3rd broken 360 in 18 months.
 

I first bought a 360 on launch day, had it for a month like most others, before finally getting the 3 rings of death. The turn around time then was excellent, i received my box in 2 days, and a new system in a matter of days, it was even delivered on christmas eve.

The new system lasted until april of this year, again, the 3 rings of death and my warranty was obviously over with. Called up microsoft they informed of my warranty and quoted me 140 dollars for the repair. Fine, whatever. It took them over a week to even get me the box, and another week + to send me back a refurbished unit.

When i first plugged in this refurb, i noticed it was much louder than my old system. Grinding, clanking etc. Over the past week everything was fine other than the noise. Yesterday, i sit down to play guitar hero 2, and noticed its even lounder than it was previously, after about 15 minutes, the 360 proceeds to tell me that the disc is no longer readable. I eject the disk and noticed that there was a ring of scratches around my previously mint condition disk. Needless to say, im enraged and call up customer support immediately. After being on hold for 20 minutes, i finally get ahold of a live operator. I explain the situation, and she proceeds to give me the customer support runaround, "i'm so sorry" agreeing with everything i say, and finally offereing to send me another return box with a 3 week turnaround. After seeing this was my 3rd warranty problem, she gets her supervisor on the phone to talk to me, finally i think, i'm going to get some help. The only thing he has to tell me is that I'll be getting a call from his supervisor monday morning to discuss this matter with me and get it worked out So, 9am this morning he finally calls me, basically telling me that I can have his direct phone number during this process to monitor my return, and that it will still take 3 weeks, they can do nothing about my game, that their system scratched, and that I will not be receving a new unit, but another refurb. What kind of system is microsoft running? Why cant't they have a product with a lifespan longer than 6 months? This has seriously got me thinking about taking the plunge and buying a ps3. I'm just so fed up with them right now.

Pffff 3! a good friend of mine literally just found out his 8th 360 needs to be sent back and fixed again!

Yeah it seems some people have decent lifespans with these and others like you and my friend have the worst of luck. I have had mine since launch without a single hiccup maybe I just don't play it as much. But I imagine as time goes on the newer 360s will be better as in quiter drives and 65nm cores or whatever.

Not that I don't believe there are problems with the system, but where are you putting it? Is it in an enclosed space? Overheating? Are you putting it on its side or flat?

Just curious.

Its laying flat on my tv stand, with space on the sides and back for air ventilation. This most recent 360, isn't giving me the 3 rings of death, its just grinding the hell out of my games. Microsoft sent me a defective unit, thats mainly what I'm pissed about, and now i have to go another 3 weeks waiting for another junky refurb. They're just blowing off the fact that they're "repaired/refurb" system might have ruined a game i paid 90 dollars for.

I just called to get mine sent in tonight. I have had it for 10 months. I did the spring update and now have 3 flashing red lights. Awesome. It's on it's own stand with a good two feet of clearance around it. I have the 2 year warranty but it still sucks. Oh well I'm good until May 2009. Hopefully by then the mythical 65nm processor 360's will be out. Or they will be powered by unicorn farts. Whatever comes first.

Well, sounds like you aren't doing anything weird with it. I'd be pissed too if it scratched up my new game. I don't understand why they can't make exceptions and send out the occassional new unit, especially to people that are having a lot of problems.

my first replacement 360 did the scratching up discs thing as well a few months ago - same symptoms: always leaving a perfect circular scratch on the disc, lots of grinding, disc read errors, sports games with play-by-play would lose the voice track and then error out while trying to find it again, etc. They did replace it with a new 360 - so far, so good. :fc:

Did they replace your discs? The thing that ticked me off was the fact they were refusing to replace the scratched discs.

Its really sad that such a great lineup of software is only available on the worst designed and manufactured console in history. I have put off a 360 purchase for over a year now thinking they would figure this out and the problems only continue to multiply.

I like that they are fixing them out of warranty, but don't like the fact they refuse to admit a problem and refuse to replace scratched discs.

my system has only done that ring-scratching on one disc (Gears of War).

I bought my system in Jan '06 and have been problem free so far. That sucks for those who continue to have unit problems.

I never made a stink about the discs - I stopped playing the games as soon as I heard the grinding and/or got the "disc is dirty" message, so it was mostly light scratching, and they all still worked on my new machine. I know they say "the squeaky wheel gets the grease", but when dealing with things like this I tend to keep it as simple as possible with the non-English speaking customer service reps in order to prevent any screw-ups in getting my service call done correctly. So I was "scared" to bring up the discs ;)

In the past, I've never really believed people's claims of widespread problems on any console, as neither I or any of my friends ever had a bad XBox, PS1, PS2, etc. - but it's hard to look past the sheer number of people with 360 problems. It seems to be more than the usual "well, you'll only hear from people with bad machines" explanation that skews the actual numbers. In my circle of close friends/relatives alone, almost all of us have had our 360's replaced, with over half of us going through more than 1 machine. Out of that group, I think 7 or 8 of us actually got launch day 360's, and only one of us still has his original machine. I kind of feel bad that his has actually lasted this long, it seems more likely than not that his is going die and he won't get a free replacement/repair. It's unfortunate, because we all love our 360's to death (literally, I suppose)

You know, as irritated as I was about my 360 kicking it twice, as long as it holds out til the 65nm (and supposing they actually work better) I'm fine.

I love the system, but Microsoft dropped the ball in the QA department.

This is what I ran into with the PS2. I heard from many that the defects were overstated, but I had 3 with the disc read error personally and knew of at least a dozen people with similar issues. The 360 is very similar. I know many people with them and every single one has had to have their system fixed at least once. Microsoft's 3% number is very hard to believe.

it's bullshit, to be honest

My system works fine. You guys are just a bunch of Sony fanboys. ;)
Acutally everyone I know, including myself (that's 7 out of 7 360s, 2 launch consoles) had the rings. 2 of those people had it go in multiple times. It's a garbadge design. I still can't believe how loud the console is. that and heat is a sign of bad design. Time to stop making these machines like hacky desktop computers, simplify and bring back the cartridge!

I'm surprised there hasn't been an independent survey or research into this. Microsoft's "acceptable failure rate" line is what is bullshit. Of the 3 people I know with a 360, 2 have failed and the 3rd's only had it since New Year's and isn't a heavy gamer.

Anyone every put the 360's parts in a regular computer case? I've searched online and haven't found much. I figured the modding community would have been all over that by now. Cooling would be a lot easier.

my brother got the rings literally a day after he got his system, brand new


my brother-in-law got the rings about 4 months after he got his

I bought a used one initially, which got the rings about 3 months after I've had it.

I can top that. I got the three rings within an hour of opening the box. Exchanged it at CC that same evening.

I've gotten the red rings and I haven't even bought one yet. :(

YOU WIN THIS ROUND!!


/skakes fist

what are the rings of death?

I've had my 360 for 6 months now, and I haven't had any problems yet (not even a single freeze). I'm keeping my fingers crossed...

when you turn it on, instead of it powering on and going to the dashboard/game, the power button has three, flashing red lights around it, and it won't turn on (black screen)

The sign of a dead Xbox.