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As of last night I have officially had nine Xbox 360s die on me, which means when I get this replacement, I will be on my eleventh Xbox 360 (counting debugs and retails).

Over the weekend we had a little neighborhood party at my house and in the midst of it I decided to show off Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360. We played it for a bit, maybe 30 minutes and then I went to turn the 360 off and turn the music back on. When I pressed the power button on my Xbox 360 Elite it started making sounds like a blender. This lasted about 10 seconds and then it powered off. I found the news a little bizarre, but didn't think anything of it until Sunday night.

Last night I found a bit of free time on my hands and went down to the 360 to finally check out Vampire Rain (which should totally be better than Chocolate Rain). I turned the 360 on and popped the disc in. The console made a whirring noise for a second and that was it, just sat their displaying the Xbox 360 menu. I hopped over to the game blade and down to the place where it should say "Play Game". No dice. It just had an option to open the DVD tray. I tried a different game. I tried a DVD, No luck.

Then I hopped onto the Xbox 360 forums and discovered I had just become a member of the broken DVD player club. So that's eight dead because of a Red Ring and one dead because of a bad DVD player. Microsoft really needs to get their shit together. As I pointed out to Peter Moore back when they announced the new warranty for the 360, warranty or no, customers are still going to be annoyed if their new or relatively new consoles keep dying. It's an inconvenience and certainly shakes confidence.

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