How Caspian Got (His?) 360 Back
I realize it's entirely too premature to post a positive follow-up article announcing the "success" of my Xbox 360 repair. However, I did find a few interesting pieces of informative ammunition during my process with Microsoft's Support Team.
So to fill in the gaps: I posted my Ring of Death Rant. Our friends at Joystiq relayed my post and raked in 189 comments from other plagued Microsoft patrons. A few days later, I sent a polite plea to Arne at Microsoft's Marketing Unit who explained to me that it was their policy to help members of press have operable machines- warranty or no warranty. He also notified me that they've upped their standard warranty length from 90 days to 1 Year.
Complete story after the jump.
I was contacted subsequently by Leo from Xbox Repair Land. He sent along a postage paid box for me to ship via UPS to their factory in Texas. The original machine I purchased had a Manufacture Date of 2/25/06. It took about a week and a half for my unit to make the round trip. Or did it? On Friday, when I got the parcel back, I opened it up and the Serial Number and Manufacture Date (now 6/9/06) were different. I fired the thing up and my (presumably) refurbished 360 seems to be working gloriously. Microsoft's Customer Service was pretty smooth and chipper; No complaints there. I'm just wondering though- if they were going to send me a different unit, why didn't they just track my outgoing package, make sure I sent it out, and deliver me a fixed one quicker? Oh well. I was only shivered in the fetal position from withdrawals a few times in the 3 weeks I was without my console.
The juiciest bit to make sure you take advantage of if you're an Xbox Consumer with hardware troubles: Leo told me of a new Microsoft Policy (instituted 4/2/2006) to give an extra year's warranty free of charge on units that have been sent in for paid repairs. Be sure to mention this if you send in your problematic machine.
I'll post again in intervals to see if the refurb will hold up. In other news: My brother's broken 360, that I mentioned in the first article, miraculously came back to life after he took off the case and tinkered with it for a couple hours. Check the forums here for a picture of his Frankenstein-like, caseless box. He's planning on modifying it with a customized transparent green cover soon to celebrate the exiled red rings.
Update: Check out The Game Rag's take on the situation. Hilarious.
What say you?!