Topic: Microsoft showing their true colors once again.

[Urkel]

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I have since sold the last replacement, which did work for at least 2 weeks, I have kept the cash, and will buy a PS3 when the price drops a tad.

Sony's making a comeback!!!!!!!

[Nick DiMola]

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Originally posted by: SixthAngel
While not confirmed if you don't want to be be the next to have your system die you should avoid Forza.

I love how Microsoft just doesn't care about consumers in the least. If you piss off enough people you will get a bad image and people will stop buying your goods, especially when there are 2 other competitors who sell items very similar to yours. If your product is made poorly and is breaking due to your errors, step up and do the right thing, replace peoples consoles and don't make a big deal out of it.

[Ceric]

You know what the sad part is.  That every customer service dealing that I've had non-game related with Microsoft has been fair to positive.  Once I got the right guy on software it was ok.  Now whenever I've had a piece of hardware fail that they have made there has been no hoops.  I call tell them its broke, we go through some simple common sense things and when those don't work they send me a new one.  Don't ask for the old one back or anything.  I guess its a different department for consoles.

I think its not Microsoft as a whole its Microsoft's console and game division.  Bad thing is with a corporation that large it reflects on the whole thing.  Sometimes its good being a puppet master organization, own lots of other corporations but your name isn't on them so they don't effect each other.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

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Originally posted by: SixthAngel
While not confirmed if you don't want to be be the next to have your system die you should avoid Forza.

LOL is each new game some sort of TIME BOMB?

[Kairon]

Retailers Estimate Xbox 360 Failure Rate High as 33 Percent

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EB Games held conference calls for its Canadian stores informing them of the new policy changes and revealing alarming failure rates of the Xbox 360. “The real numbers were between 30 to 33 percent,” said former EB Games employee Matthieu G., adding that failure rate was even greater for launch consoles. “We had 35 Xbox 360s at launch I know more than half of them broke within the first six months (red lights or making circles under the game discs). Two of them were dead on arrival.”

*ducks* Don't kill the messenger guys!

Also, I found this explanation on the NeoGAF forums, so take it with a bit of salt, but still... wow.

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Every X360 will die within a few year time period. There is a DESIGN FLAW in the system In EVERY SINGLE SYSTEM (normal & elite) with the X-clamps that causes the boards to flex when heating and cooling back down and over time that will screw up the GPU connection to the motherboard and give you the 3 lights.
...
...if the truth every got out official and that's why it NEVER WILL. People not only stand to lose their jobs from telling the truth, but lose any potential of ever getting another job, and stand to lose their homes, savings, etc...

It looks to me like MS has a serious problem on their hands, and retailers too. An endemic problem up to 33%... if true, it's no wonder that MS is trying to sidestep the issue.

It's such a pity too, because otherwise, the XBox 360 is an amazing piece of hardware, and this one problem is crippling their manufacturing rates, profit potential, consumer perception, and ability to drop the price on the systems. That move to a redesigned 65 nm process can't come soon enough.

[GoldenPhoenix]

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Originally posted by: Mr. Jack

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Originally posted by: SixthAngel
While not confirmed if you don't want to be be the next to have your system die you should avoid Forza.

I love how Microsoft just doesn't care about consumers in the least. If you piss off enough people you will get a bad image and people will stop buying your goods, especially when there are 2 other competitors who sell items very similar to yours. If your product is made poorly and is breaking due to your errors, step up and do the right thing, replace peoples consoles and don't make a big deal out of it.

Microsoft has been extremely easy to deal with anytime I've had an issue, when my HDD died they replaced it with no questions asked (well besides the testing they make you go through). A friend of mine had their Xbox 360 break and MS replaced it as well with no big fuss.

[Shecky]

I don't think it's the handling of problems people have the most heartburn with, but rather the frequency at which they occur.  (which seems abnormally high for the xbox360)

[Spak-Spang]

It is pretty obvious to say this, but hardware defects are always going to happen, all you can do is minimize them the best you can and have could service to correct the customer experience after they are hit with a hardware problem.

The big problem with the Xbox 360 is how crazy widespread the problem seems to be.  If the stories and numbers are to be believed then there are several people that have returned their Xbox 360s and received a new just to break again...and then it happening later on to them with yet another Xbox 360.  

If the failure rate was normal, it would be almost impossible for a person to get a bad Box and then have another one fail...and then another one.

The odds just should be against that.  So either manufactoring problems are extremely highly, or there is a major design flaw in the components and 100% of the Xbox 360s have the potential to failing.  In that case Microsoft has serious problems, because the first generation 360s will all eventually fail.  

[BlackNMild2k1]

From what I've heard, the major defect is just a loose screw that holds the heat sink in-place. If you void your warranty (which I don't recommend) and tighten the screw you can fix the 3 rings of death that most 360's seem to suffer from.

If that is indeed the problem then I don't see how MS couldn't fix that with an extra step in assembly to just replace you tighten that particular screw.

I don't even own a 360 and this defective 360 plague is really hurting the system's popularity. The 3 people that I know that have 360's are either on their 3rd 360, are contemplating with having a 360 that doesn't work 100% correctly or just don't play it in fear of it breaking again. I think its pretty sad. Microsoft really should do something.

[BigJim]

UK Store Stops Repairing RROD 360 errors

Apparently they were getting too many in, the repairs are too extensive and would be too expensive, and it's just all-around not viable to fix the problems.

What is it going to take for people to stand up, for the media to take notice, and force MS to issue the recall that the product deserves?    

[Kairon]

I don't know. I simply don't know. I get the feeling that MS will simply get away with this.

[Arbok]

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Originally posted by: BigJim
What is it going to take for people to stand up, for the media to take notice, and force MS to issue the recall that the product deserves?

Probably only if a lawsuit related to it gained traction, which would be about the only way I could see the general media start to take notice of it.

[Chozo Ghost]

Does the 360 sell at a loss? If it does, then a 33% failure rate is bad for them, because that means those systems have to be replaced or repurchased and that makes them lose money each time. So it is definitely in their best interest to fix this problem, as well as the bad image it is making for them...

[that Baby guy]

From what I've read, they actually started to 'make' money on consoles at some point later last year, though they spend much more than they make advertising and coercing.

[Kairon]

I wonder if the replacement consoles are counted as "sold" in their numbers.

[denjet78]

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Originally posted by: Kairon
I wonder if the replacement consoles are counted as "sold" in their numbers.

Considering that Sony does it I think it's rather easy to assume that MS does as well. What I would like to know is, does Nintendo? Not that it even matters. Their hardware is so well built that even if they did it would only skew the numbers by maybe 1-2% at most.

[SixthAngel]

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Originally posted by: Kairon
I wonder if the replacement consoles are counted as "sold" in their numbers.

Of course they are.  Since ms counts shipped numbers a customer doesn't actually have to be able to buy the box.  They either shipped it to the service center or a store but still shipped it.

You also have to consider the people who don't have a warranty or don't want it repaired and buy a new one instead (as well as those who don't want to replace it).  With these huge failure rates and rebuys I would think the actual number of working consoles is far, far, far lower then the numbers given out.

[GoldenPhoenix]

I thought I would post this, I asked my contact at MS about this and he gave me the statement that he cannot comment on it. So more than likely the numbers are much higher than they originally stated or he would have told me so.

[Kairon]

Are "no comments" effectively the same as "neither cofirm nor deny" responses?

[GoldenPhoenix]

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Originally posted by: Kairon
Are "no comments" effectively the same as "neither cofirm nor deny" responses?

I think in this instance it is confirm because if MS still held the official 4% system failure rate he would have gave me that.

[Ceric]

I would think that if MS had an easy cheap fix they would have done it.  Methinks by christmas they'll hopefully will have a new improved version.

[couchmonkey]

Yeah, I agree with Ceric - the problem must be more than one screw, maybe that's fixing the greater problem for the time being, but one undertightened screw is something MS could have fixed months ago.

[Kairon]

Microsoft does the right thing. Three-year red-ring-of-death retroactive warranty.

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Any Xbox 360 customer who experiences a general hardware failure indicated by three flashing red lights will now be covered by a three year warranty from date of purchase.
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Microsoft stands behind its products and is taking responsibility to repair or replace any Xbox 360 console that experiences the "three flashing red lights" error message within three years from time of purchase free of charge, including shipping costs. Microsoft will take a $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion pre-tax charge to earnings for the quarter ended June 30, 2007 for anticipated costs under its current and enhanced Xbox 360 policies.
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said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division. "We value our community tremendously and look at this as an investment in our customer base. We look forward to great things to come."

For any customer who has previously paid for repair expenses related to the three flashing lights error message on the Xbox 360 console, Microsoft will retroactively reimburse them.

Frankly, I think this is what they needed to do, so good for them. The $1.05-$1.15 billion cost to last fiscal year's gotta hurt though.

[Spak-Spang]

Wow.  Microsoft has now got me feeling safer about buying an Xbox 360, and willing to buy one now instead of waiting.  I still want a price cut before purchase though.

[that Baby guy]

So basically, they plan to lose over one billion dollars on this.  What does that mean?  I'm not entirely sure, but as I've said before, I believe MS dis start to make a profit on these things at some point in the past year.

If we assume that the majority of broken consoles were premium ($400) versions, that 11 billion of the consoles have been shipped, that the cheapest way to fix the console is to replace them, and that the exact cost of replacing one is the cost of sale, we'll see that about 23% of 360s were defective.

However, honestly, I think the cost to fix should be less than $400, which would mean that an even higher percentage is messed up.

I would hate to be an MS shareholder right now.  They just threw out a billion dollars more on the 360, and will face absolutely no gains from this money.