OK, I just had this issue with the red ring and bought mine from a Sam's club a year and a half ago (way longer than 30 days). After I attempted to take it back to the store I bought it from (after reading this forum) they told me they wouldn't even entertain exchanging it and I HAD to contact microsoft. They didn't even ask how long I had it. I then called Sam's Club customer service and they said basically it was up to the store manager as to if they'd take it back but it WAS Sam's club policy to honor the member guaruntee which is to replace any defective electronic sold at their stores. So I called another Sam's club across town and not only did they take it back WITHOUT the reciept but I got an upgraded unit (my original was the 20 gig the replacement was a 60 gig) and 3 games including guitar hero 3 and a $60 gift card for the difference between the price I bought the system for in 2007 and what it costs today (as they only sell bundles at Sam's). So basically call first, they ARE supposed to take them back but it's up to the manager at the specific store you go to. The Sam's Club exchange is way more beneficial than just trading one out with Microsoft and is quicker.

@indydrew:

I wonder if you lose the receipt, if they can look up your store purchase history?

@exkon:

When i purchased my 360 from sam's club, the sales rep told me that it was under warranty for life as long as i brought it back to sam's club. Weather or not thats true, idk.

I've returned two to Costco over the last two years as well, also no questions asked. They do check to make sure the warranty sticker is intact (at least the guy at our Costco was smart enough to look).

If you have one near you, Costco is a much better alternative to Sam's - they aren't out to dominate the world, treat their employees incredibly well, and have hands-down the best return policy in the business. Well worth the $50 a year.

I got the RRoD about a months ago. It took less than a week to ship the XBOX to Microsoft, get it fixed, and shipped back to me.

The problem is the system may be unplayable for the same defects that caused MS to extend the warranty but not consistently report the 3 red lights and if so it's a hassle to actually get the system repaired. Not to mention it takes a few weeks.

Costco/Sams replacing it on the spot is pretty nice.

One thing it's great for is cookware. The Member's Mark anodized non-stick (not teflon...some new wonder enamel crap that doesn't kill pet birds) has a lifetime warranty, but unlike most cookware lifetime warranty, where you have to jump through hoops to file a claim, you just take it back and grab a new set! One of our pans got scratched by something and they just swapped out the entire set!

Also, their Wolfgang Puck Santoku knives are a kickass deal...$20 for 4 & a block and they last forever...screw Cutco!

@JoshReflek: He is technically right though. If that 60" was sold at the same time he bought the 50" it would be way more expensive, but as technology gets cheaper so does the TVs. With his friend taking advantage of this, Costco now has to take the hit and sell his original TV probably at half the price they sold it to him, and that hit results in the prices going up for everyone else, along with the rise in the membership fee just to cover the cost of the TV that they end up not making any margin on. (this is assuming that there are plenty of other people taking advantage of the return policy as well, and I'm sure they are)

@y2julio: They only send you a refurbished one, not a brand new one.

@Necroscope: as an ex Best Buy employee, the RROD is no longer covered under the replacement plan (this started in October) because Microsoft will no longer accept the returns from the store specifically because of their 3 year warantee on the RROD. The hardrive can be kept during the exchange, just keep in mind that the newer ones have more memory. If the product is exchanged after the 1 year MFG warantee (again, not including the RROD) then the plan is fulfilled (meaning you would have to buy a new one, or have 30 days to buy a new one, so the new xbox can be covered), but if the item is exchanged within the one year, then the plan transfers over and is still in effect from the original date of purchase. I hope this helped.

And yes, technically you can purchase a new plan, before that one expires, you just have to exchange your xbox to do it. You can always just say that it overheats, or freezes after an hour of play if there's nothing wrong with it.

@gyroball: you're blaming a consumer who doesnt want to be stuck with a bricked 360?
The fact that Franklin Comes Alive! has found a more effective way to, *GASP*, get what he paid for minus the excessive hassle of shipping out a product he bought, doesn't transfer any responsibility from the manufacturing process at microsoft.

@pb5000: With planned obsolesence inherent to many electronics, i wholeheartedly support your friends digicam strategy

@VarneyRichards: Your attitude sucks. if its within their policy to take it back, "no questions asked", and thats what the customer does....he's an asshole?

yes, how dare he hold them to their promise.

HOWEVER, once I realized that they had an honest-to-goodness no B.S. return policy, they quickly became nearly my single-source supplier, even for client purchases. Bad LCD? No sweat, here's your refund. Garbage vacuum cleaner died? Here's your refund, feel free to buy another one.

As I understand it, the manufacturers sign agreements to take returns back on THEIR dime. In a system like this, it's to the manufacturer's advantage to supply Costco with their HIGHER quality stuff. Also, Costco is known to pay some of the highest non-union wages, and the employees are generally helpful and fairly "OK" with their jobs - that alone is worth $50 bucks a year to ease my conscience.

I have heard that Walmart (and by extension, Sams Club) have been leaning so hard on manufacturers to bring costs down so low that they have a LOT of "Walmart Only" models made from cheaper components that quickly fail. Black and Decker comes to mind as one of Walmart's victims.

And we all know how awfully Walmart pays their employees while cockblocking union organizing with all sorts of evil and illegal tricks. Don't know if Scam's Club is just as immoral, but with the same corporate parent I would expect so.

I used to work at Costco and whenever someone broughts in a RROD X-Box we would simply say, "We'll gladly replace this one, no questions asked, but we're asking that any future RRODs you get be taken care of by Microsoft, since they're addressing this problem specifically and offer extended warranties for this problem free of charge."

I have a PS3 that won't play any newer games. Why ? Well, the newer games have higher system requirements. Something the original units won't handle. As an early adopter I can't play GTA without paying Sony $150 to fix my device. Those bastards actually feel its ok to charge me to fix a defective unit.

Sony and Microsoft need to step up efforts to fix units in timely manner and fix them for free when the device clearly has major flaws.

You pay a premium to shop there, they better have damn good customer service. I don't find it surprising at all.

Not sure about Costco though. Never been.

I think you misunderstood the tone of that part of my post. The reason I said that is because I also work in retail and my corporation also has a product replacement plan, and while we *can* exchange the system for an identical system, we cannot refund the difference if the price dropped since original date of purchase. That said, I have heard of other clerks in my own retailer that accidentally refunded the difference because they didn't know any better. Maybe incompetence was too harsh of a word - is ignorance better?

So yeah, it worked out to his favor that he got refunded, and that's great, but he probably wasn't supposed to be. That's all I was saying.

@ajlei: Yeah, how about it... mine was two days before Rock Band 2 released, and I was giddy at the prospect of playing both Sqeeze and Lush.

@VeeKaChu:
I'm in the middle of a nightmare 360 RROD story as we speak. I'll be submitting my story to Consumerist if this isn't resolved fairly quickly, but at this point they think they may have lost my Xbox. I was told basically to wait until Monday to see if it shows up somewhere. There's a bit more to the story than that, but wish me luck!

The number one reason they do it so lax is that they want to keep members satisfied. Not everyone abuses the policy, but there are some that do. Of the ones that do, its usually once or twice, and thats it. They would rather you keep your $40 membership + The money you spend because you HAVE a membership, than risk someone refunding the membership due to being unsatisfied with a return not being accepted. There are jerks that return clothes and food, but anything I ever buy, has to go back within 6 months if it goes back at all. I just feel guilty doing a 1 year return. I guess its different when someone returns a mattress they bought 7 years ago, at a different club, on a debit card and want cash back.

Did it occur to you that he might've got a refund for the difference because he was courteous and reasonable about it and the store employee was therefore willing to do a bit extra to help him out? Maybe you should try treating a clerk like an actual human being once in a while, you might be surprised at how much more they will be willing to help you.

The losses and shrink on a product are calculated into the price of future sales. Alot goes into setting a price, including the expected unrecoverable loss due to returns. Everyone who abuses these return policies is raising the price of consumer goods for everyone else and creating massive amounts of waste.

You should be good, but check the manufacture date before you leave the store with your system. The date is located below the serial number on the back of the system, which is visible through a window cut in the box. If your system was built after August 2007 you're good to go.

Reference this article on Anandtech for a breakdown of the problems and Microsoft's solutions: [www.anandtech.com]

I think it's great that Virg got the convenience of swapping the system for another one in the store, but the sentence "he figured it would be months before he would get it back and expected to have to pay somewhere," kind of irks me. The next sentence should read, "much to his surprise, a simple phone call to Microsoft would have gotten his system replaced for free within a couple weeks."

Also, I don't know exactly how Sam's Club extended warranty plans work but I'd bet it was due to the clerk's incompetence that he got a refund.

My SO's boy just got his 360 back from service. Second time in six months, and it took a month. What a PITA! If my computers died as often I'd change careers.

I'm not suggesting computers don't die or that some aren't built shoddily, but I can at least choose to use good components and have excellent reliability. I'd expect a gaming system that sells millions of units over this long to have gone through enough development cycles for problems to decline. Seems not.

Do you guys expect this going in and just deal with it, buy spares, or is it a surprise?

//Don't pay attention to him. His first "console" was Pong.

@rickinsthelens: The new 360 Elite systems have a different motherboard mount that has pretty much eliminated the RROD. Repairs on older ones are fitting them with the new mount so RROD will eventually be almost phased out.

I know warranties exist, but they're just too much of a hassle.

@unobservant: If you are more than half way through your replacement plan's coverage period, it is consumed when you use it. If you are not, it remains in effect until it would normally expire.

I know this, because my original xbox went south at 18 months and I had to buy a new plan. My Second went out at around 11 months and my coverage is good until late spring of this next year. I wonder if I can purchase a new plan before this one expires to continue my coverage.

My xbox is at Microsoft right now getting fixed for this very problem. I bought mine in December 2006 and it just failed. I doubt Best Buy would've done this, although I'm surprised that a Wal-mart company treated someone so well.

I want my xbox back so bad...Call of Duty 5... Gears of War 2.. and Left 4 Dead are all out right now :(

Also, the newer ones have HDMI output. Sucks for we early adopters, but still a sweet feature.

Same here. Although it was 10 years ago, I returned a portable CD player I had bought there 11 months prior that stopped working. The warranty was about to expire (1 year) and I was getting no where talking to customer service from the manufacturer. I brought to back to Sam's Club to see if they could help me. They exchanged it with a different model that was the same price no questions asked.

Uhhh, why would he figure that? 360's are warrantied by MS. I believe the typical turnaround for RRoD repairs/replacements is 7-10 days, and is completely free (including shipping).

I'm glad it worked out for him, but by now an RRoD is almost expected by MS (sad, I know), and is handled quickly.

Really not bad. I'm not sure that Sam's Club is offering all that much more than MS is here. Still, kudos to them for handling it well.

I'm the guy who submitted the story and I realize that MS extended the warranty to 3 years for the RRoD issue and am aware that I could have contacted them to start the process to get it fixed.

But we've all seen stories on here about what a nightmare that can be for some people. It was awesome to be able to just jump in the car and go get an almost 2 year old console swapped out without any hassle.

My point was that being treated helpfully and respectfully went a long way towards ensuring a satisfied customer who will shop there again.

And PB500, it's guys like your friend who got some of the liberal return policies at places like Sam's Club and Costco nixed. You should pass along a middle finger from all of us.

Best $40/year that I spend.

Hopefully it won't take that long. At least the kids have a Wii to keep them happy :)

He says he's pretty blunt about it, and that he gives them the opportunity to say something. When they don't his mindset is you might as well.

This is a nice story, however it is really not that big of a deal. It's Sams Club's policy to return anything for any reason at any time, as long as you have the receipt. The only exception is computers, you have 180 days to return those. If you dont have a receipt you can get in store credit most of the time. If you are buying a game console, or a camera, or,,,,ANYTHING electonic Sams is really a better option then Best Buy, CC, etc...

Sorry for saying this but,

Your friend is a douchebag!

I have a friend who buys a new digital camera every couple of years, he buys it at sam's club then returns it two years later, takes the refund and buys another one on the spot.

@exkon: I got my XBOX in May of '07, and it RROD'ed in September this year. And aside from some initial hassles wherein MS claimed that my home address WASN'T VALID [www.veekachu.com] , once they emailed me the shipping label I had brand-spanking new equipment in 6 days. I was impressed by that much, at least. I think they've got the RROD-Swap proccess pretty well streamlined by now.

It reminds me of my piece of shit co-worker that also took advantage of the generosity of Costco, he bought a 50" Toshiba DLP TV in December 2006 and then he saw that they had a 60" model at a cheaper price in August of the next year, the a-hole returned it and Costco didn't ask why, so he bought the 60 inch model. He was bragging about that and I was ticked off. Companies should put a stop to this abuse.

@y2julio:

Yah...but if its regular policy for sam's club to replace all electronic equipment there on the spot...then why go through the trouble of calling Microsoft :P ?

Sam's and Costco seem to have the best customer service for some odd reason. I think it's how they deal with the people they buy from and what they buy that allows them to bend over backwards.

Good job Sam's, I'm really considering getting my 360 there...

Since Xbox360 came out just over 3 years ago, only ones purchased before today in 2005 are out of RROD warranty, which basically ones that came out for release.

Actually the sam's club AND costco around my way does this. Some kind of lifetime warranty that's separate from the respective warranty of the manufacturer. Its a pretty cool thing

This is one of the reason why I got a PS3

That's fantastic! I wonder how long he had the first Xbox before the RROD. My hard drive failed after 5 months, and the GPU failed after 8 months.(During the troubleshooting process the console got the RROD) Each instance only took 3 weeks to get a refurbished hard drive/console back.

I've done this like four times with the Best Buy replacement plan. They made me buy a new replacement plan after that many times. Thank goodness my latest one has been working well.

I have a few friends who had their xboxes RROD and when they shipped it in, they got it back in 3 weeks.

Great job of Sam's Club for doing this though.