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Microsoft has extended its warranty coverage of the Red Ring of Death, up to three years.
You can say a lot of things about who is winning the game wars. However, when it comes to returns, one company claims that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is the real winner.
Warranty company SquareTrade says (via Yahoo!) that 16 percent of 360 consoles experience some type of failure within six to 10 months after the warranty purchase. Three out of five of those are due to overheating issues, or the Red Ring of Death—which gets its name from the appearance of a red light surrounding the power button.
Microsoft currently extended its warranty coverage to three years specifically for this issue. Yahoo! adds that the number of problems could actually be higher, because many owners most likely hit up Microsoft first when a failure occurs.
An offshoot to the overheating problem: Those lucky enough to get their consoles fixed, could lose any purchased Xbox Live content.
SquareTrade says that competing consoles, such as the Wii and PS3 pale in comparison, with failure rates hovering around 3 percent.
“Warranty company SquareTrade says (via Yahoo!) that 16 percent of 360 consoles experience some type of failure within six to 10 months after the warranty purchase.” Yeah based on a 100 units with its airflow and airways blocked. If you want to believe that 16% then you have to count 16% out of 10+million 360 units sold. A lot of people like to spread rumors as facts and a lot of people don’t like Microsoft so they make up stuff about their products.
Kevin,
You got lucky ,one week turn around ? you live in near TX?,
After going through this for 4 times, I have yet to get a new one, everyone I get back is a refurb, or someone’s else’s old problem.
What really irks me is that they cannot guarantee the prior condition of the unit, which has me very suspicious of it when it comes in through the door. I do not have the info here with me where I am currently at , but I have the other 4 unit’s build date and serial, just to keep for personal reference. Even my wife gets a bit suspicious at the failure rate of these devices.
Have a feeling I will have to go through this again.
Also on my last time dealing with Xbox and crew , I did not have to talk to the foreign support guys, no that I mind, but I get linked to a customer care manager based out of TX. Good service, but I think and feel that havening to go through 5 of these is a bit much in any regard.
Ahh, remember the old days with the NES, all you had to do was usually blow the cartridge out or stick something on top of the cartridge to get it to work? the old days,, lol.
If you got yours back in a week, then yup, that is great customer support. In my case it took a month from the time I shipped my broken unit back, and when I got my refurbed unit. And it cost me $100 since it wasn’t a RRoD.
If it hadn’t cost me anything and had taken a week, I’d be a lot happier with MS.
I have the XBOX 360 nd received ” The Red Ring of DEATH ” after 14 months are so. I called via phone to Xbox, they sent out a box overnight to my house with instructions. I placed my broken Xbox console in the UPS overnight return box amd received a brandnew console within a week. Great customer support imho.
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Yeah, keep that tin-foil beanie in place… it’s all a huge conspiracy. That’s why MS had to write down $1 billion to cover their extended warranty program.