An Open Letter to BBC Complaints
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Article written by colossalblue in Blog, Hot, PS3 News, on Friday, September 18, 2009 at 11:00.
Those of you that saw the BBC One show “Watchdog” yesterday will have seen the report on the PlayStation 3’s “Yellow Light of Death” issues. I watched it twice and was inspired, for the first time in my life, to write a complaint letter to a media outlet. This is that letter, published here but also on it’s way this morning (via proper post, if the postal service isn’t on strike again) to the BBC complaints department in Glasgow. If you were annoyed by the report for any sensible reason then I strongly urge you to do the same. The Television Licence Fee which funds the BBC now costs £147.50 per year which isn’t cheap in these hard times. What follows is the full transcript of my complaint letter and is obviously my personal opinion rather than the official stance of TheSixthAxis.
To Whom It May Concern,
I wish to address the most recent episode of the BBC’s consumer affairs programme Watchdog (original broadcast date of 17 Sept 2009). In the episode there was a report concerning the Sony PlayStation 3 and the recent issues which have been widely reported by consumers concerning the “Yellow Light of Death” (YLoD).
I work as a blogging Editor within the gaming industry for a website which prides itself on accuracy and fairness. We report on the issues affecting gamers in the UK and Europe and have seen numerous reports of the so called YLoD. I believe that the problem is becoming widespread (chiefly, I believe, among launch consoles) and serious enough to warrant further investigation.
The news that Watchdog would be featuring such an investigation was welcome and I looked forward to the broadcast. I even read the published six-page letter that Sony Computer Entertainment UK (SCEUK) sent to the program to register their dissatisfaction at the way Watchdog had been handling the issue. This was, I believed, a big issue and it would be interesting to see how the BBC (a source I have always had the utmost respect for) would deal with it. Finally, I thought, a unifying voice that will be loud enough to demand action, or at least dialogue, from Sony.
So it was with a rapidly growing sense of disappointment that I watched the report. I am not a current affairs editor or producer with the BBC and I’m sure that our collective license fees pay far more experienced people to make these decisions so I am willing to admit that I may be wrong with my next sentiment. It’s just that I think starting a report by stating that the comedian you have hired may be biased as he works for the main competitor of the product might taint your report’s attempt to appear unbiased. Surely it would have been more appropriate to hire a reporter who might have had, at the very least, the appearance of an unbiased viewpoint?
In the interests of expediency I would like to avoid a detailed breakdown of all the errors in your report (although, if required, I will provide those at a later date) and instead discuss the generalities of the way you failed the consumers you proclaim to champion.
Firstly, you didn’t actually address what the problem was. There was no indication of why the problem occurred, no discussion of which models it was being reported for and no information regarding possible preventative measures. These are all things which would be invaluable to the consumers.
Secondly, you failed to mention that your “free” fix wasn’t actually free. Even if those engineers carried out your kerbside repairs without invoicing the BBC (which I sincerely doubt) they do not carry the repairs out for free to the general public. Most of those independent engineers will charge almost as much as Sony for repairs and the Sony repair comes with a short (but nevertheless useful) warranty period. This warranty period would be especially useful since, as you briefly mentioned in the report, the kerbside repairs carried out by Watchdog had a shocking failure rate themselves.
I’m sure your consumer group are glad they didn’t pay for the fleeting repairs and perhaps a little annoyed that the integrity of their system has been compromised by a third party meaning that any future (and once again necessary) repairs carried out by Sony will, most likely, now be un-guaranteed and more expensive.
So, to conclude, you screened a report with very little factual information, partially fronted by a comedian/presenter with a proclaimed (and seemingly jovially celebrated) bias against the product. You spent (I presume but would love to be corrected) licence-payer’s money on badly carried out repairs to assist in your almost comedic take on a problem which I believe deserved more respect. You then skimmed over a six-page letter from SCEUK, summarising their lengthy (and apparently warranted) misgivings about the way you were handling the issue, in a few smirking sentences.
It seems to me that the only responsible and valuable thing to come out of the report was the brief request for more people to come forward if they experience the problem. Perhaps if you had made this request before recording the laughable report you would have had a weight of evidence to confront Sony with instead of a comedy stunt outside their offices. Perhaps if you had hired an extra researcher or two to investigate the issues instead of a presenter with an admitted bias to mock it you would have been able to get someone from Sony on the show to answer the complaints of the consumers.
I feel that you have failed at every turn with this issue and the way our licence fees were used to fund it. I wish to register my immense dissatisfaction with the team involved and the BBC itself for broadcasting such a pathetic attempt at consumer affairs journalism.
As if the poorly conceived, badly executed and embarrassingly vague report wasn’t bad enough you then closed out the report with an awful comedy song. I’m a fan of gaming and a fan of Johnny Cash so my opinion may lose some objectivity here but it pains me to think that public money is paying for that am-dram drivel.
Sincerely,
Peter Chapman
Comments
Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.
bunimomike | 18/09/2009 13:03
Member
3366 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
A very well worded letter. So much so that I’d like to put my signature against it. Would it be possible to have it in the forum and we can “sign” against it somehow? Then follow your in-transit letter with a follow-up of X amount of signatures in agreeance?
nofi | 18/09/2009 13:13
Wants a custom tag.
3870 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
No, I think each individual complaint about the show should be exactly that, no point doing the whole ‘petition’ thing when we’re all perfectly capable of getting over our issues with the show.
colossalblue | 18/09/2009 13:48
Team TSA: Editor
1146 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
feel free to use portions of my text if you want but if everybody who has an issue with the report complains individually then it’s far more powerful than a petition.
bunimomike | 18/09/2009 16:15
Member
3366 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
Respected and noted.
Apnomis | 18/09/2009 13:09
Member
449 TSA Points | Member since: Sep 2009
Interesting take on a complaint – I like the “I agree with your premise but you are just incompetent” take on the situation!
I too was, for the first time, motivated to send a complaint, however mine was far less forgiving! There X-rays bit was a laughable attempt at pseudoscience that in the past Watchdog themselves used to take people to task over, and was just one of many instances where they misrepresented their findings to suit their own agenda with extreme bias. At no point was any mention of accepted industry failure rates or OOW policies for other goods – the “investigation” (and I use the term loosely) was apparently focused on Sony’s OOW policy but it is the same for 99% of consumer electronics products in the PS3’s price range and to not mention that the company they used charged almost the same was again a misrepresentation of the situation.
They failed to find any firm evidence that there is (or rather was) an inherent hardware fault with the ‘fats’ or if the failure rate was above what would be considered acceptable for a consumer electronics item, if anything I’m now more inclined to believe Sony when they say it’s just a generic error light – the continued association with the 360’s RROD issue was frankly borderline libellous!
All in all I think SCEUK put far more effort and research into their rubtle letter than the researches of Watchdog did into this item. The fact my licence fee is now going into creating YouTube style spoof music videos on what was once a serious consumer affairs show tells me all I need to know – the facelift given to this programme is even more disastrous than the facelift given to it’s presenter…
If anyone else would like to make a complaint, and stopped using the post to send letters years ago, you can also fill in a form on the BBC’s website (and even request an e-mailed response to your complaint) – https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/
cc_star | 18/09/2009 13:15
Team TSA: Writer
5866 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
That’s a +10 from me
TheSabreman | 18/09/2009 13:09
Member
266 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
I agree with the letter and the poor way Watchdog dealt with the issue.
I guess the only way to get longer guarantees is to buy from places that offer good customer service like John Lewis (They seem to be flexible outside of manufacturers guarantees and do a free 5 yrs for TV’s).
The BBC is well worth the license fee in my opinion generally the quality of the TV & Radio on offer is far better than the alternatives.
The previous series of Watchdog was much better but this series is awful and is full of minor celebs, it is not doing anything significant to help the consumer and after all that is the programs objective.
ER-nut | 18/09/2009 13:11
Member
238 TSA Points | Member since: Sep 2009
YAY i love this, the biggest TV compony in the world VS the biggest gaming compony in the world!
flatfour | 18/09/2009 13:25
Member
116 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
That’s a great letter Peter, good job and nice one – here’s hoping you receive a reply.
Doddsy | 18/09/2009 13:29
Totally Oscar Mike
625 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
The annoyance was that last week by asking had you bought a new PS3 when the problem is launch consoles. This could damage Slim sales :/
bewarned | 18/09/2009 13:35
Member
3 TSA Points | Member since: Sep 2009
I wrote to Watchdog about this myself, complete joke of report.
Any credibility Watchdog had is gone. My PS3 has never broke, my friends original PS3’s Blu-Ray drive broke, 15 months after he brought it and Sony replaced it for free. Would love to see Watchdogs research notes, bet its a side of A4 – W**kers!!! and Iain Lee is such a Jackass.
rick_x | 18/09/2009 13:35
Member
57 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
Watchdog has no journalistic integrity. Did anyone else see the nepotism when they ‘investigated’ the ‘pitfalls of renting out properties’ for Connie Huq (the BBC presenter)? It’d be nice if any of us licence fee payers could get this kind of special attention to sort out us out when we’re trying to make a fortune on all our property rentals!?! I’d much rather they did a proper investigation into Sony blocking legal imports of their products into the EU by bullying companies like play-asia and the now defunct lik-sang.
DeathByNumbers | 18/09/2009 13:37
Member
343 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
I’m not sure if your website would welcome this but I really want a thread somewhere (maybe TSA Forum) that contains information in the following manner;
Username: DeathByNumbers, Model: 60GB, Date Purchased: 12th November 2007, Fault Date: 17th August 2009, Previous repairs by Sony: 0.
Obviously, I want people who don’t have faulty systems to leave information too, just put N/A for the fault date. This way we would all be able to be a little more enlightened about the problem. One other forum I use has about 12 members with 60gb’s, about 9 of them have broken, now we could all be covered in that 0.5% failure rate but it’s unlikely. I bought a slim, and tried to fix my 60gb myself, the fix worked but it’s unstable so I’m not using it until it’s been professionally repaired (solder replaced with BGA rework station). Also, a console repairer in Ireland (not sure if I can post the address?) fixes about 20-30 60gb’s per week. He charged a friend of mine about £40 minus p&p and his is still working 2/3 months on.
cc_star | 18/09/2009 13:40
Team TSA: Writer
5866 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
Good points
dirtyhabit | 18/09/2009 13:41
Member
1152 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
Good shout, The forum is free to all, Why dont you just start a thread, People will pick up on it and reply , I’m sure.
“build it and they will come”
colossalblue | 18/09/2009 13:44
Team TSA: Editor
1146 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
Absolutely, start a thread in the forum and our moderators will try to ensure that the information is kept in the proper format. We can even let the BBC know about it so that they can use it for any future coverage.
We can do the research bit better than Watchdog too. Now, how do we go about a TSA licence fee?
Great idea.
DeathByNumbers | 18/09/2009 14:16
Member
343 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
OK, I just made the thread: http://www.thesixthaxis.com/forum/general-chat/ps3-failure-rate-05-or-not/
hopefully, people will use it and I will try and direct people towards it too.
Thanks, I really like TSA’s style!
Demibeard | 18/09/2009 21:18
Member
332 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2008
@DeathByNumbers
There’s quite a few posts on there, mine too.
mynameisblair | 18/09/2009 13:45
Member
3666 TSA Points | Member since: May 2009
Fantastic letter, read it right through.
Very valid points.
modwyer | 18/09/2009 13:48
Member
226 TSA Points | Member since: Jan 2009
CB, I agree completely. It annoys me that the BBC would produce such a poor report.
Hodgi92 | 18/09/2009 13:50
The Thumb
969 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
Good stuff Cb.
They should pay attention to a letter like that, but probably will not
jtickner1 | 18/09/2009 14:01
Member
64 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
My god. That letter is great.
Watching that video was painful, what a horrible report.
I find it funny how they make a huge deal about losing all their data on their HDD. Take it out, hook it up to PC, problem solved.
It’s almost like the BBC have never heard of the RRoD
Real Gambler | 18/09/2009 14:15
Member
7 TSA Points | Member since: Sep 2009
Not sure what’s the fuss about… Yes it’s a crappy show, but like some crappy web sites, it’s only looking for hits. Like most very bad web site, the more viewer, the better for them. Doesn’t matter what crap they say as long as they get viewer. And like crappy web sites, if the rating is going down, they simply produce another controversial “article” and they are happy.
So get over it everybody. It was a crappy show to start with. Very sorry for you if you just woke up. I’m amazed that Sony is even bothering to answer back.
GamerRiley | 18/09/2009 14:40
Member
274 TSA Points | Member since: Sep 2008
Great letter Cb, I hope you get some sort of reply from Watchdog or even the beeb.
One thing that pissed me off though was Anne Robinson, it was just a big joke to her. All the way through the piece she was just thinking ‘get a life you sad pathetic morons’. She couldn’t help but take the piss out of the three guys cuddling their PS3’s.