360 Red Ringed AGAIN!!

QuadShot · January 18, 2012, 12:32:53 PM

Quote from: Jobydrone on January 18, 2012, 12:22:54 PM
They're only offering cloud saves to Gold members...$50.00 a year if you pay all at once. They aren't "giving it away."

Wow, I didn't know that. Crap.

QuadShot · January 18, 2012, 12:34:32 PM

Quote from: Jobydrone on January 18, 2012, 12:27:59 PM
Quote from: Chris-El on January 18, 2012, 12:19:03 PM
I'm on my 4th X-Box, and after 3 "repairs", this one has been better than the others, no freezing or anything. I think I've had it for 2 years. It's crazy how this sort of hardware failure on a high ticket item (I bought mine in the1st wave for 400) is so common. I hope they are being more careful with the next version.
Agreed, it's totally ridiculous. Also that they charge $100 for out of warranty repairs even though this is a known hardware defect. In any case, I could have repaired it and instead chose to get a new one. My choice, not forced. Of course, my experience with their repair process back when my first Xbox failed, and having them send me three broken units under the guise of "refurbed models" soured me on their repair program. Now I see from my experience with my latest refurbished Xbox described above that they have not changed their policy of poor quality control and testing for their refurbished hardware. Pretty pathetic really, for such a rich company to have such low quality standards.

It is quite abTurd. When I sent my second one in for repairs, they did send me a free Gold membership...good for 24 hours! 24 HOURS!! Big spenders!! :)

Jobydrone · January 18, 2012, 01:02:37 PM

Quote from: QuadShot on January 18, 2012, 12:34:32 PM
It is quite abTurd. When I sent my second one in for repairs, they did send me a free Gold membership...good for 24 hours! 24 HOURS!! Big spenders!! :)

Lol @ AbTurd. That's what they make me feel like whenever I have to deal with Microsoft customer service...a Turd.

ChrisMC · January 18, 2012, 01:54:03 PM

I've had to pay a couple times, but by ranting I got it down to 50 bucks. I won't do it again, though. I'm sure MS knows that eventually people will buy the newer model system instead of going on this merry-go-round of crap. I'll buy a new one just so I don't have to deal with the customer service phone number ever again.

Jobydrone · January 18, 2012, 02:19:43 PM

I paid for the out of warranty repair when my first box red ringed, then later they offered a full reimbursement for everyone that did that due to the widespread epidemic proportions of the red ring issue. Of course when I called to arrange for my refund, they had no record of my ever having paid for a repair. Such BS! Never did get that money back.

X · January 21, 2012, 01:27:39 PM

Quote from: Jobydrone on January 18, 2012, 12:22:54 PM
They're only offering cloud saves to Gold members...$50.00 a year if you pay all at once. They aren't "giving it away."

Well, I pay 100.00 a year for 4 people to have accounts and that's pretty much a steal compared to other services that I pay for. Also, since it wasn't something you hard before, they are giving it away. I have done nothing new and it was given to me. Sure if you aren't paying for live, you wouldn't have it, but if you aren't paying for live, you really aren't using the internet features of the xbox anyway.

Again, I know some people have had issues with their xboxes, but I own 3 of them, about to be four. I had to replace a drive on one of them, but I have a 0% Red Ring failure. I also push my machines hard. several hours each day. At the same time, I make sure to clean my vents and other preventatives that I haven't had issues with them.

Joby, they only charge 100 bucks after the warranty expires. For Original 360s, there is a three year warranty on red ring failures. Three years is a pretty good warranty. Anything after that and it's a wear and tear failure more than it is a hardware defect.

ChrisMC · January 22, 2012, 01:36:26 PM

Every single one of my friends have gone through at least 2 X-Boxes. I had red ring twice and disc drive failure once. I think that since they don't actually fix your X-Box, but send you a different one, it should be a new warranty. Just my opinion.

QuadShot · January 22, 2012, 03:45:02 PM

Chris...totally agree.

Jobydrone · January 23, 2012, 07:39:25 AM

Quote from: X on January 21, 2012, 01:27:39 PM
Quote from: Jobydrone on January 18, 2012, 12:22:54 PM
They're only offering cloud saves to Gold members...$50.00 a year if you pay all at once. They aren't "giving it away."
Well, I pay 100.00 a year for 4 people to have accounts and that's pretty much a steal compared to other services that I pay for. Also, since it wasn't something you hard before, they are giving it away. I have done nothing new and it was given to me. Sure if you aren't paying for live, you wouldn't have it, but if you aren't paying for live, you really aren't using the internet features of the xbox anyway.

Again, I know some people have had issues with their xboxes, but I own 3 of them, about to be four. I had to replace a drive on one of them, but I have a 0% Red Ring failure. I also push my machines hard. several hours each day. At the same time, I make sure to clean my vents and other preventatives that I haven't had issues with them.

Joby, they only charge 100 bucks after the warranty expires. For Original 360s, there is a three year warranty on red ring failures. Three years is a pretty good warranty. Anything after that and it's a wear and tear failure more than it is a hardware defect.

The place where I get my lunch just started putting pickles on the plate if you buy a sandwich there. They never used to do that before. If a homeless guy goes in there and asks for free pickles he ain't getting them, I wouldn't say they are giving away pickles.

It's fine, you can call it as you see it, Chris. For me the features they keep adding to Xbox Live Gold don't make it worth it to me to pay for that service. I rarely play online multiplayer games, and the Netflix, new TV apps, You Tube, etc etc are all things I get included with my internet subscription and/or for free on the Playstation 3 with PS Network. There's no benefit for me to pay that money, and I never will. It would have been nice to not lose my saves if I had access to their cloud, but they are trying to entice people to subscribe and pay them more money with that feature so "oh well."

As for your other point, with a total of four Xboxes failing on me, the hours of time I've wasted on the phone with their customer "support" getting nowhere, a small fortune paid in repairs and replacements, and Microsoft's failure to honor agreements they have made publicly on reimbursing repair costs, there is nothing you can say to me that will convince me what a great job Microsoft is doing with support for their 360. I'm glad you have lucked out with the ones you bought, (or at least 75% of them) but that hasn't been my experience.

PaulECoyote · January 23, 2012, 08:12:05 AM

Quote from: Chris-El on January 22, 2012, 01:36:26 PM
Every single one of my friends have gone through at least 2 X-Boxes. I had red ring twice and disc drive failure once. I think that since they don't actually fix your X-Box, but send you a different one, it should be a new warranty. Just my opinion.

That's interesting, when I returned mine in the UK for repair out of warranty, I had to pay ~100 then they *did* extend the warranty on the one I got back for a year. After it failed out of warranty again I had a friend look at it and try and fix it, he failed so I did end up buying a slim when it failed out of warranty and that has been fine thus far. If a car catastrophically fails I may give it one chance, but a second time? I've had Playstation 2 and Sony receiver die on me too without much help from Sony and at expense, plus a shoulder button break on my DS soon after I purchased it - consumer electronics at the end of the day are fallible sadly. And stories are always anecdotal.

I've had mixed experience with the xbox support. I brought my region 2 xbox from the UK, phoned up and they sent me a US power supply for <$30, so I can play all my dvds here without having to buy a new one - they didn't have to do that. Way more legit than the ones you see on ebay. XBox Live works too on it, so was nice not to have to buy a US 360.

It is a terrible shame the transfer process failed for you - I've used it to migrate from 20 > 120 > slim with no data loss :( I've also been keeping saves on USB flash drives since they let me do that, and just kept games and content on the HDs.

If I were you Jobydrone I would also be pretty negative about MS. My advice is that if you get the wrong answer than phone and try again. If you manage to get through the main call center and talk instead to a tech guy then they are helpful.

The first time I called up for the US PSU I gave the frontline customer service person *too much* information and they didn't think that the power block would work or fry my 360. Second time I called I just said "I need a replacement psu" and they put me through to the tech guy in Redmond who I then explained my situation too and he sorted it out.

I don't know... in the UK I tended to go with companies with UK call centres. In the US I think I'm going to try and use companies with US call centres where I can.

X · January 23, 2012, 03:20:56 PM

Quote from: PaulECoyote on January 23, 2012, 08:12:05 AM
Quote from: Chris-El on January 22, 2012, 01:36:26 PM
Every single one of my friends have gone through at least 2 X-Boxes. I had red ring twice and disc drive failure once. I think that since they don't actually fix your X-Box, but send you a different one, it should be a new warranty. Just my opinion.
That's interesting, when I returned mine in the UK for repair out of warranty, I had to pay ~100 then they *did* extend the warranty on the one I got back for a year. After it failed out of warranty again I had a friend look at it and try and fix it, he failed so I did end up buying a slim when it failed out of warranty and that has been fine thus far. If a car catastrophically fails I may give it one chance, but a second time? I've had Playstation 2 and Sony receiver die on me too without much help from Sony and at expense, plus a shoulder button break on my DS soon after I purchased it - consumer electronics at the end of the day are fallible sadly. And stories are always anecdotal.

I've had mixed experience with the xbox support. I brought my region 2 xbox from the UK, phoned up and they sent me a US power supply for <$30, so I can play all my dvds here without having to buy a new one - they didn't have to do that. Way more legit than the ones you see on ebay. XBox Live works too on it, so was nice not to have to buy a US 360.

It is a terrible shame the transfer process failed for you - I've used it to migrate from 20 > 120 > slim with no data loss :( I've also been keeping saves on USB flash drives since they let me do that, and just kept games and content on the HDs.

If I were you Jobydrone I would also be pretty negative about MS. My advice is that if you get the wrong answer than phone and try again. If you manage to get through the main call center and talk instead to a tech guy then they are helpful.

The first time I called up for the US PSU I gave the frontline customer service person *too much* information and they didn't think that the power block would work or fry my 360. Second time I called I just said "I need a replacement psu" and they put me through to the tech guy in Redmond who I then explained my situation too and he sorted it out.

I don't know... in the UK I tended to go with companies with UK call centres. In the US I think I'm going to try and use companies with US call centres where I can.

Hey Paul, what did you work on for Lionhead?

Jobydrone · January 23, 2012, 03:58:57 PM

Quote from: PaulECoyote on January 23, 2012, 08:12:05 AM

That's interesting, when I returned mine in the UK for repair out of warranty, I had to pay ~100 then they *did* extend the warranty on the one I got back for a year. After it failed out of warranty again I had a friend look at it and try and fix it, he failed so I did end up buying a slim when it failed out of warranty and that has been fine thus far. If a car catastrophically fails I may give it one chance, but a second time? I've had Playstation 2 and Sony receiver die on me too without much help from Sony and at expense, plus a shoulder button break on my DS soon after I purchased it - consumer electronics at the end of the day are fallible sadly. And stories are always anecdotal.

I've had mixed experience with the xbox support. I brought my region 2 xbox from the UK, phoned up and they sent me a US power supply for <$30, so I can play all my dvds here without having to buy a new one - they didn't have to do that. Way more legit than the ones you see on ebay. XBox Live works too on it, so was nice not to have to buy a US 360.

It is a terrible shame the transfer process failed for you - I've used it to migrate from 20 > 120 > slim with no data loss :( I've also been keeping saves on USB flash drives since they let me do that, and just kept games and content on the HDs.

If I were you Jobydrone I would also be pretty negative about MS. My advice is that if you get the wrong answer than phone and try again. If you manage to get through the main call center and talk instead to a tech guy then they are helpful.

The first time I called up for the US PSU I gave the frontline customer service person *too much* information and they didn't think that the power block would work or fry my 360. Second time I called I just said "I need a replacement psu" and they put me through to the tech guy in Redmond who I then explained my situation too and he sorted it out.

I don't know... in the UK I tended to go with companies with UK call centres. In the US I think I'm going to try and use companies with US call centres where I can.

Yeah with the millions of consumers they serve I imagine they've got to get it right some of the time. Kind of like a monkey throwing darts at a board, eventually they're going to hit the bullseye. Don't get me wrong, I think that the Xbox Slim is a fantastic machine. I've been totally enamored with it since the first time I turned it on. I think Microsoft was in an untenable position with the original 360. They released a faulty piece of hardware, but couldn't possibly afford to admit it without taking a gigantic loss monetarily and to their public image. Even after a couple of iterations they still were not able to fix the overheating motherboard that was causing the red rings. The Slim is hyped as "guaranteed not to red-ring" but I think that's only because they didn't put the color red in the circle of lights that surrounds the power button ;)

When I got my new Slim it came packed in with Fable III, did you work on that game Paul E?

Jobydrone · January 24, 2012, 01:10:23 PM

Microsoft Customer Support Center

PaulECoyote · January 30, 2012, 08:51:09 PM

For the announced stuff, I worked on Fable II, Fable III and Milo doing central technology stuff. My gravestone in Fable II was being eaten by coyotes (Wile E Coyote reference) and in III my stone was about working for the people upstairs (the Milo team).

I hope you enjoyed them! Lots of long hours went into them. :)

Jobydrone · January 31, 2012, 06:19:09 AM

Quote from: PaulECoyote on January 30, 2012, 08:51:09 PM
For the announced stuff, I worked on Fable II, Fable III and Milo doing central technology stuff. My gravestone in Fable II was being eaten by coyotes (Wile E Coyote reference) and in III my stone was about working for the people upstairs (the Milo team).

I hope you enjoyed them! Lots of long hours went into them. :)

That's very very cool, Paul. I was a huge fan of the original Fable and really liked Fable 2 as well. Did you ever work closely with Peter Molyneux or was he more of the public face of the company? He is always very interesting to listen to when he is out promoting his games. Do you know if Milo is ever going to see the light of day in any form or is the poor kid relegated to life as a tech demo? Looking forward to starting Fable 3, if I can ever get out of Skyrim.

I had to start that game over since I lost my save and I am now focusing mostly on one handed melee, block, archery, and sneak, with a dab of Restoration magic, Blacksmithing and Enchanting. I'm actually enjoying it more as a stealth/melee character than the almost pure magic I did on my first play.