I bought GTA4 today, got home and popped it into the Xbox and absolutely nothing happened! Then I see 3 flashing red lights, so I look it up online and turns out this is a notorious issue with the XBox 360 console. The so-called “Red Ring of Death.”

It’s been a few months since I played any games, so it’s frustrating that it seems to have died randomly. However, logging into the MS site and pulling up my warranty information was a breeze. This is the first time I’ve tried, but I just popped in the serial # and away it went. It turns out I’m out of warranty, except for this specific issue. seems they extended the warranty for everyone with this issue. That’s good, ’cause I’m not spending another $300 on a new console!

So I entered a repair request, they auto-generated a ticket and will mail me a box with a pre-printed shipping label. Then I get to take it to a UPS store and off it goes, should be back in a week. I’m cautiously optimistic…

Update: box came, I shipped it and got it back within a few days and it works like brand-new! So while it was very annoying that it broke, it’s incredible that it was so easy and relatively painless (and free) to get it repaired. I’m really impressed with Microsoft! This just reinforces my belief that a product/service defect presents an excellent opportunity for a company to build customer loyalty. It doesn’t always work of course, but if a company can take a problem and do a stellar job of resolving it, I firmly believe that they can actually come out ahead with that customer. But you only get one or maybe two of those chances; if you build a shitty product no amount of resolution is going to save you!