The X-box story....

Christmas 2008...my sister bought the boys an Xbox for Christmas.  They were THRILLED to say the least.  It was a refurbished one but it had a limited warranty and it worked beautifully.  The memory on it was huge - way more than you get when you buy the standard Xbox new.  They got HOURS of fun out of the system until...

The red ring of death...

Yes, this apparently is a heinous thing that can happen to your Xbox and although Microsoft is aware of it, the older models are pretty much sure to have this happen.  The boys were devastated when it happened...Michael was playing it when it did so Nick, naturally, blamed him.  This was a great source of grief in my house.  

So on graduation weekend while my nephew was here, he helped Nick "fix" the Xbox.  There are a great many sites on line that show you how to do this - something about wrapping it in a towel and overheating it or something like that.  Well, it worked, Nick went out and spent a FORTUNE of his graduation money on new accessories and games for the system and was happy as a clam until...

The red ring of death...part two.

Now there is MUCH yelling, screaming, crying...oh, the drama!  Finally, Nick had had enough and decided to spend the $100 (since the system was out of warranty) and get it fixed.  Microsoft will fix it for the $100 when it's out of warranty - it's free if it still has one.  So we get our ticket number, print out our UPS packing slip, I take it to the UPS store and deal with Beavus and Butt-head (remember them?  Seriously, that's who was working in the UPS store), pay my $11 for shipping and off it went.

It came back today.

Still broken.

Now there was much MORE yelling, screaming and now cursing was added to the mix while Nick FREAKED out.  But he pulled it together long enough to call Microsoft and demand that something be done.  I was so proud of him!  He told them the whole story, how they have our money and we still have a broken game system and how that is not acceptable.  By the time he was done, they were going to accept the system back, fix it, give him a gold membership with Xbox live and perhaps a free game.  Not too shabby.  Oh, their reason for not fixing it?  They sent a letter saying how it wasn't under warranty...uh, duh!  We told them that when we submitted the repair ticket!  And that the system looked tampered with.  Um...we got it USED...I'm sure somewhere along the way someone tampered with it.  

So long story short...Xbox will be shipped out on Monday and in two weeks we'll probably have a new and improved one with new things to play with.  Not that this really effects me in any way, shape or form because I don't play the game but at least there will be some peace between brothers once again.

At least for a short time...