I've owned my Xbox 360 since the 2nd of this month, including one week when I've been away on holiday and haven't touched it, and already... I've been on the phone to Microsoft support twice today to arrange repairs under warranty. I'm quite disappointed - I didn't even get to see the famous "Red Ring Of Death". What's happened is that the console refuses to read games or DVDs. It gave me an error message last night - a disc read error, asking me to open the tray and remove any dust... so I opened the tray, took a look at the disc which was absolutely immaculate, pristine, brand new and super nice and shiny - not a speck of dust. I shrugged and put the disc back into the tray and got on with my game. It was a compilation disc of games, so I guess it didn't need to read very much, so I didn't have any problems for hours until I stopped playing.
After that, it wouldn't read any discs. I put in a disc, it says "reading" .... and then instead of the name of the game, it says "open tray". It doesn't recognise discs. I tried a whole pile of different games, nothing would work.
So I went to bed, and in the morning tried to ring the support line. They're only open 9am to 5pm so I spent some time jotting down the serial number ready. When I got through, I was through to a woman with an Indian accent. I have a cold so I suppose I must have been hard to understand. I ended up repeating myself an awful lot, and the line kept cutting out and beeping so she was hard to understand, too.
We went through all sorts of things, I explained the problem a few times, told her what I could see... registered the console with the serial number... for some reason she kept asking me if the time and date were right on the console - which are automatically updated when it's connected to the internet, but the internal battery is dead so the clock is wrong otherwise - went through the menu to "console settings" -> "startup" -> "disc" but now it won't let me change whether to start on the dashboard or DVD, it just goes backwards to the previous page on the menu. (?)
At her request I tried a DVD and an audio CD - the DVD failed, but the CD works (it even grabbed the track listing which quite impressed me, since it was an import Utena soundtrack). She asked me if the console was too hot. I said yes, it's hot but how hot is too hot? She asked if it was too hot. I said it's hot, you could use it as a hand-dryer. She asked me if there was ventilation, I said it's sitting there on its own, nowhere near anything else, and that it's a smokeless environment, there shouldn't be a problem with the air. She said maybe I should switch it off and let it cool down for a few hours. I told her it had stopped working since the night before and that I had left it switched off overnight and it still wouldn't work. She suggested I switch the machine off and remove the hard drive like that would make a difference. It didn't.
She eventually got me off the line by saying that she couldn't go any further with this until we had ascertained whether the problem was with the console or the discs, and she claimed that the only way to do this was for me to re-try the pile of games and DVDs out on another console to see whether it was an issue with the games or the console. I told her that my games had all been working, and I'd tried them before, everything had been in perfect working order right up until last night. I told her that my console is under a month old and that my games are brand new and the discs are completely unscratched. She wouldn't accept that. She insisted that I try my games out on another console, gave me a reference number and would not discuss the matter any further.
She did ask me if I had any other questions, so I asked about the other enquiry I had made, a week and a half ago, about removing the credit card details from my xbox, so that if the console is stolen no-one can commit fraud and buy points with my credit card. She went "let me tell you this!" and told me something about the details sticking around until the next billing cycle (whenever that may be), and that the last 4 digits of a card will be shown in the dashboard but they cannot be used.
Grr, Microsoft. Always doing half a job and leaving a huge mess and expecting the user to be happy with it.
At that point I could tell she was really really annoyed with me, she was all snappy and I knew she wanted to get rid of me, so I hung up. I felt really quite angry with her. So I decided to give it a rest for a few hours.
I am sorry to make a post here in which I feel angry. I didn't intend for this blog to be a venting ground, but this is what happened.
I rang back after 4pm, quoted my reference number to the woman on the phone (who also had an Indian accent), and she spent a while reading the details of the case. I told her that it was definitely a problem with the console and not the discs, and she said she would set up a repair ticket for me ("please bear with me, the system is very slow"). She asked if I would like a shipping label by email or by post, saying that by email would be faster and more convenient, and I said that by post would be faster and more convenient because I don't own a printer. She seemed alright with that. Again, I waited. She apologised for making me wait, saying that the system had just crashed. Again, I waited. She was coughing and making uncomfortable throat noises quite often. I felt quite sorry for her, as working in a call centre is the worst place for a person with a sore throat! She told me that the delivery and collection would be done by UPS, it would be taken for repair and should be returned within 2-3 weeks and there would be no charge as the console is under warranty.
That's just as well. If they had dared to charge me money for repairing a console that stopped working in under a month, I would have been so angry!
She told me that before returning the console, I should remove any custom faceplates and the hard drive and any other peripherals and accessories. And asked me to patiently wait.
I could hear a man shouting in the background behind her. Not just plain yelling, but perhaps angrily demanding something? I wondered if I should ask if everything was alright. More people were coughing in the background.
Eventually, she told me that the system had returned with an error, and gave me a reference number to ring back with tomorrow. [sigh] She asked me if there were any other issues I'd like to discuss, and I let her go. This phone call had lasted over 30 minutes and there had probably been under 5 minutes of talking! Such a long wait, so much apologising!
So... I'll be sending my nice new console in for repair very soon. I hope they are good to it, and that my console is all nice and shiny when it comes back. I've heard that sometimes people get replacements when they're sent in for repair, and I'm dreading that I might get my nice shiny new broken console replaced by a tatty old nasty 2nd-hand refurbished only-just-working console. :(
Well, at least in the meantime, the only thing that is broken is the DVD drive so I can play Space Giraffe off the hard drive... ^_^
