The horrors of the red rings are no match for what I had to go through.
My first 360 decided to through me a DRE with every disk i used. It started out with Assassin's Creed, and Halo 3 would simply freeze and crash, but slowly but surely it became useless. I was still under warranty at this point so I called it in, talked to a Lisa (Whose name I can guarantee is not fucking Lisa), scheduled a repair order and have them send me the box in what they would be a week.
Three weeks went by and no box.
I call again, a bit more annoyed (I was really polite the first time), and talked to Mike (Also not his real name), canceled the first order and made a new one, and this time I got the box, and sent it in. Now a little known fact about the repair orders for the 360 is that you typically just send in the console, not the hard drive. At first this didn't seem like a big deal, so I thought nothing of it.
In about month and a half I got a new console. Elated I plugged it in, popped in the hard drive, threw in Halo 3 and viola... It crashed... It got further along mind you, but it still crashed. Looking at the disc, aggravated, I noticed how terribly scratched it was and figured, because I got the Limited Edition, where so many of them came scratched and they offered a free return policy on these, I'd just return it and get a new one, easy fix yes? Ok so I tried another game, Assassin's Creed again and low and behold another DRE. I was tearing my hair out at this point. I cycled through all my games, and every last one (except for Tiger Woods 08, it was just horribly glitchy to the point of unplayability) gave me the same error. I experimented and found that all my games, with the exception of the damaged Halo 3 worked when the hard drive was taken out of the system. Great I discovered the problem and promptly called tech support.
A man named mark, who actually kind of sounded like he could be a Mark, answered the call, and I went on to explain things to him. I'm by no means computer illiterate, however he treated me as such and asked me questions which were clearly already answered in my explanation, and I was getting further annoyed, and a great deal more snippy. He put me on hold... for an hour and a half... and then he fucking hung up.
Outraged I called back (i got a different automated system this time, so I guess Marks damn shift was over...asshole) and who do I get? Lisa, Again, and I remember her because the first time I had to ask her to repeat every third sentence, This time I was screaming into the phone, "How fucking dare you hang up on me...blah blah" and nearly threw in some ethnic slurs I would surely regret. After RE-EXPLAINING the issue to her, and after being asked the same mundane questions, i was presented with a solution. Here's the kicker:
As per Microsoft's warranty, the 360 console is covered for about a year after the purchase. however the hard drive is only covered for ninety days. This entire issue started on day ninety-six...I was absolutely livid, and ended up having to buy a brand new hard drive.
And this is why, though I have a 360, I own and adore Apple products.
