Return of a 360

I was getting a bit worried about my Xbox 360 that I'd sent back to Microsoft (three flashing red lights!) a few weeks ago. It had been 17 days since it was picked up by UPS and I'd not heard a peep from Microsoft support to confirm they'd received the console or if it had now been fixed. I was therefore resigning myself to the fact that it was going to take the full 25 days as estimated to either get it repaired or replaced.

To my surprise I returned home today after work to find a UPS delivery notification stating that they'd left a package with my neighbour. Without delay I rushed next door to pick it up.

It was indeed an Xbox 360, not my original but a replacement. The cover letter reads:

"So you can get back to playing and enjoying your Xbox quicker, we have replaced your Xbox console with a replacement unit."

If it takes 17 days to "replace" a unit I'm glad they decided not to fix it or else it may have been gone for a very long time.

So far it's working fine but I did notice that it sounds different to my previous unit and I hope this is down to an "enhancement" that has been made to stop the problem reoccurring.

All in all the process was relatively painless and I've been sent a couple of complimentary one month Xbox Live Gold subscriptions as a gesture of goodwill, but at the end of the day we shouldn't really be seeing hardware failures on this magnitude from a mass produced commercial console.

Related:
Death of a 360
The State of Play