Beware reduced warranty on repaired XBox 360 consoles

Stan Spotts — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 15:04:00 GMT

The first time my XBox 360 died, it was the Red Ring of Death. That happened in July 2006, 10 months after the Mfr. Date on my console. So I had to send the box back and pay the $140 repair fee, and got my XBox back in August 2006. But then a check appeared in the mail a few months ago, refunding the $140 because Microsoft decided to do the right thing and make the warrenty for a year. Nice!

Now, about 6 months later, the DVD drive is dying. When I insert a game disc, I get a message in several languages telling me to insert the disc into an XBox 360. I have to admit that I usually yell at the console, in one language - but a very colorful one - that I am sticking the bloody disc into an XBox 360. That never works, but does offer some relief.

I should have enjoyed that modicum of relief, because relief is not what I got when I called XBox repairs. It turns out that when I had it repaired the first time I should have been offered an option to purchase a 1 or 3 year extended warrany, which I would have given the quality control issues on this beast. It also turned out that repaired XBoxes have only a 90 day warranty. So, XBox Repair gets my $140 back to fix this box again. They'd damned well better send me the warranty paperwork this time.