xbox360 repair cost....

[slaveofconvention]

I'm posting this here because 1) The video games section says software, and 2) No matter how much Microstuff tries to deny it, the xbox360 IS a PC.....

So the DVD drive is fubar on my 360 - after a lot of hunting around I basically came to the conclusion that, yes, I can fix it myself and yes, I'll probably get banned from xbox live shortly afterwards (admittedly not a huge issue, I don't use it any more anyway)

Just on the off chance, thought, "What the hell" and called Microstuff today to get a price to replace the drive.

1. Bear in mind it's a DVD-ROM drive - nothing special - no write etc (approx price in the UK for a generic DVD-ROM if you can find one - £13ish)
2. A brand new 360 arcade console can be had for about £120-130 if you hunt around.

And the MS price for replacing the drive.... £96....
But if you arrange it online, it's "only" £78 - so apparently, as well as tearing your eyes out for the repair, they want an extra £18 for someone to say on the phone "Ok, thats £96, please send it to this address along with a note saying - please please take my money - I don't want it anyway......"

Thieving barstewards!!!!

[Zephik]

It'd be interesting to see how much cost they actually have to cover by us sending in our stuff for repairs. I read an article the other day debunking the idea that companies are always trying to screw us out of our money. The article basically went on to say that no, companies aren't always trying to rip you off, consumers just simply don't understand all the cost involve. For example, a lot of people only think about cost and labor, but that's not the only thing companies have to pay for. Just for one example off the top of my head, they have to pay for the buildings that they own and use which includes electricity, plumbing, etc etc so on and so forth.

Prices like these seem absolutely ridiculous, but for the most part, people just don't understand how it can cost so much and so they assume that they're getting ripped off. Granted, this is the case sometimes. Like with Monster Cables. Dear lord those things are like a 1000% mark up. lol

Anyways, I wish I knew someone who works at one of these places so we could ask them why it costs so much. It'd be really interesting and enlightening. I'll see if I can find that article in the mean time, it had to do with Apple I believe...

Not saying that its not terribly expensive by the way, because it really is. I'm just saying that I don't think they are trying to screw us out of our money as much as we think they are. This is where a lot of new businesses fail, because they think they can offer lower prices but once they get into the **** of it, they quickly realize that their offering lower prices isn't going to cut it. Like the CrunchPad for example. It was supposed to be $200, but now its rumored to be more like $300+. People just don't understand.

[slaveofconvention]

While I understand the cost of overheads etc, this is still, in my opinion, somewhat excessive - the xbox is only about 18 months old but only the RROD is covered after the first 12 months - if I can buy a DVD rom drive for about £13 I'm damned sure that MS gets them for less than £10 - I spoke to a guy at my local computer store who does xbox repairs as a sideline and he tells me it takes him about 3 minutes, tops to get into an xbox - and the dvd drive can be out of the machine in seconds after that - even allowing for reassembly, thats a total labour time of maybe an hour, including the time it takes to box it back up and send it to shipping. This kind of work does NOT require a highly trained person - so I very much doubt the labour cost is much more than £10 - say £20 at the most pessimistic - that still leaves a gross profit on the repair of over £60 - take off tax etc, and yes, that drops again to maybe £40 - and no-one has THAT kind of overhead on a 20 minute repair. If they do, they're going out of business no matter what they do - a company the size of MS SHOULD enjoy massive economies of scale to hugely reduce overheads compared to smaller companies so while I DO accept your point about "other" costs to a degree, I still think this is woefully excessive.

Bear in mind I'm talking UK Pounds here, to convert to USD, add about 60%...

[billygoat333]

Oh, its very much so a rip-off. and yes, the xbox 360 drive is fairly easy to replace. although make sure you get a compatible drive as not all dvd drives will work with it.

http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/Xbox_3...Comparison.htm

[slaveofconvention]

Been down that road - mine is the Benq - trying to find them in stock anywhere is proving to be somewhat of a challenge though :p

[billygoat333]

not even on ebay? lol that sucks yo. can always try to find a 360 witha RROD problem and cannibalize it.

[slaveofconvention]

I'm getting there - looking like it'll be about £30 to do it myself - then just hope I don't end up with a blacklisted console :p

Problem with RROD consoles is making sure it has the same drive - and I've never been keen on the whole "Sold as faulty so no returns - even if it DOES turn out to have 10 more problems than I'm admitting to!"

[billygoat333]

yeah, thats very true. my brother in law fixed his dvd drive himself, and no blacklist on xbox live for almost a year before the system finally just up and died on him.

[slaveofconvention]

As it happens, I got this console working again - I gave it a monster clean out with the compressor/blowgun when I took it apart to check exactly which of the 3 or 4 possible DVD drives was in it. When I put it back together it worked - weirdness.

Well it did - and today it stopped - it's been gradually failing again for the last week or so. I have, in my possession, a total of 4 360's at the moment - one is a mates which I was trying to repair - without luck so far - and the other two - one I bought super-cheap on ebay and the other I pulled out of a dumpster lol. As things would turn out, both of the consoles which are mine have the same drive anyway. I went hunting for a re-flash guide to get the motherboard to accept the new drive and came across some instruction on swapping out the laser unit. Well I did it just now (and what a fiddly job) and it's now working 100% again. I'm not going to claim victory just yet - it might well be the same as last time where it starts working for a few weeks before giving up again, but it's working now.... Happy bunny again

[nevermind1534]

No matter how much Microstuff tries to deny it, the xbox360 IS a PC.....

It does have a PowerPC processor, so I guess it's more of a last-gen mac.