While I own all of the major consoles, I’ve been a long time supporter of Microsoft and their Xbox. Since the days of the original Xbox I’ve been slaving away at my job mostly to support my love for video gaming, oh and my family too. But Microsoft has gone from a high quality competitor, to a low life corporate company who could care less about you or any other gamer out there.
From day one I’ve had an Xbox 360, loving every second of my time with my next generation box. About a year after my initial purchase, I started hearing horror stories of Xbox 360s dying for no reason. I thought I had been one of the lucky ones to avoid such tragedy, seeing how all of my friends had already missed a few weeks of gaming due to their system failure. I had managed to get passed the loss, or so I thought. One night after a long day at work, I got home and kicked on the box, only to see that my TV wasn’t picking up a signal. I had green lights, so I imagined that my cable was unplugged or something along those lines. So I shut the system down, checked all the cables and turned it on again, only to see the three red lights appear on the face of my console. My heart sank, and I suddenly realized that there was no one who could escape the Red Ring of Death.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m a huge online gamer. Xbox LIVE is without a doubt the best online service for gaming, and I wasn’t about to go without. So that very night that the feared Red Ring of Death hit my household, I went down to my local GameStop and purchased a brand new Xbox 360 Elite. I had been wanting one of them anyway, and the new found horror at home gave me an excuse that my wife couldn’t argue with.
Fast forward a year and a half..
Last night I was getting into the new Call of Duty World at War maps, and some buddies of mine decided we were going to play the new Nazi Zombie map. We were having a blast, when all of the sudden, the sky turned bright pink. “Holy shit!” I exclaimed, “do you guys see that?” My friends, probably thinking I had one too many beers, asked me, “What are you talking about man?” Me, knowing that I was far from drunk, continued to tell them about the bright pink sky that was showing up on my screen. Everything else was fine, no problems with the characters on screen, the zombies looked just as terrifying as always, just a bright pink sky. Thinking that this must be some sort of glitch that my game happened to encounter, I shut my system down and tried to jump back in. Suddenly, my system lost the will to live. As my TV continued to tell me that it was searching for a signal, I thought to myself, “please don’t be the RRoD again.” If I had only known what would happen next, I would have taken the RRoD with a smile.
After a couple conversations with my friends, I decided to try a new cable. I suppose that the cable could have been the problem, but a buddy of mine had warned that an HDMI cable wouldn’t have picture issues like that. Due to the type of signal it sends, it would either work or not. But I figured it was a good way to cover my bases, just to make sure. After plugging in the new cable and getting the same error on my TV screen, I had no choice but to call 1-800-4MY-Xbox. Upon talking to a tech supporter that I could barely understand, she had me run down a list of possible problems that I could be having. I even had to hook the Xbox up to my computer monitor to see if it would work for her. Once all of the trouble shooting was done, she confirmed that my video card was most likely the cause of my issue.
Though a console should surely last longer than one year, I was told that the video card would not be covered. “I’m sorry sir, the video card is only covered for the initial year,” said the representative of Microsoft. Frustrated with the entire situation, I explained to the woman that it was already my second Xbox 360 that I had purchased in full, and this was the second time that my system had, for no reason, died on me. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she told me, “but the cost of this repair will not be covered under a warranty, and if you would like to have it repaired it will cost you $99.99.”
Seriously Microsoft? Seriously!? I have been a loyal customer of yours since day one! I have purchased over 50 Xbox 360 video games, extra controllers, battery chargers, wireless headset, and so many downloadable games and content. Now after all of my thousands of dollars that I’ve poured into your company, you won’t fix a problem of mine that shouldn’t have happened in the first place? That’s about as low as you can go. This is a major quality problem that can be ignored, and you’re about to lose a customer that would have spent thousands more with you in the future. All because you won’t fix a bunk video card that should have never had a problem to begin with.
I hope everyone out there who is reading this knows that if I were to be forced to choose a side in the console war, even with the loss of my first Xbox 360, before last night, I would have said Microsoft. But after last nights phone conversation with Microsoft’s Tech Support, there’s no way that I can support a company that continues to shell out a product that they themselves won’t back up. So Microsoft, unless you can fix my issue, consider this a goodbye from a long time, faithful customer. Every one else should take notice, if you don’t know already, there is no quality in the Xbox 360′s hardware.
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