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XBox (Games)

For Unlucky 360 Owner Seventh Time's the Charm 153

Posted by Zonk from the give-him-some-bennies dept.
Microsoft has maintained that the problems occasionally reported by Xbox 360 owners are not very prevalent; just a small percentage of 360s are faulty, they say. That may be so, but for one unlucky console owner it's taken seven faulty consoles for him to get customer service satisfaction. The Mercury News discusses the tale of Rob Cassingham, a self professed 'Xbox fanboy'. He and his wife Mindy run a gaming center, and were responsible (via direct purchases and through word of mouth) for more than a dozen 360 purchases. For his business, he had six machines ... and every one of them failed. Even one of the replacements for the original unit failed, and for every replacement he's had to wait two weeks to get a new system. As he puts it, "Why spend money for rims on a car that spends 90 percent of its time in the shop?" After the Merc's Dean Takahashi referred his case to Peter Moore, he finally received a new machine as a replacement for his most recent faulty model. Cassingham is still deciding whether to keep it or not.
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For Unlucky 360 Owner Seventh Time's the Charm More

For Unlucky 360 Owner Seventh Time's the Charm

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  • Heat & Hard-Drive (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HappySqurriel ( 1010623 ) on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:04PM (#18128568)
    The combination of the ammount of heat being produced by the XBox 360 (and PS3) is probably the #1 reason these systems fail ...

    Everyone knows how hot a 100w light-bulb gets (because we've all been foolish enough to touch one) and both the XBox 360 and PS3 have the equivilant of 2 of these bulbs running in a very tight space; this heat can not be particularly good for any of the components and (probably) rapidly ages everything.

    • Re:Heat & Hard-Drive (Score:5, Funny)

      by Iamthefallen ( 523816 ) <Gmail name: Iamthefallen> on Friday February 23, 2007 @06:07PM (#18129286) Homepage Journal
      Sure it sounds like a design flaw, but in reality, it was supposed to also double as an Easy-Bake Oven.

      Muffins and Halo, awesome.
      • Reminds me of a Sealab 2021 episode.

        Murphy: "It is NOT a toy. It has icing packets. And a 40-watt bulb. But the secret ingredient is love. Dammit."

        Murphy: "NO. I MUST have my oven. My sweet, CAKEY treasures, piping hot from their 40, WATT, WOOOMMBBBB."

        RIP Harry Goz

        Swi

      • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        EasyBake 360 - has a nice ring to it.

    • Google recently found that contrary to conventional wisdom, drives at low temperatures fail more than those at high temperatures [google.com]. (Pdf warning. Summary here [bbc.co.uk]).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vadim_t ( 324782 )
        The drives in my case, which are in a cage right behind the intake fan, are at 39 and 41C right now. Looking at the graph, that's entirely within the safe area. Now, should I turn the fan off, I wouldn't surprised if it climbed past 45 C, which on the graph starts looking dangerous. I've seen temperatures a lot higher than that. A 7200RPM disk in a bad case could reach 55C quite easily, which isn't even on the graph. Of course, Google has a decent datacenter where they don't get temperatures like that, but

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Amouth ( 879122 )
          you have to wonder if it was jsut that they where running cooler.

          if they are running cooler than the dew point then they could have had minor condensation either inside or out side of the drive caseing.. after removing it from the cool enviroment to insepection it would have heated up and the visable water would have been gone and the drive would have just looked like it had failed.

          this is somehting on pary with tin/zinc wiskers.. (google it if you don't know about it - realy neat stuff)
      • I could be wrong, but "temperature" is not the only problem that could be caused by the energy output of these systems. As an example, what happens to a hard-drive if it has a large temperature variation from one side of the hard-drive to the other? Being that a hard-drive is such a precise device I would anticipate that the expansion/contraction caused by a 20 or 30 degree variation could have serious impacts.
      • I used to work at a hardware manufacturer of HPC storage clusters.

        Perhaps Google failed to correct for the fact that most modern drive manufacturers simply turn off write verification at high temperature to save energy output, reduce temperature, and thwart drive failure.

        When we got drives with firmware that did this, we sent them back, rejected them, and told them not to do tricks with the firmware. It also killed performance at low temperature, and the software we wrote already handled media failure.

        Note
        • At least on /., the Google study is getting all of the press. But there were two large studies on disk failures this year at FAST: the one by Google, and the other by the Carnegie Mellon Parallel Data Lab. It won best paper. You can find it at http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/PDL-FTP/Failure/failure-fa s t07_abs.html [cmu.edu]

          Although the CMU group didn't have environmental data to see what correlations there were, they get results similar to Google in other areas; e.g. that drive "vintage" matters, the failures are not a Poi

    • Re:Heat & Hard-Drive (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 23, 2007 @06:16PM (#18129384)
      Have a link to any examples of PS3s overheating? The PS3 has an amazing piece of cooling tech inside that has been written about in many computer news sites.

      The only hardware problem I've ever seen reported from PS3 owners is one or two people who had drives that weren't ejecting discs properly.

      As to the Xbox 360 there has been yet no one verifiable reason why so many of them fail. Silly products like that intercooler device have give people the erroneous assumption that heat is what is causing 360s to die over and over again. Right now only Microsoft has an idea of what went wrong with the 360 hardware design and manufacturing. Whatever the reason or reasons it can't be something simple if so many people are still talking about and falling victim to those problems.

    • At least when these systems are on they have fans running to remove the heat. Try running a Wii with Wiiconnect24 mode on for a while.

      The "standby" mode of the Wii is really nice for downloading news and stuff while you're not using the system but the trade off is a really hot Wii that has warped the bottom of the plastic and cooks discs left in the system. I've turned mine off until I can get a response from Nintendo about it. It still plays games with no problems but the plastic case has been damaged f
      • If your Wii cooks discs in Wiiconnect24 mode, it's broken. My Wii has been running in Wiiconnect24 since I bought it the day it came out, and it is only slightly warm to the touch if I'm not playing games.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 )
      No one seems to mention the fact that this guy bought his machines for a gaming center. This places those machines in a whole different category of use than a home user (longer hours, rougher treatment, etc). Someone already mentioned dirty power as a likely culprit. We also notice from reading the article that his gaming center has shut down - impending lawsuit? We only have his word that three of the machines were "personal use only". I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the failure rate is
      • I have a two friends who live in the Norwegian Riviera (that's the north shore of Lake Superior). They live in the same house and have their 360's in well ventilated spots. They're both also on their 3rd 360. But everyone else I know has their original. I'd say it's the same as the PS2's when they came out. Flaky at best. Maybe 5% are bad and some people get screwed multiple times.

        When I read the headline, I though this guy had gotten six consecutive bad 360s, but then when I read TFA it became clear

    • ...had always been prone to locking up though. It was a first run unit. MS initially charged me for a repair, and sent me a new one. A couple months later, a check for more than they had charged for the repair showed up in my mailbox. The new machine has been fine for about a year.

      I'm willing to cut them some slack on a first productuion run, especially since they took good care of me when I had a problem. I guess I'm just a data point on the other end of the bell curve from the poor guy who went throu

  • Huh (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ObiWanStevobi ( 1030352 )

    I have mine on the way back to MS right now. DVD drive went out completely after 8 months. Just like the Original Xbox. I actually consider myself lucky mine went out in time to be covered by the extended warranty. I think that will always be something Playstaion has up on the 360, hardware quality. Obviously MS learned nothing from the crappy xbox drives the first go round.

    • Even with all the different DVD drives, the original xbox was pretty solid. The 360 OTOH is the first console I ever had which failed (DVD failure ~9 months). I skipped the PS2 but a friend had that fail as well.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by dami99 ( 1014687 )
        Agreed.

        I've modded / repaired quite a few of both ps2 and xbox. I believe the xbox had superior hardware.

        The first few versions of ps2 drives had quite a few problems with the dvd drives. (Crap lasers, you could fix it temporarly by adjusting the pot, but that only saved you a few months)

        The thomson xbox drives were really bad too.
      • Not any I owned. Have replaced three original Xbox drives so far. However, I always bought the cheapest one. They were only $25, so that may have something to do with it. I did have to replace one PS2 drive right away, but that one has lasted a good 5 years now. I have yet to have any xbox drive last 2 years.

    • I think that will always be something Playstaion has up on the 360, hardware quality. Obviously MS learned nothing from the crappy xbox drives the first go round.

      Oddly enough, neither did Sony. I don't know about you, but the handful of people I knew that had PS1s in highschool all had to get at least a second one due to the first one flat out dieing. I myself had 3, and the PS2 sitting in my entertainment center is my second. The first stopped playing DVDs after 6 months, strangely enough CDs were just

      • "The first stopped playing DVDs after 6 months, strangely enough CDs were just fine(both music and games)."

        The PS2 has two lasers, one for DVDs and one for CDs. This is why when many PS2s "break" they continue to play one type of disc. Where I work we get a lot of people asking "oh, is that game on a blue disc? Because my PS2 doesn't play them for some reason". Blue disc = Playstation CD game, silver disc = Playstation DVD game.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
          From what I heard the reason that PS2s failed so often was that Sony cheapened out and tried to use one laser with a lens apparatus that let it refocus for DVDs or CDs. That refocussing mechanism has a tendency to fail if it's used often. I think that design was abandoned some time ago though.
          • Hadn't thought of that, seems pretty plausible. A thank you, sir, for expanding my knowledge on a topic I get paid to know about :-D

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Henry V .009 ( 518000 )
      Yeah, same here. Mine was shipped back last week because of the DVD drive. This is actually the second time I've shipped it back. The first was because of a red circle of light resulting from a firmware upgrade. Fully covered under warranty both times.

      Also, it was stolen and sold for rock cocaine once, but the police got it back for me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by brkello ( 642429 )
      Right. Because PS2 drives never failed. I'd like some of whatever you are smoking.

  • Not broken (Score:2, Insightful)

    by digidave ( 259925 )
    Everyone always says that failure statistics on the web are poor because nobody comes around and says their system is working fine. Maybe we can do an informal Slashdot poll of all Xbox 360 owners.

    If your Xbox 360 has failed, reply with the subject "Broken". If your Xbox 360 has not failed reply with the subject "Not broken". This will make it easy to scan responses without opening each post. Use the post comment area if you have something more to say.
    • And how do you tell if someone actually owns an XBox 360?

      I'm certain that many (if not most) of the "Broken" responses would be from PS3 fanboys
      • Mine broke after 5 months. 3 red lights.. This was before they extended the warranty. Luckily I had the warranty from Best Buy and I now have a Wii and a DS..

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by aslate ( 675607 )
          Wait, 5 months and it's out of warranty? WTF?

          Here a product should be good for an expected lifetime for that product. Most electrical items must have a 1 year waranty, if not more.

          • Wait, 5 months and it's out of warranty? WTF?


            My 360 came with a 1 year warranty. I went ahead and got the 3 year warranty from MS. Someone saying it's out of warranty after 5 months is confused.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Daoenti ( 552606 )
              Nope, you are confused. The original warranty on the XBox 360 was 90 days... that's it, 3 months. Very recently (back in the middle of December) MS extended all warranties out to 1 year [com.com]. A notable quote from the C-NET story:

              Just in time for last-minute holiday shoppers, Microsoft has extended the Xbox 360's warranty from 90 days to one year, bringing it in line with the warranty lengths of rival game consoles from Sony and Nintendo.

              Mine started failing about three days before they extended the warranty,

      • PS3 fanboys

        And there are exactly how many of those? I think it's a huge logical cop out when you deflect criticism of your "thing" by assumign all criticism is simply fanboys. Also given how bland the reception to the ps3 was I doubt there are actually all that many fanboys.
    • Had one, started freezing. Took it back to gamestop, got an all new one. That started freezing. Took it back and got a third one.

      Running solid for two weeks so far ::crosses fingers::

      In an open space with good airflow (I have an old switched-AT power supply with two fans hooked up to it...one pushing air in, one sucking it out the back...both laying up against the box, so no I have not opened any of the ones that I have.)
    • My family has two Xbox 360's, both of which are functioning.
    • Had mine for 5 months. No issues so far...

      Bob

    • Broken [wikipedia.org]. And it wasn't an Xbox 360; it was a Wii. Once its fan failed, even 20 watts was too much for the heat sink alone to dissipate, and it turned itself off after 30 minutes.

      • And it wasn't an Xbox 360; it was a Wii. Once its fan failed, even 20 watts was too much for the heat sink alone to dissipate, and it turned itself off after 30 minutes.

        My Gamecube died the same way after 5 years. It didn't shut itself off, it just started crashing. Didn't take long to figure out why. I think it suffered some damage (partly because I tried using a box fan next to the intake opening as a low-rent replacement so that I could finish a boss fight in Baten Kaitos... too bad it didn't last lo
    • Broken, over 1 year old, Microsoft replaced without any hassle. Shipped me back a replacement unit instead of repairing.
    • Running for months, multi-hour sessions, cramped entertainment center: feelin' fine.

      *knocks on his wooden desk*
    • see subject
    • n/t

    • Not an owner (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by Ford Prefect ( 8777 )

      Everyone always says that failure statistics on the web are poor because nobody comes around and says their system is working fine. Maybe we can do an informal Slashdot poll of all Xbox 360 owners.

      I disagree with your testing methodology - such a survey is inherently biased and self-selecting towards those who own Xbox 360 consoles, broken or not.

      So in the interests of balance, I wish to report that I do not own an Xbox 360 games console. Or any other console, for that matter. However, this does mean that I

    • Three not broken (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MBraynard ( 653724 )
      One is 10 months old, the other two are two months old.

      I think the guy in the story's problem is likely his power system in the building. It may be low or have some kind of wiring issue. That's way too much of a coincidence.

    • Also, this poll is stupid.
    • I bought a Wii! ;-)
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Disk drive about 3 months in. MS replaced it for free.
    • Just got it back. My original started crashing more often and then wham...3 Red Lights of Death. The replacement seems to be working ok...but I have only been on it for a few hours.
    • Cowboy Neal :-)
    • My launch-day 360 has been home TWICE. But my warranty was extended after the second time until late Sept. 07, and I believe I got a new system after the second time. Service has been good. Don't pretend PS2s didn't and PS3s won't break.
    • Not broken, Midnight Launch 360. Used to freeze during long sessions until I set up proper ventilation in the cabinet it was sitting in. (DUH .. so it wouldn't recirculate the hot air it was pumping out back through the intake)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jwink ( 895907 )
      Not broken, but then I've only had it for two months. A friend of mine who got his at pretty much the same time has had DVD drive issues - it wouldn't close due to a bracket misalignment. This issue, however, was brought on by user issues, particularly the not-so-gentle handling by his kids.

      Mine is on a wood shelf and fairly well ventilated (lots of space around it). I was thinking it'd last a while if I kept it like that, but hearing what everyone is saying, maybe not...?
    • Our release day console had an incomplete controller (battery pack missing a terminal) so it was unusable. Though, technically the console has had no problems. My personal console runs, but it won't play Gears of War without an Internet connection (I don't have broadband at home *gasp*), so it doesn't really work.
      I think those kinda even out to one broken, one not broken.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 )
      Mine's working fine. Well as far as I know. I haven't turned it on in the few months since my old Linux-running computer died and I bought a Mac and discovered that I could play "WoW". But last time I checked it was working fine.

      I figure I might actually turn it on again whenever Blue Dragon gets released...

    • Not had it that long though. And don't play it a lot.

    • Broken (Score:1)

      by Slider ( 6074 )
      My first broke after 6 months and my second is making funny noises after 2 months...it's gonna go too...thanks Best Buy warranty!
    • I've had mine since early february 2006. I haven't had any problems whatsoever.
    • Actually the button that opens the cd drive is stuck in such a way that it cannot be pressed at all.
      The solution, removed the casing to both the xbox and cd-drive, and lift the cd cover to swap out games...

      To most consumers that would be considered broken I guess.
    • 1st broken after 2mos, 3 flashing lights of death. error code 0102
      2nd one still running for 6mos no signs of failure.

      could m$ have gotten the replacements right?

  • Hardware sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TeraCo ( 410407 ) on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:05PM (#18128588) Homepage
    If all of them failed (and he bought them all at the same time for his xbox emporium), perhaps he just got a bad batch? We bought a bunch of Dell Poweredges and now 2 years later, they're all flaking out with CPU errors - 3 in the last week.

    • If all of them failed (and he bought them all at the same time for his xbox emporium), perhaps he just got a bad batch?

      It *was* a bad batch, it just so happened that batch was the complete launch batch :)

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by TeraCo ( 410407 )
        *boom tish* Well, based on what I've read I can't really argue with that. There's apparently a new model of xbox360 coming out soon in Australia. Same price, etc, just a newer hardware revision.

        I only recently bought a PS2 and a bunch of old JRPG's, but since my yearly bonus comes down from 'on high' soon, I'm considering buying 1) An Xbox360, 2) A PS3, or 3) A giant stack of ham, which I'll then cover with petrol and burn in some kind of weird effigy.

        I wish one of the consoles would hurry up and win so I c
    • More likely the building has dirty power. Even the best power supply can't cope with the wiring in some buildings... I have a buddy who can't run a PC for more than a month, no matter how beefy the PSU is, because the wiring in his house is crap. He plugged in a UPS at my suggestion, and the wiring killed the UPS too! (It was a cheapish UPS, but still, you reach a point where you can't blame anything but the wall power.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ant P. ( 974313 )
      Only cheap, poor build quality hardware sucks.

      My ~15 year old Sega CD's still going fine after all these years. About the only thing that's ever happened to it is a blown fuse.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TeraCo ( 410407 )
        Ok, so your Sega CD was from a good batch. I'm not sure where you're going with that. Any mass produced item can have bad batches slip through QA. (Or pass QA and later revealed to be slightly out of tolerance)

  • Ain't Coincidence a Bitch? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bones3D_mac ( 324952 ) on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:11PM (#18128670)
    Seriously... you'd think everyone has issues with the things. My release date 360 still runs just as well as it did since it arrived.

    Get over the anti-Microsoft high-horse, guys. The console is perfectly stable for those of us who take the time to clean up around the thing an don't stuff it into an air-tight hole somewhere.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Sta7ic ( 819090 )
      Hell, I have an XBox that I picked up about six months after release, and the only problem I'm having five years later is that the laser in the DVD is getting old and doesn't always want to read some audio CDs (both normal and enhanced).

      Nothing wrong with the machine for having a Microsoft logo on it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xzzy ( 111297 )
      Your sole experience with a 360 is no more useful for making a conclusion than this fellow's experience with 7 360's. It's a logical fallacy for people with either experience to make a judgement on the 360's reliability based on their personal experiences, though I'm not going to bother going to look up which one it is in specific.

      It's completely unfair for you to pigeon-hole anyone who's had a dead 360 as a slob who failed to give the unit proper ventilation.
    • Firstly, I do kinda agree with your point. I work in a games store and even though we tell people when we sell them a 360, "keep it well ventilated, don't move it around while it's turned on, etc", they still do it and act all indignant when their machine breaks down. However, we get a lot of faulties that can't be explained by simple idiot gamers, for example from regulars to the store who we know full well treat their games and consoles better than their friends and family. Personally my 360 is functionin
    • Seriously... you'd think everyone has issues with the things. My release date 360 still runs just as well as it did since it arrived.

      Get over the anti-Microsoft high-horse, guys. The console is perfectly stable for those of us who take the time to clean up around the thing an don't stuff it into an air-tight hole somewhere.

      You anecdote is not indicitive of all 360's just as my launch PS2 is not indicative of other PS2's fromt hat time. My PS2 has been running with heavy use for almost 6 years. It's only now
    • I thought the same thing as you. For the record, bought an Xbox on launch day and bought an Xbox 360 in January 2006 (manufactured Oct. 05). I had it on a wire rack, both the unit and power supply. No problems. All the problems I thought were because people were stuffing it and their unit had no heat dissipation. Well, a few months later mine died. It froze a few times then red lights of death a few weeks later. I'm a big hardware guy so I opened her up to see inside. Conclusion: I don't know, so I bought a
    • We've got massive influxes of them coming into where I work for repair, usually for firmware upgrades and faulty optical drives.

      Not often, we do get one or two in with bad system boards, and we basically rebuild the damned thing. (Well, not me, I work in HP, not the icrosoft department, but word gets around fast enough in repair depots!)

      One board actually fried itself due to shotty capacitors. That was a lovely smell to have float to my nose, not.
    • >>> The console is perfectly stable for those of us who take the time to clean up around the thing an don't stuff it into an air-tight hole somewhere.

      you make it sound like the ones who've had a broken box are treating it poorly.

      mine was in open air, dust free, cool room.
      power brick was also off the floor on little stilts and away from the xbox.
      the x360 just started to flake out with freezes in Burnout.
      Then it finally got the 3 red lights of death while playing Halo.
      The flake out happened over abo

  • I got a new unit 1st time around (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 0kComputer ( 872064 ) on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:12PM (#18128674)
    This was around mid December, I called cust support and went through all the troubleshooting procedures. Long story short, they wanted me to pay 140 for the repairs. After asking for her supervisor etc... they finally agreed to send me a new one for free. They sent a box and i put my old unit in and fed ex'd it back about a week later i got a brand new unit. The total turnaround time was about 10 days. Haven't had any problems since. Since then i've learned that they extended the warranty to one year (from 3 months). So I have to say that my experience was generally good given the situation. Not sure why they would keep sending refurbs. All I can say is that i just followed their instructions to a tea. Maybe this guy was doing something wrong.
    • For electronics, fixing them can be more expensive then fabing a new one depending ont he problem. Also once fixed electronics tend to fail more often after. So a machine that has been fixed once tends ot break more often then a machine that has never been fixed at all of the same age. So for them given these two facts they'd rather just send you a new one.

      Anecdote: My Sony cybershot retailed for $250 when I bought it. Last year it broke and it cost me $100 ot fix it. I debated if I wanted to fix it or not
    • So I have to say that my experience was generally good given the situation.

      Your definition of "good" differs from mine. My idea of "good" would to have not had it fail in the first place.

  • They ran a gaming center. How many hours a day where the machines on? Where they in cabinets? These are a huge factors.

    Still that is a lot of failures.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Brigade ( 974884 )
      Exactly what I was thinking. It's almost statistically impossible for him to have purchased, and replaced, THAT many machines, and EVERY one failed on him, all due to faulty machines.

      When I was working at Gamestop, people would call ALL the time for tech support for different things. A lot of calls were about overheating 360s .. and most of them had the damn things in a media cabinet. Non-techies don't understand the concept of INTAKE/EXHAUST when it comes to consumer electronics. OR they stick the po
      • The point of any consumer product like a computer or a game console is that the end user shouldn't have to make adjustments like installing new cooling systems. The manufacturer should take care of these needs, otherwise it's an incomplete product. How would you feel if in order to use your brand-new card you bought, you immediately had to do an overhaul so it wouldn't stall on the highway on your way home from the dealership?
    • so... running in open air... 70 degs + ambient temp in the xb0x... maybe what 150 deg?

      in a cabinet, what, raise the temp another 50 deg (F) ????

      ok, but, PCBs, silicon, metal, even Solder, don't have problems with this small a temperature fluctuation...

      People stop saying every is "ruining their xboxes" by putting them in cabinets or having bad airflow...

      just cause it makes your skin feel uncomfortable doesn't mean the silicon/solder/PCB is "hurting" inside... they can withstand much higher temps...

  • Oh noes! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cervantes ( 612861 ) on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:53PM (#18129122) Journal
    While it does sound from TFA that he had a hard time of it, the article also has him complaining about all the time it took with tech support for each machine. A whole 20 minutes? They made him turn it off and back on? They actually did troubleshooting? ZOMG!

    I'd rather have a competent tech on the other end of the phone who makes me walk through the basic steps to make sure it really is broken, rather than a tech who goes "Thanks for calling MS... it doesn't work?... ok, we'll send you a new one. Bye!". The former is a sign of a company that hires decent people to do their job well, the latter is a sign of a company that hires any schmuck off the street and then rewards him for having a 2 minute call length average.

    And, speaking as someone who had to argue with 3 different techs at Telus to convince them that there was actually something called a "Default Gateway", and no, it wasn't a proprietary setting for the device I was connecting, and no, it wasn't 192.168.0.1 ... I'll take competent techs who make me check the basics any day.

    All that said, he does sound like he got a bad batch. TFA mentions he bought the majority at one time, which could be a reason, but it also mentions that at least 4 of the machines were used in a gaming cafe. Machines take a lot of abuse there, whether you're keeping an eye on them or not, so again, I'm not surprised. Really, a different spin on the article should be "360 owner sends 7 defective units back to MS, MS replaces them and doesn't accuse him of breaking them himself". Really, many hardware vendors I've had to deal with get a little suspicious after you return items for the 3rd or 4th time. I actually had to threaten legal action against a graphic card remanufacturer in order to get them to replace my card after the 4th time their cheap fan died and fried the GPU, out of a batch of 5 I'd purchased.

  • For his business, he had six machines ... and every one of them failed.
    So, uh, where does this guy work, because I'd like to fill out an application.

  • Compled hardware fails (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Complex hardware from any manufacturer can fail. Unless you're talking abnormally high percentages I don't think this speaks to the quality of the company behind it.

    It's what they DO after the failure that determines a good company in my book. Having to wait 2 weeks for a replacement system sounds absurd!

    I had an early November PS3 fail 2 weeks ago (wouldn't detect the HDD sometimes when powering on). Sony overnighted me an empty box to return the unit, paid for overnight return shipping to them, and shi
    • Wouldn't it be better for them to send you a new one instead of the empty box? You remove the new one, put the broken one in the box and ship it back. Faster and cheaper for them (less freight cost) and you get your toy up and running sooner.
      • I'm guessing they give you that option, but you most likely have to give a credit card number that they will charge the full price to in the event that they do not receive the returned unit. I'll let them pay the extra shipping and wait a bit longer.
  • Rentals have high failure rates? Who would have thought!

    20 min call for troubleshooting before RMA? Preposterous! Dell is always taking me at least 3 hours, MS techs must by lazy.

    On another note it becomes more and more clear that in order to get something posted on /. it doesn't have to be smart, interesting, to the point or sometimes even factual, I just have to come up with something that makes MS look bad! And don't you start "welcome to slashdot n00b!" ;)
  • The article states the guy bought at least 4 of the units at launch, Microsoft has already made it clear there was a problem with a lot of launch units so is it really any suprise that this has happened? One replacement failed again but it doesn't state if this was one that was replaced earlier on and hence could be prone to the same fault.

    Don't get me wrong it does indeed suck for the guy and it is a bit silly of MS to release with these problems (surely they must have known?) but the article sounds like i
  • I find it pretty funny the lame excuses Microsoft's army of fanboys are making for the consoles very poor relibility... There is a poll here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=43 63999#post4363999 [avforums.com] Showing 50% of 360 owners are on at least their 2nd console... Yet Microsoft continue to lie, and say failure rates are within industry standards...
  • He and his wife Mindy run a gaming center [snip]. For his business, he had six machines ... and every one of them failed.

    This isn't home use. This is a gaming center. Let's consider likely properties of a gaming center:
    1. The machines are run all day, every day, far beyond typical usage.
    2. The machines are likely secured to stop customers walking off with the $400 units. Entirely plausible is the possibility that the brackets used block airflow or, even worse, all six units, generating a ton of heat, are all kept

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