Review: Astro A40 (Customer Service)

Coming from a PC FPS background, I found myself lamenting the loss of headphones when I purchased CoD:Modern Warfare 2. Doing some research on headphones I could use with my Xbox, I came across the Turtle Beach x41 and the Astro A40. The consensus seemed to be that though the Turtle Beach x41 was more practical due to it being wireless, the Astro A40 had better overall sound. In the end I decided to go with the Astro A40 as I figured the wires were a small price to pay for better sound.

When I received the headphones, I was very impressed with not only the boxing, but with the heft of the headset and amp. This made me feel better about the $250 I had spent, as they didn’t feel like cheap plastic that would break at the slightest resistance. I sat in my living room, reading the directions, and was impressed with the large amount of options for installing the headphones. It seemed they had included connections and options to account for almost every setup imaginable. Unfortunately, my setup was not one of those, as my receiver (which is pretty new) does not have an optical out. I wracked my brain on how the setup could work in my environment, and finally collapsed in frustration. That’s when I called Chingtastical to come over and map out a plan for me, as I know he loves to do that sort of stuff. After much investigation, we finally determined that Microsoft sucks since they created a system where you cannot use the optical cable and hdmi cable unless you buy their $50 connector. I ran over to Best Buy, dropped a Christmas gift card on their overpriced cable, and returned home. After connecting the amp to the 360 using the TosLink cable (thank you monoprice.com), I plugged my headphones in and began to play some CoD. The difference between speakers and headphones was immediately noticeable, and I found myself setting ambushes for people that I could hear coming. On occasion though, I would notice the sound pop, or it would seem to go out for a second or two. After a few times, I looked at the amp, and noticed that the TosLink wasn’t firmly connected. The slightest movement would jar it loose, and I would lose sound. I pushed the cable in, but there was no noticeable click, and the second I took my hand off, it would just hang there limply. I tried using different cables, but they had the same effect. After scouring the Astro forums, I found one other person who had had a similar issue, but there was no real help provided there, so I turned to their customer support. I submitted a ticket on January 18th letting them know of the issue, and heard back the same day from one of their customer representatives, letting me know that it should click in, and I should check the little gate on the input to make sure it was working. They also asked to confirm my shipping address, which I confirmed for them while explaining that the door did not seem to latch, and seemed stuck . I then waited a week with no word from Astro, and replied to the same customer representative reiterating the issue with the door, and that I had not heard from him in a week. On January 28th, after still having not heard back, I submitted a new ticket through their website, letting them know of the issue, and that I had not heard back in over 10 days from the representative on my case. I received the following email:

As your issue is still unresolved from your previous case, we are going to close this case and continue dialog under the existing case.  For your reference, the quickest way to assist us in resolving your issue is to respond directly to the email you receive from your Customer Relations Representative. Be sure to leave the reference information in the subject line unmodified. If you respond to the email address with a modified or blank subject line, or by submitting a new support ticket, it may slow the response time from your representative as your response may not get correctly referenced by our support system.  We will update your existing case with this latest communication, and let your representative know that you are waiting to hear from them.

Basically they were telling me: 1. You should only reply to the email from the representative, not submit new tickets 2. You may have slowed down the response to your ticket now by resubmitting this issue I was a bit miffed at that, as I had replied to the guys email on 2 occasions, and had not heard squat back in 10 days, and it seemed like when I submitted a new ticket, it at least brought it to their attention. That same day I heard back from the original customer representative apologizing for the delay and stating that they just needed to confirm my shipping address (again!) so that we could work on replacing my amp. I replied with my shipping address once again, and have now gone another 4 days without a response. I really want to love these headphones, and I really want to start using them on the 360 (right now they are being used for my laptop instead), but Astro does not seem to want me to like their product. If you are like me and are unlucky with purchases, I cannot recommend the Astro A40 gaming headset because there is a chance you will have to go a month or more with a defective product and little to no support.

Check out the Astro A40 at Amazon.