Tag Archives: techsupport

Xbox 360 Repairs – Part Four

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My 360 died again. Just six months after Microsoft sent me a replacement for the one that died, the replacement itself has died.

My screen was freezing after playing a game for a few minutes. Suddenly the whole game would just stop, no error message, no lights, no response to the controllers, nothing. I looked the issue up on the support site, tried the suggestions (basically all the common sense stuff like checking the cables and trying different games, and also clearing the hard drive cache), but nothing fixed it.

Finally, I called tech support, who had me try a couple more things, and then while I was on the phone with them, I got the red ring of death. They’re sending me a box to ship them my console, as well as the power cable (which they didn’t take last time).

One funny thing is that this time around, Annie’s almost as upset as I am – playing Carcassonne has become part of her daily routine during Zoe’s naps!

Xbox 360 Repairs – Part Three

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My 360 came home yesterday. Inside the package was the console, a 1-month Xbox Live Gold membership card, and a letter explaining that to accelerate my repair, they had sent me a different console. I forget the exact wording now, but I think it’s refurbished, not new. As an apology, the letter explained they had included the membership card, which I’ll probably end up giving to one of my brothers once Halo 3 comes out. I plugged everything in, and reconnected my hard drive, and it seems to be working fine.

I read online that some people have problems with downloadable content they already purchased not working, and I haven’t really had a chance to test that yet. I did notice that the new tileset I downloaded for Catan wasn’t working. I’m assuming that I’ll have to re-download some stuff, but I won’t have to pay for it again.

Update: I did a little digging based on Urn’s comment, and found the following:

To clarify for people who still don’t seem to understand, when you pay for and download a game for the first time, it’s keyed to the console ID. This means the console can play it in full mode forever, OR it will run in full mode under your ID on other consoles. When you replace your 360 due to upgrade or failure, you’re no longer using the system your download was keyed to, so you get treated as a legitimate user on someone else’s system – but only if you’re signed in to Live so it can verify that.
– from a discussion thread on Kotaku

That’s super lame, but Urn says they’re working on a fix, so hopefully it’ll get better at some point.

The good news is that since it was under warranty, the repair was entirely free, including the shipping. I know people are upset about the fact that 360s are failing in the first place, but I think it’s just unrealistic to expect a new product to work flawlessly. My 360 lasted for nearly a year, and when it broke Microsoft fixed it for free. That’s a better deal than I ever got from Apple when my laptop’s motherboard died – twice.

Xbox 360 Repairs – Part Two

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My 360 is on the way home to me! I got the box to ship it to Microsoft on the 16th, and they received it on the 18th, and then today I got this email:

Dear Scott Vandehey,

Xbox Customer Support Service Request ID #: XXX
Serial Number: XXX

Good news, your Xbox console has been shipped! You can expect to receive it in 3-5 business days.

For your convenience, your shipping information is provided below:

Carrier Name : UPS
Carrier Tracking Number : XXX

You may track the status of your package using the UPS website and the tracking number provided above.

If you have questions, please go to www.xbox.com for the most up to date information.

Thank you for your business.

Note: Please do not reply to this message, as it is not a monitored e-mail address.

I was worried that this was going to take a long time, but this is actually a pretty respectable turnaround. With luck, I’ll have my 360 back up and running within a week!

Xbox 360 Repairs – Part One

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Yesterday my xbox 360 died. Kinda funny that it happened just a day after Microsoft announces that they’re extending the warranties, but it doesn’t really apply to me, since they only extended the warranty for one specific error (three red lights), which mine doesn’t have, and it’s a moot point anyways, since my 360 is still under warranty.

The problem I’m having is that my video suddenly quit working, leaving me with just a black screen with scrolling white dots, as described in this forum. After reading through the forum, I was a bit discouraged, because there’s no fix available. Lots of people are having this problem, and you just have to send your box in for repair – and since the warranty got extended, they changed the average wait for repair from 5 days to 25 days, which means I might have to wait a month to get it back.

This morning I called tech support, and after going through 2 different phone trees, both of which tried to get me to hang up if I was just calling for a rebate, I finally got through to a real person who, surprisingly, was helpful! I told her I had already tried all the suggestions in the support FAQ, like unplugging everything and plugging it back it, trying with a different set of cables (lucky I have two) and booting without the hard drive. After just a few minutes verifying that I had tried all that, she got me a repair number, and said they were sending me a box to ship my xbox back in. Since I’m still under warranty, the repair and the shipping will be free. The box should be here via UPS in 3-4 business days, and then once they get it, it’ll be 10-20 days for the repair.

So, it sucks that it might take a full month to get it back, but on the other hand, this is the best possible time for it to happen. I’m not actually playing anything on my 360 right now, but starting in August, there’s several games coming out that I’ll be playing, so at least it sounds like I’ll have it back and fully functional before then.

Comcast: Not Much Better Than Qwest

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Submitted via an email form to Comcast this morning:

This morning I ran the Comcast install CD wizard on my macintosh. It’s running OS 10.3. When the wizard was finished, the internet connectivity was working great, but for some reason, it changed my shell prompt. Previously, it was displaying Hosaka:> – which is the name of my computer. Now it displays c-24-19-225-21:> – which is the letter C followed by the dynamic IP address that was just assigned to my computer.

I use my shell prompt all day long for internet work, so while this is a cosmetic change, it is important to me. I could not find how to change it back, so I called 800-Comcast for tech support.

When I called at about 11am on Monday, November 1st, I was connected to John, who gave his service ID as 62410.

John was EXTREMELY unhelpful. After describing the problem to him, his first reaction was “That is clearly not an IP address”. After I explained that nothing else had changed on the computer, and that the wizard had clearly made this change, he told me that there was no way the wizard did this, since all it does is configure the IP (not true, by the way, the mac wizard does several other things, including creating a new location profile). When I persisted, John informed me that they don’t support OS 10.3, and that I should contact Apple tech support instead.

When I asked John to transfer me to a manger or someone else, he refused, and informed me that the managers were only there for payroll, and deferred all tech discussion to the “training and experience” of the guys on the floor, like him.

When I asked him to transfer me to someone where I could lodge a complaint, he told me I could find the information on the website. I asked him if he could just transfer me, since I had already called the number on the website, and he got sarcastic and asked “Are you talking over a website right now?”

I’m disappointed both in complete unwillingness of the phone support guy to try to find a solution, and in the fact that the wizard made this kind of change without giving me a way to set it back.

Edit: About twelve hours later now, and I’ve just added my wi-fi router to the mix, which assigned a new IP address to my computer, which seems to have fixed the problem, meaning it was a temporary thing. Thank goodness, since I was not looking forward to calling “tech support” again. Long story short: everything seems to be working now, no thanks to Comcast.