Nintendo Wii Repair Service Rocks

Um, wow. Seriously. Nintendo repair service rocks.

My Wii was acting up (Wiimotes would not stayed sync'd). So I went to the Nintendo service site, entered my info and the Wii serial number. They mailed me a pre-paid UPS label.

I took the Wii to the UPS Store on Friday afternoon and here it is Wednesday afternoon and the repaired Wii is in my hands again.

Walmart Wii Windup

My Wii saga has come to a close. Remember how I wondered what Walmart would do when 30 days passed and they could not fulfill the Wii bundle I ordered ? Well, they canceled the unshipped part of my order a few days before the 30 days deadline. Sweet!

So the upshot of the whole deal was -

Stuff I Kept

• Wii Console
• Trauma Center: Second Opinion
• Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
• Elebits

Returned to a local Walmart (for full credit less a bit for S&H)

• Ant Bully
• Open Season

Canceled Items

• Barnyard
• Far Cry Vengeance
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent

I am pretty happy about the whole deal. But Walmart could have been a lot clearer in their communication. Or just not bundled the damn thing in the first place.

finally got the Wii !

So after leaving Tennessee a week ago and not getting any updates on the tracking number, my Wii arrived in LA today and was delivered. Maybe I shoulda sprung for the next day air ?

I received two games (Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz and Trauma Center Second Opinion) the day before. The good news is the receipt that came with the games has no indication whatsoever they were sold in a bundle. So hopefully I will be able to return the crap games as they arrive at the local Walmart, as this was the plan all along.

Trauma Center sounds pretty good to me and a co-worker is giddy at the prospect of Monkey Ball, so I think I will be keeping these two.

I still haven't played anything yet, since my IT background forced me to connect it to the Internet and install updates straight-away. It is still doing that .....

Walmart/Wii update

OK, I am a little pissed.

The Wii console and two games shipped at some point in the night and I have tracking numbers. Sweet. Of course they are those weird UPS MI numbers, which don't tell you squat as far as I can tell.

So I called walmart.com and tried to cancel the other 6 crap games they made me buy. (Does anyone really want "Ant Bully" and "Open Season" for the Wii ?). The CSR told me I would not be able to cancel anything and I could only return the entire bundle to them. I tried to explain that two different CSR's told me a different story two days ago, but all this guy could do was mumble an apology.

So now I guess I get to wait until the crap games arrive and trek over to exchange them at a local Walmart. That better work or I will need to plot a way to get approximately $300 worth of revenge at Walmart.

Getting a Wii from walmart.com

After trying online since Saturday night, I just got a Wii order in at walmart.com. If you do a bit of research you will see only walmart has been having them available on online, and the just a few are available on a periodic schedule.

Here are the things I think you need to do to be successful getting one -

1. Use the ReloadEvery Firefox extension (or equivalent)
2. Setup your account billing info and shipping info with walmart. This way you only need to type in the 3 digit credit card ccv code to checkout.
   
3. When walmart will let you, put a Wii bundle into your cart. You will likely not be able to order this one and you will see the big red error message on the checkout page.
4. Now tell ReloadEvery to reload the checkout page every 10s or so. Put the browser window off to the side. Do work or something.
   
5. When you notice the page refresh without the big red error, turn off ReloadEvery.
6. Click through the order process. Shell out $736. Be happy.

Now that said, I got a delivery date of 11/29 to 12/01 with standard shipping.

Supposedly you can call walmart.com customer service and cancel just the games you don't want. Also you are supposed to be able to take the (unopened) games to a real walmart for exchange.

We shall see how this goes. I am still going to try and get one at a brick & mortar store on Black Friday.

midnight Wii

Any one else in LA going to try to get a Nintendo Wii at midnight on Saturday night ? Supposedly some Walmarts and the Torrance ToysRUs are going to sell them at midnight. My friend and I are going to try for the ToysRUs. Drop me a line if you want to coordinate efforts.

Of course everyone knows about the WiiSeeker mashup, right ?