Part 5: My Xbox 360 Repair

Part 1: My Experience with Microsoft's Xbox Customer Support
Part 2: My Xbox 360 Repair
Part 3: My Xbox 360 Repair Stats
Part 4: My Xbox 360 Repair

Just wanted to give an update on the 360 repair situation...

As I stated in my previous post about this situation, I received my repaired 360 a while back and my controllers would not sync with it. Brilliant! So I spoke to my contact (Sean) and he said I would need to have my 360 repaired once again. I had to wait another 4 (business) days for a coffin and once I got it, I shipped my 360 back to them ASAP. Once it was on it's way, I spoke to Sean again and asked if I could get expedited shipping once they were done with it. He said they can't do that. Fortunately they were pretty quick to repair my 360 and it was scheduled to be delivered on Monday, November 26th. I would like to mention that for the first time in history, UPS delivered something early. I received my 360 on Wednesday the 21st.

I excitedly hooked everything up and hit the power button, and.... NOTHING! It wouldn't turn on. My heart sank for just a moment. Then I hit the Eject button and it turned on. I felt much better after that. I then noticed that the faceplate on it was not the same one I had before. The only reason I knew that was mine had a ding right next to the front USB ports. This one had no ding. So I pulled the faceplate off and hit the little power button inside and it turned off and on. Thankfully, it was only the faceplate causing the power button not work. I get all my settings back the way I like them and I was up and running. I start browsing around and making sure everything works and all looked good.

I then login under Heather's profile, just to make sure my downloadable content is still working. Problem! She cannot play any of my Xbox Live Arcade games. Confused, I check the back of the console to see if the serial number is mine or if I got a refurbished 360. The serial number is the same. My console did not change. I sign back in as myself and unplug my network cable. I am also unable to use any of my premium downloadable content unless I'm signed in. I tried calling Sean, but he was going to be out until the following Tuesday. He told me he was going to follow up with me on Tuesday anyway, so I just waited for his call.

Tuesday came around and I got my call from Sean. I told him the problem with the power button. He said he'd ship a faceplate out to me. I told him about my premium content situation. He put me on hold for a few minutes. When he came back he said I would need to recover my gamertag and then re-download the content from my download history. I have a lot of premium content, but if that's what I need to do, I'll do it. He then said he could send me a free game or accessory. He offered Project Gotham Racing 3 or Viva Pinata. I had no interest in PGR3 and I already have Viva Pinata. The accessories were: remote, 64MB MU or wireless controller. I decided I could sell the controller to my friend Victor for $40 and then I would buy the 512MB MU, which I've wanted to get for a while. So anyway, I got home that night and I did as he asked. It took nearly 2 hours to recover my gamertag. I then re-downloaded a few arcade games. This didn't fix the problem. The content is still unusable unless I'm signed into Xbox Live. I called him back the next day (The 28th) to report my findings. He said he would need to escalate my issue to Xbox Live support and they would give me a call to fix the situation.

Several days later, I received the faceplate and controller he sent me. I was under the impression that I would be getting a brand new controller. Instead I got a dirty, used, gross controller. I'm assuming it was a refurb or something, but it was nasty. It was dirtier than any of my controllers that I've been using for almost 2 years. Honestly, it looked like it was pulled straight from one of those Xbox 360 kiosks at Best Buy. I was pretty disappointed. So I gave Sean a call back the next day (a week after our previous conversation) and told him my feelings about the controller. I told him I would be happy to ship it back, but I didn't want to keep it. I also stated that with what I'd been through with support so far, I felt I deserved better than a dirty, used controller. He said he could send me something else, but the only things he can offer are PGR3 or Viva Pinata. Neither of those interested me. He then brought up Forza 2. That's at least a relatively new game, so I took that. I also told him that it's been a week so far and I have yet to hear from anyone at Xbox Live regarding my content issue. He assured me that they were aware of the situation and they should be contacting me, but he doesn't know their time frame.

So, at this point, I'm still waiting to hear from them. Hopefully they don't take too long to get back to me. I'd like to be finished with this whole ordeal, since it started back in mid-September.

So, in summary, I feel the Xbox Support system is in pretty bad shape. I will say, however, that Sean has been great. He has always called me back exactly when he said he would, he was always very helpful and professional and he always got things done as fast as he could. I understand that certain things are out of his control, so I can't fault him for some of the crap that's happened since he started helping me. Microsoft needs to find more employees like Sean if they want to improve their support situation.