Tales of the Easily Annoyed - The Screw Microsoft Edition
I can’t in good conscience recommend that anyone buy an Xbox 360.
This is not to say that there’s not some entertainment to be had with one, but the product just isn’t reliable. Couple that with a 90-day warranty, and you have the potential for a lot of disgusted customers.
When I bought mine in January, the Best Buy clerk tried to sell me hard on the extended warranty, but I generally don’t mess with such things. I thought it was odd to have a company essentially badmouthing the product I was purchasing that very instant.
Perhaps I should have given them the $60, since stories of system failures were all over the net. Now it’s to the point where MS voluntarily extended the warranties of systems made before the end of 2005. I don’t know why they picked that cut-off date, but I missed it by 10 days.
I got to have two different drones at Xbox’s support number tell me that I was out of luck, but they did offer me a 25% discount on the $130 repair. I might have sprung for that if it wasn’t for all the stories of people who get defective systems back from MS. As it is, I think I’ll take that money and spend it on something that MS doesn’t make. Maybe I’ll get it fixed after the first of the year, I can’t say I’m in a hurry right now.
If MS is smart, and I’m not particularly convinced that they are, they’ll get their manufacturing issues fixed and start giving a decent warranty. MS loses money when people buy their systems. MS makes money when people buy games and accessories for their systems. People with broken systems don’t buy games for them.
Bring on the Wii.
