The red ring of death (coined after another lovely Microsoft failure state, the blue screen of death) sounds ominous and rightly so. It is a near-unavoidable sentence to brickdom.
But I knew what to do. The same thing that I had done the other two times that my XBox 360s died. I packed everything up and headed over to Best Buy where I bought it in the first place. Now, this would be a futile endeavor if not for the Product Replacement Plan (a sort of warrantee) which I had purchased when I bought my initial XBox 360 (may it rest in peace).
I have to give high praise to Best Buy on this. My experiences in replacing my XBrick 360s have been nothing short of amazing. The process is simple and painless. I don't get hassled by customer service people, rather they are very helpful. They let me keep my hard drive with all my saved games (although they warn me that the HDD could be the problem with my system. That hasn't been the case thus far). They process everything pretty quickly and in a matter of minutes I'm out the door with a new box. And this last time they even credited me the difference in price since the premium package has dropped in price since last year when I bought mine.
I haven't verified it for certain, but I think I got one of the new Falcon XBox 360s. I hope this will mean that I won't have to replace this one for a long time, if ever. But it is nice to know that I still have some 10 months of security through my replacement plan.
I'm sure that the $50 I spent on that replacement plan is the best console related purchase I've made... possibly ever. It's sad that the failure rate on the 360s are so bad to make that the case, but still I very much enjoy the XBox. I would highly recommend that anyone planning on getting an XBox 360 check out Best Buy for their purchase.
