Another One Bites The Dust
Well, my 360 died yet AGAIN.
About a month ago, my replacement Xbox 360 DVD drive quit reading. I borrowed a friend's 360 (yeah, that's a true friend!) until mine was repaired.
The repair process took a month. It took 2 weeks to get approval for warranty repair, even though the unit was less than 90 days old. It took two more weeks to get the new replacement (used/refurb/whatever), which just arrived.
I just plugged this replacement unit in, and got a disc read error.
Microsoft, thanks for sending me a console that someone already returned to you because it was defective.
So, if you count the 360 I bought from Circuit City while my first console was being replaced (which froze and had the ring of death), this is my fourth crap Xbox 360 console.
Yeah, these are normal failure rates, uh-huh.
Comments (8)
I’ve had a similar experience as you. I’ve gone through 2 360’s and when the last one died M$ was going to charge me $200 for the repair (out of warranty). Here is what I did..
I bought a replacement 360 from bestbuy but really wasn’t happy with having a $400 paperweight sitting around. So I did some research and found a guy in my area that ‘claims’ he did 360 repairs. I called him and talked to him for a while and he said that the issue with the 360 is as follows:
The 360 manufacturing companies (contracted through M$) skimped out and used a led based solder. Apparently it’s cheaper, but also more suseptable to becoming brittle when heating up and cooling down fast. Actually, he said if you never shut your 360 down you would be better off. To fix the issue he retouches the solder points, applies thermal paste to the CPU and GPU. Since he sounded like he knew what he was talking about, offered a 90 day warranty on his work and I had nothing to lose I took my 360 to him. Went back 2 hours later, he demo’d that the 360 was working. I gave him $30, took it home, plugged it in and now 2 months later it is still running. It actually runs better than any of the 360’s I’ve owned as it has only locked up on my once since I got it back (and I’ve used it for 7 or 8+ hours straight). In the meantime I took the other one I bought back to bestbuy for a full refund.
So in the end it cost $30 and 2 hours lost playing time vs. $200 and over a month lost playing if I were to send back to M$.
Ouch, that sucks. What was the manufacture date on your boxes? Are the new ones still using the crappy solder or did they jump on that as soon as they found out? I bought mine last October and will be really pissed if it bricks on me. But I live only 30 minutes from Redmond so I will catapult it on fire at their campus if it dies on me!
My first box was a launch box, mfg’d in Oct. It crapped out due to the GPU overheating.
When I sent it back, I bought a core from Circuit City, which I was going to resell on ebay after I got one back from MS. It had the red ring a couple times and froze up a couple times. I didn’t feel good about selling it to someone so I returned it to CC. I think it was an Aug box.
The one I got back from MS was made in June, and the DVD drive quit reading in less than 90 days.
The replacement I just got that was bad, I forget the mfg date. It had disc read errors, ran hot, was very loud and the drive door was slow to open.
I just got one that was made in Oct of 05, a launch era date, and seems to be good so far.
My bud let me borrow his console while this last one was out for 2 months. His is a launch console and he has left it on for days, maybe weeks at a time. Not a single problem.
I think some are good boxes, and many are just plain duds.
So after not playing the Xbox 360 all weekend, we get back in town and fire it up. Mind you, it’s a launch console that has had only the occassional freeze up. Nothing to write home about. We boot up Halo3 Beta and she comes to a halt. Freezes completely and a bottom right red light starts flashing. No error code. Okay, we restart – and can’t even get past the launch screen without it freezing and blinking the same bottom right red light. I call Customer Support and they have me plug the Xbox powersource straight into a wall jack (I guess it has a built in power surge? That’s what CSR said) – no luck. Okay, disconnect the hard drive and boot it up – still freezing, same right light and no error message. They tell me it’s a hardware failure but can’t explain nothing else. They tell me because it’s out of warranty (December 2006) that it’ll be $139 to have them repair it (that includes shipping and 1 month of Xbox Live). I ask to speak to a supervisor – obviously not happy about this – but I refrain from yelling and screaming at them – after all they didn’t create the problem – they just need to help solve it. Well I get “Sean” – the CSR manager. What a total jerk this guy is. No sympathy, no explanation, nothing. He just says basically, “too bad, so sad”. Now I’m at the point of “what can I do?” which is basically eat the cost, buy a new one or lose out on the $1000s of dollars I’ve poured into games and accessories. So he hangs up on me after I keep telling them they should at least split half the cost.
Well, knowing darn well that I have to eat this $140 price I call back, get a different CSR girl, she offers me a paltry 25% discount, that one lousy month of Xbox Live and then puts me on hold for 10 minutes to tell me she can offer me Kameo or Project Gotham Racing 3. In total I get that for $104 plus they pay for shipping and a year warranty. Fair deal or not?
NO WAY! I’ve been a gamer since the Atari days and I’ve never, EVER had a hardware failure on ANY of my game consoles. It’s not like we play it a lot, it’s in a well ventilated area, lays on it’s side, has never been moved or touched since we bought it on launch (unlike what the CSR rep. kept INSISTING that the hardware failure was caused because of one of these issues).
Hindsight, I should have claimed foul on my Xbox 360 launch console in December just to get a new one. Instead, 5 months after the crap out (oh, they claim Xbox failure is rare – yeah, don’t read the forums or any of the gaming sites do you?) I have to pay $100 more bucks and miss out on the majority of the only reason I own an X360 – the Halo 3 beta.
Microsoft, I’m very disappointed in your treatment of a loyal customer. I would never buy a PS3 but perhaps I’ll just keep investing in my Wii. After all, 5 solid systems later and I know Nintendo won’t crash on me.
I will keep contacting Microsoft customer service until I am satisfied that I have spent $100 of their time talking to me. It’s grassroots and really the only choice I have to reclaim my money. After all, the only choice you have left me is to pay the repair costs of a console you obviously do not stand behind. I plan on doing this June 1st. I proclaim is “CALL YOUR MICROSOFT CSR DAY”. It’s one little thing we can do to show our displeasure on how everything is being handled. I implore you to embrace June 1st as CALL YOUR MICROSOFT CSR DAY. Maybe the overwhelming calls will get their attention. Just tell them that what they are doing is releasing an inferior product and not supporting it.
Thank you,
theasp18
VideoGame911.com fixes everythng including the 3 red lights on 360’s. They claim it runs cooler after the repair/modification and it has been nonstop running for weeks now. They have very fast service and they fixed and returned mine in days. They also have 3 month warranty. Bottom line = no brainer if you have 3rl and don’t want to deal with constant problems.
I am getting pretty sick of my 360 dying. Of course it was after the warranty. I wonder if the ps3 has this many problems?
culdnt u just heat da gpu wit a heat gun???
ps3 is king it never breaks down ill never buy ms console ps3 fanboy for life