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Piranha Gaming Piranha Gaming Stole XBOX 360 Motherboard Racine, Wisconsin
Hello, The owner of Piranha Gaming is running a fraudulent scam. I'll tell you everything I know. Please help shed light on this.
A couple of months ago my dvd drive on my xbox 360 broke. My mother bought it for me for christmas, and not knowing anything about xboxes, I took it to Piranha Gaming and paid about $64 to have it fixed. I was a little uneasy because he didn't give me a receipt, wrote my information on a napkin, and never put any stickers on my xbox to mark it as mine. When I got it back, it seemed to work fine.
Fast forward to a couple days ago. My xbox 360 started overheating. I bought a guide online (again because I don't know anything about xboxes) and decided to do a home repair. I opened the xbox only to discover to my horror, that several pieces were missing:
1. All 8 black screws holding the X Clamp to the plate covering
2. 2 (out of 3) screws securing the RDF module
3. Both X clamps
Worst of all I discovered:
1. A non-xbox sanctioned additional heat sink put on my motherboard
2. The repair I was going to do was already done but it was done poorly with not enough washers.
I was absolutely alarmed because the more I read, the more I realized that you don't have to touch the motherboard to change a dvd drive. The only time my Xbox 360 ever left my house was when I handed it to the owner of Piranha Gaming. I immediately assumed there must be some kind of mistake and called the owner.
I explained the situation and what was missing. I asked if he had switched the motherboard by mistake or given me someone else's. This was the conversation:
Owner: "Did you buy it new?"
Me: "Yes"
Owner: "How do you know?"
Me: "My mom bought it for my for christmas from Walmart"
Owner: "Well someone must have switched it at Walmart"
Me: "That doesn't make sense, someone broke into a walmart cabinet, got into the box, opened it and switched it out, I have all the plastic bags that everything came out of, that seems extremely unlikely"
Owner: "It happens all the time"
Me: "Is there a possibility you accidently handed me someone else's xbox when I went to pick it up"
Owner: "No I mark all the Xboxes"
Me: "Well mine wasn't marked when I picked it up, do you use a sticker or what do you use?"
Owner: "I don't have to answer your questions"
Me: "I'm just trying to seek clarification as to how this happend and now you are refusing to answer my questions?"
Owner: "I don't have to talk to you, I don't have to answer any of your questions, you are wasting my time!"
Me: "Can I talk to the owner?"
Owner: "I am the owner so this is the last person you are going to talk to, I'm not going to do anything for you, so I don't know what you are going to do."
After he hung up on me I checked the serial number of the Xbox console with the serial number under my account settings (when you turn the xbox on) and realized that they were in fact different. Proof that the motherboard in my xbox 360 had been switched out for a crappy motherboard that had previous repairs on it. I had thought that perhaps this was accidental but after the phone call I believed he did it on purpose. After reading reviews about his business I found that I wasn't the first person that this happend to.
On google reviews on 12/14/10 a man named Ben reported that when he recieved his PS3 back there were missing and broken parts inside. On 8/7/11 a man named George had his personal Xbox used for the Piranha Gaming's pay-to-play systems (the store used his xbox) and the only reason he found out is because he had online charges for things he never bought off his Xbox during the time it was in the shop being repaired.
Please help me. This owner is scamming people like me who don't know anything about gaming systems. In fact, I wouldn't have known that it happend except for me opening up the system, and how many people do that? He was incredibly rude on the phone and he thinks he can get away with stealing peoples' things. I paid for a very simple service and he stole my motherboard. Thank you for your time.