Red Lights of Death and why Best Buy rules

Noooooooooooooooooo!

This is the thing every Xbox 360 owner fears ... the 360 "red lights of death" which means your beloved machine is dead.

This was a wide-spread problem when the 360 debuted in late 2005. The first gen 360s, of which mine was, had problems with overheating, screen freezing during game play, hard drives crashing, etc. But the biggest problem was overheating. Two of my friends who bought 360s when they first came out had the RLOD on their machines, so I should have known it was only a matter of time for mine.

I bought my first 360 in June, 2007 and didn't realize (until yesterday) that is was a first gen machine, manufactured in Jan., 2006. So I went to play my favorite game du jour, Call of Duty 4, on Saturday and after about 10 minutes ... screen freeze. Uh oh ... never did that before. Re-booted, seemed OK. Played Sunday night ... screen freeze. Re-booted ... red lights of death. Crap crap crap crap crap crap.

Putting it into perspective, I shrugged it off because, as much of a bummer as a dead 360 is, it was still under warranty so I knew it'd be fixed by M$ for free. Granted, I'd be offline for a couple of weeks, but then that meant I'd have to pick up a book, go for a walk or spend more time with my family. (I keed, of course, I really play mostly at night after the family goes to bed.)

Then I remembered that when I bought the 360, I also bought Best Buy's 2-year Replacement Plan for $50, which says they replace the defective equipment with a brand new machine for free for two years from the purchase date (unlike M$, which sends you a refurbished machine, something that gave me the heebies and the geebies). When I bought my first 360, it seemed like cheap insurance so I ponied up the extra coin.

Now, the Replacement Plan contract says not to go to the store to get a new machine. You have to call a number, get an authorization code, send the machine, yadda yadda yadda. But, there's a BB near my house, so I went there anyway yesterday thinking the worse that can happen is that they don't let me do the exchange and I have to do it the way the RP states. Here's what happened when I walked up to the Customer Service counter with my dead comrade:

Me: Hi. My 360 is dead. Here's my Replacement Plan paperwork.
BB person: < looks over the paperwork > No problem. Go get another 360 and we'll take care of it.

Now, I had heard horror stories about BB and their Replacement Plan and it being a real hassle to get this done, so I still didn't think it was going to be this easy.

So I bring the new 360 up to the desk. The CS Rep scans everything, hands me the new machine (they don't give you all of the peripherals when doing this type of replacement, just the console itself) and I was done. Four points here:

1. I now have a brand new 360 (manufactured less than 3 months ago) that I didn't have to send out to get repaired.
   
2. The Replacement Plan contract from my original 360 transfered to the new 360.
   
3. The Customer Service Rep didn't take the HD off of the new machine as he should have, so now I have a spare (which I've since sold).
   
4. Because of the price drop since I bought my old 360, I have $54 in credit at Best Buy.

Yup, sometimes it really is that simple and all works out.

I heart Best Buy.