Recently, while getting fired up for a family Rockband session, our XBox died. Red ring of death. Put down the guitar controller - the third one nonetheless - first one got its strum bar stuck, second one had a miscalibrated tilt sensor - and go through the routine... call, ship, wait. We'd only done it three times in the last two years, so yes, we know the routine.
Two weeks later (life without an XBox isn't all that bad, really - did you know there's a whole world outside the front door) the box shows up on our doorstep (...get the guitars ready). Together with a letter that said that we had tampered with our XBox and they won't fix it, so here, have your brick back. WTF? Given that none of us have a need to, care to, or even know how to "tamper" with our XBox, the only explanation I can come up with is that this is a machine that had been previously opened by Microsoft's repair engineers. This cannot really be happening, right?
Several hours (days) on the phone with patient, but completely unempowered customer service personnel we know now that there allegedly is a broken seal behind the faceplate, as evidenced by some photograph - now attached to our file. So with the engineer's remote help (as we've never done it before) we take off the faceplate and have a look. Nothing. Not the minutest crack. WTF? I guess this is how Microsoft's mitigates the rising cost of supporting their extension of warranty to 3 years. By refusing to fix them.
So as it stands right now we have a nice-looking brick, a useless (with or without the Xbox) HD DVD player, an extensive library of games, and a bunch of ugly plastic instruments sitting around our living room. Anyone interested? The PS 3 is starting to look really good....
UPDATE: My well-connected colleague Chris Williams set some things in motion and some well-meaning Microsoft folks made it happen. Customer Service reps suddenly became very helpful (it was like magic) and we were asked to send our box in again. I'm happy to report that we have now received a replacement box and a month of XBox Live for "our troubles". Thank you Chris, and especially Brian from Microsoft!
Rock on!