It’s only fair that since I complained mightily when my Xbox 360 died, I should also let everyone know when it was resurrected.
During the week after my machine died, I spent a lot of time on the phone with Xbox and Best Buy, determining that a) either of them would replace the broken Xbox and b) Microsoft’s fix would take several weeks, but not require my hard drive while Best Buy wanted the Xbox and everything it came with, including the hard drive.
Best Buy’s option would take the least time, but cost me my saved games. Mulling this over, I spoke with my friend Dave who told me he had a tool that would make a copy of my hard drive and then allow us to restore it to my new machine. He was also willing to try hooking my hard drive up to his Xbox, in hopes that we could simply copy the saved games, my gamer profile and other content over to his memory stick.
Both options worked well, indicating (at least to us) that the problem that killed my Xbox was related to the machine itself, not the hard drive. Meanwhile, Dave suggested taking it back to Best Buy, explaining the situation and seeing if they might do an outright replacement. I was skeptical … but what did I have to lose?
The Non-Battle of Best Buy
The next day I headed out to the Best Buy where I bought the Xbox. I steeled myself for a fight, expecting that they make me jump through at least a few hoops in order to get a new machine, or at the very least try and force me to send the 360 back to Best Buy headquarters via my product replacement plan.
But there was no fight. The customer service rep asked me what was wrong with the box, jotted down the serial number, looked over my receipt, took the old Xbox and replaced it with a new one. It was still under the manufacturer’s warranty, she explained, and for such machines Best Buy did a simple exchange.
Overjoyed, I went back home setup the Xbox, copied my backup data from my friend Dave’s Xbox memory card, downloaded my old purchased content from Xbox Live (note to Apple: you really, really need this ability with your Music Store … and you don’t want to be one-upped by Microsoft do you?), and was soon blasting my way through Gears of War again.
That, of course, made my Xbox very happy.