I bought the 360 at launch. That one died in May of ‘06 and was promptly replaced. The replacement died 10/15/06. Microsoft sent me a refurb that arrived on Halloween and was instantly killed by the Fall update’s faulty installation code (as admitted to on Gamerscoreblog.com - a site run by Microsoft employees). Two weeks later, another refurb arrived - this time dead out of the box. At this point, I bought a Core system from Circuit City because I had gone over a month with no system and wanted to play Gears Of War.

Microsoft lost the DOA unit I returned. After countless hours on the phone, they still refused to act so I contacted Larry Hyrb (aka Major Nelson) and explained my story, asking for his assistance. This resulted in an e-mail from Microsoft asking me to send in my dead system, which I explained that I had already done a month before. I did not receive a replacement until January 15, 2007 - almost three months to the day after my first refurb died. During that time, the Core system I had purchased red-ringed on me and was promptly replaced by Circuit City on 12/23/06. When I complained about 8 weeks of my Live account going to waste from them sending me broken units, they offered me a free year of Xbox Live.

The day after this statement was made, they charged my credit card for a year anyway. When I called to ask for a refund, they cancelled my Live account altogether. After two hour long calls asking where my free year went, they told me I would have to pay for a year again while the refunds were being processed. I did eventually receive two credits to my card, so eventually they did give me that free year. They then charged my credit card for Microsoft Points without actually giving them to me, requiring two more hours of phone calls, plus faxing my driver’s license and credit card to them on the letterhead of the law firm where I work. To their credit, after the 01/15/07 console arrived, I did receive a call from Microsoft HQ asking if I was satisfied, and when I explained everything that had happened, they sent me a free copy of Viva Pinata.

The system they sent me on 01/15/07 died on 05/23/07. I waited for the box, sent it in and received a refurb on 06/08/07. That refurb had a disc tray that wouldn’t open and the system would randomly reboot itself for no reason. I received yet another box from MS and just sent the refurb back to them on 06/14/07.

If you’re doing the math, the next refurb I receive from Microsoft will be system number 9 since launch (if you count the second Core system, which I kept as a backup). Seriously. NINE. I wish I was kidding about that number, but I have a closet full of Microsoft boxes and 5 white faceplates to prove it (because they tell you to remove them before you send the dead system in).

Since launch, I have made over 50 phone calls to Microsoft support, each averaging about an hour. During these calls:
- I was lied to about getting a free year of Live and had to talk to two supervisors to get what they had promised me.
- I was lied to multiple times about a return box being sent to my house when none was scheduled to.
- I had to pay for my own shipping and packaging twice.
- I was told that I had to ship it myself, and then received an empty box from Microsoft the day after my Halloween ‘06 refurb arrived.
- I had a supervisor tell me my case was being escalated to Microsoft HQ so I would receive a NEW console instead of a refurb - only to be told weeks later by another supervisor that this was not true.
- I had another supervisor tell me that a new-in-box console had already been shipped to my house and to call back 24 hours later for a tracking number, only to be told the following day by a supervisor named Shaun that “that supervisor lied to you, probably just to get off the phone with you.”

The point of my story is this: I love the 360. I like the games, I like the integration and ease of Xbox Live, and the 360 controller is probably the most comfortable game controller I’ve used in my 33 years. But if someone like me, who works in IT and treats their electronic equipment exceedingly well, can’t keep a 360 running, there is a serious issue with the system’s reliability. And after my 8th system since launch was dead on arrival, you would think that Microsoft would just send me a new one already… or at the very least, a refurb that they had adequately tested.

Let’s hope that system number 9 arrives soon. Personally, I’m hoping that they send me one that has the new heatpipe they’ve added to the GPU heatsink that has been reported by countless gaming news outlets (and was responded to with the same amount of stonewalling and doublespeak that Dean experienced here). If not, I’ll no doubt be on number 10 before too long… and that’s simply inexcusable.

USA Today quotes a Microsoft representative as saying that returns of faulty Xbox 360 consoles are running at between three and five per cent of those sold. Which is lower than many of the online polls, but as US games blog Kotaku says, this could be due to some people not contacting Microsoft for a return if their machine is only occasionally glitching.

Anyway, the early reports are indicating that MS is getting ahold of its overheating problems:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/06/26/30__failure_rate_for_the_360/1