Microshaft

Now for fear of legal reasons I shall not use words such as "liars", "corrupt" or "bastards" in this posting. I shall merely convey my feelings with a subtle use of language.

Microsoft are fine purveyors of the art of the making of the 'porky pie' and have an inate ability to cleverly imitate the characters immortalised in that fine film by Francis Ford Coppola starring Marlon Brando and a horses' bonce. Oh, and they are bastards*. *Allegedly.

I'll cut the very, very long story short. I bought my Xbox 360 in May 06. It broke in November o6 and was repaired, under warranty, by Mircosoft. It broke and died in July 07 - two months outside its' one-year warranty. It's death is a mystery, but basically, there's no power, no lights, nothin'.

After several million phone calls and the odd email, the delightful lady at Microsoft informed me that had my original Xbox breakdown been due to the '3 red lights' issue then I would have been alright. By the '3 red lights' issue, she meant the well-publicised hardware problem that many Xbox 360's suffered. Microsoft admitted this problem and promised to repair all affected consoles, including those out of warranty, for free.

When my Xbox broke in November, it was not due to the '3 red lights' issue, but another crippling hardware failure. Had it failed because of the sodding red lights thingy, I would have been given a whole years' worth of additional warranty. This would have meant that when my console died this July ... it would have been covered by the new warranty and repaired for free. Instead, they will charge me £70 to have it fixed.

The woman on the phone actually agreed with me when I said that it was clear that my console had suffered the 'wrong sort' of breakdown in November. Yes, she agreed! If you look around the Tinterweb, you'll find plenty of information about the huge number of Xbox 360 failures there have been since it was launched. Despite this, the *%^&$+£'s from Redmond have only reluctantly agreed to repair the most known about and publicised problem with their console. All the other buggered Xbox 360's are simply being ignored, and left to be used as doorstops or generously-sized paper weights.

I wonder if my console would fit up an arse. If I really shoved it?