05.18.07

why you probably shouldn’t buy an xbox 360

Posted in games at 8:46 am by Rob Fahey

One of the very first posts I made on this blog was about my Xbox 360 console – which had chosen to give up the ghost in full-scale, three flashing red lights fashion. For the uninitiated, three flashing red lights means that the console has, in effect, bricked itself; there is no known user intervention that can fix this condition. It’s a dead console, an ex-console, de-fucking-ceased.

(In this specific instance, the 360 bricked itself after applying a Microsoft firmware update which was required to continue using Xbox Live – great testing there, guys!)

Today, I finally actually took some proper steps to get this sorted out. It had been lurking at the back of my mind for a couple of months that I really ought to call Microsoft and get them to repair the bloody thing – although granted, the utter drought of games for the system (since Crackdown, anyway) meant that it wasn’t exactly a top priority.

So, I rang Xbox Customer Support this morning, at 9am on the dot. I listened to the crap hold music, and then I spoke to a young lady who was the most singularly unhelpful person I have ever dealt with in customer service since… Well, since the last time I had to call Barclays, but who’s counting, eh?

The long and the short of it; my Xbox 360 Core System, which I bought last year to replace my fucked Premium system, is out of warranty. As such, Microsoft wants me to pay an extra 85 quid, on top of the money I have already paid, to make this system work again. Naturally, I objected to this on a very fundamental level – to which the company line is, oh, but we’ll give you another 12 month warranty once you’ve paid your 85 quid! Jesus, thanks guys! That’s just great! And given that this system failed almost exactly 12 months after purchase, I guess the new one will too – so this is what, an 85 pound subscription to keep my bloody machine working from year to year?

Now, as I explained politely to the young lady on the phone, this isn’t actually how things work in Europe, or in the UK. Microsoft, being an arrogant swaggering cunt of an American company, is under the impression that its warranty is the be all and end all of its obligations to its customers – that may be true across the Atlantic, where citizens tend to be rather less protected from the whims of business, but in pinko commie liberal Europe, it’s most certainly not true.

Our consumer laws are clear as crystal on this matter; Microsoft sold me a product which would be fully expected, given the price and the firm’s own statements on lifespan, to work for several years. It packed in after 12 months; most notably, it packed in due to the company’s own firmware update (which is arguably an entirely new product which the company has forced onto me, and which should come with its own warranty). This represents a product which was most clearly not fit for the purpose intended, and under consumer law, it’s up to Microsoft to provide a remedy to this – i.e., to fix my damned console.

I explained all of this, as politely as I could muster (which is pretty polite when I’m in dealing-with-customer-services mode), said that I most certainly was not going to pay an extra 85 quid for this flaw to be repaired, and that I expected Microsoft to act up to its responsibilities under UK and EU consumer law.

Miss Unhelpful on the phone proceeded to act utterly dumbfounded, like she’d never heard such a ludicrous idea before in her life.

“Well, let me ask you, what do you want me to do for you?” came the astonishing question. Simple answer – I expected Microsoft to repair my console for me and not to try and charge this ridiculous fee.

No chance. She erected a brick wall right there and then – it was company policy, it was in the warranty… I explained that their company policy was completely overruled by the law in this case. There’s not a damn thing you can write in a warranty which removes a consumer’s basic rights under law. She continued to parrot the fact that it’s company policy, and that I’d get an extra 12 month warranty if I just paid the 85 quid.

At this point it became clear that I was wasting my time. I took a reference number from them (oh, to add insult to injury, it became clear at this point that Microsoft also expects me to package up the console and arrange myself for it to be posted back to them, at my expense – charming!) and hung up. As usual in companies like this, it was painfully clear that not only was the woman on the phone not actually interested in helping me, but even if she was, she didn’t have the authority to waive the fee – which essentially means that she was completely useless. (Oh, and a request to speak to her manager was met with another barrage of stuff about how I’d get another 12 month warranty – sigh!)

So I’m left with a bricked Xbox 360 – I guess I can add it to the pile with the OTHER bricked Xbox 360 in the corner – and a company which expects me to pay the guts of a hundred quid to repair their shoddy, low-quality product.

The Xbox 360 is unquestionably the most poorly manufactured console ever launched; the failure rate for the system is absolutely ridiculous, and all of the early claims that it was “in line” with the rate for previous systems have now disappeared as it becomes clear just how untrue that is. I’ve heard figures from Microsoft staff which suggest that the fail rate is running at around 30%, which is an order of magnitude higher than anything we saw on the Xbox or the PS2. Under the circumstances, the only thing which could rescue Microsoft’s reputation, in my eyes, would be to have a helpful, friendly and efficient repairs service. Instead, they have an unhelpful, sarcastic customer service representative trying to gouge me for the repair costs.

In summary – don’t buy an Xbox 360. At least not until they fix this nonsense. And if you’re considering your next-gen options (which right now means that you have more money than sense, since neither console is actually worth investing in yet), and weighing up the PS3 and 360, I invite you to add 85 quid to the Xbox 360 price tag, since that’s what it will almost inevitably cost you to repair the machine, and to consider the hassle involved in sending it back…

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