My 360 has been home for a couple of days now.
When I originally shipped it off for repair, I did not think to list my shipping address as the office. Which is unusual, I normally have packages sent to the office, since more often than not they require a signature, which does not happen when I am not home, obviously.
Microsoft replaced my busted 360 with a completely different one. Gina asked me why they did this, I can only surmise that it is because it is easier for the “repair facility” to put all the busted ones in a crate to ship back to China for “repair” and just pick a “refurbed” one from the pile and ship back to me.
They gave me a nice letter stating that they apologize for causing me any inconvenience, which was nice of them.
Even nicer was the Xbox:LIVE Gold card they sent me, good for one extra month of service. Because a day after having my 360 home and getting my daily fix of Fallout3, my LIVE Gold membership expired.
So, I guess I want to say two things.
1. Microsoft you suck! I mean there was probably some executive out there that weighed the costs of repair vs the time and cost for delaying the launch. So they shipped a buggy product. Which, when you ship softwar can be forgiven, just a little bit more so. You know, because a software patch is not as much of a problem as sending in a physical unit.
2. Thank You for acknowledging that you suck. You guys have endoured the “slings and arrows” of many rabid users, competitors and pundits and in my opinion have provided what has to be deemed GREAT customer service. You extended the warranty on all 360 units by 2 additional years for the RRD issue, you have taken to replacing the units with refurbs, speeding up the return time, and most of all you give the consumer something for their troubles.
Those are all things that you did NOT have to do. Those are things that I believe help make up for the fact that you guys shipped buggy hardware.
So definitely keep up the good customer service, but possibly, please possibly try to not ship hardware with such a fatal design flaw in the future.
Laterz