WTF

So yesterday I actually got the other item that I had ordered. Its Grand Theft Auto V for the 360. I got it on a black Friday deal from amazon but the timing of the deal in the US meant that I still had to wake up early here in Japan to order the game when the deal was going on. So even on the other side of the world I had to wake up early for black Friday. Then after paying for shipping my deal went from 40% off to only 15% or so. Oh well it was still cheaper.

The delivery date was estimated to be the 16th but it showed up on the 8th so I was pretty happy about that, oh except for one thing I can't really play it. What? Why? ....

Oh Xbox how I hate you I wish I could go back in time so I could have chosen to get a PS3 instead of a 360.  This is my 3rd 360 I have dealt with repairs and the red ring of death in the past so I'm not too impressed on the hardware side to the console. The issues were supposedly a thing of the past with this redesign so I was feeling pretty good about it when I bought it. I have a really odd issue with my 6 month old 360S, randomly the CD tray gets a signal that its been opened or asked to open so it tries to open the door. The door though doesn't open and the center light just blinks away. The fact that the door doesn't open tells me that it isn't just a sensor because the door would then open so its something with the whole assembly. The problem is that I will be in the middle of a game and it will get this signal the door is being opened and kick me out to the home screen, I lose anything that hasn't been saved and its a general real pain in the ass. Sometimes it happens with in the first 5 minutes other times its fine for an hour, sometimes it does it once and then is good for hours other times its every 2 minutes.

I have talked with Xbox support a few times but nothing we did fixed the issue. So now they tell me I need to send it to get repaired. Fine its free right? The tech tells me yes, he knows I'm in Japan and that this is a US system etc. So when I try to set up the repair ticket I'm told its going to cost $80 because I'm in a different country even though the repair center is in Japan. So its $80 plus say $30 or more for me to ship it were talking over $100 to get this thing fixed and its only 6 months old I mean I bought it new with the Kinect for only $250, and a brand new system only unit is only $200. So after 6 months they want me to pay over half the price of a new console to repair this one.  On top of that my Live subscription which if you don't know is something you pay for monthly will run out next month so if I repair my console now then for that time I will in a sense lose a month off my subscription.

Right after I ended the chat I also had an issue on xbox.com where all of a sudden my gamer tag was wrong. Grrrr! So I started another chat and spent about 15 minutes fixing that issue. Have I mentioned I hate MS and Xbox!