"I had seen the SquareTrade logo multiple times on Ebay and felt that it
was another way to get a few dollars from me. I really hadn’t
researched it that much, but that day I needed it to be real. I read
everything I could on SquareTrade (ST)... 'No hassle'. 'Customer Focused'...Why isn’t everyone using it then?"
After taking a good sample of SquareTrade warranties, we can report a 16.4% failure rate for the Microsoft Xbox 360.
These numbers represent 171 claims made on a sample group of 1040 Xbox 360 warranties purchased between April 1 and July 31, 2007, shortly after we began offering warranties on gaming consoles. All claims were normal-use mechanical or electrical failures from non-commercial units. No accidental damage issues were included.
PLEASE NOTE: this report only tracks this test group for a period of 6 to 10 months after warranty purchase (ending January 31, 2007). Once this same test group is tracked for 24 or 36 months, the fail rate is certain to go up. Our data shows that failures spike in the third month after warranty purchase but remain fairly steady after that, with only incremental drop-off until the eighth month. This pattern is fairly consistent with all electronics failures.
Also, after Microsoft's well-publicized warranty extension, it is possible some of our warranty owners are not reporting failures to us, but going directly to Microsoft. If so, our 360 fail rate is skewing lower than is entirely accurate.
The sample group includes all three Xbox SKUs available at the time;
• 27 Elites, the 120GB flagship model.
• 57 Core models, the basic package.
• 956 Premiums, the standard 20GB model.
Splitting out the Premium model results in a slightly higher fail rate: 17%. The low volume of Core and Elite warranties/claims (one claim on an Elite, eight on Cores) in the sample group does not make them acceptable statistical candidates on their own.
Out of the 171 claims, 102 were "Red Ring of Death" (RROD) general hardware failures. This represents roughly 60% of all claims, and 9.8% of all warranties in the sample group. It's believed that overheating is the main cause.
Of the other 69 claims;
• 18% were disc read errors.
• 13% were video card failures.
• 13% were hard drive freezes.
• 10% were power issues.
• 7% were disc tray malfunctions.
These would NOT be covered by the extended Microsoft warranty, and are therefore more reliable numbers. Overheating (without a Red Ring error), controller connectivity, and undetermined errors made up the balance of claims issues.
In July 2007, Microsoft announced hardware changes to fix the Xbox's overheating problem. It is unlikely any modified Xbox 360s were a part of our sample group.
Also in July, Microsoft extended their warranty to three years for RROD issues ONLY, with a $1 billion fund set aside to cover repair/replacement costs for "any Xbox 360 console that experiences the “three flashing red lights” error message." We have referred our warranty owners with RROD issues to Microsoft since that time (and offered pro-rated refunds) while continuing to service all other 360 failures within our 5-day turnaround window. Microsoft's turnaround is reportedly anywhere from one to three weeks.
SQUARETRADE
Analytics Team
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Our analytics team just finished running a report on the reliability of the Microsoft Xbox 360, and discovered it has a 16.4% normal-use failure rate.
That's roughly half the 33% failure rate once claimed by Best Buy, Gamestop and EB Games, but way above the standard 3-5% failure rate Microsoft announced a year ago... the only official numbers they've ever released. By comparison, their main competition - Sony's PlayStation 3 - hovers in the 3% range for hardware failures.
Gamestop indefinitely suspended sales of product replacement plans for all 360s last October.
Not surprisingly, the dreaded "Red Ring of Death" played a heavy part in our report, factoring into 60% of all service calls. Almost from day one, three flashing red LED lights on the power display (signaling a general hardware failure) has symbolized the 360's reputation as a machine with serious design flaws. Damage caused from severe overheating soon reached epidemic proportions. Peter Moore, Microsoft's then-Vice President of Interactive Entertainment Business, finally responded last July by retroactively extending all Xbox 360 warranties to three years at a cost of 1 billion dollars, but only for Three Red Lights issues.
The other 40% of the Xbox's hardware failures are limited to the standard one-year warranty. Microsoft charges $99 to fix any non-Three Red Lights issue, with a reported turnaround time of 21 days.
Disk read errors account for nearly half of all non-TRL claims. Other problems we see crop up fairly often are fried video cards, hardware freezes, on/off failures and, interestingly, disc tray malfunctions that also tend to damage game discs.
Last June, Microsoft released modified hardware on all new and repaired 360s, adding a second GPU heatsink to fix the console's overheating problems. It's highly unlikely any modified 360s were included in our report.
UPDATED: The full report, including numbers and methodology, has been released.
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Clearly, someone feels bad that the Microsoft Zune got shut out of the gift card giveaways during the Christmas iPod price wars, and is now looking to make up for it. Specifically, Best Buy, and specifically, you'll get a $25 gift card with any Zune. None of that graduated amount nonsense they pulled on us when it was the iPod on the table. It's a flat number whether you get the 4GB Zune or the 80GB Zune. Oh, and free shipping if you buy it online, too.
Given how well the gift card discounts worked, we'd expect to see more deals like this show up in future, especially as it keeps all the money in the store. It's not like we weren't going to spend $25 on "stuff" there anyway. But if you want to save even more cash, then you'll want to bypass their warranty and get ours for literally half the price. You can even add Accidental Damage coverage if you want.
And while we're on the subject, the Zune's new tag line is "You make it You." No, Microsoft. No. You're not Apple. Trying to act all cool when you're not cool is so uncool.
Brown Zune, Zune warranty, Zune insurance
IPOD PRICE WAR! It's ON!
Last Friday, we were wondering how long it would take Best Buy to counter Circuit City's two-buck undercutting of their Apple iPod sale. Answer: not long, but they've gone a different direction on it.
Instead of further iPod price drops or discounts, Best Buy is selling them at regular price and giving you a graduating scale of Best Buy gift cards along with purchase. It's $10 for the 1GB Shuffle, $15 for the 4GB Nano, $20 for the 8GB Nano, $25 for the 80GB Classic, and $30 for the 160GB Classic. They're offering $10 off the 4GB Microsoft Zune, and $20 off the 8GB or 30GB Zunes.
Circuit City's counter-counter offer is "a free $10 eGift Card" flat rate on iPods only (no Zune sale, no Zune gift card), with their sale prices all still intact from what we reported last Friday.
Well played, big box stores. Their free gift card strategy essentially keep your money coming into their stores instead of being spent elsewhere, but the current result is that, iPod price-wise, they're both now in a statistical dead heat, plus or minus a few quarters. How long can this detente last? Not long, we hope. We're waiting for someone to drop the Big One.
War is truly hell.
Cheap Apple iPod Coupon, Microsoft Zune, cheap mp3 player, iPod vs. Zune, iPod warranty, iPod insurance
If there's an MP3 Player on your list to give (or to receive) his holiday season, whether it's an Apple iPod, a Microsoft Zune, or any other MP3 Player on the market, now you can protect it with the best warranty around (according to our reviews, anyway). And you can do it for a lot less if you use our special 3-Day discount.
You can get an instant warranty quote using our widget in the sidebar, but then use coupon code: MP3MADNESS on our checkout page and you'll get 33% off your MP3 Player's warranty. This offer is only good from today through Sunday, 12/16/07.
Keep in mind, this is on a warranty that's already 40% less than retail warranties, and it comes with a 5-Day Service Guarantee most retailers wouldn't offer to save their lives. We fix it or pay you’re the item's purchase price in five business days, or your warranty and the service are free.
If you bought an MP3 Player for yourself or a friend in the last month, you can still put a SquareTrade warranty on it at 2/3rds the normal price, even if you add Accidental Damage coverage. And if you still need to buy an iPod, by purest chance, Best Buy and Circuit City both have sales going on.
It's never too late to Christmas shop. There's almost ten days left! Plenty of time!
Cheap Apple iPod Coupon, Microsoft Zune, cheap mp3 player, iPod vs. Zune
Any survivors out there? Well, if you can still type with broken fingers and crushed spirits, feel free to use your office's precious bandwidth to scout out a few really good deals still in effect on the internet.
First and foremost, Circuit City is offering a 10% discount on any and all purchases over $249, but for in-store pickups only. Hope that's not a reflection on their normal shipping charges. PayPal is also giving you 20% cash back if you do business with any of their PayPal-friendly etailers, like Overstock.com, Ritz Camera, Toys R Us and HP.
Wal-Mart's extended its evil Cyber Monday deals through the whole week, and there are several choice items up for nicely discounted grabs. Our favorites: a TomTom One GPS Bundle for $162, an HP 7 MP digital camera with printer and 1 GB memory card for $188, and a super-special Xbox 360 Premium package with two games bundled and a third for free (you choose from a list that includes Game Of the Year contenders Halo 3, Mass Effect, and Bioshock), a messenger bag, and an extra wireless controller, all for $399. The Xbox is a today-only deal.
Best Buy's advertising a sale on all their Apple iPods, but really, it's pretty weak stuff. Your iPod Nano sale price: ten bucks off. Your iPod Touch sale price: fifteen bucks off. Your iPod Shuffle sale price: four bucks off. Rah. We're much more excited about their $100 off TomTom GPS sale, which drops the price of the TomTom One even below Wal-Mart's, only it applies to every TomTom model.
And then there's us: you can get a three-year SquareTrade warranty on all this stuff for 20-35% Off its normal price (which is already about 40% less than Circuit City or Best Buy's warranties), even if you add extra years of protection or Accidental Damage coverage.
Stay strong, folks. It's not even December yet. Just wait until you have to go find a tree.
iPod warranty, holiday savings
Yes, it’s true that we were a part of the collective yawn last year when the Microsoft Zune tried to muscle in on the Apple iPod. But now they’re back with a new iteration, the second generation Zune 80 GB, and while Steve Jobs still doesn’t have TOO much to worry about, at least now there’s some actual competition in the marketplace.
What’s good? Well, they’ve cleaned up the controls significantly. The new Zune Pad is a good one-touch control, and the interface is much smoother than before. The two big advantages the Zune has over the iPod are Bluetooth synching and FM Radio. If you still like listening to five minutes of music separated by two minutes of brainless DJ and fifteen minutes of commercials, the Zune’s still got you covered... not a lot of new here. The updated synching feature, however, is pretty damn cool. Zune to Zune wireless file sharing (take that, RIAA) returns, but now your playlist automatically updates when you get in range of your library-holding, WiFi-enabled desktop without any need to dock. You can even narrow it down to specific artists you want to update, and leave the rest out. It’s a slick little one-up on the Zune vs. iPod battle royale, and we'll be very surprised if it goes unanswered for long.
There’s a bigger color selection in Zunes, too, if that’s as important to you as it should be. It tickles us how the brown Zune 30 GB is outselling the more spiffy 16GB iPod Touch at the moment (the $266 differnce might have something to do with it). The prices are comparable to their corresponding iPods, and on our side, that means the SquareTrade Zune warranty is on par with the SquareTrade iPod warranty, right down to the optional Accidental Damage Protection for new-condition players.
It has to be said that Apple iTunes still beats the tar out of Zune Marketplace from the selection (no TV for the Z) to interface (no bookmarking) to the name (“marketplace” is so 90’s). That won’t stop anybody who goes mainly from their own catalog of ripped CDs, but it might if you’re looking forward to surfing the internets and downloading songs direct to your mp3 player. Which is coming soon.
Honestly, if this was the Zune that came out last year, it would’ve been on equal footing with the iPod. As-is it does what an mp3 player should, but not what an iPod can. Sorry, Mr. Bill, but you’ll just have to settle for owning the home computer market
Microsoft Zune warranty, zune insurance, Apple ipod warranty, ipod insurance
It's been rumored for a while, but the new Xbox SKU is now official. Jumping at the all-ages market that Nintendo's dominated for years now, the Xbox Arcade is priced at a Wii-like $280.
That includes five games bundled with the system, all culled from Xbox's Live Arcade download service: Pac-Man Championship Edition, an adaptation of the classic card game UNO (last year's surprise hit on Xbox Live), puzzle shooter Luxor 2, rhythm game Boom Boom Rocket and Feeding Frenzy... which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, only for children. Collectively, they add about $40-50 value to the package. There's also a V-Chip setting for parents to moderate their kids' gaming.
Microsoft's also sealed a few deals with Warner Bros. and Nickelodeon to bring downloadable episodes of The Backyardigans, Blue's Clues, iCarly, and about fifty classic Looney Tunes cartoons. They'll all run about $1.50, but for a measly twenty-five cents more, you can watch Bugs and Daffy in hi-def.
Though what you'll be saving them to is a bit of a mystery. It looks like the Arcade only comes with a 256MB memory card... multi-gig hard drive sold separately. It's especially worrisome given that Microsoft is putting resources into supporting younger-age content, including a downloadable game using the Shriek license.
Still, even though it's being marketed at families as an E for Everyone video game console, at it's core this is a stripped-down Xbox 360 that knocks the price of owning an Xbox below the hallowed $300 mark (seriously, it's $165 less than any other Xbox), and right in time for holiday gift-giving, too. If all you (or a loved one) wants to do is play Halo 3 and save your in-game progress, the Arcade is going to be a nice little addition to your entertainment center.
But it's still an Xbox, so don't forget to get a SquareTrade warranty for it... also for a lot less.
square trade warranty
