14 DAY TRIAL // This is the story of Justin Lowe, the average hardcore gamer who currently owns a PlayStation 3, an Xbox 360, a Nintendo DS and, of course, a PSP. He also helps run Aggravated Gamers (as 1Up reports) an indie gaming podcast. The title and subtitle say it all. He had 11 Xbox 360 replaced due to various malfunctions, while one of them even exploded.
It is well known that Microsoft has a big problem on their hands with the 360. It's just not very reliable. It scratches discs, breaks down on you just like that, dies on patch installation, overheats... I could go on forever. The company calls these "isolated cases". Now, back to our subject.
Justin Lowe says "I'm no fanboy," although he is clearly a huge fan of the Xbox 360. Justin bought his first 360 a month after the machine's launch. Since then, he has not had a working 360 for longer than two months. Here are some of the problems he encountered with the 11 360s, as the same site posts: "three red lights of death, two with disc read errors, two dead on arrival, several with random audio and video-related issues and one that actually exploded."
After sending his first three machines for replacement, he noticed that shipping had started to take longer, while the customer service became less helpful. He also found out that only with enough problems and by specifically making the request, Microsoft would ship you a new console. But there's a problem here too. It takes even longer to receive new machines (some two weeks).
However, Microsoft has somewhat compensated Justin, treating him to a month of XBLA, replacement headsets, some MS Points and a free game (whenever problems occurred), but he claims to have never asked for anything, except the XBLA time.
By the time he was having his third 360 repaired, one customer service rep suggested him to look into the wiring at his house. By the eighth console repair, Justing had a contractor coming to the house and checking the wiring. Of course, nothing was wrong, as every other system he owned including several PCs were doing just fine. Nevertheless, although no abnormalities were found, the customer service has continued to suggest that the wiring was a potential cause.
He told his story to Cheap Ass Gamer and NeoGAF. No one believed him. Then Justin was prompted to call MS customer support, where he asked the service representative to read off his support/repair request numbers, as he recorded the whole conversation. 1UP received the recoding in which the rep is supposed to be heard letting out an audible laugh, after opening the account.
That's about it. Kind of makes you think again before getting a 360, huh...? It's clearly the most problematic console ever.