Open Letter to Microsoft...
- Thread starter Zer0.MediA
- Start date
For years I've tried to defend your XBox 360 console, even after having to replace two of them due to the inevitable red rings of death. I am one of the few who was "lucky" enough to have your hardware fail on me so soon, that I still had a 7 day warranty on it from Gamestop, saving me a month or so of waiting time since I didn't have to ship it in a coffin to your "customer service" department. The XBox they replaced it with eventually flashed the rings of death, to nobody's surprise. The XBox they had given me was from the same huge batch of nearly useless consoles you sold to your loyal customers. This may be neither here nor there, but I have a hard time believing that you didn't know of the problems you were shipping your units with. It's clearly in your best interest to ship out defective products on time and ensure your sales, then it would be to push back your launch date and deliver a quality product.
I understand this, as most people should. You're in the business of making money. It's well known that Microsoft makes its living selling sub-par products to the masses. And hey, software you can patch after the fact. No harm no foul. As long as the average consumer keeps downloading patches that offer little to no description of what they are fixing, and they continue to install them, nobody is the wiser.
But hardware failure? Really? What makes me the most curious, is that it seems you knew so far in advance that your XBox 360's were going to fail in such very specific ways, that I can tell how it failed by how many lights are blinking in my face. How would you know to plan ahead for "overheat" (2 red lights) or "hardware failure" (three red lights, which is essentially the same thing as "overheat", considering hardware failure is usually what seems to cause the overheating). Did you add that feature in advance to make it easier on your "customer service" department to figure out which huge building to ship the coffins to? Are there "inevitable overheat" buildings next to the "inevitable hardware failure" buildings, which are conveniently placed next to the mysterious "inevitable red ring of death" buildings?
With all the possibilities of failure that could result from the thousands of soldering connections, or just simple wiring, you've managed to accurately estimate the most common of failures and have them blink red in my face to inform me about it. Interesting. Why couldn't you make it blink a big middle finger with a Microsoft logo, or perhaps a dollar sign (or any combination of the two) in the background. At least I might have chuckled at that.
The reason I am taking the time to type all this is because very recently, my 3rd XBox, the one you "refurbished" and sent back to me began flashing with 3 lights. Coincidentally, the problem began immediately after downloading the Penny Arcade rpg from XBox live. It installed, I ran it, and before it could ask me to press start the whole thing froze. Upon restart, I was greeted with the sideways smile of three red lights. After some research it seems that people have been having similar problems with your "updates". Much like your Windows platform, we are never aware of what we are updating, though we have no other option if we wish to continue playing those games online as they were originally intended.
I can't prove that it was the download or the update that caused the problem, but that is quite a coincidence, no? Either way, if it wasn't the update, then the XBox that you took so long to "refurbish", failed. Not only were you fully aware of the problems that the system had, but you can't manage to fix them properly, and still choose to send out a defective product. I'd almost be willing to bet, that your "customer service" department is just a warm building full of guys with towels, wrapping up broken XBox 360's and letting them run for 30-40 minutes, stuffing them randomly into support coffins and shipping them out, ready to be sent back a few months later.
I have spent thousands of dollars on Microsoft products in my short life. Some of it intentional, such as XBoxes, peripherals, games, XBox Live downloads, points, and time, and some of it unintentional, like every time I buy a new PC. I just want you to be aware that this is the final straw in a very long struggle with your complete disrespect of the average consumer. Wait, I take that back... You're complete disrespect of every consumer. Remember Back Orifice by cDc? You don't descriminate when it comes to inferior products and unstable programs.
My XBox is stll under warranty. Will I send it in? No. I already took that shit apart a hundred times, fixed it temporarily and had it fail again. No, I'm not going to wait another month for you to send me another failing product. I'm going to buy one last XBox, used, at a Gamestop, if they assure me that you don't make any money off of it. Why? Because as much as I hate it, I have a HD with days worth of my life saved on it, and I would prefer not to give that up. If the next XBox should fail, that will be the last time I buy a Microsoft product. Rest assured, I will be buying a PS3, playing online for free, and not having to worry about any type of ring of death. My next computer will be a Mac, and the first thing I will make sure to do when I boot it up is uninstall IE if it's there.
I appreciate you taki... taki... taki....
System Error. Contact Siccness Customer Support.
I understand this, as most people should. You're in the business of making money. It's well known that Microsoft makes its living selling sub-par products to the masses. And hey, software you can patch after the fact. No harm no foul. As long as the average consumer keeps downloading patches that offer little to no description of what they are fixing, and they continue to install them, nobody is the wiser.
But hardware failure? Really? What makes me the most curious, is that it seems you knew so far in advance that your XBox 360's were going to fail in such very specific ways, that I can tell how it failed by how many lights are blinking in my face. How would you know to plan ahead for "overheat" (2 red lights) or "hardware failure" (three red lights, which is essentially the same thing as "overheat", considering hardware failure is usually what seems to cause the overheating). Did you add that feature in advance to make it easier on your "customer service" department to figure out which huge building to ship the coffins to? Are there "inevitable overheat" buildings next to the "inevitable hardware failure" buildings, which are conveniently placed next to the mysterious "inevitable red ring of death" buildings?
With all the possibilities of failure that could result from the thousands of soldering connections, or just simple wiring, you've managed to accurately estimate the most common of failures and have them blink red in my face to inform me about it. Interesting. Why couldn't you make it blink a big middle finger with a Microsoft logo, or perhaps a dollar sign (or any combination of the two) in the background. At least I might have chuckled at that.
The reason I am taking the time to type all this is because very recently, my 3rd XBox, the one you "refurbished" and sent back to me began flashing with 3 lights. Coincidentally, the problem began immediately after downloading the Penny Arcade rpg from XBox live. It installed, I ran it, and before it could ask me to press start the whole thing froze. Upon restart, I was greeted with the sideways smile of three red lights. After some research it seems that people have been having similar problems with your "updates". Much like your Windows platform, we are never aware of what we are updating, though we have no other option if we wish to continue playing those games online as they were originally intended.
I can't prove that it was the download or the update that caused the problem, but that is quite a coincidence, no? Either way, if it wasn't the update, then the XBox that you took so long to "refurbish", failed. Not only were you fully aware of the problems that the system had, but you can't manage to fix them properly, and still choose to send out a defective product. I'd almost be willing to bet, that your "customer service" department is just a warm building full of guys with towels, wrapping up broken XBox 360's and letting them run for 30-40 minutes, stuffing them randomly into support coffins and shipping them out, ready to be sent back a few months later.
I have spent thousands of dollars on Microsoft products in my short life. Some of it intentional, such as XBoxes, peripherals, games, XBox Live downloads, points, and time, and some of it unintentional, like every time I buy a new PC. I just want you to be aware that this is the final straw in a very long struggle with your complete disrespect of the average consumer. Wait, I take that back... You're complete disrespect of every consumer. Remember Back Orifice by cDc? You don't descriminate when it comes to inferior products and unstable programs.
My XBox is stll under warranty. Will I send it in? No. I already took that shit apart a hundred times, fixed it temporarily and had it fail again. No, I'm not going to wait another month for you to send me another failing product. I'm going to buy one last XBox, used, at a Gamestop, if they assure me that you don't make any money off of it. Why? Because as much as I hate it, I have a HD with days worth of my life saved on it, and I would prefer not to give that up. If the next XBox should fail, that will be the last time I buy a Microsoft product. Rest assured, I will be buying a PS3, playing online for free, and not having to worry about any type of ring of death. My next computer will be a Mac, and the first thing I will make sure to do when I boot it up is uninstall IE if it's there.
I appreciate you taki... taki... taki....
System Error. Contact Siccness Customer Support.
and you can rest assured... IE is not installed on any current version of OSX.
::
LOL! You win points for your letter man. I have a 360, still haven't put it online yet, and although I've never had the power failure (mine has the falcon cpu) I felt cheated when I looked at the HD and saw 9 gig when it was supposed to be 20. After I deleted all the crap I had 13 gig showing up. So I called the tech support line and they had me speak to some dude in India named "Bob". Due to language barriers I couldn't address the problem with "Bob", so I just hit the website. They said 7 gig was reserved for the dashboard. Seriously, the dashboard is simple, does it really take 7 gigs to store and process it?
