Microsoft Done Right?

Well, I got another Xbox back...and it's curious. It's NOT a 3-year-old piece of shit this time. Actually, the manufacture date is 4-18-2008, meaning that i may have gotten a new xbox (or just someone's lemon). We'll see if this one lasts; I play to put it to the test.

And It's OFF!

Xbox #3 is out the door. Here's the interesting thing this time: Xbox has asked for the power cord and power unit to be shipped w/ the core unit. It seems that they may be replacing those as well. I've read online that people have long suspected the power brick being faulty...looks like that speculation may be true.

Strike of the 3RRoD again!

It's happened again. Tonight I was playing a little Mass Effect, and the game froze. I went to restart the console and I got the 3 red rings. Crap. Back to Microsoft you go.

This is my 3rd xbox in 9 months. Pathetic if you ask me. This xbox was made in 10-2005 (note: 2 months OLDER than the 1st piece of crap that a received). Again, I bought my original xbox in December 2006. I'm tired of xbox sending me this old, clearly flawed pieces of shit. It's not like I'm up every night playing for hours on end. I might play an hour or two a week...surely the console should be able to handle that?

Here's the best part: I'm now a Microsoft Xbox 360 frequent flier. Because this is my 3rd repair, they are using "expedited" shipping for me. Wow, thanks. How bout sending back an xbox elite...or is that for my 10th repair???

~1 more week

Well, my console was received, and now my 3rd console is on it's way back. It was shipped yesterday. My guess: I'll have it next Friday. Should be interesting to see the manufacture date of this console...

It's off

My 2nd Xbox360 Console is out of the door, into the UPS truck. Now it's waiting time until another refurbished unit arrives...I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this time I will receive a truly fixed one.

How to Lose Your Fan Base

Here's an excerpt from the Xbox.com Forums/Technical Issues:

"im currently an EXTREMELY angry xbox 360 owner, as i have just suffered my 3rd (yes 3rd!!!) RRod with a gap of no more than 2 weeks between repairs. Its dust free, ventilated and all that jazz, and ive hardly played on it, in fact my sessions have been no longer than a few hours, if that, since the most recent repair so my patience is running extremely thin...i think it might be a ps3 for me, over to the dark side, after being stuck firmly on microsofts side since 2001 with my xbox. Ive dispised some of my friends' ''sony this'', ''ps3 that'' rantings, but i want a next generation console thats not off in some repair centre somewhere when i want to play. IF i had of known this was going to happen when i excitedly paid full price for my premium xbox 360 package about a year ago, i would of thought twice about shelling out the 300 or so pounds...-loving Microsoft fan"

Man, that's just not acceptable. Clearly Microsoft needs to find someone else to fix their Xboxes because the company(ies) that is doing it now just can't get it right (assuming the above story is true). I tend to believe the guy because he's not alone. If you read around, it seems there are a lot of people out there with the same story!

Emails With Microsoft

I found Microsoft's service unacceptible, so I sent an email (through the Xbox.com website/support) letting them know that I was disappointed. This was a small portion of their response:

"The console has no defects and it is fully functional. The service center fully tests the console. The console you receive is a fully functional console in exchange for a problematic console."

Really? If the console I received was fully tested, then the testing needs to be fully tested. The console I received was not functional, as evidenced by it's complete failure in 9 days.

Now where's the phone number for that local news, consumer advocate??? This could be bad for 360 sales as X-mas approaches.