So I recently encountered something that most college students dread. The day that you turn on your xbox and instead of booting up like normal you see 3 flashing red lights on your console. These red lights in fact are so common that they have received the well-understood nickname, “The Ring of Death”. It has received this nickname because it is literally death to you and to your xbox. It requires that you pay outrageous repair fees or buy a new console. Something that no college kid wants to hear. Worst of all, in almost every circumstance of “The Ring of Death”, it occurs with no warning. Having worked fine the time before, and now refusing to boot.

After doing the standard reboot multiple times to eliminate the possibility that it was a fluke, I eventually turned to xbox.com for support. I discovered my problem, in the support home page under “most common problems” column. I found it as the first item in that column. There I clicked, and was taken to a surprisingly short troubleshooting page. The page consisted of the following advice

1) Reboot
2) Check for a red light on the power source
3) If, it still doesn’t work and the power source has a green light, then you will need to send in your console for repair. Click to continue.

More  or less, that was it. Now, I have already had my power supply fail twice, and needed a replacement so I wondered if that could (hopefully) be the problem. Unfortunately the light was green, indicating that all was good. Which meant the solution that I dreaded the most. I was going to need to replace my console. I clicked the repair icon and inserted my console serial number to begin the repair. The next screen proceeded to explain how my console warranty was out of date. I will need to pay for my repair. The repair will be $99 to fix, plus parts. “Noooooo” I screamed, “Not now”.

I guess the sad part was that my xbox didn’t even get used for a year (I was living in europe, my xbox was living in Wisconsin). Which meant that there was a whole year where no wear and tear was put onto it. I left that site sad and depressed that night. The way I looked at it anyway, was that I might as well just replace the console than to pay to fix my 3 year old one.

A few weeks passed, no xbox (and consequently, no Netflix Instant Play movies). I could have sworn that I bought my xbox within the last 3 years, but I couldn’t quite remember. I just remember it was about this time, 3 years ago. I must have just missed it. Then, while investigating my problem further on xbox.com one day, I typed in my gamertag and discovered that you can see pretty much everything online. Including any medals that you earned or gamerscore points. I was drawn then to an arcade game that might save might xbox. Hexic HD.

For those of you that have heard this name before, you know what i am talking about. Hexic HD is a game that comes on your xbox when you buy it new. It is like bejeweled, only made by another producer. Just a small mini game (xbox arcade) that everyone gets on their xbox. Now I can not speak for the whole xbox community, but for me, I played that game the first day I got my xbox and not a day since. Which meant that the dates for the achievements that I earned on that game would be the date that I got my xbox. I was presently surprised to see that it was mid-march, 2007. This means, I still have warranty left. I was so excited and I immediately called 1-800-4-MY-XBOX to resolve this issue. I tried to navigate the menus for a while, but quickly realized that these menus where designed to keep you from talking to a real person. They took me in circles, and I never found something that could help me. Being a tad bit frustrated, I resorted to the old operator trick. I clicked the “0″ and “*” keys a few times each, which almost always end up sending you to an operator, no matter what. Sure enough they did.

Finally a real voice (I can’t say that it was an American voice, obviously outsourced, but then again, what did I expect). I explained my situation. How, despite the fact that I am within the 3 year warranty, online it says that I am out of warranty. This guy then proclaimed that the 3 year warranty is an extended warranty and that is what I was seeing there. I have the opportunity to only pay $99 to repair my xbox, thanks to this warranty.

Well, I have to say, I felt honored. What a chance. My operator made it sound like I had stumbled across gold in California, oil in Texas, or that I had Just discovered a cure for cancer. He made it sound like I couldn’t possibly ask for anything greater in my life than the occasion to pay these 99 dollars and repair my xbox while it is under warranty. I waited for him to get it all out, then I sat in a stupor of thought for a second. I pinched myself to make sure that this wasn’t some kind of nightmare. I thought this through again, sure that some how I must have missed something, that my money would be refunded, or that this was actually a joke they like to play on customers to “break the ice”. But no, this was far worse than any joke. This was real… He was serious…

After thinking about this for a second I replied back, “So if i understand you correctly…” and then spited out what I understood up to this point. He said “Yes, that is correct”, and then had the audacity to say, “Is that all that I can help you with today?”. I said, “wait buddy, I don’t know what kind of stunt you guys are trying to pull over there, but giving me a ‘coupon’ to only pay $99 for an xbox repair, is by no means a warranty”. I explained to him that there is no way that under a warranty you are going to still expect me to pay you for the fact that your company sucks at quality control. Well, for one reason or another, we started to have language barriers and I was sent to his supervisor, who hooked me up with what I wanted… A free xbox repair under the 3 year warranty.

Sure enough I printed out a pre-paid shipping label that day, threw the xbox in a cardboard box and shipped it off to xbox repair HQ. They tried to fix it, but ended up replacing it, and shipped it back within about 7 business days from when I sent it. I was happy to get it back, complete with a letter explaining that they needed to replace the console and that I was issued a 1 month xbox live extension to cover not having my xbox.

I was excited to once again, rock out to Rock Band, shoot ‘em up in Call of Duty 4, watch movies with Netflix Instant Play, and it was all just in time for Halo 3: ODST. Thank you Microsoft (xbox division) for helping a brotha out. I still think you have many issues, for example if you could bring the number of consoles that require repairs to under 50% or eliminate all that garbage about the $99 warranty special repair, or even fix your website so that if you do actually have warranty left, it reflects that (instead of saying that it is expired when it isn’t). But I don’t want to ask too much of a multi-billion dollar company. So keep on going. I will defend you by saying that xbox 360 is still the best console ever (repairs, warranties, and quality control aside), and that xbox live is amazing. Plus I am super pumped about Twitter and Facebook support coming next month, and I already love watching Netflix movies on demand from my xbox. The games seem to rock as well, and Project Natal looks sweet. You are doing many great things, just meet us (the consumers) half-way with this repair and warranty junk, and it will save both of us a lot of head aches.

Plus stay tuned for my next entry (hopefully tomorrow) about an article I discovered in gameinformer, comparing video console repairs and breakdowns. We are going to learn a lot. See you then. The graph above is a sneak peak from that article, that we will discuss next time.

Anyone else had xbox problems? Go a head and vent below… leave a comment. Keep it clean.