My horrendous steam machine journey
[Mostly solved, edit at the bottom of the post]
So I am a simple gal: months ago when I got the email stating the steam machine waitilist opened and instantly joined the 512 no controller one, like 14 minutes after it opened. Then, a couple weeks ago to my surprise, the email saying I could finally buy it arrived and I paid Valve to send me this Steam Machine. So for now everything went as expected.
Then I quickly discovered the courier chosen by valve was GLS, and I screamed in pain because GLS is know in italy to be one of the worst ever. In my area they simply don’t deliver the parcels AT ALL. Exactly, they don’t ring the doorbell and they don’t hand you the package. How are they still in business? Only god knows.
However, the package didn’t arrive at home as expected so I went to the local warehouse and after complaining they told me they actually had 2 packages for me with the same id so I guess 2 SMs and they didn’t know which one was the correct one. So CEVA (the third party courier VALVE paid to handle EU deliveries) sent 2 erroneously, while exposing all my personal data in the recent data breach.
Then the GLS local warehouse attempted contacting CEVA to know how to handle the situation and they didn’t reply, so they decided to arbitrarily change the tracking to “delivered” while I didn’t have neither the money or the SM, that technically is a crime because the tracking is a legally valid document.
After insisting in solving the situation after almost one week of the SM being officially “delivered” to no one, they magically had a reply from CEVA and proceeded handling the “correct” package. I guess they just handled me one randomly and straight up stolen the other.
So, after like 2 weeks, 4 rides to the warehouse with 40° celsius (around 100F) and many many complaints I have this SM and I’ve been exhausted by the super horrendous handling by all the parties involved, including VALVE support that has been basically non existent, handwashing by saying “we’re not handling the shipping”.
So I decided to return the SM to valve and they straight up ignored all the complaints and difficulties and sent me the return message… WITH THE WRONG SERIAL! Because GLS handled me “some box” randomly and now I have the SM that could be marked as stolen! The famous “customer first” valve support has been again non existant and I’m sincerely exhausted and honestly mad at VALVE for this horrendous process of getting a freaking steam machine that in the end could have make my whole account banned because:
Valve. Sent. Me. A. Stolen. Steam. Machine.
Thank you Valve. Really thank you.
EDIT: they sent me a second message after letting them know the SN they have in their system is different from the SN of the SM in my possession. They wrote to "rest assured that we'll sort out the serial number discrepancy at the returns facility."
I'll update this post, but it looks like that the problem is finally solved.