UK company has had enough of repairing Xbox 360s

The plot thickens! Micromart Ltd, a UK based company which has apparently 'been providing a comprehensive repair service to games Consoles for over 10 years' has decided to can the service.

[DirtyRat]

Seems strange for a console repair service to be annoyed by getting more business sent their way! Surely they should be thanking M$ for the manufacturing problem?

[Hayabusa 117]

Yeah, that's what I thought until I read the full article. The heading makes it sound like they're simply tired of fixing 360s. But the article gives the impression that they can't coupe with the number of repairs coming in.

[sjappie]

Why stop repairing all xboxes? They must be making money on it.

[RealityCheck]

The truth is that they don't get to charge individually for each unit they repair because then more repairs would always be good business for them. In actuality, a repair center will make an estimate of how much to charge per units for average repairs of different kind, estimate how much of each type of repair they expect, and then make a ballpark deal whereas they will charge X amount of money for Y amount of repair units for a time Z.

More than likely, repairs have been more intensive and costly then they expected, so they are probably not making much money (or even loosing money, yes that is possible) and decided not to renew or extend their contracts.

Microsoft is very shrewd at negotiations so I'm sure the repair center got the short end of the stick. That being said, Microsoft will easily find another place to pick up the repairs, they might just have to pay the next place a little better.

[Killfooler]

The problem is that for them to fix the ring of death, they would have to give some sort of guarantee that the problem will STAY fixed. They're asserting that the issue has to do with the design of the hardware. They've already had cases where their "fix" only lasted a couple of weeks. In a case like this, they would be obligated to CONTINUE to fix the problem for free until it is resolved. If the problem is associated with the hardware design, however, they would be obligated indefinitely to the repair of a system that simply CANNOT be repaired.

[deepio]

This is bad news. I've had my launch day 360 repaired already in April last year. I hope I'm not going to be anticipating another failure anytime soon....

[Shadow Flare]

...you don't know what will last longer, your game or your console. I don't get it, the 360 has a fan as loud as a jet engine and it STILL overheats and dies. If Microsoft was trying to think up a catchy 3 figure name for the new xbox, then they should've scraped '360' and gone with 'POS'. Congats to Peter Moore for approving that heap of crap. Huh,...i guess cos he's the boss that makes him...the lord of the rings???

[kornbeaner]

Don't forget that peter moore was one of the figure heads when the Dreamcast got sent out to pastor. I really don't know how he got a job doing the same thing at MS.

[Babylonian]

But you know what the stange thing is. The original Xbox didn't have a failure rate as high as the 360 (I think the original Xbox had even a lower failure rate than the PS2, but I don't know for sure I'm just saying so), so why all of a sudden is this the situation with the 360?

I think that Microsoft looked at what Sony did with their PS2. Many companies look at what their competitors do, but especially Microsoft. If they see how another company succeeds, they try to mimick it (Apple for instance cam with the mouse, and Vista looks a bit like MacOS). I have absolutely no problem with that because the more competition there is the better it is for us.

But are you seeing what I'm trying to tell. Microsoft looked at what Sony did with their PS2 (early lead, cheaper than the Xbox, big 3rd party support) and tried to use this strategy. The only problem was they they might have rushed the internal design of the 360 so that it would have that early start.

And that's the reason for the high failure rate I think. It was a smart move by Microsoft, but it may bite them in the ass in the long run. The only thing that is different from last gen and now is that the PS2 is still supported and the PS3 is gaining in popularity because it has time to establish while it's older brother still stands strong. And if the price is cut and the games are there alot of people will buy the PS3. Sony is then back at the top with it's Playstation brand.

Man I can't wait for E3.

[kornbeaner]

Why as a company would you complain about work. The easy solution to this would be, do it really S-L-O-W! If it's not in your contract to have a quick turn-around then hold MS by the man-berries until they are ready to negotiate a fair deal, seeing as this machine seems to have a large amount of defective consoles.

[thewhoopimen]

I hope you're being sarcastic...

Let's see how you would react if they S-L-O-W-L-Y repaired your xbox360.

[thewhoopimen]

I hope you're being sarcastic...

Let's see how you would react if they S-L-O-W-L-Y repaired your xbox360.

[00]

reported this story as old and duplicated story.

[BS68280]

I have allready had to replace my 360 once, after standing in a 10hr line to buy it at launch and i got home it didn't work. I don't really play it much at all. I am gonna completely give up on it if i get Halo 3 and my 360 craps out on me again. As long as they fix it for free it will be okay, but if i have to pay for it like people are saying, than i am done with MS.

[crck]

Yes its related to the article from yesterday but they actually called the company up for a better explaination. The response? MS uses crappy solder that will eventually get brittle from the heat and crack. They can reheat the solder to melt it again but it will just crack again. Thus they kept getting returns for more service which they have to do for free under their warranty. They no longer want to do this anymore.

[xfrgtr]

xbox 360 is a piece of sh!t

[PS360WII]

Hey why did this get posted again. There's a 60 post section of the same artical about the same thing. Come on people this is a duplicate!

[TheXgamerLive]

The red ring which is a warranty issue that MS knows the solution to and I believe MS is basically servicing only and rightly so at this point, this company doesn't know the best fix so they haven't been servicing that problem, however as they state,"they are continuing to service ALL other issues".

But to state were not fixing the red ring etc....was only a publicity stunt and it worked didn't it.

[kewlkat007]

Same sh!t article the other day. talk about groundhog day, people must love saying the same stuff, day after day. waste of my time.

[AznSniper]

It really makes me wonder how many of the xbox 360's sold are actually replacements but i dont know crap anyways cause im happy with mine but this still worries me

[BIadestarX]

Don't wonder for too long... most people will do one of the following:
1) Send it to microsoft for repairs which happends to be free if within warranty.

2) Pay $140(I think that's what it cost) and have microsoft repair it.

Unless ofcourse you got money like that... and you don't mind spending another $399.

When you hear stories about people saying, "I'm on my 3rd or, 5th, or 20th" xbox 360... do you think they purchased another 360 for the 20th time?

I think the problem is that Microsoft is refurbishing the systems and the very same defective one are being shipped to people over and over.
I think this failures are happening primarity to people that got a launch console. Though I still have mine working.

[tehcellownu]

awesome news..im prepared to see microsot take no action again..now gpt yjr true xbots fans defend them please..

[the_round_peg]

Micromart

Mircomart, Coopies Lane, Morpeth, Northumberland, NE61 6JN (North East)

Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Information:
Employees: 2-5

Age of Business: Less than 3

Turnover: n/a

Contacts: Mr Keith Morris (Proprietor)

Okay, here's the thing: "Less than 3 years" is the minimum length. That means the company could be only one-day old, and it'd still be listed as "less than 3 years".

[dazed808]

they only registered that name in the last couple of years - could well of been trading for the stated 10 years.

Bit more info on the story -

"We saw it over a period of several months and it was just getting worse. It began towards the end of last year. Once the twelve month warranty finished then we started to see more and more machines being sent in to be looked at.

"The problem with three red lights was there fairly regularly, but over two or three months it became a real issue," he detailed.

Micromart acts for individual retailers who send customer's goods to the specialist. Croft says his company pulled the service after discovering problems with the motherboard, and that that repairing the console wasn't financially feasible. Even after working on a number of machines, the company didn't feel comfortable with the end result.

"The work we had done to the console lead us to believe that basically it was a fault with the motherboard and not something that could be resolved easily. And it wasn't going to go away.

[unicronic]

I can't believe such a commonly occurring hardware issue has been allowed to slip through Mr. Gates Corporate net.

Ah well, proof that gamers are still looked upon as cash cows and not the back bone of the industry. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have all helped to demonstrate this mentality over the last few years.

[amerz]

As long as MS allows them to break, the stories will go on.

I hope a recall is issued so they lose BILLIONS for releasing shi**y hardware, refusing to fix it properly or even revise their production process. We need a huge class action lawsuit NOW. This is one of the worst products in HISTORY!

That'll teach them for rushing their console to launch, killing off Xbox1 and losing half their "fanbase" and forcing the next generation to start before it was meant to. I mean look at poor Nintendo! The software quality is so godawful I'm pretty sure they actually went BACKWARDS in hardware power.