Freebie? More like refund for the time you spent offline.

I think everyone gets one of these if they send their 360 in for repair.

you had an elite break on you already?

yea, they've been doing this forever.

That's a pretty smart thing to do. It makes you feel better about your loss by giving you something that doesn't cost them anything.

Wow that is nice, now only if Miscrosoft admits the real reason the console fails so much!
.... still waiting on the new chip set before I get my 360...

I wonder if this is something they'll be doing for anyone or if this special treatment since Crecente's a journalist.

How long did the repair take?

Did you get celebrity treatment, or can "the little people" expect something like this?

I had a letter saying mine had the same freebie. But it wasn't actually in the box. Some packer probably swiped it.

Agreed with OObla, it's partially a refund for lost subscription time and providing evidence for rectangle, I received the 1 month of gold free as well.

M$ has been giving out free one-month gold subscription cards for repaired 360s' for going onto months now. Nothing new.

I got one of those for my second Red Ring O' Death back in like April or so. For the amount of bricks you've had Crecente, you'd think Steve Ballmer would show up to your door with Halo 3 and a bottle of 18 year McCallan. Nothing says "I'm sorry" like unreleased games and scotch. Nothing.

It's not even that big of a step considering your most likely going to be unable to use your Gold Account for a month while your Xbox is being repaired as it is.

I received my repaired Xbox yesterday, also with the Xbox Live Card for one month. The repair took about four weeks. Thankfully I had my friends Wii to entertain me.

@oobla: Exactly.

They should throw you a 2 or 3 month card at least. Maybe even some MS Points.

They gave me 1month LIVE as well back in April -- It's really not a freebie...more like a refund of the month it took to repair.

SK

You know what mine came back with after being away for nearly two months? 1 month of live and a noiser dvd player... yay!

Sorry but a little irked at that.

Enough apologies, (discover) and disclose what the problems are already... I mean it, I want a 360, but I want to be sure I'm getting a reliable device.

I'm on my 4th 360 now, I think this one is dying as it's freezing all over the place now. However, I just return mine at Costco and buy a new one.

Hopefully the new chipset comes soon. I'll be picking up one of those.

Like others have said, this isn't anything new. I got a subscription card with my 360 back in May, and the problem my system had wasn't even RROD related.

I appreciate they sent me the card, even though its pretty much making up for lost time. I think for all the flack its getting, their customer service is doing a fairly decent job for all the work they had/have to do.

Screw the free month, just make sure my 360 doesn't RR again. Still waiting for them to send it back from repairs.

They should include a free month of live with every console repaired these days from what I've seen. I was given a 1 year card for Christmas last year, so when I get one of these it's like "Well, at least I didn't get ripped off even more!"

@CRECENTE: did you get the "member of the media" 2-week turn around time?

I got one of these like a year ago when I sent in a 360 for repair.

If you don't wanna wait for you 360 to be shipped off, repaired, and sent back you can go to Costco and buy one of their 360 bundles.

Open it up, take out the new 360, and switch it with your broken one. (Be sure to keep your old hard drive) Box it back up and take it right back to the store and tell them it doesn't work. They will give you a refund instead of just exchanging it.

They don't scan the serial numbers on the systems they sell, so they have no way of knowing if it is the same one they sold you.

I did this when mine broke, which was a few weeks before they extended the warranty length, and it worked perfectly.

Who the hell cares about 1 month free of live. To me it seems cheep at best. So how many early adopters will there be for MS next console?

HOLY CRAP! THAT'S LIKE A $2 VALUE. Wow, MS is too good to us gamers. I hate playing on-line for free on EVERY OTHER PLATFORM.

My PS3 came with an eternity of free online play. And I didn't even have to break my system!

...But seriously folks, I think Microsoft's "free" month of Live falls far short of making up for the customer's difficulties with RRoD's over the last year and change. At least they could give you a year, which wouldn't be an immediate out of pocket expense for them, instead spread over a year's time. But I suppose that if they went too far to buy back your loyalty, it might be a more public admission of the severe problems that 360's are having, rather than the doublespeak reasons that they've been giving so far.

I'm still on my first 360, I bought it about 6 months after launch and the only thing that's happened so far was a lightning strike causing it to turn off, then again my computer turned off too and the lights flickered so I can't exactly blame the 360.

@oobla: No, repayment would be like a 3 month card. they produce those repairs with ever growing shittyness

Even though the new chipset isn't quite out yet I don't think it will fix much. Until we start seeing real results MS should stop trying to create new ways to make it up to the consumer and start paying more attention to how to fix the problem permanently. Sure the extended warranty and the free month are nice but they're just distractiond from the real problem.

This is the right thing.

@Eyerox: Mine was expedited because it was a loaner.

Yeah I got one of those from Sony after buying my console but It lasts a little more than a month though. :P
I other news, I'm a fucking jerk!

My launch-premium replacement came with the same card.

My XBox broke at the end of May and it took them 6 weeks to repair it, I got one of those cards as well after that. Too bad I lost over the 1 month worth of XBox Live Gold, so it didn't really make me feel much happier.

Can't believe you guys are satisfy with one month. That's peanuts for Microsoft. Should at least give you a year's worth in subscription, and maybe some points too.

@sobjw: You don't have to switch the consoles at all. The return policy at Costco is for one year. So if you buy something, you have a full year to return it. Costco does not do exchanges at all, they ALWAYS give you money back.

My first RROD didn't come with anything, but my recent dead 360 couple weeks ago came with a free 1 month live card as well.

Speaking of which, when do the new chipsets start coming? I remember an article about them being already in production, but I've searched around and can't find anything more on the subject.
I'm holding off to buy another 360 until those come out, so until then, no Bioshock for me.

@number8888: Yeah, I think after the whole RROD situation no amount of compensation will sate the hunger for revenge most of the 360 community has for Microsoft.

I'll do you one better- my repaired 360 didn't have the card with it like they said it would, so when I called them about it they gave me 2 free months to make up for the mistake.

Isn't this like a $4 value?

oh yeah, I should've mentioned that, ha ha.

actually, I heard, if you have to send it in multiple times they freebies get better.

I'm not sure of the guy was full of crap but on his 6th send back he got 6 months and PGR.

I agree with everyone else saying that 2 or 3 months free would be more appropriate. With how long some repairs are taking, a one-month card should be the expected minimum.

@Boxelder: "Every other platform" being PS3 and PC? Also, a free month of XBL is a $5 value, not $2. *shrug*

@Eighty-Ate:
I wasn't clear enough in my post: I was saying that you can do the switcheroo with your already dead 360. I bought mine from Software Ect at launch. When it died I went to Costco and bought another 360, switched my dead one with the new one, and returned the bundle back to Costco with the broken 360 in it. They gave me all my money back and now I have a brand new 360 that I only had to wait a few hours for instead of a few weeks.

They did this for me as well. I sent Kotaku the story days ago, must have got lost in the mail :P

@Toasticus: Actually, it's a $4.16 value but who's counting.

@sobjw:

That's just cruel man. You may not have to wait but what about the poor guy that gets your old model? Thanks for being an upstanding citizen jackass. Have a little courtsey for your fellow man.

yea, this came with my repaired 360 also. To me it's compensation for the month fo XBL service I paid for that went unused while the clunker was being fixed.

END OF MY REPIAR STORY.......(a must read)

Tuesday I went to the UPS store to pick my 360 up and I handed the guy my shippment ticket without saying a word to him. He comes back a short time later and said "I bet you're jonesing to play huh?". Yes, I replied and asked "So you know what this is?". "Oh yeah!" he replies. I asked if he had seen a lot of these to which re replied "oh yeah!". He then tells me to have fun and I reply "I will, there is a lot of good stuff to play in this" and he says he has heard that a lot also.

Fin

@sobjw: yeah, but when a 12-year-old opens up said bundle just to recieve the RROD, then what?

@Sparx88: you stoled my comment!

I received a similar letter with my third replacement 360 (my first two met their maker within the first two months). Microsoft, however, forgot to include the card.

When I called XBox Support over the issue, "Kevin" told me that they'd send my an envelop for me to ship my defective apology letter back to them. I then asked "Kevin" when I'd receive my apology letter back, to which he once again apologized for the inconvenience and said that while there are sometimes delays, that it would probably be sent back out within 10 business days.

When I got the letter back, it had the subscription card, but when I tried to activate the card, it didn't work.

(Ok some of that is made up)

@lotkrota: uh... the first three times i sent my console in, i had never received one of these. but when the fourth came back, i did receive one. "doing this forever"? i don't think so...

I'd perfer some Microsoft points but when I get my console back I look forward to trying everything I've missed.

I laid into them when they repaired mine, and I got a free game. Then again, my situation was anything but painless. It took me 5 days -- FIVE DAYS -- just to REPORT it was broken. Not get fixed ... to report it.

I almost went insane -- I wrote up about it here: [blog.myspace.com]

Terrible experience x-(

@Sparx88: @Kupaka: I guess you guys have no idea how retail works. They aren't going to put a system that was returned back out on the shelves. They are going to send it back to Microsoft.

I was curious, so I looked up the current Gold membership subscription MSRP:
[www.xbox.com]

Indeed, Amazon sells them for $7.99. If you were only planning to buy 1-year memberships, though, it does equate to about a $4 value.

@Kupaka:

sorry, lol

@sobjw:

yeah well I dont know how things work at costco, but when I worked at Wal-mart, as long as the package was still in excellent condition, it got put back on the shelf

I'm guessing the 1 month is for new XBox Live accounts only?

I got my console back a couple days ago, and it too came with a free month card, my opinion however is big whup.

@Sparx88:
So, if someone returned a product and said it wasn't working, it would get put back out for sale as long as the box still looked good? Did anyone test these items? Another reason not to shop at Wal-Mart.

@cello: I have an XNA Creators Club subscription too ($99 / year) but they wouldn't give me any compensation for that downtime. Pretty disappointing.

6 weeks after my RROD, I got the same letter pictured above stating "to get you back to playing quicker we sent you a replacement console" (different serial number). Quicker?

The console I got was 5 months older and scratched up compared to my original. I appreciate the warranty extension and a month of Live, but I still view it as the minimum Microsoft can do to assuage my troubles with the system.