bordagen

Well, yesterday was my birthday. Was a really good day.

I was feeling a little delicate for most of the day due to drinking far too much on Saturday night, but it was fine. Got a few games (Mystery Detective – DS, Hotel Dusk – DS, Dead Rising – 360, some Xbox Live points) and a DAB radio, oh, and a LCD TV from everyone. Just wish my Xbox was here so that I could see what it looks like in HD.

Thanks for the presents everyone! I had a great day.

Interesting.

It would seem that I have been lied to by Xbox Support again. After ringing them on Friday enquiring about the status of my Xbox repair I was informed that it was with UPS but hadn’t been scanned. I just rang them up today to check on the status of my delivery, as the tracking number I was given was not showing up on the website tracking system.

As of this morning, the tracking reference is still not registering on the site, so I figure that I might have written the tracking number down wrong. I rang up Xbox Support again to be told that it has left the repair centre. I rang UPS who tell me that it hasn’t been registered with them and that Xbox Support might just have printed the tracking label out.

So it would appear that my Xbox is stuck in Limbo.

I rang up Microsoft Xbox Support again today to see if I could find out about the status of my repair.

Turns out that it has gone out for dispatch by UPS, but at the time of the call hadn’t been scanned at a station. I was told that I should expect it to arrive back after the weekend. I was however given a tracking number so that I can keep an eye on it’s progress.

Luckily I have Monday and Tuesday off of work so at least I can wait in for it.

Supposedly, if you’ve seen over 85 films you have no life.

Whilst idly floating around the Internet, I found this on Becky’s Facebook page/site/thing.

There are 239 films on this list. Stick an ‘X’ next to the one’s you’ve seen and add them up.

I managed to get 140. For exactly which movies I’ve seen, click the jump.

Read more »

Disappointingly, my Xbox 360 went in for repairs today, shipped off with UPS to it’s destination – with no discount to the charge I had to pay.

After speaking to them on Saturday, asking to speak to a supervisor only to be told they do not work weekends, and on Sunday, finally getting through to a supervisor who was very unhelpful and didn’t understand anything I was saying, I still ended up paying the full £83 for repairs. On the plus side though, I will be getting 12 months warranty and a month free on Xbox Live. Still, I won’t have my console back for up to 15 working days. I was also told that should anything happen with this problem – such as free/discounted repairs – that I would be credited the difference. Whether they hold up this part of the deal or not is yet to be seen.

Part Three: The Phantom Supervisor…

I’ve just got off the phone with MS again over this matter of the GH2 patch screwing my system. Apparently there were no supervisors for me to talk to around at Xbox 360 Support. The guy I spoke to also said that he didn’t have the access to page a supervisor?

I’ve not worked in a call centre before so I don’t know if that is true, but it sounds like an excuse to me.

I don’t think I’m even getting closer to a solution over this. Now I’m setting my sights on at least a discount on the repair costs since it isn’t exactly Microsoft’s fault and my console is out of warranty. Apparently my account now has a note on it about the fact that I want to talk to a supervisor over this matter so next time I ring up which will be tomorrow now (as I’m not spending another 25mins on hold) hopefully something will get sorted – whether I will be paying a discounted repair fee or being the proud permanant owner of an XBrick 360.

I arrive home today from previously mentioned Tesco trip to discover that I have 2 emails in my Inbox from Activision.

Both of them stating that:

The 3 red rings that you are getting indicate a hardware failure within the console. Title updates do not do anything within a system that could cause this error, they don’t touch the system firmware, nor do they try to rework the hardware at all. The only time the title update even activates within the console is when you put your Guitar Hero 2 disc into the system and start the game. Since you can’t even get to that point then the problem cannot be related to the title update.

The problem you are having is the same as the one that occurs to people that purchase a new game, bring it home, and pop it into the console to find out they are now getting the red ring of light (a scenario that happens far to often Xbox 360 owners). It seems obvious to blame the new game, but the real answer is that the console was ready to fail, and even if the new game was the catalyst for this failure it was the hardware itself that gave out.

To further support the console failing theory please read the following articles (the first is from December ‘06 the second is a follow up with more information from the beginning of April)

I have yet to see a major corporation quadruple it’s warranty period, start offering free shipping in both directions, AND pay back people that had repairs recently out of the goodness of their heart.

For further reading you may want to check out this 59 page thread from the official xbox forums entitled “360 Freezing Club” .

If you want more information a simple google search for “360 freezing” or “red ring of light” should give you a wealth of choices.

So the fact is that the console was ready to fail and this update happened to trigger it – this sounds like a cause of a fail if you ask me.

Also I find that reply gets a little snotty towads the end of it. Also, from the thread on the official Xbox forums that I sent to Activision support this is happening to people who machines are of different ages, from launch machines to ones bought a month or two back.

I am tired of being ping-ponged between Activision and Microsoft over this matter. I refuse to pay the cost of this repair since it only happened after the software patch ‘triggered’ the hardware crash, and I don’t think it is right. Sure, if the break on the console was my fault – say I somehow dropped it 50ft out of a building or something – but it’s not. The patch was unfit for distribution and the amount of peoples consoles that have been brocked is surely proof of this.

Microsoft/Activision/RedOctance – whoever else is involved. Sort this out and give us, the new brick 360 owners, the fix we are due.

So I heard from Liz’s brother that Phoenix Wright 2 on the DS was £9.97 at Tesco. I went down there to find that they had sold out. Fair enough. A DS game for a tenner, can’t really go wrong. I then tried ringing around all the major stores in our area to find this game. Today, a week later, I find one copy and so I get it reserved.

I high-tail it down to Tesco and pick up my game. I get to the til only to find out that it is £24.97 – not the £9.97 as told by a Liz’s brother and confirmed at another store. After being told that it’s not really worth the full price, I decide to not get it. I was told however that different stores have different prices. Glad I know this now.

As you can see, I have recently upgraded to WordPress 2.1 for my blogging engine rather then using MovableType.

There wasn’t a reason, just I fancied a change and this seemed to be the next logical engine to use.

I am having a spot of trouble making posts, but I am working to rectify this so things should be back to normal soon.

Please note that you will need to update any RSS feeds to the new ones.

I got in from work today and after a few moments of ’sit down’ time, I decide that instead of checking my auctions in WoW, to get a bit of Guitar Hero 2 time in before going shopping.

I turned on the Xbox and selected ‘Play Game’ from the dashboard. I get alerted that there is a patch available, do I wish to update. I selected ‘Yes’. That is where the trouble starts. I was aware of this patch issued to fix the wammy bar problems with certain models of the controller, and since my controller seemed fine I figured that it wouldn’t have any problems. Oh how wrong I could have been. The patch installed nicely and let me in to the game. Nearing the end of ‘Psychobilly Freakout’, the game crashes. I turned the box off and back on only to be greeted with my friends, the 3 Red Lights of Death. Fearing the worst as this had already happened to me once before, I rang up MS Support about it. After 20mins of being on hold, 10mins of trying to find my old mobile number because the woman on the end of the line was INSISTANT that I tell her what it was to ‘verify’ myself, besides me telling her the serial number of my box, my name, address, email address and after I tell her three times that the game that seemed to spark the issue was GUITAR Hero 2, not GHETTO Hero 2 (I also spelt it out for her phonetically) the only solutions she came up with were ‘unplug the hard drive and move the console somewhere else’…

How is this going to solve a hardware fault brought on by a dodgy update patch? My Xbox is useless now as it no longer plays games, nor can I do anything else. It was already been sent back to MS once for repair and now I am reading about people having to pay for the repairs to their 360’s. We shall see tomorrow when I ring up and try to get through to someone with a degree of intellect to see how this progresses.