The Reason For This Blog

On September 24, 2007, my Xbox360 developed the dreaded three red-flashing lights. I searched the web, only to find that this is a common problem with the 360s. So, I called 1-800-4my-xbox. The customer support quickly diagnosed that my xbox needed a repair. I was relieved to discover that this problem is covered by a new, extended, 3 year warranty.

The good news: all costs were to be covered by xbox. They shipped a box with a pre-paid UPS shipping label (took >1 week for the box to arrive).

The bad news: the expected turn around time was 3-5 weeks. Ouch.

On October 19th, I got "my" xbox360 console back. I opened the shipping box, only to find that xbox had sent me a different, supposedly refurbished, xbox. Whoa, I didn't agree to this? (I guess I did, somewhere, in some fine print). But I didn't buy a used xbox360. I bought a new one, and I treated my console with care. I have no idea who's xbox I just received and how it was treated in the past. Is this xbox from some 10 year old, who kicked it when losing a game of Halo? Imagine dropping off your car for repair, only to return the next day and have the mechanic give you someone else's car! So, needless to say, I was skeptical. But, I plugged in the "fixed" xbox, and things weren't quite right:
-Games would suddenly freeze. This was independant of game type, or amount of time played. Sometimes it would freeze jsut after starting up, sometimes, it would freeze after 30 minutes of playing. I tried to diagnose the problem. Nothing seemed to work...until:

October 28, 2007
I turned on my xbox this morning, only to be greeted by the three red flashing lights, again. That's right, in about 1 week, my "fixed", replacement xbox broke again.

After searching the web and even the xbox forums, it appears I'm not alone. Microsoft has admitted that the 360 is flawed. But it appears their repair process is flawed as well. After a quick read of the xbox.com forums, you'll quickly see that people complain of having to ship their "refurbished" xboxes back multiple times. Keep in mind, each time you ship, you're without your ~$300 electronics entertainment for ~1 month! Therefore, 3 returns=1/4 of the year! If this were a TV, a DVD player, a computer, this would not be acceptable.

So, after this experience, I've realized that I'm probably in for a frustrating experience. How long will this last until xbox/microsoft can resolve this problem and give me an xbox that won't break? I've decided to document my experience, through this blog, for everyone to see. There will be no hyperbole here. Just the facts, as I experience them. So sit back, relax and enjoy the xbox.com/support experience as I go for the ride!