MS improves X360 customer service

[Pete]

scooby, phew! I'll hang up on the arson tips anonymous hotline, then.

Zaphod, well, it's all a matter of perspective, but I'm sure there's insurance that covers negligence (not gross negligence, but everyday hare-brainedness). Good points, though. I'd have to give that claims agent a gold star for saving other agents' time by stamping the negligent towel-user's forehead.

Just to keep slightly on-topic, I'm surprised that merely wrapping a towel around the unit could heat it enough to melt solder (if that's the culprit) without adversely affecting other components.

 

[Zaphod]

Just to keep slightly on-topic, I'm surprised that merely wrapping a towel around the unit could heat it enough to melt solder (if that's the culprit) without adversely affecting other components.

I wouldn't expect it to be, but metal expands when heated so it could be a broken trace or somesuch. I don't remember the exact circumstances, this was ages ago, but I once saw a machine kept up for a few minutes using a hot air gun pointed at a PCB. Remove the heat, and it flaked out.

 

[Silenti]

Considering that #4 just shot craps on me, I'll take this as a good sign that MS is at least taking their lumps on the issue.

 

[Sis]

Considering that #4 just shot craps on me, I'll take this as a good sign that MS is at least taking their lumps on the issue.

4? Holy crap. I'm still on my first--maybe everyone else plays a lot more than me. What's your gamerscore? You don't by any chance set your console on top of a sub-woofer, do you?

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I'm still going strong with my day 1 unit, but I know very many people that has had his X360 broken. Some numbers I have seen suggests that the failure rate so far for the early units could easily be in the 20-30% range, which if true is really bad thing.

http://www.konsolifin.net/bbs/showthread.php?t=34661

This is a survey on a Finnish board where I freguent. The survey requires a registration and a post to get the vote included in the survey. Some people have had multiple units broken and some people might have two working properly. Anyways so far the survey has gathered 353 boxes and out of those 128 (36%) have broken... Ok I realize that this still is quite limited survey and people surely report problems, but not necessary make any noise if things are running smoothly etc. But I still think this survey is quite telling of the magnitude of this problem.

The survey lists first the amount of people that have had 4 unit brokes then 3 and so on and finally the ones with zero broken units.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Given the cost of replacement and customer service, would it have been better for MS to go with a high-class layout like PS3s? Or does the extra cost per unit make replacements a more economical choice?

 

[infinity4]

Given the cost of replacement and customer service, would it have been better for MS to go with a high-class layout like PS3s? Or does the extra cost per unit make replacements a more economical choice?

i think they need to do both. given that current 360s are already FailBoxes, microsoft inevitably need to replace a lot of them repaired. They also need to root out problem for long term future. i am sure microsoft won't be prepared to replace 30m 360s

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I was specifically asking about their intial decision, rather than what they have to do now. If they went with cheap fabrication, was that a false economy, and they'd have been better off spending more per unit to spend less in replacements and support?

 

[pipo]

Probably. But we'll never know for sure I guess.