Woe is me!

After a long boring day of work I finally got home and was looking forward to trying a little Burnout Revenge.  Imagine my suprise when I turned on my 360 (which had been performing flawlessly for 3 mo.) to discover flashing red lights!  I tried reseting anything and everything I could find to no avail.  Finally I called Microshit to be told that I would have to send the unit back to them. 

Now, I appreciate the fact that they are willing to replace my 360.  However, it will probably take 4-5 days for them to get me a return box, then another 4-5 days for them to receive the return, then it takes 10 days from date of return for them to get a new one out, then 4-5 more days in transit back to me.

I originally purchased the unit at Frys Electronics back in January.(the "born on date" is 12/1/05)  I called Frys and to their credit they were very understanding and helpful.  When I purchased the 360 I bought the 2 yr. warranty along with it.  They were more than willing to exchange my xbox for a new one, but.....thats only useful if they actually had one in stock.  They suggested that I go ahead and send it back to Microshit since they are only getting a few units every 3 weeks.  The gentleman at the store did take my name/number and said he would call me if one happened to come in over the next 3-4 days while I wait on my return box from ***(I dont even want to say the name anymore!! :x )  Once I finally get my new 360 I will have to go back to Frys and have them re-register my new serial number against the extended warranty Ive already purchased. 

I know Im not the first person (or even the 1000th person) to have this problem.  Its just very frustrating to know that MS pushed a product out the door that wasnt ready simply to capitalize on the Christmas season.  The 360 as a huge return rate.  Even the games that were release dont appear to have been ready.  COD needs/needed a patch, PGR needs a patch so on and so on.  Its has if they told the game publishers that they needed x amount of games so just give us what you have ready and well deal with the rest later.

Well, Im now in a holding pattern.  I plugged the old xbox in and played a couple of game of Halo2 last night.  You cant imagine how dificult it is to get used to the old controller and look at fuzzy images again.  It took 3 weeks to get used to the new controller! 

Just to add insult to injury.  On Monday I rented Burnout Revenge at my local Blockbuster that now is useless to me.  Another $8 wasted.