I need to exercise. It’s more than just to lose a few pounds and to be able to mow my small yard without taking a nap afterward. If I don’t do something to improve my overall health, I probably won’t make it to the average life expectancy of 77. As I am now 74 and a half, this is a worry. To accomplish this, I have bought a treadmill, an elliptical, a bow flex, a weight bench, and an ab slider so that I could get 6 pack abs rather than the whole keg. I am on a fixed income, so the equipment was all used, but fully functional. As the kids have all left us, all of this stuff is in a spare bedroom along with a 32-inch TV to keep me entertained while I do my daily work out. Only trouble is I hate it. Daily became, 4 times a week, then 3, then 1, and now I only go in there to watch Castle reruns while I think about exercising. A good outcome for this lack of activity is not likely.
Then my son, who in more overweight than I had a heart attack at 50. He needed to do something fast. As a gamer he had a VR device, the Oculus Quest 2 and discovered “Supernatural”. Not the TV program, but an interactive exercise program where you break virtual balloons with virtual baseball bats while standing on the moon or the great wall of China and listening to music and the encouragement of coaches who look like MMA fighters, with the exception of the fat lady with pink hair. There is also a gay black guy for those who might go for that kind of shit. My son said finding that program was literally saving his life.
I was not sure that I wanted to exercise to the kind of music my head banger of a son likes, but he said: “Dad they have golden oldies”
“You mean like the Rolling Stones?”
“They have lots of Stone’s tunes.”
“Beach Boys?”
“Good Vibrations, and I Get Around.”
“The little old lady from Pasadena?”
“What?”
At which point I broke into song: “the little old lady from Pasadena, go granny, go granny, go granny go”
“Dad? Dad stop and don’t quit your day job!”
With my fears somewhat assuaged and after trying it out at his house, I thought why the hell not. So, 6 months ago I plunked down the $300, bought some other accessories for an additional $100, got a subscription to Supernatural ($18/month) and got to exercising. Guess what? It’s a blast! 30min goes by and you can’t believe it, except for the sweat and elevated heart rate. And by the way, the Beach Boys, “I get around”, kicked my but. I appreciated the overweight pink haired coach, and her back story was truly inspiring to us gravity challenged fatties. I even enjoy the gay black coach when I turn the volume down so the wife won’t question my sexual preferences. After 52 years of marriage somethings still need to remain secret.
About a month ago our Oculus Quest 2 began to have start up problems. It would turn on the turn off. Sometimes it would take 15 or 20 minutes to get it to work. I emailed the company and complained.You see they are too cheap to hire Punjabis to man their help lines. You know what I mean. “Hello, my name is Bob, and I am calling from your AT LAN DICK A”. (No shit I got that one once). They are also too cheap to man a chat line where you can text back and forth with someone with indecipherable syntax. They did get back to me in a day or so with things I could try, but nothing worked and even then, I had to U-Tube several sites to figure out what the hell they were telling me to do. After about a week of back and forth with 2 or 4 different people they finally agreed to send me a replacement but first they had to receive my defective headset then in 3 to 5 business days they would evaluate my head set and possibly send me a replacement which would likely be refurbished. Re WHAT??? Your product broke after 6 months into a year warranty and I am getting someone else’s broke ass head set that you might have fixed?? I didn’t bitch because I did not want to die prematurely for not exercising to Supernatural. I could live with it as long as it worked.
| I arrived yesterday. Guess what…It didn’t fucking work. The headset needs to pair with my phone, or my wife’s phone or with a blue tooth device. I would even accept if it paired with the gay black guy on Supernatual as long as I didn’t have to watch. So, back to the email crap with Meta. They had me down load another app on my phone and run a diagnostic which maybe someone with a degree in computer science could decipher even if he/she were from my AT LAN DICK A. It looked like Greek to me and I don’t have any idea what Greek looks like. Once again, I emailed back to them the results as best I could plus a multi digit code from the new app, plus the serial number of my headset which required me to partially dismantle the device and be able to read a letter and number code with the aid of magnifying glass and a flashlight. Thank the Lord I had just got my new trifocals, or I would have been fucked on that one. I sent all of this to Meta and this is what I got in reply: “Thank you so much for getting back to us. I hope you’re doing great! I deeply understand your sentiments towards this. I, myself had experienced something relevant as well and I completely know how it feels to be waiting for something that I deserved to have in much faster and convenient way. I would like to personally apologize for all the inconvenience and frustration that your interaction with Meta Store Support has caused and I would like to assure you that you have been heard and I am positive that your feedback (and other customers’) will be instrumental with process and system improvements that will lead to better customer experience. I have just reached out to them again today to follow-up on the case as a huge number of customers are experiencing this issue but they’re unable to provide a definite timeframe. I would like to assure you as well that I will monitor this daily and ask for follow up so that you can get back to your VR really soon. I know that this has been such a great inconvenience already but we’d like to ask for your patience while we are doing our best to have this sorted out as soon as possible. Your utmost understanding and extended patience is highly much appreciated. Till then, keep safe and stay kind! Sincerely yours, Marc” Then we got this one as well. |
| “Thank you for contacting Meta Store Support. I hope all is well with you and your family. I understand that you’re unable to pair your phone/controllers to your Meta Quest 2 headset. I really would like to appreciate all the time and effort you have put into explaining the situation and for performing some troubleshooting steps to possibly resolve the issue with the serial number and RouteThis code. No worries, I`m more than happy to sort this all through out for you. A number of valued customers have reached out to us with the same concern like yours after the Meta Account launch and they’re having issues pairing their headset to their phones and controllers. Our Engineering Team is aware of this and their currently working for a permanent fix. Don’t worry! I will keep this ticket open and continue to monitor the situation. Rest assured that once our Engineering Team informed us that the issue has been resolved, I will let you know right away. I don’t want to take you through the full replacement process if there’s a known ongoing issue regarding headset pairing. I do apologize for this delay and I fully understand the inconvenience it will cause you. Kindest regards,” Okay. Let me get this straight. I spent over $400 on this POS. You finally send me a replacement that does not work at all and you might get back to me once your engineers figure out a fix?????? Why are you still selling this product that does not work? Why didn’t you offer to give me my money back so I might be able to purchase another VR system that works? Mark Zuckerburg, YOU ZUCK! And finally Supernatural, could you please come out with you great program on a VR platform that actually works! I would really love to live past the life expectancy age. |