STRAnG3R

ralfhnader

weitek

Dliu22

oneasianthug

dolo54

ilango

Tisteldun

But with how terrible the wait times are to get your 360 back, I'm not sending it in.

dtrmp4

This is how long it took to get my xbox back, from the day it was called in to the day it came to my house.

Called up xbox tech support and told them I got RROD on 7/19/07

Received my xbox on 08/15/2007

so four days short of a month. How bad is it now?

Teekan

Papa Midnight

GOLD5

SpiceMan

tbone4690

Aex

just when you thought they were actually doing something right... and to make things worse, people are taking advantage of this in a not so good way?

Enigma_20XX

Actually, I'd be willing to bet this is a result of a lot of people that has their 360's conk out of them out of warranty, and upon extension of said warranty they decided it was finally time to get a new one.

PapaBear434

Because a lot of these people are liars and they obviously can't prove it. You will hear most of this kind of crap on the Webb where it can't be verified or questioned.

gwolf

gwolf

My 360 died Sunday evening, and when I called yesterday, I was informed that it would take four to six weeks for my system to be processed. While I am not particularly keen on missing out on Trusty Bell and Halo 3 at launch, at least I was able to finish Bioshock beforehand.

Sigh.

Sugoi

Wife : My Xbox treats me badly and does not respect me, he RROD on me six months ago and then last week he did it again.

Counsellor : Why don't you leave him, there are other options out there.

Wife : I just can't do it, out relationship is strong, I know he'll change.

2 months later...

Counsellor : You again...

Wife : My Xbox treats me badly and does not respect me, he RROD on me again.

Guys I want an Xbox 360, but until ALL of you become more vocal about it and get Microsoft to sort this shit out, I can only sit on the sidelines and laugh and refuse to put myself in the position to go through all the repair rubbish.
If you are not willing to help yourselves, no one can really help you.
The PS3 is looking like a must buy more and more.

sauvage

Maybe it's more of a make up gift (read: bribe)... as in: "please don't break up and leave me, I promise I'll treat you right. I'll keep you cold at night and buy you lots of little plastic discs to eat."

That sort of thing.

dv8godd

I can rest assured that they are doing everything they can to get my console back to me as soon as possible, apparently. That's what they tell me on the phone every time I ring up anyway.

Phew! That makes a five and a half week (and counting) wait feel somehow okay. Yay!

nicerobots

Bluespruce

That being said, I just sent my box back on Friday with a RRoD so I'm curious as to how long it will take.

brucifer

sauvage

Mii

They could have avoided this by making the upgraded heatsinks available as a self-install kit.

Now they're stuck manging a shitload of inventory and paying for labor to actually complete the repairs.

O-Z

YouReflectionBG

Dogswithguns

That's funny. Usually don't people buy flowers for things that *are* screwing them?

ConstantCupcake

jrleek

remanance

hahaha thats good shit. best buys replacement plan is better...you can sort of pull out the drive...you know...

Snukadaman_

I tried playing all day with a blanket on it, and it just got hot. I put a couple plastic bags around it and the blanket, and it just would over heat and shut down. I would turn it off, then turn it back on and it is fine.

Oh well, I will send it in anyway.

Justcrim

They said it'd be 10-15 business days. Here's hoping...

FrigidAir44

ThisCharmingMan

remanance

My previous experiences with the 360 are best left unmentioned. They mostly involve screaming at it and threatening to throw it out the window. I'm still playing games on one, but having to take it back to EB a few times has soured the experience somewhat.

splines

Snukadaman_

remanance

SAKY

LOL. That's exactly what Microsoft want you to do. They purposely make the wait time so long and unbearable that impatient people like you will just go out and dish out another $400 for a 2nd XBox.

valkyriex

Very quickly I received word that it was back in the mail ! I was stoked!

Got it yesterday and they replaced my unit with a whole new unit! It started up perfectly and I reach for my Bioshock disc. Oops, the disc tray won't open...

The disc tray is broken. They sent me a unit with a broken disc tray that won't open or close. And I can't put it back in the mail yet because the initial repair order isn't closed yet, despite the fact that I've already received the unit.

Frustrating frustrating frustrating

cheesepants

Trueneutral

I will just say, that you forget how freaking loud the damn thing is.

Wirbelwind

All the people I know personally who have bought a 360 had some sort of problem at one point or another and either sent it in for repairs or got a replacement at where they bought it before the warranty was extended. Microsoft is loosing all the advantages they had over the other systems and left it wide open for the Wii to steamroll them.

silentbobfan

I can't really blame MS entirely, though, when morons keep lining up and buying "backup" consoles to cover the four week span when the original's in the repair shop.

frygar

I'm not going to get it back before Halo :(

SquirrelPhister

Yeah, I mean frankly (and keep in mind I'm also a 360 owner, on my 3rd one) we've enabled this behavior by putting up with MS' shenanigans for far too long. We've let them sell us substandard servers, OSes, and Office suites for decades, and continued to pay for the crap even as we experience untold headaches as a result of their piss-poor engineering and focus on profit over quality. I'm not making this into a "Oh we should just all switch to Macs/Linux/etc, buy a PS3" kind of thing either, thats works for some but not all, and there are very practical reasons behind it.

Same goes for Adobe, EA, even Nintendo and Sony have put out crappy products and we've allowed them to get away with it by continuing to buy into it. Software and development IS hard and expensive, but there has to be a better way than this.

Still, as others have said, giving us free repairs and our lost month of XBL back is about all we can reasonably expect as a group. We might be able to take them on individually (like Mongoosekun said), but as a group we're getting all we're gonna get.

I do think its silly to buy another one, but thats because most of the major games I want/have for it are cross-platform. The only thing I'll miss if I eventually can't replace it for free after it dies is Halo3 at this point.

DaiMacculate

kfacobellman

siamgx

vocalyouth

Glasseater

maxwaver

chrisvioxxx

I kind of wondered that one myself. I keep getting more 360's because they are giving them out for free. But to have one die on you, and you go out to get an elite so you can play "X" game...

It just encourages Microsoft to not do anything. Why would they? Not only are their sales already strong, but they are actually getting people to double dip into their defective hardware.

Though, my first box screwed up out of warranty, so I had to pony up the $140 or whatever it was to get it fixed. Then, the new warranty came out, and I felt the deep sting of "Aww... Damn it..."

PapaBear434

PS: odd reading comments on PS3 but posting using PC while watching Haruhi Suzumiya

Bleentastic sees bandwagon and jumps

frygar

I just don't get the logic of owning "secondary" 360 as backup. Wouldn't that actually make 360 more expensive than PS3? 360-> $350x2 = 700 bucks. PS3 = 500 bucks.

Oh, right that famous "360 got games" argument. Spin around spin around like a flip flop....

HobbaHobba

Works well, but I don't remember my 1st 360 midly "stuttering" during FMV game sequences like this one does.

Paronomasiac

What I don't get is that if the hardware is borked, why are they refurbishing messed up hardware? Isn't it more expensive for MS to keep fixing the same consoles over and over, rather than replacing units with hardware that's not going to die?

My guess is the if you bought a 360 before they fixed the problems,(if they ever did)then it's going to fail within 3-5 years. Instead of a recall MS decided to stagger the blow by extending the warranty, so that the money is a trickle rather than a torrent.

While MS explained that a recall is reserved for problems that are a health risk,(bad power bricks,shooting sparks, random fires,herpes,lesions, etc) it's pretty screwed up the way they treat the users like children and fix their problems the way MS fixes aways does it; by throwing cash at it until it goes away.

Hopefully I'll get it back and it won't break again, but if it does and the PS3 price drops to the $400 range before MGS4, then I guess MS will lose me as a customer for good.

BTW: Bioshock beats the pants off of Metroid Prime 3, and don't try to tell me they're not similar games.

figurhead

@sadkermit:

Yes, if you read my post history I've mentioned a few times. I'm in awe of consumer stupidity. Even without the warranty they could get a full refund via small claims court ( no lawyers ). If a console I bought did this I'd likely be leading a class action suit or two. There are plenty of design and hardware defects to take to court.

@NateN:

You can file for more than motor vehicles, and some states cover any product over $50-$100. The zinger is the defect is never fixed for the product, which will whip people into a frenzy if you take it to court. In fact land sharks drool over such cases.

[www.ehow.com]

Mongoosekun

Rodimus

1. Rush low-quality consoles to market
2. Rumors of breakage surface (denial! denial!)
3. Slow realization this *is* a problem
4. Make reasonable repair policy, but screw up again by handing out "refurbs" as "fixed consoles"
5. Stories of multiple bad consoles (I'm on my 6th!)
6. Earn reputation as a P.O.S.
7. Supply ($1BN) 3-year warranty.

Now we have...

8. Upgrade Console with (HDMI/Falcon)
9. Customers take advantage of warranty to (hopefully) get "free upgrade"

FlapjacksAreTasty

It's not as if they haven't made a quality piece of hardware before in the past (see: Sidewinder gamepad, Optical Mouse, ORIGINAL XBOX...)

Xbox 360 - the shark-skin condom of the console world. Don't worry about the chafing, you'll eventually love them for it.

frygar

MS really shot itself in the foot here. They are fixing it and all, but you don't want the "bad reliability" reputation. The Falcon could be the most reliable piece of equipment ever and people would still think about it skeptically.

sand0789

gstaff

Also, the camera trick where you take a picture of the bottom of the console to see the heatsink really does work, if you can see the screws holding in the DVD drive then you don't have the heatsink.

NateN

kw4k

Dimipapa

Rodimus

Soriya

I sent in a console in July. I got it back in August, about 4 weeks turn around time and 2 weeks longer then I was initially told. I hook it up, pop on my hard drive, and I'm rip roaring ready to go. I go to open the DVD drive, and it DOESN'T OPEN. I've been sent back a broken console. Well, Microsoft must employ some reasonable folks, so I'll get an expedited repair, right?

No. You won't. I've talked to the my-xbox folks, I've talked to the xbox product specialist folks. I've even talked to their customer support folks via the BBB, and they've ALL turned me down. So my next step is to go for arbitration via the BBB, or I could sue them in small claims court, or I could just sit in the corner and fume. I'm ticked off enough that I'm probably not going to settle for #3.

I'd recommend to folks in the US that are truly ticked off about the way Microsoft is handling their repairs contact the FTC. (They have a form under Consumer Protection called File a Complaint). While it won't help you directly, the FTC will investigate once they get enough complaints. If you've had only 1 broken console I don't think that's worth making a complaint about, but if you've been jerked around like I have it's probably worth sending in a note. Hopefully it will improve the repairs process for everybody.

@sadkermit: From what I can tell there is no lemon law for consumer electronics. I've looked, but nothing jumped out at me. According to the warranty, Washington's laws are the ones that matter, and lemon laws are pretty much for cars.

@crecente: I'm green with envy! :-P.

NateN

Also, I sold my old pro console from launch to a friend in order to get an elite, and his still works great, which twists the knife.

Mini-Boss

trax

In related news, a recent scientific study showed a strong correlation between raindrops falling from the sky and people getting wet.

HeyApples

But that was before the new 3-year warranty was available and the service centers got swamped with returns. That's what this rumor is talking about.

Personally I took preventative measures on my 360. I was already outside the 1-year warranty (this was also before the extension) so I ripped the sucker open and modified the cooling shroud to pull air across the entire heatsink instead of just across one edge. I'm also ready to do the X-clamp replacement if I ever get the RROD, but so far I've been ok. *knocks on wood*

baberg

-

seanj652

NerdblurbSteve

discuc1

While my one experience may or may not be the norm, 2 weeks from out my door to back playing seems to be a good turn around time.

All and all I rate that as good service.

Stalkem

VaderTV

Brian Crecente

So, I waited a week for the return box, didn't come. I then called them back and was told they didn't have anything in their system that I had called in with a problem! Argghh! Waited another week for the return box (2 weeks total), then got the 3rd unit back about 3 weeks later. Total time to get one working system: about 8 weeks and all I got was PGR "zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"! Really bad customer service protocol (at least last year, don't know about now).

Anyway, I sold my 360 around May of this year and am waiting for the 45nm (hopefully the one with the 2 game bundle). I really want to play Bioshock, but I shall resist the temptation. Oh well, enjoying RE4 and FFXII on my PS2 until then!

kagai

Barbara

Try sending out anything else back to the manufacturer and see how long the turnaround time is. It's a pretty sure bet it won't be less than 2 weeks.

Katsu

robotica

Phenom88

btw, I know this could come across as flame-bait, but I just thought it was funny.

fulgore66

dv8godd

Lant

I had mine sent in a few weeks back when "rumor had it" that it was taking 6-8 weeks. I got it back in two.

KaneRobot

Lyme

Trap

phalanges

Rectangle

tannhauser

Kokuryukai

Friscodude

MrPants

Sadly when Halo2 finally came out my xbox had long since crapped out with a crudtacular DVD. So I missed out. Although some would argue I didn't.

Anyhow, with Halo 3 coming out I was preparing to be one of the masses and buy a new x360 and a copy of Halo 3... but with this quality control issue it's just REALLY making me wonder... is it worth it? Probably... for a few weeks. But then I'd have the buyers remorse.

LunchViking

KingCzar

I love it when people want your sources: the 'pics, or it didn't happen' crowd.

You should just take direction from political reporting and start attributing everything to an unnamed 'senior administration official.'

doubtful

KEELr

projectmayhem

=( they gave me a 3 to 4 week window for return.

ZenGaijin

3 weeks for the entire process. Not too shabby.

0ldb0y

It's way worse than "slowed to crawl", quality controls seems to have taken a hit as well. My original Xbox 360 (bought 12/28/05) started to have WAY too many disc read errors on clean, flawless, games in July. I'v got the 2 year extended warranty so I called in for a repair. Xbox Service sent me the white box and I sent to them for service on 7/31/07. I finally received a system back on Friday, 8/24/07.

I stoked to have my '360 back for Bioshock. But to my dismay upon opening the box, it wasn't my original console, this was a refurb that says it was originally made in April 2007. Oh well, right? Well upon hooking said refurbished unit I was immeadiately greeted with the dreaded 3 red lights "Ring of Death". I can't begin to tell you how angry I was.

So of course I had to call up 1-800-4-MY-XBOX and request service again. The reps were nice, but you can tell they had to go by their SOP (standard operating procedure) because they could only offer me compensation in the form of Kameo, PGR 4, or XBLA Unplugged. I felt slightly insulted being offered a $20 game for their huge error and I won't even be able to play the game with a '360! I asked them to ship me a new/refurb unit right then and they said they cannot do that. Man, I almost crushed my cell phone in my angry grip.

I wish there was a way to make a formal complaint against the Xbox Service department with Microsoft. The Service Manager said she logged my complaint, but I doubt that will do much good.

Now I plan to trade in the next system they send me, providing it work, towards a brand new premium. Part of me wishes I could just drop the '360 altogether because of this experience. But games like Halo 3, Mass Effect, and Ace Combat 6 compel me to stay with the '360.

Reluctant-Hero

prizm

demonwolf

The 360 gave me a new hope in consoles, and M$ shat on it because of their substandard product.

crappedcrusader

liquidcross

In my opinion, Microsoft has the following options:
A: Be cheap-asses that got themselves in this situation in the first place, pay UPS tons of cash to cart around broken consoles, have gamers not spend money on games (where they actually profit) because they never have a working console.

B: Replace the units with fresh ones that will not Red Ring or lock up (my issues I witnessed personally, respectively). Keep them in the houses of the people who shelled out the cash for them and keep them buying games. Profit.

If they keep choosing option A, I'll have to pawn my 360 gear off on some unsuspecting sucker.

crappedcrusader

Don't get me wrong, it is pissing us off and it shows poor quality in the manufacturing and even in the whole engineering process, but it's not like it would be a better idea to just put it in the garbage and sell the games as used, and then what? Buy a PS3 that has no games? Buy a PC that will be obsolete as far a new games are concerned in two years, not counting in the fact that I just enjoy playing on a console more than I do playing on PC?

The thing is, once you bought it, you're more or less at the mercy of Lady Luck and Microsoft's customer service.

However, Microsoft will have to work pretty hard to convince people to buy their next consoles in a few years because of the reputation they now have. But hey, people are still buying Fords and Volkswagens cars and both brands have more than their shares of unreliable products, so then again I might be wrong about that last bit and people WILL buy Msoft next product without any apprehension.

Personally, I know I'll probably wait before buying the next generation Xbox console.

WhiskeyJak

Warbuff6644

Gabexmosh

Travis Hudson

zany_ninja

Was pissed too that they sent me a refurb from June 06

Kyle81

FelixLighter

tehFluffz

The one I sent in was manufactured on May 31, 2006 and the one they sent back was manufactured on August 3, 2007. Included in the box was a letter apologizing for the long delay to fix my console / please accept this replacement console instead.

I was elated to have a less-than-two-week old 360 and, for the record, it did not have HDMI. The only two differences I notice are: 1. The fan runs at full speed for about two minutes after I shut off the console, and 2. The play and charge cable will not charge when the console is off (on my original 360, it would).

Jmarsh04

Good thing Persona 3 showed up from Amazon the day the 2nd box died, lessened the pain.

Mike Maximus

MJDeviant

This issue is going to really start digging a deep hole into their games business, I wonder when investors will finally say 'enough'?

sadkermit - soon to be banned for standing up to the ummm nazi.

AuraHACK

Infradead

They are not sending my original console back so I have WRITE A LETTER to the warranty dept and have them transfer my purchased warranty to my new (refurb) console.

SAKY

Dimipapa

Actually, no. Been a loyal Windows user since 3.X. Tried Macs, but there's not enough personal control for me.

But I have had some harsh things to say about Vista. Maybe they heard me?

PapaBear434

CopyPaste

FuNkYbOsS

MJDeviant

Link:
[www.xbox360fanboy.com]

Rectangle

mr_dimsum

AuraHACK

Granted mine hasn't RRoD (knock on wood) but the DVD drive has broke, but I took it upon myself to repair it (super glue). Release a new fan or something, and for our trouble make it an LED one that fades or does something shiny to distract us from how PO'd weve been.

CopyPaste

Amsterdaam

FelixLighter

WhiskeyJak

InsidiousTuna

Kokuryukai

Luckily I managed to complete Bioshock before it happened! But damn I hope I get it back before Halo launches

Tachikaze

(Please no flaming me, I'm typing this on one of my two macintoshes as I speak)

ConstantCupcake

InsidiousTuna

AuraHACK

pushstartnow13

That said, people seem to be getting theirs back faster than that and also getting new machines in a lot of cases.

Psychotext

ConstantCupcake

This is my fourth unit I'm waiting on.

First one red ringed.

Second one ate a groove into my Crackdown disk.

Third one overheated my graphics card, and made vertical artifacts appear all over any game I was playing.

I'm pretty much done with Microsoft consoles after I get this one back. I'll just keep it around to play Dead Rising. When it craps out, the multi-platform sequel will hopefully be out and I won't have to worry about it.

PapaBear434

right....

zerokill

HotLegs

slomo788

I'm crossing my fingers with my 360, I bought it when I lived in the states and now I'm back in Britain lord help me if it goes tits up...

Meldy

ConstantCupcake

You might want to invest in a secondary system if you haven't already, then. You'll be in gamer withdrawal by the time you get it back.

PapaBear434

FuNkYbOsS

lbregitzer

Then, #3 started to glitch out on me, and I did pitch the whole thing.

InsidiousTuna