Sooo, For Christmas, I bought an XBox360 Kinect thingie along with Dance Central and the Fitness One. It arrives and I wrap it up as a gift to give my son. Christmas comes and he opens all the gifts and is excited to try it out. Later that evening we get a chance to try it.
I plugged it in, connected everything and turned on the unit. I didn’t expect it to do anything yet, and I wasn’t disappointed. I knew it had to download an update since it didn’t come with software. It didn’t seem to want to update on its own, so I put in one of the Kinect Games and sure enough, it informed me I needed to update. I hit yes and let it do its thing. After 3 or 4 or 5 cycles through its update process it rebooted 1 or 2 times and then it started its setup and adjustments…asking me to do certain things. At one point it asked me to confirm or cancel and I couldn’t get the Kinect to do either and then it froze.
I rebooted and saw the XBox splash screen… It was jerky and then froze. I rebooted yet again and this time RED RING OF DEATH – 3 blinking rings. I tried several more times and just got the Red Rings. I went to the XBox web site and read up on it, and tried a few of there solutions with the power supply and cords and plugs. Nothing.
Bahhh, not fun games for Christmas. The day, we decided to get his XBox360 from his other house. We brought it in, connected it, booted it up, asked to update…Click ok, FROZEN. Same thing, 3 Red Rings and it won’t work now.
So now I have 2 dead Xbox 360’s. My original one has a manufacture date of 2006 and the other 2008. Before that, I had to trade in my first XBox 360 to Game Stop because it died but was still under warranty. Before that I bought the first 360 because my original Xbox died. So between 2003 and 2010, I had 4 XBox’s die on me.
I still have a working Playstation….a working Playstation 2….a working Nintendo 64….a working Wii…. Not one of them has broken and the Playstation 2 has been my DVD player since 2001.
NEXT: I sent Microsoft an email telling them my story above back on Dec 29th. Jan 3rd I received an email from them.
We're sorry to hear that your console doesn't seem to be working properly. In order to isolate what is causing the problem and to give you the correct steps to resolve the issue, please provide us with more specific details.
- Are you using an Original Xbox console (Version 1), Original Xbox 360 console or the new Xbox 360 S console?
- What is the exact error message or error code that you are encountering?
- If/Since the Ring of Light is flashing red, how many quadrants are doing this?
- Does the problem occur only on specific games? What are these games?
- Does this happen on online or offline games?
- What is the color of the power supply's indicator light?
- Please include other details that can help identify the issue.
We look forward to hearing from you again and helping you resolve your problem.
They are asking me questions to answers I already gave in the email telling them of my problem. So, I humor them and tell them everything above, including going to their website and following the instructions on how to troubleshot with the power supply. Jan 5th I get a new email. To Save space and not have a wall of text, click here to read it.
This has got to be the worst cookie cutter customer support letter I have ever seen in my life. Did a child write this? How hard would it be to have someone that knows what they are talking about write an auto response correctly, neat and organized?
From what I have read on the net – if you get the 3 Red Ring of Death – they will fix it for free, so one of mine will be paid for, but not the other one, the one with all my downloads. I don’t have happy feelings of giving Microsoft more money for products that are so cheaply made they break within 3 or 4 years.
Anyone else have a horror story about their brand new expensive Kinect?
