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So I emailed the Xbox support team regarding a problem with my Xbox and its ability to play DVDs whilst adding new special effects. On around 30% of my DVDs, the playback appears to be missing frames. However, the sound is unaffected. Pressing 'stop' on the DVD remote then 'play' puts it back to normal again, until the DVD gets to the next scene. I explained my Xbox was bought sometime in November 2002 just after the Sega pack was released and soon got a response saying that they have never encountered such an unusual problem before and to give them a ring at my convienience to see what to do next.
With the suprisingly assuring email I recieved, I decided to follow their instruction and rang the UK support number they have for support issues. I selected the right option and was told to wait on the line for an assistant to answer. Three minutes later I still had silence. Not even a ringtone or a crappy ten second tape that keeps replaying whilst I'm on hold. I hung up and tried again and got through to some woman with a name so unusual I couldn't quote it if I even tried. I explained the problem and it seemed to take a few seconds for her to even register what I was talking about. I wouldn't be suprised if she was trying to follow a script given to her on a piece of laminated paper covered in coffee stains, for she clearly knew nothing about Xbox.
Instead of asking for various symptoms, she went straight to, "How old is the console?" I told her.
"Right, so that's around..er....er....er...."
"Eleven months"
"...Eleven months out of warranty. There's nothing we can do. However, we can service it for you."
"Right...."
"It costs £80 to service. That includes picking it up and delivery."
"But I can buy a new one for a tiny bit more. Why is it so expensive just for a service?"
"That's a very good question. I'm not sure why it is that myself."
"So what do you think is causing the problem?"
It is probably the hard drive. What colour is the power light on your Xbox.
"Green"
"When there's a hardware fault, it turns red."
"Well it is definately green. But I am almost certain that the hard drive is not at fault."
"Well I better warn you that if you have it serviced, you may lose all data currently on your hard drive."
"So if I get myself a new Xbox, am I going to be charged again for downloading the Xbox Live downloads for games such as Project Gotham 2?"
"Unfortunately it is out of warranty so you would be charged."
"Right..."
At this point I decided I wasn't going to get anywhere with this person and her laminate script.
"...I think I'll just buy myself a new one then. Bye"
"If you do decide you want to get your Xbox serviced, you can always give us a ring and we'll still do it."
Ah - the desperate attempt at getting a sale. How expected.
"I don't think that will be necessary. Bye"
It was that point I put the phone down.
So, it seems Microsoft technical support are just as bad as Sony. Microsoft blame the hard drive for a problem with DVD playback. Something which at most would only use RAM, not hard disk memory, just goes to show how competant their 'technical support' really is. She didn't sound like she understood how an Xbox works, let alone memorise her laminate script. And I draw the line at desperate attempts to get money. Pathetic.
So Special Reserve may well be getting a sale out of me fairly soon. As far as online stores go, their offer of an Xbox with Oddworld seems to be the best value for money I've seen so far. Would be nice if they could offer me some kind of package on a game I want, but I have enough games to play on anyway. I could just buy a cheap DVD player, however I suspect my Xbox is on its way out, and so it's worth replacing anyway. At the least, I'll have future capability of using System Link.
Balls to Microsoft's hotlines.
With the suprisingly assuring email I recieved, I decided to follow their instruction and rang the UK support number they have for support issues. I selected the right option and was told to wait on the line for an assistant to answer. Three minutes later I still had silence. Not even a ringtone or a crappy ten second tape that keeps replaying whilst I'm on hold. I hung up and tried again and got through to some woman with a name so unusual I couldn't quote it if I even tried. I explained the problem and it seemed to take a few seconds for her to even register what I was talking about. I wouldn't be suprised if she was trying to follow a script given to her on a piece of laminated paper covered in coffee stains, for she clearly knew nothing about Xbox.
Instead of asking for various symptoms, she went straight to, "How old is the console?" I told her.
"Right, so that's around..er....er....er...."
"Eleven months"
"...Eleven months out of warranty. There's nothing we can do. However, we can service it for you."
"Right...."
"It costs £80 to service. That includes picking it up and delivery."
"But I can buy a new one for a tiny bit more. Why is it so expensive just for a service?"
"That's a very good question. I'm not sure why it is that myself."
"So what do you think is causing the problem?"
It is probably the hard drive. What colour is the power light on your Xbox.
"Green"
"When there's a hardware fault, it turns red."
"Well it is definately green. But I am almost certain that the hard drive is not at fault."
"Well I better warn you that if you have it serviced, you may lose all data currently on your hard drive."
"So if I get myself a new Xbox, am I going to be charged again for downloading the Xbox Live downloads for games such as Project Gotham 2?"
"Unfortunately it is out of warranty so you would be charged."
"Right..."
At this point I decided I wasn't going to get anywhere with this person and her laminate script.
"...I think I'll just buy myself a new one then. Bye"
"If you do decide you want to get your Xbox serviced, you can always give us a ring and we'll still do it."
Ah - the desperate attempt at getting a sale. How expected.
"I don't think that will be necessary. Bye"
It was that point I put the phone down.
So, it seems Microsoft technical support are just as bad as Sony. Microsoft blame the hard drive for a problem with DVD playback. Something which at most would only use RAM, not hard disk memory, just goes to show how competant their 'technical support' really is. She didn't sound like she understood how an Xbox works, let alone memorise her laminate script. And I draw the line at desperate attempts to get money. Pathetic.
So Special Reserve may well be getting a sale out of me fairly soon. As far as online stores go, their offer of an Xbox with Oddworld seems to be the best value for money I've seen so far. Would be nice if they could offer me some kind of package on a game I want, but I have enough games to play on anyway. I could just buy a cheap DVD player, however I suspect my Xbox is on its way out, and so it's worth replacing anyway. At the least, I'll have future capability of using System Link.
Balls to Microsoft's hotlines.
In the long run, it is still probably more worth my while replacing my Xbox.
As for it not being able to handle DVDs. So long as the console hasn't been tampered in any way that could void the warranty, you would be able to get your money back from the shop that sold it to you under the Trades Description Act. The Xbox is designed to play DVDs. If it can't handle DVDs and is not playing up due to wear and tear (dust on lens causing permanent problems for example) then you can take them to the small claims court.
I remember these lessons from school well. Five years ago they taught me how to be a bastardo.
As for it not being able to handle DVDs. So long as the console hasn't been tampered in any way that could void the warranty, you would be able to get your money back from the shop that sold it to you under the Trades Description Act. The Xbox is designed to play DVDs. If it can't handle DVDs and is not playing up due to wear and tear (dust on lens causing permanent problems for example) then you can take them to the small claims court.
I remember these lessons from school well. Five years ago they taught me how to be a bastardo.
Sounds like you need a replacement dvd drive, i can sell you one.
Possibly.
Possibly.
Yeah she does sound a bit dippy! I think that's well unfair charging you £80 to repair it! When I put a cd cleaner in my first xbox to try and get rid of the "lawnmower" sound. the sound was caused by dvds burning out the xbox' laser which also caused most games to freeze after a few mins the xbox didn't recognise any cd format afterwoods. i couldn't play a game, listen to an audio cd or watch a dvd. i rang up the helpline. he did tell me that the instructions for xbox say they won't repair the console if you do something like that (as it states in the manual), but he understood what i said. you don't think to read the manual/instructions of something as simple as a console. wouldn't of thought that a cd cleaner would cause an xbox to stop working. as it's also audio/dvd player you'd think it might need cleaning. so he told me they'd repair it completly free! i was very appreciative of that. but they didn't fix the "lawnmower" noise it made about 85% of the time. someone said that might be because i played too many dvds that it burnt the laser or something. I decided to buy myself a new xbox and a dvd player. i also thought that an xbox clearly isin't used to handling dvd use like a top quality sony dvd player like i got now. my advice: don't put cd cleaners, cd-r/rw in your xbox. only put xbox games and audio cds for copying tracks into games (eg: r&b the very best of). buy a seperate dvd player for films ;-)
So I emailed the Xbox support team regarding a problem with my Xbox and its ability to play DVDs whilst adding new special effects. On around 30% of my DVDs, the playback appears to be missing frames. However, the sound is unaffected. Pressing 'stop' on the DVD remote then 'play' puts it back to normal again, until the DVD gets to the next scene. I explained my Xbox was bought sometime in November 2002 just after the Sega pack was released and soon got a response saying that they have never encountered such an unusual problem before and to give them a ring at my convienience to see what to do next.
With the suprisingly assuring email I recieved, I decided to follow their instruction and rang the UK support number they have for support issues. I selected the right option and was told to wait on the line for an assistant to answer. Three minutes later I still had silence. Not even a ringtone or a crappy ten second tape that keeps replaying whilst I'm on hold. I hung up and tried again and got through to some woman with a name so unusual I couldn't quote it if I even tried. I explained the problem and it seemed to take a few seconds for her to even register what I was talking about. I wouldn't be suprised if she was trying to follow a script given to her on a piece of laminated paper covered in coffee stains, for she clearly knew nothing about Xbox.
Instead of asking for various symptoms, she went straight to, "How old is the console?" I told her.
"Right, so that's around..er....er....er...."
"Eleven months"
"...Eleven months out of warranty. There's nothing we can do. However, we can service it for you."
"Right...."
"It costs £80 to service. That includes picking it up and delivery."
"But I can buy a new one for a tiny bit more. Why is it so expensive just for a service?"
"That's a very good question. I'm not sure why it is that myself."
"So what do you think is causing the problem?"
It is probably the hard drive. What colour is the power light on your Xbox.
"Green"
"When there's a hardware fault, it turns red."
"Well it is definately green. But I am almost certain that the hard drive is not at fault."
"Well I better warn you that if you have it serviced, you may lose all data currently on your hard drive."
"So if I get myself a new Xbox, am I going to be charged again for downloading the Xbox Live downloads for games such as Project Gotham 2?"
"Unfortunately it is out of warranty so you would be charged."
"Right..."
At this point I decided I wasn't going to get anywhere with this person and her laminate script.
"...I think I'll just buy myself a new one then. Bye"
"If you do decide you want to get your Xbox serviced, you can always give us a ring and we'll still do it."
Ah - the desperate attempt at getting a sale. How expected.
"I don't think that will be necessary. Bye"
It was that point I put the phone down.
So, it seems Microsoft technical support are just as bad as Sony. Microsoft blame the hard drive for a problem with DVD playback. Something which at most would only use RAM, not hard disk memory, just goes to show how competant their 'technical support' really is. She didn't sound like she understood how an Xbox works, let alone memorise her laminate script. And I draw the line at desperate attempts to get money. Pathetic.
So Special Reserve may well be getting a sale out of me fairly soon. As far as online stores go, their offer of an Xbox with Oddworld seems to be the best value for money I've seen so far. Would be nice if they could offer me some kind of package on a game I want, but I have enough games to play on anyway. I could just buy a cheap DVD player, however I suspect my Xbox is on its way out, and so it's worth replacing anyway. At the least, I'll have future capability of using System Link.
Balls to Microsoft's hotlines.
With the suprisingly assuring email I recieved, I decided to follow their instruction and rang the UK support number they have for support issues. I selected the right option and was told to wait on the line for an assistant to answer. Three minutes later I still had silence. Not even a ringtone or a crappy ten second tape that keeps replaying whilst I'm on hold. I hung up and tried again and got through to some woman with a name so unusual I couldn't quote it if I even tried. I explained the problem and it seemed to take a few seconds for her to even register what I was talking about. I wouldn't be suprised if she was trying to follow a script given to her on a piece of laminated paper covered in coffee stains, for she clearly knew nothing about Xbox.
Instead of asking for various symptoms, she went straight to, "How old is the console?" I told her.
"Right, so that's around..er....er....er...."
"Eleven months"
"...Eleven months out of warranty. There's nothing we can do. However, we can service it for you."
"Right...."
"It costs £80 to service. That includes picking it up and delivery."
"But I can buy a new one for a tiny bit more. Why is it so expensive just for a service?"
"That's a very good question. I'm not sure why it is that myself."
"So what do you think is causing the problem?"
It is probably the hard drive. What colour is the power light on your Xbox.
"Green"
"When there's a hardware fault, it turns red."
"Well it is definately green. But I am almost certain that the hard drive is not at fault."
"Well I better warn you that if you have it serviced, you may lose all data currently on your hard drive."
"So if I get myself a new Xbox, am I going to be charged again for downloading the Xbox Live downloads for games such as Project Gotham 2?"
"Unfortunately it is out of warranty so you would be charged."
"Right..."
At this point I decided I wasn't going to get anywhere with this person and her laminate script.
"...I think I'll just buy myself a new one then. Bye"
"If you do decide you want to get your Xbox serviced, you can always give us a ring and we'll still do it."
Ah - the desperate attempt at getting a sale. How expected.
"I don't think that will be necessary. Bye"
It was that point I put the phone down.
So, it seems Microsoft technical support are just as bad as Sony. Microsoft blame the hard drive for a problem with DVD playback. Something which at most would only use RAM, not hard disk memory, just goes to show how competant their 'technical support' really is. She didn't sound like she understood how an Xbox works, let alone memorise her laminate script. And I draw the line at desperate attempts to get money. Pathetic.
So Special Reserve may well be getting a sale out of me fairly soon. As far as online stores go, their offer of an Xbox with Oddworld seems to be the best value for money I've seen so far. Would be nice if they could offer me some kind of package on a game I want, but I have enough games to play on anyway. I could just buy a cheap DVD player, however I suspect my Xbox is on its way out, and so it's worth replacing anyway. At the least, I'll have future capability of using System Link.
Balls to Microsoft's hotlines.