ShadowReality

The Second time

29th June 2008
I hate adding to this page on my site, I hope I don’t have to do this too often.

This time things are different, I know I’m not out of my warranty and because of this when my Xbox360 refused to load up the wave of anger and frustration never took place. A refreshing wave of acceptance was instead found, something that I believe all Xbox360 owners can understand.

• Warranty Status: In Warranty
• Warranty Type: Repair
• Warranty Start:
• Warranty Expiration: 11/27/2008 6:59:59 PM

Now had there been a new huge game out like Gears of War 2 or Fable 2 things might of been different, but that isn’t the case. So instead I headed towards the Xbox support site.

Now first thing I noticed here was the support section had been updated, they had even implemented a DRM transferal tool for transferring your DRM locked games across to your new console, something that had once been lacking in the past for some people who needed it.

Another thing I noticed was that I could now submit my repair request over the internet and not even have to call the call center, whereas before even though this option existed it redirected you to the “contact by phone” page anyway. So why not! I don’t mind waiting, this way may even be faster, plus I have the added bonus of not having to talk to a nobhead that knows less than I do.

So click the button I did, and I even got an update straight away…

Yay, instant update, it’s doing stuff, things are happening straight away… 10 minutes later I get an email through, my UPS labels were ready to be printed off. 10 minutes! what was the time last time? “Shipping labels made it to me within 1 day via email“. Right I better get printing..

30th June 2008

Well apart from running out of ink and having to use my neighbors printer everything is going smoothly, I printed off the labels called UPS and they will be picking it up tomorrow. Plus I got another update on the website.

I really have not been waiting around this time, last time I think it was about 1-2 weeks before it left my house as i was just a bit lazy.

Also something else of noticed when I printed off the pre-paid UPS labels was that it wasn’t gonna head to the same repair centre that my previous one went to. No this one was heading to Frankfurt, Germany! Whilst part of me is a bit apprehensive about this I know it will be heading there based on repair centre queue times, so I’m guessing there’s not too many broken Xbox 360 in Germany at the moment.

One last quick inspection before we send it off..

4th July 2008

UPS confirmed delivery to Germany Yesterday, and today we have the 3rd status update from the Xbox site. The last status is “we have repaired you Xbox and are sending it back”.

LATER THAT NIGHT…

Oh yes, it has been “repaired or replaced” which leads me to think it has been replaced by a new or refurbished unit with a new serial. Why? 2 reasons.

1. It only spent 3 days there, they obviously turned it on and saw how fucked it was, and its quicker to turnaround and send our a replacement.

2. The warranty associated with the serial number hasn’t been updated to a year from today, like last time.

Anyway I’m hoping I’ll get a better revision that my last xbox which I was believe was manufactured August 2006.

So now we are waiting for UPS to come and collect it, it’s sitting at the famous Billing Information Received and we know from before it’s gonna take a few days for UPS to pick up.

7th July 2008

UPS status changed, In transit, Due for delivery on the 9th.

The first time..

It happened to me.

The thing that all Xbox 360 users dread. A broken Xbox 360 and a repair centre call.

I decided to blog my experiance with the repair of the Xbox 360 to maybe help other people who are going through the same experiance. Without knowing how my experiance will turn out this page will either serve as a hassle free repair or worse case scenario a horror story from hell.

So what happened?

Well back in August/September 2007 my xbox occasionaly would give an “unplayable disc” message.. sometimes opening and closing the tray made it go away. This was to be my first warning, but it went away and I thought nothing of it, putting it down to dust on the disc.

Then Halo 3 Came out which meant a lot of play time on my Xbox, or maybe not, as 2 days after playing Halo (October 7th 2007) my xbox 360 decided it no longer wanted to play Halo 3 anymore, infact it didn’t want to play anything, giving me the unreadable disc error.

Having recieved my Xbox 360 for my birthday back in 2006, and it now stopping working 2 days after my birthday 2007 I knew that i could potentially have a shitty time with Xbox repair and thier warrenty. Herein starts my journey . . .

My Xbox 360, pefect condition, not a scratch, now unable of reading discs.

October - Xbox Customer Support - Info gathering

Made about 3 calls in all this month talking to the customer support centre, mainly just to see where I stood with the warrenty.

1st call - After giving a few details about the problem and my xbox they said that it could be sent in for repair and that it was not covered by the warrenty, that the console warrenty was from the 7th month (JULY). Since I got my console for my birthday (OCTOBER) I told them that although I know it is outside the warrenty, thier information was wrong and that is the manufactered date on my console and not when I purchased it, this ended up about them giving me details on where to send proof of purchase information to which i was uninterested in as even if i found my reciept it would still be out of warrenty.

2nd Call - Just confirmed price, and process of what would happen. Around £60-65 to repair (Credit cards ONLY). After that they would send shipping labels via email or snail mail (normal post) depending on your choice. Then UPS would come pick up your box, it would go be repaired taking around 15 working days, and then youd get it back. Sounds simple enough eh.

3rd call - After finding my original reciept dated 22nd September 2006 I thought I would give them a call and see if I could get it repaired for free as it was roughly 2 weeks outside the warrenty and it had displayed errors inside the warrenty period. The support person wasn’t accepting my plea, I asked to speak to a supervisor as this support person wasn’t being helpful, I was declined with the ecuse that “he would tell me the same thing”.

I could of kicked up a major fuss here, I decided not to as I wouldn’t be able to send my Xbox off for a while anyway - I had more important things to deal with since my washing machine just broke too, and clean clothes are more important than Halo 3 (I think).

November - Xbox Customer Support - let’s do this

1st Call - Finally started the proccess of sending away my box, Paid the fee, was told that if my Xbox did display 3 red lights that I would get my fee refunded (3 year warrenty on RROD only), also if I was able to provide the reciept and that it was inside the warrenty that they would refund me. Well thats good to know, maybe I will make a call since I found my reciept recently and get that cleared up but for now lets get my box repaired. Shipping labels made it to me within 1 day via email, All printed out. I just have to call em up and get UPS to pick up my Xbox360.

UPS - 60 second phone call, thier picking it up tommorow. I boxed it up ready.

According to Xbox Support it will take 15 WORKING days. I asked them to clarify and that apparently means after 15 working days UPS will be knocking at my door with it repaired. I thought it meant ups takes a few days, its held by xbox for 15 days then ups take a few days to get it back, but nope 15 working days and it should be back. Well I will believe it when I see it. Personally I think Halo 3 might of caused quite a few “repair orders” for microsoft this month.

20th November 2007
3:20pm - UPS collected my Xbox for repair
This is about 2-3 Working days after I put in the call to xbox to go through with it, so no worries so far.
15 working (weekends not included) days from today would be around December 11th. Now we wait.

21th November 2007
12:51pm - UPS Delivered package
I guess they got it. You know what… waiting sucks.

27rd November 2007
Made a 1min call to see if they gave out status reports whilst under repair, well they told me they received it on the 21st, and that it was being repaired on the 23rd, i take it from how they said it that it was kinda being processed for repair on the 23rd, as i was told to call back next week to see how its going. I did have a thought and I wondered if there gonna take this long I wonder if they are sticking extra heatsinks into the 360s that DONT go in for the red ring. /shrugs.

29th November 2007
I Finially succeded in sticking my serial number into xbox.com to track it’s repair status. It looks like they updated the support area of thier site. so thats why I could not before. But heres some news looks like my status has been updated and they started the new warrenty.

• Warranty Status: In Warranty
• Warranty Type: Repair
• Warranty Start:
• Warranty Expiration: 11/27/2008 6:59:59 PM

2nd Call - 30th Novermber 2007
Because the warranty had kicked in (27th) and it had started it’s repair back around the 23rd (last call), I gave Xbox Support a quick call, and w00t it’s all repaired and waiting to be picked up by UPS to come back to me. I even got given a new UPS tracking number and at present it’s awaiting pickup as I understand it. (Billing information has been sent to UPS. Check site later for updated shipment status or contact shipper for more details.)

1st Problem

Not a big problem, more of an annoyance. Xbox service up until this point has been fine, here’s the skinny…

My Xbox360 has been fixed (and covered by warrenty) since the 27th Nov, and since then has been waiting in the repair centre warehouse to be delivered back. Oh they can fix the problems quick, but then they like to keep em for a bit after.

Looking at the tracking status on UPS it has remained Billing Status Recieved for a whole week now, I am told by UPS that this means that they have Generated a label for the package, but have not arranged pickup for UPS yet. I am not the only one with this problem, it seems there is some sort of bottleneck in getting them redelivered.

My only thought on this is that they are Play-Testing and QA checking the Xbox360’s before they send them back out, and if this is the case I don’t mind at all, that seems fairly logical. Their still within their quoted time frame so far, so not a problem… yet.

It Arrived back 5pm on 6th December, good as new, I’ll Summarize this page when I can

Please feel free to discuss this in the comments below..