The Crash and Burn

I have to send off my Xbox 360 for repair. For some time now, my system had been giving me grief concerning the reading of certain DvDs and game discs. The DvD issue was solved when I purchased a PS3 in December, but apparently the game disc issue just wasn't going to fix itself.

After being away from my system for a month, it has decided that I didn't love it enough and has decided to not read any of my game discs. This is an issue because, I miss my L4D and Fall Out 3. So, I decided to contact Microsoft concerning their console system.

First I tried the website. I didn't have any problem registering my console for the repair, except I thought that Microsoft had extended it's original warranty from 1 year to 3. Course, later I found out that this was only when it came to the RROD (Red Ring of Death). If your system has other issues, your pretty much screwed. So, after getting the impression my system was no longer under warranty through their website, I decided to call them up and chat with a tech, play ignorant and hope they would repair my system under warranty. To Microsoft's credit, their tech support is open 9am - 1am EST every day of the week.

I got a really nice lady on the phone, who proceeded to help me run through a few diagnostic checks. One consisted of checking for bad files on the system, then once we found none, she had me remove the hard drive to make sure it wasn't a software issue. The bad news it was a hardware issue so I would have to send it in. Upon finding this out, she proceeded to check to see if my system was still under warranty, which it wasn't. It had expired last month on the 3rd, bummer. She was even nice enough to see if she could still file it under the warranty, because it had only been a month out, but when she came back, I already knew she wasn't going to get that done.

I then proceeded to confirm my address so she could send me the famous coffin most people speak about when they have to send off their defective Xbox's. After that she told me the repair would be a stock $110.00 including shipping and tax. I wasn't very happy about it, but since I have grown very fond of my 360 and I didn't want to spend &300.00 replacing it with a new one, I proceeded to give her my credit card information. Besides, once repaired, I would get a new 1 year warranty covering not just the repair, but the entire system, including controllers.

I then asked her jokingly if she could sign me up for a free magazine, since I was about to spend $110.00 on replacing a $20.00 disc drive. She laughed and said she would see what she could do. In the end, what I ended up with is a free month of Xbox live, which worked out pretty good since the repair will take about a month, with them shipping me the coffin and me shipping it back out to them. The repair will take about 2 - 3 business days, but getting it there and back will be the pisser.

So, I'll be out of commission for about a month. Hopefully, I'll get the shipping box or Coffin, next week and I'll send it out. I'm hoping that I won't miss it that much since I have found a new love, my Final Fantasy game on the DS and the fact that I will be mostly out of town for the entire month of Feb anyway.

Course, this means, I most definitely will be picking up the Left 4 Dead Pc version very soon. lol

All in all, I'll have to give Microsoft a good grade on handling my problem for right now. I'll give an update once I get the brick sent off and get my wonderful Xbox returned to me.