Many people are suggesting that the failure rate of the 360's are falsely increasing sales figures by 3-8%. This is totally untrue for a number of reasons;
1. The typical procedure for a Xbox 360 repair is to call Microsoft Repairs and send your unit to Texas for repairs. If it is under warranty it will cost you nothing. If your out of warranty, then it will cast you $130 plus one way shipping. (Turnover is usually 2 days and you get either your repaired unit or a refurbished one)
2. There are only a few exceptions to this that I know of. Only one dept store that I know of(Target)will take back an item for any reason for a year. MOST department stores require you to follow the Microsoft repair procedure. I cannot give an accurate breakdown of how many units were sold in each store, but keep in mind the 360's must break within the stores timeframe (unlikely to have a problem in 30 - 90 days)and the customer must have the receipt.
3. Customers who chose to buy a service warranty (lucky bastards)do get to exchange ther units in store and they are counted as additional sales. BUT the warranty company acts as an insurer and does end up putting out the money for the new unit. So Microsoft does still get paid for that unit.
4. E-BAY...Those of us who bought our launch units on E-bay were pretty much required to send in the units to Xbox repairs thus not counting as additional sales.
So in the end very few of the repaired units actually get counted. I would be surprised if that number reached .5%.
