Hey CAGs. I had a launch 360 that, through a great deal of luck, spent a long time without ever seeing the dreaded Red Ring of Death. However, about a week or so before the release of Halo 3, my luck finally ran out and my console ate it. Right around the time I went to get my repair set up, Microsoft had messages up on service.xbox.com saying that they were performing maintenance on the service and it wouldn't be available for a few days. So I called them up, set up the repair, got my info, good to go. But though in the first day service.xbox.com did show my 360's repair status, a day or so later, a click on the info page showed "No repairs scheduled." This caused me a great deal of concern, but I got my box, mailed it in to them, confirmed that they got it and that a repair was scheduled despite the absence of info on the xbox service website. They told me I'd get my 360 back in 12 business days from the day they received it, so that would be something like October 18th or so.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I checked the mail today and found my 360! But more surprising to me was that it actually wasn't *my* 360. According to a letter included in the box, rather than repairing my 360, they sent me a new one (and a free month of Xbox Live). The manufacture date on the back confirms that it's new--made 9/24/2007 (which is more or less the day I filed my complaint). So is this nothing new and I just haven't heard about this practice? Or is MS doing something new here? Maybe this is a way to get rid of the non-Falcon non-HDMI consoles? Whatever the case, I'm happy with it, I just thought I'd share this with the community in case this is news to you people. If this is standard operating procedures, then excuse my wasting your time. Now I get to go play Halo 3!