Most people have heard of the Blue Screen of Death… if you have an early gen XBox 360, you may be familiar with the Red Ring of Death. Basically in the first two generations, the console would either overheat or not heat up enough, eventually causing a hardware failure which resulted in this pretty little guy:
The racket was simple. Even if they had to fix a large number of systems, they used the negative publication to strongly suggest 360 owners to buy the cooling system, and continued to push for the cooling system even after they corrected the issue on the succeeding releases. I thought I was clear of the problem consoles…
And then a breaker blew…
It may have been a coincidence, but as soon as it blew, both my DVD/Surround Sound System (which I got for my birthday in June 06) and my blessed XBox 360 (Christmas 2006) stopped working… yes, there it was. The Red Ring of Death…
I thought for sure that I’d have to pay to get it fixed since A) I didn’t have one of the early generation models and B) my one year warranty was up… But, to my surprise and excitement the extended three year warranty for “general hardware failure” (signified by the three red lights), DOES apply to my console (cheer with me please!). All free… including shipping.
What is funny is they are paying shipping via UPS, to and from my house, when the repair center is only about 5 miles from me. If i would’ve known that before they sent the pre-paid packaging, I would’ve called and asked if i could just bring it in.
In any case, i’ve already been without for about a week now, and I have another 2-4 weeks sans 360… but I do have the PS2 that my Bro-In-Law was so kind to let me borrow.
bummer…you might actually have to, like, read a book or something
Man, life must be really tough on you with nothing to do. Maybe it’s time to start on that 3rd kid?