Xbox 360 repair adventure!
The Xbox 360 is, today, the best current-generation games console. It has the best online experience, and the widest selection of top-tier games. However, it’s enormously unreliable compared to the competition and its predecessors.
And, lo and behold, mine’s busted. There are some horror stories concerning Xbox 360 returns, so I thought I’d document the process.
- Sunday, 2nd September – Microsoft Support agree to take return of the console. It’s been freezing and showing red lights intermittently for a week or two. They promise to send me a return label in the post, estimated time of arrival: 3-5 days.
- Monday, 3rd September – Return label arrives from UPS.
- Tuesday, 4th September – Arrange for UPS to collect console from work. promised pick-up time: between 10am and 5pm. Later, the UPS driver rings to rearrange until Wednesday morning, due to the funfair that’s consumed the main route through Oxford.
- Wednesday, 5th September – Package is picked up in the afternoon, tracking information available.
- Thursday, 6th September – Console is shipped to Teleplan in Havant, Hampshire.
- Tuesday, 25th September – Console is returned, along with a 1 month Xbox Live Gold subscription. It’s got the same serial number as the defective console, and the coversheet marks it as having undergone a motherboard replacement. Total time from pickup to redelivery: 14 working days
February 21st, 2008 at 11:52 am
My experience has been slightly different:
My console showed the 3 red lights on 18th Jan 08′ (Day 1). I immediately called microsoft.
They arranged for a UPS collection on 22nd Jan (Day 4).
I didn’t hear anything from microsoft or UPS until I called microsoft to see what was happening on 9th Feb (Day 22).
Microsoft told me that my console had been delivered on 1st Feb! They called UPS and it turns out that UPS delivered the xbox to one of the 200 houses down my road but failed to tell me when it was delivered or which house it was delivered to.
It is now 21st Feb (Day 34) and my xbox has not been recovered. I have contacted both UPS and Microsoft numerous times but all they say is ‘we are very sorry sir. We are doing all we can to recover your xbox’
Yours unhappily Bill.
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