Get ready for a TL;DR thread (first person to post it inevitably gets a plus), but it's quite a funny story anyway

Many of you may remember a thread I made a while back concerning my Steelseries Siberia headset breaking (not once but twice). Also, I have a 7G keyboard (which I love to pieces) but the keycaps can often crack after heavy use (not rage, but just hard tapping). They're made by Cherry or something and can be hard to get replacements.

Anyway, story starts about a year ago...

Take one. I e-mailed Steelseries support asking if they could send me replacement key caps for the 7G keyboard. Couple of e-mails were exchanged and eventually they said they would send me a set asap and to give them my address. Happy with this result, I gave them the address and waited for a reply. Couple weeks pass when I receive and e-mail saying "your keys have been sent". Que forwards a few months and no keys have been sent and I'm still stuck with the broken keys (which I'll tell you now can be a pain in the ass to use). Keys never arrived and I got sick of the keyboard so actually ended up stinking up a huff and sending it back to the people I bought it from (play.com). Having got a new keyboard, the keys followed suit (I dunno, maybe I rage afterall) so I ended up finding a small British company that were great enough to send me replacement key caps. There was nothing wrong with the keyboard itself, just the caps were quite prone to breaking (they have little x's to attached them to the switches which can crack). Anyway, problem solved!

Fast forward a few months and I need a new headset. I was going to go with the Sennheisers but just as I was about to buy them, Steelseries brought out the Siberia V2. Being a bit of a tech-head with music engineering, I checked out the stats and found them to be pretty damn good for the money (almost the same as the Sennheisers at half the price). I took the plunge and bought them. Weeks pass and they're awesome. Sound great, feel pretty swanky. SUDDENLY (capitals for dramatic effect), the bass frequencies disappeared. Don't ask me how or why, but all the bass left the headset and I was left with a honky mid-range sound that felt like my ears had been hollowed out.

Take two. I e-mailed mainly to ask them what the problem was as I could still return the product to Amazon but was interested if this was a fault that was frequent and if it would happen again. No reply but I decided to take the replacement since the headset was great when it worked (and hell, if it does happen again, at least it'll be quick and I can send my hair-ridden old one for a swanky new one :D)

Second headset arrives. Works fine for months. All good so far... Rather irritatingly, whilst in a mix, the microphone gave up, crackled, gave out a last eep of life and then died. If I flicked it occasionally it would work, but it was done for. Being passed the return period I had do the inevitable and contact Steelseries.

Take three. I e-mailed Steelseries again expecting nothing in return. Surprised I received an e-mail stating that they were sorry that the product was not working and they would be happy to send a replacement (where have I heard that before ey!) Going along with it (and fully expecting to be trolled) I sent an e-mail back asking if they had any info on the keys for the 7G, along with my address for the replacement Siberia headset. I also mentioned I had a Xai mouse and was wondering if there was an accel firmware fix (I knew the answer would probably be no, but hey, nice to throw it in there to show I'm a loyal customarrrr huh?) I received an e-mail back saying that they would send a replacement for both items and they would be shipping by the end of the week (derp de derp). Cue forwards a week or so and I sent a polite reminder e-mail asking if anything had been done about this. The response was that they had sent the replacements out with DHL and to expect a tracking number soon.

Eventually, another e-mail followed with a long number that was meant to be the tracking number. As you would, I went immediately to DHL to check the tracking on it. "We have no record of this package" was the message I found before me. In the words of Rapha - c'mon..

I phoned up DHL and probed around trying to find out if this package actually existed or if I was being trolled. Again, no records again and they told me to contact the seller again.

Take four. I e-mailed Steelseries again asking if they had actually sent the package or just headbutted their keyboard's num-pad to make up a tracking number (ok, I didn't actually say that, but that's what I was thinking). A few days pass over the weekend when I receive an e-mail to tell me "Oh right sorry, we're with Fedex now... not DHL!"

What a development! So I check up Fedex and I found that a package had actually been sent and was in Brighton's depot. Somewhat expecting a box with some dog turd in it due to trolling, I was somewhat hopeful that they actually had sent something.


Needless to say, I was somewhat surprised to find this when the package came this morning (shitty camera phone picture incoming):