I convinced my dad to buy my older brother an Xbox 360 earlier this year for his birthday.

Drew loves gaming, but wasn't decided on whether he wanted the Playstation 3, Wii or 360, so I decided for him. I was pretty sure I had made the right call after he received it and started playing the games. He had an Xbox and loved a lot of the titles on that system, so it seemed like a natural fit.

Then he called me last night to tell my his system, his three week old system that he had played exactly one game on had crapped out on him. He was getting the red ring of death. So I told him to call customer service.

"They'll handle everything, they're great. They'll even pay for shipping and Fed-Ex it for you. That's what they did for my systems (yes, plural) when they died."

He emailed back a little more than unhappy:

Brian Crecente

I was annoyed and disappointed when I saw my three-week old 360 wasn't working. I looked up the info about the blinking red circle on the Internet and found out that it was apparently toast. I called Microsoft and was relieved that I didn't have to wait very long to speak with "Vishay." What are the odds that Vishay is housed at Microsoft's campus in sunny California?

After going through the requisite questions Vishay stated (nearly enthusiastically) that my 360 needed to be repaired. He sounded as if he was doing me a favor when he said that all repairs and having the 360 shipped back to me was going to be covered by Microsoft.

When he said that I'd have to pay to ship it to Microsoft, annoyed went to pissed immediately.

I explained that there was absolutely no way that I was going to pay a penny for what was apparently a "shoddy product." Three weeks and it's already a paperweight? No sir.

I told Vishay that if he was unable to handle this situation that a supervisor would be required. After waiting nearly ten minutes Vishay returned to say that I was being transferred to a supervisor. Another five minutes of listening to some very static-filled on-hold music and Vishay came back to say that a supervisor had "approved" free shipment of the 360 to Microsoft.

Microsoft: if you're selling a product that goes belly-up in less than a month never suggest that I should pay anything to get said product fixed. You've blown the customer experience (and not in a good way). Instead of annoyed and disappointed I'm now pissed and unfortunately will stay so for a while. That sucks for me ... so thanks for that.

Unfortunately, these reports of shoddy costumer service on Microsoft's part seem on the rise lately. And what's with a console manufactured in August (I had Drew check) dying after a few weeks? I thought this was an issue with just the early batch of consoles. Come on Microsoft, don't fumble now. Brian Crecente

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