Following endless reports of broken or malfunctioning Xbox 360 units, Microsoft has for a second time extended the warranties of its next-generation system from one year to three years. The company, which said it would miss the 12 million shipping target that it lowered just months ago, said it will incur a loss of over $1 billion on the repairs. In an open letter posted on Xbox.com, Microsoft’s marketing guru Peter Moore apologized for letting customers down. “Good service and a good customer experience are areas of the business that we care deeply about. And frankly, we’ve not been doing a good enough job,” he said. “Some of you have expressed frustration with the customer experiences you have had with Xbox 360; frustration with having to return your console for service after receiving the general hardware error message on the console.”
As is always the case, Microsoft assured its customers that “the majority” of its customers “have had a terrific experience from their first day, and continue to, day in and day out.” However, according to a poll on GameSpot, nearly 45% of respondents that owned a Xbox 360 had a system fail. It is a good reason then that “when anyone questions the reliability of our product, or our commitment to our customers, it’s something I take very seriously,” Moore said.
The new policy reads, “While we will still have a general one year console warranty (two years in some countries), we are announcing today a three-year warranty that covers any console that displays a three flashing red lights error message. If a customer has an issue indicated by the three flashing red lights, Microsoft will repair the console free of charge—including shipping—for three years from the console’s purchase date. We will also retroactively reimburse any of you who paid for repairs related to problems indicated by this error message in the past.”
