Yet Another Harebrained Scheme

So if you were around last spring, you might've read about one of my exploits: scamming the scammers and getting an iPod nano for a net cost (to me) of about $13. I loved the whole process for a couple reasons: 1) I got a dirt cheap iPod Nano and 2) it was nice to stick it to people notorious for taking advantage of others on the internet. This year I was thinking about repeating the process for a near free Nintendo Wii, but while reading one of my favorite websites, Engadget, I had another idea.

Last November I purchased an Xbox 360, and have loved it so far. SO of course I keep up with Xbox news, and this article caught my eye: "Microsoft offering free repairs for all 2005 Xbox 360s" and boy, that got me thinking. I was thrilled that my current Xbox 360 had its manufacturer's warranty extended from 90 days to a full year, but I was willing to bet that there were plenty of people out there who don't keep up with the news.

So what's this scheme, you ask? Buy a broken Xbox 360 manufactured in 2005, return it to Microsoft for its free repairs, and either keep it or (more likely) turn around and sell it on eBay and hopefully make a profit decent enough to take a good chunk out of the price of a Wii. Not as good as a free Wii, but it seems more legit and a lot less of a hassle.

Let's see how this all turned out:

January 16th: Time to get a busted 360

Of course the most logical place to scope out a busted Xbox 360 would be eBay. A notorious problem plaguing early Xbox 360s is the "red ring of death" - a case where the Xbox has something wrong and displays 3 red lights around the power button; so I figured that would be a good place to begin my search.



Going into this I had three criteria for any Xbox I wanted to buy:

1) It MUST have a manufacture date before 1/1/2006. Now, 90% of auctions don't mention the manufacture date, but you can always use eBay's "ask seller a question" feature and most people will be more than happy to provide the date for you.
2) While we're on the asking seller a question bit, you also MUST find out if the console has ever been opened or previously repaired. Why? Because sometimes these things can void Microsoft's factory warranty. If the warranty's shot, don't buy it.
3) The price had to be reasonable. I set a maximum of $140 for myself including shipping, which I knew would be moderately expensive.

With those things in mind, I found an auction for a 360 made in 11/2005 at a decent price. A day and a half and $134 (after shipping) later, I was the proud "winner" of a used, broken Xbox 360. Note that it was at this point that I had my first thought of "Good lord, Matt. What are you doing?!" But none the less, I kept going.



Now as soon as the auction ended and I had paid for my Xbox, I sent an email asking the guy (or girl, heh) for the Manufacturer's Date as well as the Serial number from the label on the back of the 360 before he mailed it off. He complied, and with that info in hand, it was time to turn to Microsoft.

After doing some hunting around, I found the customer service number: 1-800-4MY-XBOX. I called up and was greeted by some automated crap with an overly chippy guy who let me through some common troubleshooting techniques. After (oddly enough) nothing worked, I was transferred to "Susan Jones" who I assume was in sunny Bangalore, India. Ugh. I gave her the information regarding my newly purchased Xbox, and also after going through ALL the same steps again she informed me that my Xbox
indeed would be repaired for no charge, and that Microsoft would be sending me a box.

So I had two things incoming, a box from Redmond and a busted Xbox from eBay. Time to play the waiting game.


January 24th: Well, well - that was fast


(A view from the cave that is my room. 2 TVs - 1HD, 1 old ass 11"; Dreamcast hooked to HDTV via VGA, 2 Xbox 360s (functional one to HDTV via component), original Xbox hooked up via component, and a hacked series2 TiVo running through S-Video)

So I get home today and find not one but two boxes outside of my front door. One's my "brand new" Xbox (the one on top with the white tray is the older, busted 360; the functional one has the chrome tray):



...and the other is just a box from Microsoft, complete with a return label and detailed packing instructions:



At this point I'm feeling a lot better - this crap might work! I packed up the busted console and sent it on its merry way. Stay tuned to see if this ends up working!


February 6th: Holy Crap, it Worked



Wow, this stupid idea actually worked! Now I'm in possession of 2 Xbox 360s, one which I paid entirely too much for (retail), the other, not so much. Microsoft sent me a replacement 360, and with a manufacture date of 11/2006 I'm pretty sure they just sent a new unit. The box just had the 360 and a note telling me about the process:



So now that I have two 360s, what should I do now?



Oh yeah. That. Anybody feel like buying an Xbox 360?