Gaming Signal: Adventures in Customer Service: My 360, The Red Ring Of Death And Me

Adventures in Customer Service: My 360, The Red Ring Of Death And Me

The fact that the Xbox 360 is prone to crashing and burning into the dreaded Red Ring Of Death shouldn't be news to anyone. It certainly isn't to me, as I've had that happen twice before and each time I called 4MYXBOX and I had a replacement 360 back in my possession within about 10 days. So when I got the RROD on Sunday, July 22nd, I didn't think anything of calling customer support and informing them that my 360 was dead. Again. I talked to a nice young man who asked me a couple of questions about the 360 and agreed that, yes, my 360 was covered under the new 3-year warranty and that it needed to be fixed. Everything was going according to previous calls until he realized this was the third time I had called Microsoft for the RROD. Then things changed.

Before, they would give me the address of the repair center in McAllen,TX where I could send my 360 to be repaired. But no this time. No. Because this was the third time for the RROD, I was going to get a 'Personal Service Agent' who would personally help me through the repair process. This PSA would be assigned to me and would call me back. Uh-oh, being a Sunday, I expected to receive the call on Monday. I was pleasantly surprised to hear from 'Mike' within an hour. After a brief conversation, I was told that a box was being shipped to me, the so-called 360 coffin, and I would then send my 360 back in the pre-paid shipping box. If I didn't receive it by July 31st, I was to call back.

OK, so the first thing on my mind was, 'Why does the personal touch take so much longer, just for me to send my 360 back, than the non-personal touch from before?' I'm willing to pay the $15 to ship my 360 in because I know UPS gets it there the next day, but now I have to wait up to 10 days to get a box to ship my 360 back. You can guess what happened. July 31st arrived and no box. So I called Mike and, of course, received a voicemail. I left my message stating I hadn't received my box and I wanted one shipped to me.

I didn't hear back from Mike. I did hear from Elise though, on Thursday, Aug. 1st. Apparently, Mike had been 'promoted' in the organization and Elise would now be 'helping' me and I was to call her back. So I did, and, naturally, got her voice mail. I left a message asking her to call me at work. This was about 9am or so on Thursday. So she calls me while I'm at lunch and leaves a message asking me if my machine needs to returned and to confirm my email and address. WTF? Can't you just look at the history to see that, yes, it needs to be returned? Isn't that what the whole PSA thing is about, helping people through the return process? So far, I'm not impressed with the PSA 'service'. So I call and call and call, and get nothing but voice mail. I finally leave a message saying, yes, it needs to be returned, I re-confirm my address and email, and ask that a box be shipped to me ASAP as I've been waiting now for over 10 days to return my system. So far, as of right now (Aug. 3, 10:40am CST), nothing.

But that's not the best part. Elise's voice mail says she works Sun - Thurs 10am - 6pm EST. So she isn't in today. What the hell, don't they have backup to help with this stuff? The other thing that bugs me is her voicemail says she will get back to me at her earliest convenience. Um, no, you should get back to me as soon as you can. I've been waiting for 12 days now, I deserve some decent service here. So now I'm faced with the prospect of calling the regular, plain old 4MYXBOX line and trying to get someone there to help me. I am not overjoyed by this. And I've seen other reports that MS is saying it will take 4-6 weeks to repair the console. Again, WTF? I see tons of consoles sitting at Gamestop and Best Buy. MS should call one of these guys up and work a deal to replace my 360 with a new one, or at least ship me my freaking box. I hope this is just MS grossly overestimating repair time to make themselves look 'good', but I'm not holding my breath on this.

The sad thing is, I really love my 360. We use almost all of the features it offers. My sons and I play a lot of games on it, my youngest son watches his DVDs and my wife listens to her music streamed to the 360 from the machine upstairs. I was going to look into download movies to see how well that works, but I can't right now. I basically have a $400 paperweight in my entertainment center and I'm still waiting for my coffin. Nice job Microsoft. Whatever lead you had in the console wars is going to disappear as you continue to screw the pooch with your repair 'service'.

Stay tuned. I'll update this post as I continue to try and get my 360 repaired.

Update #1 (08/07/07) - I finally received an email from MS on Sunday stating they were going to be so kind as to actually send me the return box. I also received a phone call from Elise. Of course she called my work number and left a message as it must have been too much trouble to read the history sheet and get my home phone number. Anyway, part of the email says this:

To make this process as easy as possible for you, we are sending you the packaging materials you need to send your Xbox console in for repair/exchange. Once we have received your Xbox console at our Service Center. Your Xbox console will be serviced and you should receive it within 4-6 weeks.

Bwahahahaha. Easy as possible would have been to have the box shipped to me two weeks ago when I first reported the issue. Looking at the UPS site, I see that the box shipped from McAllen and is in Houston this morning. If I get it in the mail today, they can have it in for repair probably on Thursday. Then I get to wait 4-6 weeks. Yay me. The only hopeful thing is the idea I am clinging to that MS will ship me one of the new ones with the extra heat sink. It may be time to look at the Texas Lemon Law for consumer electronics. Hmm...

Update #2 (08/09/07) - Whelp, the coffin finally arrived yesterday. I opened it up and the contents were: (2) foam end pieces, (1) plastic bag, (1) piece of tape, (1) pre-paid UPS shipping lable, and (1) instruction card. Basically, to send it back you: put your broken 360 in the plastic bag (with your reference # on a piece of paper), attach the foam pieces on either end, place the 360 back in the same box, use the tape to tape it shut and affix the shipping label over the current label. Then you get to go by your friendly, local UPS store and ship it off. MS generously paid for 3 day select shipping. Of course, it only takes a day to get from Houston to McAllen so they could have used regular ground...And now my 360 is off for a 4-6 week vacation in sunny and warm south Texas. Yay!