Struck by the Ring of Death
My son turned on the system last night and the three bright red lights immediately appeared. That being the case, my guess is that the heat generated from the system has nothing to do with the malfunction in the hardware.
I immediately called customer service to see what I can do -- and after getting taken through a useless process of disconnecting the hard drive to see if that would bring back the system, I was connected to a representative in India, who obivously knew just key words for various system malfunctions. When I told him I was a victim of the 360's ring of death, he had no idea what I was talking about. Then, I said I had a hardware failure -- still no clue. Then I told him I had three blinking red lights on my machine, at which point he knew what script to follow.
You think that one of the richest organizations in the world could afford good help, or at least to train their underpaid, international workforce to know how to communicate with their customers, but I guess not.
Bottom line is that I have to pay $140 up front to get the repairs made, and I won't have the system back for at least three weeks.
I have been a staunch advocate of the Xbox since I bought my first system back on November 15, 2001, but gouging me for $140 after I have already spent more than $1,000 on the system, games and accessories seems a bit greedy to me. If anyone has started proceedings for a class-action lawsuit, I'd like to join in on it. It seems this is happening all too frequently to Xbox owners, and Microsoft is making a mint on fixing their shoddy merchandise.
I will keep you updated on my experience with MS moving forward to let you know how it goes. I'm hopeful that things will go smoothly, but am not too confident.
Luckily, I have my PS3 and my newly acquired Wii to entertain me during my limited free time over the next few weeks.
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