Don't buy an xbox 360

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gazza27

63 posts

Master Geek

#106425 23-Jan-2008 23:15

I rang EB, but they told me to go straight to Microsoft. Seems DSE are a bit nicer in that regard.

rscole86

4973 posts

Uber Geek

Moderator

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#106432 23-Jan-2008 23:38

Th3Yank: im just replyin in general to this whole post, doesnt relly refer to anyone in particular, or any part of it in particular.

So some of you seem to think that by a retail store doing a straight exchange of an xbox is wrong, such as eb games. that you have to deal thru microsoft. what eb games and other stores are doing is fine. I am a sales person at DSE so i knw the routines. If we get someone come back with there xbox saying its fauly nd all that, we cld just send it away as a service repair and be done with it, they might wait a while for it to come back. But often enuf since we are such nice people(lol) we will do an exchnage, giving the customer a new one, and we will send the faulty unint away as a store repair. so its still thru Microsoft, but in this case the customer is us, been DSE. you might think ok thats a waste of money, but because we are a massive company microsoft just takes the faulty unit and credits DSE with a new one. Same thing will apply for EB Games.

Next! Warrentys, let me clear this up. yes sometimes they are worth it, othertimes no! and yes they are a profit maker, any good salesperson will sell a extended warrenty and other accessories with a product. i do! a warrenty is pure profit. say if we sell 20 extended warrentys in one day at DSE, how many of those people will actually have a problem with there product? maybe 5 or less. and the money to repair that will be very little compared to the profits made on all the warrentys purchased where no one has had a problem.
In saying that, it doesnt mean a warrenty is bad, i wld deffinatly reccomend a warrenty on things such a LCD televisions etc, real high priced items. its worth it, who wants to pay $2000 for a new 42" LCD 2 years down the track coz the panel has failed. But for smaller things such as mp3 players and the likes of, why the hell wld u want a 5 year warrenty on one of em? 5 years down the track a 8gb Nano is gonna be old, u will have a new one by then lol. Yet i still manage to talk people into buyin them, silly customers lol.

Thanks for your post Th3Yank. I had said earlier that I am nolonger taking part in this thread, but I cannot help myself!!!!

I am sure DSE do not just swap out consoles willy nilly. Sure they might do it within a certain time frame, but a well used looking 8 month old console I doubt it? From my expereince they will quite often call MS on the customers behalf, instead of just telling the customer to do it themselves.

DSE is a massive company? I cannot really seeing MS caring a lot if they were to stop selling their consoles

DSE are big, but not that BIG.

Warranties are not pure profit! Simple as that. I am sure that DSE and others make money from it, as do the insurers. But they also have to pay for the repairs... which do cost money.

I agree warranties are definitely more important on some products more that others

Finally, what you had written was a bit big, try breaking it up a little and im sure more people will read it. Also, text language is not the norm around here. Using english will help people here who are not 'texters'.

Th3Yank

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#106446 24-Jan-2008 01:21

In regard to what rscole86 said, DSE certainly dont just go swapping xbox's willy nilly, bt yes we will take in to considertion things such as, legnth of ownership, nature of the problem, if the customer is nice and co-operative etc. and depending on who the manager is and how we feel about it, weill depend on how we go about repairing or replacing the console.

Ok so massive might be an overstatement, but DSE is a big enought company that microsoft will treat us like any other electronic retailer and credit us on products such as the xbox.

Warranties are not pure profit, but they are majority profit. Yes they also have to
pay for the repairs, but the money been spent on repairs is alot less the the money being made on the warrentys being sold. We have a very high expectation to sell warrentys on all the products we can, and have to meet certain targets to meet our performancce criterea. so much that we get rewarded for every warrenty we sell, DSE certainly makes enuf profit from them that they can give up a portion of it and give it to their employees.

And yes, even i purchased a warrenty once. of course it was something well worth the money spent on it.

oh yea sorry about that, it certainly was a bit of a rabble on. I will try and shorten things down a bit in the future! As far as im concerned as long as you can understand whats been said then my lanuage is fine, but i must admit, it is quite a habbit! i dont susally realise im doing it, but i will take it into consideration! Thank you for your response!

KiwiShaver

9 posts

Wannabe Geek

#110698 14-Feb-2008 21:01

I've owned my xbox 360 for over a year now and luckily it hasn't melted down yet...

here's a statistic or 2 for this dicsussion...

It's a great gaming platform but if you buy one you should be aware they have a 33% failure rate (which is why Microsoft took such a massive profit hit to extend the warranty to 3 years for specific faults, and even refunded many who had paid the $200 repair bill ref http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/05/xbox-360-warranty-extended-to-three-years/)

You should be safe though investing in the elite xbox. It actually has more parts inside including extra heat sinks to resolve many of the the faults of the origional.

You can this here: http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-13636_11-180481-41.html

dnb4life

312 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#111071 17-Feb-2008 02:19

yea if i ever get round to buying one it'll no doubt be an elite. better hardware, more heatsinks and comes in black (which the 360 should have been in the first place). ps3 comes first though

garvani

1873 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#111317 18-Feb-2008 08:59

I just recently straight swapped my Elite for a ps3 40gb with cod4. best descion ive made! i was a xbox fanboy but knew that the ps3 was the way to go for longterm gaming. PSN gaming is better than i was expecting to thanks to the cod4 patch.

dnb4life

312 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#114187 2-Mar-2008 18:53

ps3 controllers are amazingly light. it supports better divx, its got blu ray built in and its not gona overheat, crash and take a month to fix so yeah ps3 ftw.

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weblordpepe

460 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#114191 2-Mar-2008 19:14

tonyhughes: Te Warewhare

I think this is the first 'LOL' I have done in a web forum this year. I have no idea why that is so halarious.

I also agree that store warranties are hopeless. I have a similar concept with all types of insurance. Personally I don't like to gamble on things I can't control: I wouldn't gamble on a horse race, but I'd bet $2 that I could beat tonyhughes in an arm wrestle in a pub.

The same beer logic makes its way to warrenties and insurance. Purchasing a warrenty / paying $2 a week is basically betting on that something will break. Look at the basic four scenarios of it:

The two 'device breaksbroken' scenarios:

No insurance/warrenty, device fails:
You have to get it fixed - then sure paid for a repair.
Have insurance/warrenty, device fails:
You get it fixed, and you paid for the repair.

Those are booth good eventual outcomes where you have paid money for an eventual repair. But what about if the device doesnt break? (Which is arguably the most common outcome for buying any product which isn't recalled & on the news at 6):

No insurance, device doesnt fail:
No wasted money.
Got insurance, device doesnt fail:
Wasted $xxx

There's only one outcome there where you waste money. Granted you can spend less on insurance payments than the cost of a huge repair, but how often does that happen, and how many people really take it into consideration?

And yes I can bring drunken arm wrestles into any thread and still be on topic.

Mattnzl

281 posts

Ultimate Geek

#114203 2-Mar-2008 19:53

Anyone who's worked in retail can tell you extended warrentee's are just pure profit for the retailer (they usually pay staff who sell extended warrantee's a good percentage of the money made).
Most things that are gonna crap out do so fairly soon - at least within the manufacturers minimum 1 year guarantee.
Xbox 360 aside - anything that makes it through the first year is likely to last a while.

dnb4life

312 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#114206 2-Mar-2008 19:55

extended warranties also have a plus side you know. for example when selling second-hand. i specifically got a 5 year extended warranty on my LCD TV because i knew in under 5 years time it would be obsolete and i would want a better one which brings me to selling it and i can tell you that any tv on trademe that has one or two years warranty left on it is gona get a hell of a lot more bids than one with no warranty AKA no piece of mind.

dnb4life

312 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#114208 2-Mar-2008 19:59

i'm also like to point out the cost of an extended warranty in all likelihood will work out cheaper than the repair without a warranty anyway. obviously minor things will cost less but what if its unrepairable and you need a replacement? how much is that gona cost you without an extended warranty?

Mattnzl

281 posts

Ultimate Geek

#114231 2-Mar-2008 21:33

Good point on the TradeMe resale, but I guess like all insurance it's a gamble - you are betting that something Will crap out, and the insurance company is betting it Won't.

Guess who makes millions per year profit in the above equation

RustyGonad

495 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#114349 3-Mar-2008 16:42

Amazing amount of FUD in the last 3 pages...

All those who want to continue buying extended warranties - be my guest, no skin off my nose.

However as some have pertained the CGA does offer a 'huge' amount of extended coverage to anyone who doesn't. The act is worded in plain english and IMO opinion is heavily weighted on the side of the consumer. Does it make extended warranties worthless - well IMO it most certainly does.

The most useful parts of the act pertain to the fact that all retail goods and services in NZ must be fit for the intended purpose, and be of durable quality. This cannot be contracted out of in any retail situation.

As long as you have not contributed to the failure you are covered by the act.

While varying items have different in life expectancies, common sense guidelines do exists, for example TV's have historically lasted over 10 years, so you should expect a TV to continue to operate for around this period.

Case in point - prior to Christmas my Rear Projection TV died, after 2 1/2 years of operation, I had no extended warranty. It took over 3 weeks to get service on the set, so I rejected the TV under the CGA as being unfit for the intended purpose. This took a single email to the original retailer (yes this was a long one and included specific references to the CGA, and the Disputes Tribunal).

Within 24 hours of this email I was offered a full refund of the original purchase price, or a replacement TV. I accepted the later and got a fantastic new TV in the process. This didn't cost me a cent, other than time to type the email, and reference to a few parts of the CGA.

Strangely enough about the same time my 5 yr old Fridge died - unfortunately the tech who repaired it was sent a US 110V part from the manufacturer which in turn destroyed the fridge. I simply mentioned the CGA on the phone to the manufacturer - who without question replaced the fridge with a brand new one. After the initial fault it was the best customer service I have ever had - buy NZ made.

So in essence a little bit of knowledge and research on the CGA saved me about $7000. I could have also burnt over $1000 in extended warranties and achieved the same results...

The Xbox 360 is cut and dried as far as I'm concerned. You would have little trouble exercising your rights under the CGA especially in relation to the RROD.

There is absolutely no need to involve MS unless you wish to, your original contract is with the retailer. Under the act you choose if you wish to involve the manufacturer. Mine was away for over 4 weeks getting un RROD - who cares it works great once it came back.

Know your rights - they're worth more than any extended warranty will ever be.

dnb4life

312 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#114423 3-Mar-2008 20:48

your stories sound fantastic. however in the real world this does not always happen. it's up to the retailer to decide whether to give you a full refund, full replacement or charge you. if you give them a good argument then sure, sometimes they'll go with the law but if you get a dishonest one it is quite likely you'll get the latter in which case unless you have the backing and funds to take legal action there's not much as a consumer that you can do. hence why extended warranties can be good. i find it doubtful you'll find many retailers that'll give full refunds or replacements when your product is over 1 year old.

RustyGonad

495 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#114467 3-Mar-2008 22:46

dnb4life: your stories sound fantastic. however in the real world this does not always happen. it's up to the retailer to decide whether to give you a full refund, full replacement or charge you. if you give them a good argument then sure, sometimes they'll go with the law but if you get a dishonest one it is quite likely you'll get the latter in which case unless you have the backing and funds to take legal action there's not much as a consumer that you can do. hence why extended warranties can be good. i find it doubtful you'll find many retailers that'll give full refunds or replacements when your product is over 1 year old.

Well I live in Akl, New Zealand which last time I checked was in the real world. I personally know of 2 other people who have used the same CGA and achieved exactly the same results on TV's. Both of these cases involved goods well over 1 year old.

No its not up to them - if they fail to deliver under the CGA its up to you to accept either a full refund or a suitable replacement. That is especailly relevent if the goods are faulty due to a design/manufacturing defect - they have no option. You also have the option to choose whether to deal with the retailer or the manufacturer, this is not dictated by the retailer.

If you contributed to the fault then forget it - but for example if a Plasma/LCD panel fails after 2 years back yourself to win everytime, especially when the retailers harp on about 60000 hour panel life etc etc. How many of us would buy a TV if we knew it would fail after 2 years???

THE LAW IS CLEAR.

Taking action using the Disputes Tribunal is a low cost legal alternative. No lawyers are involved. Its a low cost process for disputes under $7500. I think it costs $20 to log a claim, which you get back if you win. Very few retailers will let it get that far - most of them are fully aware of their position under the CGA. Yes the guy of the floor may resist, but thats what managers and head office are there for...

Further info can be found here:

www.consumer.org.nz
www.justice.govt.nz/tribunals/disputes_tribunals.html

This stuff isn't hard nor is it expensive. It was designed to protect Joe Blo in the real world, not buy Ferrari's for lawyers.

There are well documented cases of NZ Retailers and the CGA. Google Noel Leeming CGA and do some reading.

I certainly didn't encounter any resistance from the retailer (Harvey N) I used they even have a section on their website detailing their responsibilites under the CGA. They were in fact most helpful and even initiated discussion with the distributor in question.

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