I figure it's only a matter of time till my current 360 dies on me, considering the fact that whenever I open the disc drive and put a game in, it usually takes five tries before it stops popping the drive back out and actually reads and accepts the game. When it dies I'll be on my third, but at least I'm not like this person and working on their twelfth. Ouch.

From the article:

Justin Lowe is your average hardcore gamer. He's fully embraced the HD era, owning both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and loves his Nintendo DS and PSP for gaming on-the-go. He even helps run Aggravated Gamers, an indie gaming podcast. What's special about Justin, though, is he's currently on his twelfth Xbox 360.

"I'm no fanboy," he says, but there's no doubt he's a 360 fan. He purchased his first machine a month after the console launch, but, since then, Justin has not had a working system for longer than a month or two. The list of problems is almost comically large: three red lights of death, two with disc read errors, two dead on arrival, several with random audio and video-related issues and one that actually exploded.

Looking at the situation through Moore's own standards, how has Microsoft performed? "On a scale of one to ten, I'd rate them an 8... at first," says Lowe. His 360 broke in early January, just a few weeks after purchase. For the first six months, Microsoft customer service was polite and replacements sent very quickly. Since then, things have slowly but surely taken a turn for the worse. As the reported number of problems with 360 consoles increases (Microsoft writes them off as "vocal minority"), shipping has started taking longer and customer service less helpful.

As Justin garnered more experience with 360 repairs, he discovered something. The consoles consumers sent back by Microsoft are often refurbished, rather than brand-new. Justin found out that, with enough problems and by specifically making the request, Microsoft would send out brand-new consoles as replacements. Midway through his ordeal, he began doing this, but quickly found the downside: new consoles can take even longer to send out, with up to two weeks spent waiting for Microsoft approval. Microsoft has compensated Justin to some degree. A month of Xbox Live service, replacement headsets, some free Microsoft Points and at least one free game were offered at various points. He claims to have never asked for anything beyond the Xbox Live time.

Read the full article over at 1up.com