Diary of a broken 360

The same with me. I love X360 and after 26 it broken down, I also placed the photos of the broken unit on my website.
For me its a bit harder to get my console replaced as I live in a country where you cant buy Xbox360 - Poland. So I had to phone to the Customer Service in UK. Now I'm waiting over 2 weeks for the box from MS to send back the damaged console :(

Being without the 360 would really suck. It's the central entertainment hub of the househould!

It would almost be like being without my PS2...wait, no it wouldn't...the PS2 could be broken right now and I wouldn't notice. I do have two broken slims. *punches Sony in the face*

After looking at her photos, I still think that's considered a confined space to keep the 360. I kept mine in a rack similar to that one for a couple hours upon booting my system up for the first time and playing PGR3. After playing I got up to check the unit out since I've heard so much about overheating and it was considerably hot to the touch. Even when I reached into the cubicle I could feel the heat inside it. The thing is, it realeases a lot of heat from the rear and like most racks that heat can't really escape and the 360 eventually ends up breathing hot air. I have had mine on top of my rack with the sides and rear with plenty of room to breath and it runs 100% cooler. She may very well have a faulty system, I am just reporting my findings of storing it in a audio rack.

Its really sad cause Gina is a fan of Xbox like a New Yorker would be a fan of the Yankees. Hearing her talk on the phone to Microsoft and giving her monotone sappy excuses from a premade list just make me sad mayself.

Nintendo apologized to a WHOLE country for just running out of product. Microsoft tried to give her the run around for their faulty product.

The amount of heat put out by these things is ridiculous. I am very interested to continue reading her story.

Solution: Go ride a bike. Jesus people, calm down with this crap.

Looks to me like she didn't do anything wrong. Sean, if you can't put the thing on that shelf like her, then the console is clearly flawed. Every console I've ever seen worked on a shelf like that. How ignorant are people these days? Why take up for a faulty product? There is no excuse for it not to work on that shelf!

Sigh. Kinda sucks to be here I guess, but she's read the reports, she knows the drill- they send a box, she sends it in, they send a replacement.

Calling up and demanding a voucher to go get a retail one was just stupid for a few reasons. 1) it's not how they do things, she is smart enough to read the reports online. 2) they are still hard to find at retail, at least in chicago, 3) most companies that sell high tech toys have seperate part numbers for retail kits and service kits.

So that was just kinda of whiny and self assorbed to think they would change the way they do things just for her.

As for her deamnding the thing show up the next day to a lady, or else threatengint to call her- my guess is the service rep really doesnt care. She has probably been berated by a billions pised off and impatient kids day in day out, and non e of it changes the fact the calls will continue until the box has been recieved, refurbsihed and shipped back out.

i dunno. like i said, i am glad mine works, but LOL @ some chick getting her panties in a wad because something is gonna take a 3 days instead of 1 day. Boo Hoo.

I feel the pain,I have been 360-less for almost a month. After 3 weeks of shipping confusion I got a refurbished replacement, played for 3 hours, and was immediately given the red light treatment once again. Still waiting on my second replacement and hoping it is not a refurb again, since sunday marks the one month anniversary of my 360's death.

Makes my eyes water just typing this, I want my baby back.

She reminds me of Vercua Salt.
"Daddy.. I want my 360 NOW!!!"

I use mine to roast marshmellows.

I had my 360 die on me the same way hers did. I called and had the box the next day. I had sent it in just before christmas and it took about 5 days to receive a new one. They sent me a brand new system. So far it has been working fine. The only complaint is that it also came with a new hard drive which ment all of my saves were lost. I had not purchased any thing from xbox live so I do not know how that works. Overall I am happy with the way the delt with the problem, but am pissed that it broke in the first place.

It kills me. Every post that people make about their broken 360 the fanboys(not realizing that the people who purchased the broken 360's are also fanboys/girls) wanna jump down their throat and accuse them of:
1. Moving the system while disc was spinning thus causing scratches.
2. Mis-handling discs by not storing them properly.
3. If the complainee states they have their system vertical then the rabid fanboy says it should have been vertical or vice-versa.
4. Not having their system in a well vented area.

Those guys amaze me. This system is supposed to be next-gen, the future of gaming but in order to use this system correctly you are supposed to keep this in a liquid nitrogen cooled, static free room and god help you if a butterfly flaps it's wings to close to the system. And don't forget, according to them the reason the system is not doing well in Japan is because of the racist Japanese. And they ignore the fact that the Japanese love Baseball, Ipod, American music, StarBucks, McDonalds, etc.

She is not being "verruca Salt" or self obsessed. When 360 problem were first discover Microsoft went to the press telling them how they were bending over backwards to get these Xbox 360 working and back in the customers hands as quick as they could with over night shipping.

Atfirst they were not going to do this for her, and if you read inbetween the lines you know that means that Microsoft is not having "isolated incidents" anymore which is what she was trying to convey.

And when something cost that amount of money, yes the company should bend over backwards to make sure the solution is solved quickly, and there is nothing "Vercua Salt" about her excepting that kind of treatment either.

I had a problem with my 360 (the screen would go blank intermittently, and it didn't seem to matter whether it had warmed up or not). I called Xbox support last week (Jan. 9th) and got a box to ship back to them the next day. I had a new 360 within 4 days. I was very satisfied with the support, and the new 360 is working great. This sounds like an isoloated incident.

Holy shit.

This is exactly what happened to me, as Im sure it has happened to many others. 3 red lights and its dead. I followed the exact instructions of microsoft on their website, unplugging the hdd, turning on the console w/o the hdd, with hdd, replugging all the cords, whatnot. I must have tried this at least 50 times, booting it and rebooting it constantly. My entire family had developed a dependency on the xbox 360 within the 4 days that we had it working, and then it died. Since im the only one who knows anything about technology, my family being somewhat luddite unless its easy to use, I had to get on top of this. So called the help hotline, was on hold for maybe 30 secs. Maybe. I was pretty impressed. As soon as someone answers, I can hear what soudns like an entire building full of people answering telephone calls and talking. I asked him if that was all for the xbox 360, and if the 3 red lights = hardware failure was pretty common. He just laughed and told me that they got calls all the time, seeming somewhat contradictory to what Microsoft has said about the failures being a "fraction of a fraction" of all xbox 360s. But i have a feeling that he was more trustworthy than MS, since MS has every reason to lie (sales and continued hype) while this guy had no reason to lie. After getting all my info, he put me on hold for a sec, during which my phone unfortanetly dropped the call, which it does periodically. So I called back, and apparently got a different warehouse somewhere else or there was better soundproofing, b/c this guy's background was completely silent, and this time he told me that the failing 360s were actually very small. Sounds like complete bullshit to me, he sounded like he was just regurgitating what Microsofts official line. Anyway, got the box next day, sent it on saturday, got it back today (wednesday). Im pretty impressed with the speed on this, and since I havent actually hooked it up to my tv and seen if its functional, Im a tad frightened by puh_fifer's story. But the other two success stories give me hope.

Whats scary to me, isn't MS's handling of this case (seems like its going by the numbers for most companies), it's that it broke. In cases like these, most people default to the defacto, not enough "space to breath" or "you have hang the power supply in the air while dancing on your head and drinking a glass of water".

This is nonsense. As consumers how would you feel if your toaster didn't work all the time (due to its proximity to the stove or microwave). We need to have a better standard, we have stooped pretty low.

I agree that the cabinet she's putting it in (and probably closing the glass door on) is not going to get addequate ventilation.. Simple....

If you've got a cabinet like hers, then you should remove the back panel or put the 360 on a shelf that DOESN"T have that back panel in it (or cut it out of the back of the 360's shelf)...

If you took a new high end laptop and fired it up with some heavy CPU usage and put it in that rack, odds are, it would overheat as well..

My .02...

This girl needs her panties punched. Her boyfriend isn't paying her the attention she needs, hence her being an Xbox geek.

I'll volunteer, she sorta my type - kinda a redhead with tattoo's. Outta my way guys...

hmm we've had 2 break already. The quality of these things freaking suck. The second one we got (replaced, brand new) broke in the first few days we had it. Pathetic. luckily we got them replaced easy, no problem at all. The guys at msoft had a box shipped to us to package them up and got them replaced in days.

now if they would just quit freaking breaking oh and those controlers eat batteries like mad

oh and one more complaint. if you send your broke xbox in with the harddrive still in it kiss ALL of your saved games goodbye.

If you play NFS like my roommate does this will SERIOUSLY piss you off.

Clearly these things have a design flaw. The girl was giving the unit plenty of air space around it. To require more than she gave it is simply idiotic. Hopefully MS can get it sorted before the next big manufacturing run.
If the thing runs that hot, you need more fans/vents, period. Yes, it will be noisy, but thats the price you pay for hot chips. Its either noisy or its going to cook. It doensn't matter if is the 360, PS3, or a PC. If the thing gets hot, you gotta have air movement. If PS3 doesn't have proper cooling, Im sure you'll see the exact same shit happening to them as well. It will be interesting to see how the sony fanboys handle any possible console problems when the PS3 finally ships in 2007. ;)

"Don't get it twisted, Gina is an Xbox diehard, owning 3 of the original Xbox consoles and a library of 83 games. .."

Is that disclaimer really necessary? Who cares? Leave the fanboyism for 360fanboy. Just report, be it positive or negative.

boo fucking hoo, i've been waiting for my xbox 360 since DECEMBER 9TH 2005!! they finally sent me a new one on tuesday, january 17 2006... with no accessories. no video cables, no controller, not even a goddamn power brick. i swear they did it to spite me. now i have a nice 12 pound paperweight.

I think that this is interesting, all told. It's really not the heat problem - I've got 15 consoles in Wal-Marts that are still running from the day I installed them last October. With all the games shoved around them, it's quite toasty in those cabinets - and they're still running fine.

I HAVE had one console that was in a kiosk go out on me, but I suspect that was more due to kids screwing with the kiosk. (As in almost trying to steal the whole kiosk - either way, mall security arrested them for drunk and disorderly.) There've also been a couple of incidents where the kiosk control pack have decided not to recognize the wired controllers, but that's a contol pack issue, not a console one.

Other than putting the 'Not for Retail Sale' sticker on the consoles in the kiosks, the ones out there on our end of things are regular retail models - and we're talking at my 24 hour Wal-Marts that these consoles have been on 24/7 for 3 or 4 months now with no problems.

I'm not discounting that there are bad units out there - anyone who's ever bought a car knows someone that will tell them to not buy a Ford/Chevy/Dodge due to this piece of crap they bought at one time or another. There are going to be a certain number of defects - that's the nature of mass production. The thing is the volume of the people that complain - like that guy that put 50,000 miles on his van in one year and is now saying that it was a lemon and is living outside CarNation in it.

My perfectly running 360 makes those same red lights when you turn it on without the AV cables plugged in, just saying.

Anonymous rep- the wal-mart by me has one xbox 360 kiosk and it has the 3 red lights- what i call the ring of death. nobody messed with either, i thought m$ would at least give the stores working boxes.

Ned, go back to hanging out in Gina'a fanclub. No one really gives a shit about her not getting her way except her and her "friends".

Boo Effin Hoo!

Yes, it's isolated problems. Please don't make it out like it isn't. People have gone down that path already. Like the person who's having that class action lawsuit against Microsoft for shipping a defective product. Why don't you go ask Gina to join that class action lawsuit. For every one that had problems with their 360, there are hundreds that don't. Who would've thunk that?

Well, the PS3 fans should step up! Be one of the first to own the 1st generation Blu-Ray players! Spend that hardearned money!

You: My PS3 is broken. I need you to send me a overnight box so I can send it back and get it fixed. I would also like it fixed and overnighted back to me.

Sony: I'm sorry. The PS3 is still in under development. What you have is what we like to called public testing of the PS3. You need to wait for us to figure out all of the problems and quirks before we can repair your PS3. Please call back in about 6 months.

Hanging the power supply by its cord is NOT a good idea. Look at her pics! The power supply needs to sit flat with plenty of ventilation. She's probably got a problem because the brick was heavy enough to tug the cable and bend the contacts, or perhaps the fans aren't spinning properly because they are oriented sideways instead of the way the proper way.
Having lived in Grand Rapids for 8 years, I can say that the people there are pushy, demanding, and rude in customer service situations. Remember this when reading her account of the calls to MS- It's likely the tone she used was not a very friendly one.
I don't discount that there may be defects out there, but in reading her description, I saw a few things that were not recommended in the manual.

What is it about today and the ring of death??!!!

My 360 just conked out on me 30 minutes ago. I tried all the self-help measures on the Xbox website to no avail. Rather pessimistically, I called the support number. The service was great. They are shipping my box tomorrow (since it already past 8:30 PST), and hopefully I will have it out by Friday. I have to give credit to the rep who was very courteous, and honest - "It may take 7 to 14 business days to fix it, but currently we have a turnaround of 2-3 business days ... we can't guarantee it though." Both boxes however are Next Day UPS. If everything goes well, I will have my crack, I mean 360, back my the end of next week. Meanwhile, I will just fire up the ole' PS2 and play some Resident Evil 5. Cheers.

duh...of course I meant, RE 4 ... wishful thinking...hehehehhe.

Let's see the xbox 360 scratches the discs, randomly reboots or freezes, the power "brick" needs more cooling than a nuclear power plant and the machine itself gets hot enough to cook a cheese sandwhich while your playing. and now the thing just plain takes a crap. Glad I didn't bother with this overpriced piece of sh!t. Gonna wait on the PS3 cause I bought my PS2 on launch day and IT STILL WORKS !

After reading all these comments, mostly complaints,in addition to the pile of bad press everywhere else, I wont touch one of these things. I love my video games, but this machine is shipped too soon, screwed in the box, in tradition ms form. Id really like to see these guys ship ANYTHING that wasnt flawed to death. As it is people just accept it time and time again.. like theyre keeping mom and pop afloat with their patronage rather the one of the richest companies in the history of the world. What a scam.

I don't know about the U.S, but support here in Europe is apalling. My brick started to crash on start-up every time about a week ago. I called support and was given the choice between Swedish or English support. Sweden is closest to where I live, so I chose Swedish. After a four minute wait an englishman picks up. He introduces himself with the speed of colibri's wing flaps, and before I get to tell him about my problem, he says: "We'll call you back".
What!? Oh well. One hour later my phone is still silent as a church on a saturday night, so I call again. I choose Swedish support. A few minutes later I get another dude from Britain, but at least this one hears me out.
I tell him about the crashes and the red lights, and he agrees that I'm eligable for a replacement. No arguments at all. Thank God! Then he asks me if I have a cardboard box. I don't, but I say yes, because I figure I can buy one at the post office down the street. It's such minor expense that I don't really care. He says he'll send me a label that I can print out, and stick on the box. I'm then to stick the brick in the box and ship it off to Germany. I agree to this, and he goes throught the process of registering my brick on the net as this is necessary to get the procedure going. Then he says that I'll have the label in two or three hours.
Three hours later there is no label in my inbox, and by then the support is closed for the day.
I give them one extra hour the following morning to send me the label, but the inbox is still empty.
I call support again, press for Swedish support, wait, and guess what, I get an englishman. He introduces himself extremely rapidly (are these guys on speed?). I serve him my grievances politely, to which he replies: "Someone will call you back." What!?
An hour later no-one has called. I call again, and just for the pure fun of it press for Swedish support. Of course, as expected, I get another englishman. But praise the Gods! This one actually listens, and he even seems genouinly sorry about how I've been treated. I tell him about the label that never arrived, to which he replies that someone has playing a joke on me! "That's not the way we do things", he claims. I'm stunned. Apparently the procedure is to send me the whole box with the label via UPS, who will then pick up the faulty product. This excellent gentleman residing in a party of morons and practical jokers then finally gets things going. My brick is on the way to Germany as I write this.
But of course, nothing is ever streamlined with these matters. The parcel has already been stuck one day extra because of "an exeption" (whatever that means) according to the UPS tracking service. I get the feeling that I won't be playing PGR 3 this weekend, and probably not the next either.

Wow a girl with an attitude got a broken Xbox 360! Lets put this on Joystiq and start a flame war!

Jeez, be polite and you'll get it replaced. I got mine in 5 days.

This flamebait shouldn't have been posted in Joystiq in the first place. Go stick it on Xbox360fanboy where it belongs.

We have to thank Ned for submitting this crap to Joystiq and for his ulterior motive in trying to get into the girl's pants.