I've wanted to tell the story of my X-Box 360 failure saga for some time now, it's really rather funny and while a huge pain the ass it's been ridiculously beneficial for me and even dare I say, profitable! So here goes.
The Highlights:
First bought my 360 in November 2006.
It is STILL under warranty until 2013!
This is Xbox number 7.
I have spent in total since 2006 about $200 on it and that's INCLUDING the initial purchase of it!
I DID NOT lie, cheat, or steal or do anything else dishonest to be in this quite nice situation.
The Story:
Nov 2006: Bought the 20GB Xbox for $300 plus a 2 year extended warranty (from
Microcenter) for another about $30-$50 (don't recall the exact price). The warranty was one that doesn't start until the mfgr warranty runs out so it didn't start until Nov 2007.
June 2007: RROD! Still within the 1st year (or technically 3 years for the RROD) so I sent it to MS for repair.
late August 2007: This one had a strange disc drive issue where it would read Xbox games and DVDs but wouldn't read Xbox 360 games. Still within the 1st year so sent it back to MS too. Got one back that was manufactured within the previous month (1 week after I sent this one in actually).
January 2008, another drive issue but different, this one won't read anything just spins the disc. Outside my first year now, so took it back to the store. Now this is where things start looking up. I'm not sure why but what they did was completely refunded the first xbox and let me buy a new one. By this time the price of the version of xbox I had had come down so I got enough of a refund back to purchase another 2 year extended warranty, which I did. So I broke even and now have an X-Box warrantied through Jan 2011. This one had the audacity to actually last a whole year and a half before dying. I don't remember exactly why this one died but I took it back to Microcenter and got a straight exchange no muss no fuss. (the exchange is still good on the original warranty)
That one died in December 2009 from yet another disc issue this time it just plain wouldn't spin up. Microcenter again, this time they wanted to take it in and try to fix it, realized it was an HDMI model and decided to exchange it again. Again no muss no fuss.
Now, more good stuff occurs: April 2010 that one died from the single red ring I believe it was the E74 error. Microcenter again, exchange again... but they didn't have them in since this was an OLD ASS Xbox and they don't make the 20Gig anymore. So they sent off for one, they got it back called me and said "well we got the replacement in, but it's got a problem the tray won't open, we'll send off for another". Called me a few days later "Sir, we've got the replacement in but it ALSO has a problem, so here's what we're going to do...". The refunded it again and let me purchase a new one again! But this time we had a dilemma, I have a 20GB harddrive that I'm not going to give up because of my data and they understand. They said I could buy the current Pro version which is the 60Gig model and is cheaper than what I paid for my 20, I'm like "Cool!" but we need to do the data transfer. They don't have the transfer cable so we can't do that. Then they're like, "Hey, you can buy the Arcade version which doesn't come with a hard drive and just keep your 20GB drive." I'm thinking, "Seriously!? You'll let me do that?" So I proceed to purchase the Arcade version (with 2 year extended warranty again) which gets me just about a $100 refund and I keep my HD AND they let me keep the controller that came with the Arcade version (I didn't even bring in my original controllers). And I even specifically asked them "I can take this too?" they're like "Yep!"
So now after all of that I now have a 360 with 20Gig HD plus free controller and is under Warranty until April 2013. Total approximate cost: $200.
What's worse is that however much warranty I still had has long since expired.
