Hold on, before you read ahead, a word of warning: this is isn't a story of consumer frustration and woe -- at least not to this point. People often run up against walls when things go wrong with their electronics. We've all heard the stories about Sony and Microsoft. This one, though, is a happy tale -- at least as happy as it could be, given what's happened to my PSP.

Somewhere around two weeks ago, my PSP experienced some kind of shortage. I guess. It still works, more or less, but there are some problems. Push the screen brightness key to get the screen to go dark, for instance, and the screen won't come on again without a reboot. The select button simply doesn't work. And when you hit the home key to bring yourself out of a game, everything locks up. Ohh, and the browser won't load. Apart from that, though, the thing works fine. I've been playing thorugh Final Fantasy: Crisis Core; I've been using the RSS aggregator to download podcasts; I've even watched a UMD movie on the thing and hooked it up to the TV to do so. The only real frustration I've had is that after playing about an hour of Patapon, when I tried to save my progress, I couldn't. You have to hit the select key to bring up the save screen in that game. (In case you're curious, select isn't used in FF:CC.)

Clearly, this PSP needs some help. I searched around online, but found no threads describing a similar problem. I checked the knowledge-base at playstation.com. Again, no dice. Then I started looking for my receipt. I bought the PSP in Septemeber or October, so the one-year warranty was still in effect. Here's the rub: you have to have your receipt as proof of purchase, that or a credit card statement that itemizes the PSP, if you're going to get any service. I had neither. I wasn't even sure what month I bought the thing in.

I buy and trade just about every game I do at the same Gamestop; I have for years. Given the purchase wasn't too far in the distant past, I decided it was worth a try to see if this local GS, the one I spend all my gaming shekels at, could track down a copy of the receipt. Remember, though: I wasn't sure when I purchased the thing. I was fairly certain it was early Septemeber, but it could have been October. I imagined this was the point I'd meet with deep frustration, against a disgruntled, unhappy and under-paid GS employee who was about as ready to help me as he was sell an eight-year-old a copy of God of War. How's this for remarkable: the guy I spoke with, he searched sat down and searched through ever single receipt for October and September (manually, because there isn't a searchable database) and managed to find the right one. It took him an hour. And he did this with a smile on his face. I now have just a tiny bit more faith in humanity.

Shortly thereafter, I email Sony and submit a claim; they email back accepting the claim, and even send me a special box to mail the thing off in. Now I'm just playing a waiting game and they'll either fix the old PSP or simply replace it. (My bet is it get's replaced, but who knows. I put a small black dot inside the UMD case before I sent it off, just out of curiosity.)

So all-in-all, it's a good story, or at least a happy one. So far. Who knows, I may wind up with an email from Sony that they won't fix it, not without me giving them a credit card number first. But I doubt it. In the meantime, I just sit in wonder that the whole experience has been so pain-free. Maybe Gamestop isn't so evil afterall. Or maybe I just lucked out and ran into a particularly nice guy.

How about you? Any tales of consumerist woe? Or boon?