs@apple.com and got an response back within 24 hours from Executive Customer Relations.

Funny that some of you guys think its actually his REAL e-mail address. If anyone is reading these e-mails, its definitely not Bill Gates. :)

billg? That's simple . . . a little TOO simple.

Posting those links was stupid, what the fuck? Now they'll get spammed to hell. Way to go.

While I highly doubt that's Bill's real work email address, or at least the one he uses to keep in touch with important people, there is truth here. As a corporate customer service pion I am always quite amazed at what people are able to get expedited because they found some VPs email address.

VP gets email and is annoyed he has to deal with actual customer type people, tells supervisor to do it. Dept. Supervisor it freaked because the VP told him to do something and he wants to kiss ass so he gets the manager to do it. Ditto for the Dept. Manager so he pulls some scrub customer service peon to dedicate to the issue. Peon takes care of issue because he doesn't want to get fired.

There are legitimate issues and such, but it's still a horribly abused system.

I'm still waiting for my "coffin" to arrive so I can ship it to them so I can then have the privilege of pretending they're going to repair my existing unit instead of just mailing me out a different refurbished unit.

It may not still be true, but for a very long time billg@microsoft.com was a legitimate email address for Bill Gates (there is even a "lake" on the M/S campus in Redmond nicknamed "lake billg").

HAHA...too funny. You really, really think that he was the one checking "billg"? or "billgates", "bill.gates", "bg", "billig", "MSBILLG" ad infinitum?

He does have people checking some of those for him, and he does have an internal e-mail, although he rarely needs it for himself. At least, that's what I have been told.

He is reported to get at least 4 million e-mails a day on those addresses. So do you really think he's reading all of those?

Maybe there isn't enough space for ventilation?? I myself had my 360 break twice on me, but at least one lasted 89 days, the other about 8 months, and my current is perfect so far..

Here's an example of not enough space, i think..
[kotaku.com]

Just pointing it out..

@Eliasoz:
What are you blabbering on about?

Still doesn't make up for how crap quality the xbox360 is. I've sent my unit back once already, but its on the fritz. No joke, the only way it works consistently is if I leave a blanket over it (my version of the wet towel trick). I have no idea how that makes any sense, but without the blanket it will crash after 5-10 minutes due to "Disc Read Error #Blah Blah Blah".

Recently I tried to contact 360 support in the UK, I spoke to a woman with such a heavy accent she and I both have trouble understanding each other. My mic won't turn off, it says I'm constantly broadcasting even if I turn the switch off, yet she couldn't grasp this and the only advice I got was "Try a different head set".. which is fantastic advice for someone who doesn't have any friends with a 360 or a second headset.

Jallard would send a new xbox with a zune and some mountain dew. He'd than take you snowboarding. Xtreme.

I never had a problem with their service. This has happened to me twice and I had no problems with getting them to take care of my 360. Who is having all these problems?

@Keegs79: Some are lucky, some are not, I myself was very lucky and received my new 360 within 13 days of me FIRST calling them.. Others, are met with much misfortune and have to run around a couple of miles to get the same thing done.. It seems the service is rather inconsistent..

yeaaaa how many people wanna guess that those email addresses wont be in service by tomorrow morning?

@BigBadBlender: LOL. Frickin funny but true. But if you think about it, most companies use the same system. Heck, it's been adapted to universities and such too! But you did bring up a good/funny point that they should've done more.
Well... it was a good story. Will keep this story for future reference though.

@KirbyMorph: If your 360's been in for repairs more than a month, but that's longer than how long you've actually had it, it would mean that it's under 30 days (at that time anyways), and depending on where you bought it, you could have brought it back to the store to get a new one, under the store's return policy.

..I'll repeat what an annoying assistant manager at my best buy says to