My Well Travelled Xbox!
I had the misfortune of buying the Xbox 360 in Taiwan last year, when i was attending the Computex Show. I brought the unit back to the Philippines where JASnipes promptly displayed it in DLSU as part of their expo. The unit was then brought with me to Singapore for ‘further’ game play testing.
After a few weeks in Singapore, the problem was that it broke down when the unit was in Singapore–shades of blue screen of death.
A quick call to the Microsoft Xbox Support Center in Singapore (Funan Center) helped diagnose the issue. The unit had to be replaced. But the unit was to be sent on to Japan. Funny, but the Xbox Support Center in Singapore has this unfathomable policy of not servicing the Xbox units that were bought in Taiwan. The Xbox 360 went from Taiwan, to the Philippines, then to Singapore, and then on to Japan, where the unit is supposed to be fixed. To Microsoft’s credit, the Xbox came back a week later and was working beautifully….for a couple of months more….
Then yesterday, while my UPT (Unpaid product team) was ‘testing’ it, the unit broke down again. Achie, Dylan, Bryan and TH tested it so much that they uncovered a fatal flaw in the CD drive. The Xbox could not read any of the game CDs anymore. A search on the web revealed that this is one common problem of the XBOX.
A call again to XBox support in Singapore now tells us that the unit has to be shipped to Australia this time! I wonder why Microsoft just doesn’t allow the Xbox to be serviced IN Singapore itself? This is frustrating for users. From my perspective, an Xbox bought in Taiwan is still the same as the xbox bought in Singapore -both are responsibilities of Microsoft. The difference obviously is the shipping costs.
The shipping cost is killing us!!! Hopefully, we will have the Xbox back to us with the new and bug free CD drive system before christmas!
Filed under: Computing
