XBox Owner Sues Microsoft

drusoicy writes "Reuters is reporting that Sean Burke has filed suit against Microsoft because his XBox system stopped reading discs (games or otherwise) after less than one year of use. Many XBox owners can relate, as XBox hard drives are known for crashing. 'The defective XBox's stop working after minimal usage, after unreasonably, unconscionably, unusually and unexpectedly short amounts of time,' the lawsuit said. The suit will probably become class action, and seeks to represent anyone who has purchased an XBOX since the 2001 launch."

Comments

Why can't he just return it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the world really need another lawsuit?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[David Horn]

Precisely - what's wrong with taking it back to the shop and asking for a new one? This is just someone out to try to make cash from MS and I don't think it should have been posted on Slashdot, as it will no doubt aid their cause.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the world really need another manufacturer producing bad goods?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[TheRealMindChild]

You miss the point. You give them an inch, they will take a mile. Then a lightyear. Its less about getting money/new xbox and more about "quit selling garage"

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[McKinney83]

Do you think a store would take a product back after a year?
And give you a replacement?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[tenasius]

It's been over a year. The store is not liable, the manufacturer is.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[badriram]

No.... This happened to me to, barely a year after my XBOX started giving me the disc is dirty erorrs on new video games. What what pissed me offf the most was that there were a ton of people this happened to, and MS charges a 130$ to fix a problem that really is a hardware fault.

This is not one of those McDonalds Hot coffee lawsuits

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The blurb said LESS THAN A YEAR. If the Xbox comes with a 1 year warrenty then yes, you send it back for repair!

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? So it will break again within a year.. after your warranty expires?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[hattig]

Well even if the store warranty wasn't a year long, surely Microsoft's is?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mOoZik]

So what? Tough luck. If it costs that much, you either fix it or STFU about it. If that many units were actually defective, a suit would already have been brought, but this is a very small percentage of the overall users of the product. This is just another anti-MS person trying to cash in and bring the company down. *rolls eyes*

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Mojojojo Monkey Inc.]

But... I like my Microsoft Xgarage, it's the only place in my house big enough to store my Xbox.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[views]

I expect thing to work. I don't expect to change my TV every year or my DVD. And if someting does go wrong the manufacturer does fixes it. Cheers

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[CommieLib]

I had some problems with my XBox and a cleaning disc really helped. I had no idea that such a thing even existed for DVD players.

Having said that, XBox won't play a lot of the Netflix discs, presumably because of their wear and tear.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[CGP314]

This is not one of those McDonalds Hot coffee lawsuits

Neither was the McDonalds hot coffee lawsuite


-Colin

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[cynic10508]

This is not one of those McDonalds Hot coffee lawsuits

True. It is less McDonald's coffee and more Chevrolet Corvair. It's about selling a knowingly faulty product.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[MMaestro]

If you got the extended warranty, yes a store will take it back AND give you a replacement. (Though it'll be a 'refurbished' one.)

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Neon Spiral Injector]

Nope. 90 days is all Microsoft gives you against defects.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[spiritraveller]

This is just someone out to try to make cash from MS

Riiiiiiiiiight.

Let's see, $150 XBOX.

Best possible reward:
$150
-Attorney fees
-Court costs
= -thousands of dollars

The lawyers will make plenty of money... but the guy whose XBOX broke will be lucky if he gets a coupon for some games that still won't work in his defective XBOX.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Loco3KGT]

Yea, it was.

Coffee is hot. Coffee doesn't always stay warm during your trip to work.

Mcdonald's solution? Brew hotter coffee. Why? Because the customer reqested it.

It is unfortunate that the lady spilled hot coffee in her lap. It is unfortunate that people accidentally injure themselves when they use knives, guns, or pencils.

But it's an accepted risk of life. Don't want to risk it? Don't drink coffee.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[micromoog]

It's about selling a knowingly faulty product.

Which, incidentally, is also the case in the McDonald's coffee lawsuit.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[gfxguy]

Liable for what? Someone buys a product, it has a warranty, it breaks out of warranty... too bad. Lesson learned... that being to not ever by products from that company again.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[sgant]

Really, I can't see the guy actually filing this...I'm sure it was his attorney that got ahold of him and saw "class action" written all over it and is just using this poor slob as a springboard.

Class action lawsuits are for attorneys, not clients.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[override11]

just open it up and replace the DVDRom yourself, sheesh. Its outa warranty, might as well give it a shot! :)

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[micromoog]

Where do you store the controllers?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[OverlordQ]

Coffee is not supposed to cause 3rd Degree burns out of the coffee pot. That is 'unsafe temperatures' (tm)

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mark-t]

Actually, yes.

Unless he bought it from Best Buy or someplace similar.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[gfxguy]

I expect thing to work.

Good for you! So do I.

I don't expect to change my TV every year or my DVD.

Right on brother! Me neither!

And if someting does go wrong the manufacturer does fixes it.

Not if it's out of warranty they don't - without charging an arm and a leg. And, really, what would compel them to do so? Certainly they want buyers to be happy so they buy more products, but people are going to buy MS products anyway... there was no guarantee you'd be able to use it forever, there was what... 90 days, maybe? When you pay for the product, you need to think of part of that money as being a built in warranty for some amount of time. After that, if you've payed to extend it, that one thing. If not... then too bad. Sucks. Sell the games and buy another system from someone else.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mzkhadir]

At best buy, you can pick up a new one as the replacement.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[dreamchaser]

That's one of the biggest cop out reply I've ever seen here, and I've been around /. for quite a few years. When will people start taking responsibility for their own actions? The lady in the lawsuit put the coffee between her legs and drove off, thus spilling it. Coffee is hot. Hot stuff can cause burns. 'nuff said.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[networkBoy]

I know of no store who will take an item back after the manufacturers warrenty expires (90 days in this case) without an extended warrenty having been purchased.

On a semi-related note,
The number one repair I see in my "shop" is assed up mod attempts, followed closely by dying DVD-rom drives. The reason? The drives never spin down once a game is inserted. if the game disk is out of round for any reason, even by a timy ammount the drive doesn't stand a chance.
-nB

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[lukewarmfusion]

I drink my coffee, tea, and hot chocolate at temperatures that my friends and co-workers consider ridiculously hot. It's near boiling (McD's was 185F, so I'm thinking my stuff is probably close to that).

As the parent poster notes, coffee doesn't stay that temperature for long. By the time I get to work - say 20 minutes later - it's starting to cool down to the point where I won't drink it.

Hot coffee is hot. If you spill it, you'll get burns. You spilled it, not McDonald's.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[homer_ca]

This is dumb alright. How is this different from any other consumer electronics device that has a 90 day warranty (Rio MP3 players being another)? Ya pays your money and ya takes your chances. Sometimes you get a lemon, and if you don't give it a good thrashing in the first 90 days it might fail later. The extended warranty offered by stores is usually a ripoff with big commissions for the salesperson, but for some items it may be worth it.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Mojojojo Monkey Inc.]

Those don't fit anywhere yet, so I'm anxiously awaiting the release of the Xgarage 2, [i]with hypersubnanoscalability[/i].

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[SlamMan]

At the temperature it was given to her, she couldn't have drank it. Its called selling an unsafe product.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[networkBoy]

That'd be fine if the Xbox used an off the shelf DVD drive. . .
-nB

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[EEBaum]

They offer extended warranties on console systems? And people actually pay for that?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[CommieLib]

Good grief! YES IT IS! Get this: hot coffee is not safe to spill on your groin! Twas always thus, and always it will be!

There's a principle called assumption of risk. If you do something so unwise as placing a hot cup of coffee between your legs...well?

Consider that even now, placing a cup of McDonalds coffee between your legs and spilling it will cause injury. This isn't nerf-world, and we shouldn't want it to be.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Politburo]

Do you know what 3rd degree burns are? They are serious burns and do not normally result from hot fluids designed for consumption. They are also extremely painful. Had she only received 1st degree burns, I doubt the suit would have been successful.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[OverlordQ]

Reports also indicate that McDonald's consistently keeps its coffee at 185 degrees, still approximately 20 degrees hotter than at other restaurants. Third degree burns occur at this temperature in just two to seven seconds, requiring skin grafting, debridement and whirlpool treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars and result in permanent disfigurement, extreme pain and disability to the victims for many months, and in some cases, years.

The lady in the lawsuit put the coffee between her legs and drove off, thus spilling it.

a) She wasn't driving
B) it wasn't between her legs

Read

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[liquidsgi]

I am not sure about the XBox, but I have heard of at least 5 or 6 people having issues with the Playstation 2--Stops reading discs So I am not sure that the xbox is the only one that has issues.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Stuart Gibson]

So, the UK has some sensible consumer rights then? All goods purchased have a mandatory years warranty, and the agent has liability for the product up to six years, though that doesn't mean it's guaranteed for six years, but the retailer is deemed to be partly responsible for repair costs within this time. The chances of finding a retailer who will actually do anything this long after purchase are slim, but the year warranty will be honoured by everyone (by law).

Stuart

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[OverlordQ]

As the parent poster notes, coffee doesn't stay that temperature for long. By the time I get to work - say 20 minutes later - it's starting to cool down to the point where I won't drink it.

McDonalds asserted that customers buy coffee on their way to work or home, intending to consume it there. However, the companys own research showed that customers intend to consume the coffee immediately while driving.

Source

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is. Good coffee is brewed at 195 to 205F (90-96 C)

Only a lawyer could argue that freshly brewed coffee should not burn you.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Enigma_Man]

It's funny you post that article about the Corvair. It points out that Chevy wasn't selling a faulty product, and that Nader was pointing out supposed flaws in a car that he had never even driven (or any car, he didn't have his drivers license).

-Jesse

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[jmcmunn]

Actually, when you return something the warranty on the new product (which is generally but not always refurbished) is usually only 90 days or the remaining duration of the original warranty, whichever is longer. So no perpetual warranties, unless every time the product breaks within 90 days.

In my opinion though, if a product fails all the time, it should be recalled or else the company should pay to replace them PROACTIVELY. Look at the Firestone tire recall...would you all be saying "Just use the tires even though they suck...when you crash and die, just return the tires for new ones". I thought not.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mephistus]

If you have one of the notorious Thompson drives you can spend on tenth ($13) of that $130 price tag on a replacement lens. We bought one a couple of weeks ago off Ebay, opened up the optical drive and removed the old lens and replaced it with our new piece. It's not any harder than piecing together your own rig or seating a CPU. And every self respecting geek has access to a soldering iron any way.

Since then it's worked great, even better than when we first got the Xbox. No skipping, it loads and reads quicker, and all around works. Of course you can also get replacement drives like the Samsung 616T if you can find them for less than that repair price as well ($60-$80).

Now if you don't mind, I have to get back to playing Rainbow Six 3. :)

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Feanturi]

Brew hotter coffee. Why? Because the customer reqested it.

I read that the coffee wasn't too hot by customer request, it was too hot on purpose to counter their own policy of free coffee refills while you're in the store. The idea was that if the coffee was wicked-hot, nobody would have time to collect any refills, or at least not more than one. But they still look good because, "Hey, we give free refills!"
That's in the same boat as selling hardware that you know will break early, so you can make money on repairs. This way when you don't have new customers, you can force old ones to become 'repeat' customers. Hey, they're providing service on their stuff, right? That's good isn't it?

It's a matter of proving the intent in either case.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[EvilAlien]

That is why you buy extended warranties from the retail outlet. This is just a case of a whiny customer trying to get some cash out of a company with deep pockets. Its sympathetic judge gambling. Hopefully he gets some crotchety pro-business asshole who decides to award MS some damages against the whiny litigious bastard ;)

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, as far as I know the UK is still in the EU, this means you have 2 years warranty by law as far as I know (at least here in the Netherlands we do and it's supposedly because of EU rules). I actually returned stuff which was almost two years old and had no problems getting a replacement.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Koohoolinn]

Here in Belgium almost everything has a warranty of at least 1 year. Just return it to the shop you bought it and it will be repaired if possible otherwise it will be replaced completely.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mstefanus]

Does the world really need another manufacturer producing bad goods?

No no no... Microsoft does not produce goods, only bads

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Short Circuit]

You mean the same company that made/makes the groundbreaking IntelliEye mice and the Microsoft Natural keyboard? Force-feedback joysticks?

I'm not saying Microsoft is the only option for those products now, or even that they were the first to make them. They were, at one point, the primary consumer source brand for each of those products, when they first became popular. I wouldn't be surprised if stores chose to stock newly released Microsoft hardware, just because previous Microsoft hardware brought in a lot of customers.

And if there's enough demand for a product, a store won't have much economical choice but to stock it, anyway. For example, when Jordache first started selling jeans, few of the stores would stock them; They already had enough popular brands. So Jordache marketed directly to the consumer, through television ads. Consumers flocked to the stores, who then discovered they weren't stocking a product that had tremendous demand.

When lots of people walk into your store wanting to buy a product, you're sure as heck going to start stocking it.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[dreamchaser]

In fact I *do* know what 3rd degree burns are, because I've had them. I never thought once about suing the maker of the stove that caused them.

Lawsuits like that (McDonalds) are BS, plain and simple. You can try to excuse them away, but the fact remains that she bought a hot, potentially scalding liquid. She should have been more careful.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[zakezuke]

Mcdonald's solution? Brew hotter coffee. Why? Because the customer reqested it.

It is unfortunate that the lady spilled hot coffee in her lap. It is unfortunate that people accidentally injure themselves when they use knives, guns, or pencils.

But it's an accepted risk of life. Don't want to risk it? Don't drink coffee.

Coffee is typically served at 180 degrees or so. This is hot. McDonald's coffee was served 200+ degrees. This is boiling or really close to it.

Spilling typical coffee on your lap is going to hurt for a moment, and at worse you'll get a 1st degree burn i.e. sun burn. This is an accepted risk of drinking a hot beverage.

Spilling boiling water in your lap is not only going to hurt, but at the very least will cause pain and blisters, i.e. 2nd degree burns. It may also cause skin loss and nerve damage, i.e. 3rd degree burns.

McDonalds made it a choice to serve their coffee at such an amazingly hot temperature that it caused 3rd degree burns in many cases. While they did this at *some* customers request, they neglected to tell everyone about it. My first experience with their coffee was awful, only a little bit caused my tongue to blister. They just laughed and said "oh, our coffee is too hot to drink, it's so it's still warm when you go into work." This was negligent.

Knives and guns are weapons which are known cause harm. Pencils are known to be sharp and cause harm. Oysters sometimes contain pearls and olives sometimes have pits both can chip a tooth. Coffee isn't typically used as a deadly weapon and spilling coffee does not typically result in so much damage that you need skin grafts. McDonalds in short fucked up.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[MikeTheYak]

If you believe that then you are not familiar with the facts of the case. I suggest reading up on them before casting blame on the plaintiff. Consider, at least, that the jury that DID hear all of the facts unanimously found for the plaintiff. People don't like frivolous lawsuits, and McDonalds could probably afford better lawyers than she, so please don't blame the award on the gullibility of juries in the face of slick lawyerin'.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Mr. Frilly]

For crying out load, can't people read up on this?

McDonald's was knowingly superheating their coffee so that a brewed pot would stay fresher longer. They were heating their coffe to 180-190 degrees F. Your pot of coffee at home is more like 140 degrees. Even coffee at 155 degrees wouldn't give you serious burns.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Smallpond]

The laser output drops over time, but there is an adjustment on the card for cranking it back up. Look around for webstires describing the procedure. My son got his going again that way. Good thing for me; I'm still trying to get thru Ratchet and Clank.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[rseuhs]

Coffe is not supposed to cause 3rd degree burns because you are not supposed to pour it onto your lap.

That's the only reason for it.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[a whoabot]

People get into situations where they can sue for millions. People aren't always happy with letting those chances pass them by.

Those people's solution? Take that chance. Why? Because millions of dollars is very nice.

It's unfornute that McDonald's was unable to defend themselves properly. It is unfortunate that companies run the risk of having to pay up millions of dollars becase really good lawyers are more than willing to act on people who burn themselves' behalf.

But it's an accepted risk of life. Don't want to risk it? Don't sell coffee.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Majik Sznak]

Is there no way of obtaining an XBox-compatible DVD drive for replacement?

Mine still works, but is making awful, awful noises. I doubt it will work for long. I lucked out: mine is a v1.0 XBox and it still pretty much functions.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[rxmd]

Does the world really need another manufacturer producing bad goods?

Does the world really need a lawsuit for this? If you don't like it, don't buy it. It's not that he was forced to buy the XBox. And if it breaks, at least where I live, there's a thing called warranty, 12 months on the XBox, 24 if you bought it online.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[gfxguy]

This is a lesson learned for the consumer - if consumers would just stop buying crappy products (and over paying for them), then companies would start making better products.

I know it's not going to happen, this is MS, but then at least YOU as a consumer have learned and make better decisions in the future.

What happens if this guy loses the case? Does he wash his hands of MS? NO! He runs out and buys a new Xbox anyway. And he will forever be annoyed by inferior products.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the Firestone tire recall...would you all be saying "Just use the tires even though they suck...when you crash and die, just return the tires for new ones". I thought not.

The difference here is that, when your XBox breaks down, it doesn't fucking kill you!

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Politburo]

We have differing opinions in this case, and the court disagrees with you as well.

It's not "plain and simple" otherwise we wouldn't be here bitching about it, and if it was so "plain and simple" the lawsuit would never have succeeded in the first place, no?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mcc]

The lawyers will make plenty of money... but the guy whose XBOX broke will be lucky if he gets a coupon for some games that still won't work in his defective XBOX.

Sometimes class actions of this particular type the remediation is just that the machine gets fixed. I had an Aiwa stereo of one specific model that had a defect where the CD drive would consistently break after a couple of years. There was a class action, and the settlement was that everyone who bought this particular model got a coupon to go get the CD drive repaired for free. I found this entirely satisfactory.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[un1xl0ser]

I thought the reason they kept the coffee hotter was because it tasted better longer. That increased profits. Am I ignorant or full of shit or both?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[BlueCodeWarrior]

Like me...

Just yesterday I returned some headphones I got at Radio Shack (they were on a big sale when I got them) becasue they broke.

I had purchesed a year's warranty for like $3 even though I hate buying extra warranties simply because I know that headphones (at least for me) have a high chance of breaking.

So instead of dishing out another $40 I got another pair for free...

We'll just forget the fact that the clerk spelled my name wrong (When I say 'k', how do you type 'c') and they had difficulty finding me in the computer...

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[JDevers]

How again are you supposed to drink something that will cause third degree burns on your legs?

For the stove to do it's designed purpose it HAS to get hot enough to cause you third degree (actually far worse...but hey) burns. The coffee on the other hand CAN'T do it's designed purpose until it cools off somewhat. It was kept too hot according to both logic AND the law. Department of health laws are there to protect both the consumer and the business, if a company is within the law and a customer is hurt by food (burns or food poisoning) the business will be a LOT more likely to win a lawsuit. On the other hand, if the company is breaking the law, they deserve to be sued.

The next time you order something containing eggs, poultry, ground beef or one of many other possibly dangerous foods, hope that the business was following the law in regards to preparing the food because you are after all eating a potentially very dangerous food.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[telstar]

"Don't want to risk it? Don't drink coffee."

• How's that solve the problem of pencils?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Red Alastor]

In fact, it does works. A teacher I had was always returning the shoes of all his sons to Nikes just before the warranty expired to get new ones.

They even accept to send you one size bigger if you ask (because kid feet grow).

It works since sevaral years for him.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[geg81]

But it's an accepted risk of life.

People do accept the risks, such as they are, arising from drinking coffee at the temperatures at which coffee is customarily served. At issue is that McDonald's served the coffee at a different temperature, which increased those risks unreasonably and unexpectedly for customers.

Mcdonald's solution? Brew hotter coffee. Why? Because the customer reqested it.

"The" customer didn't request it at all; McDonald's doesn't customize food or food temperature for individual customers, they have corporate standards. Furthermore, companies are not free to supply unsafe products just because customers request it. McDonald's is the expert on food safety while the 81 year old grandmother isn't, so if it is unsafe for them to serve coffee at 185F, they must refuse even if the customer asks them to.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[BlueCodeWarrior]

I use my bag of holding.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Mysticalfruit]

Microsoft is selling garages?

I always wondered what they used all those copies of microsoft Bob for... I always thought they were in a pit somewhere...

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mrscorpio]

In other lawsuit news that's less publicized, a company for whom I did outsouced tech support was sued and lost by a guy who placed a laptop over his pantsless self for hours and it burned his genitals. Now, I agree that laptops probably shouldn't get that hot, but:

1) If it hurts, remove it.
2) Why are you getting your nuts all over the laptop?
3) See #1

Puts buying a used laptop in a whole new light....

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[jadenyk]

Actually, that's not true at all. In the US most companies will extend a warranty for no more than 30 days. I believe, legally (though IANAL) they don't even have to do that.

European consumer laws differ greatly though.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Jucius Maximus]

"I know of no store who will take an item back after the manufacturers warrenty expires (90 days in this case) without an extended warrenty having been purchased."

Costco. They have the best return policy of any store I have ever visited. My cousin bought a camera at Costco in Canada, and then returned to the Caribbean and then moved to the UK. After the 1 year warranty was up, the camera started turning on and off all by itself, extending and retracting the lens, and doing all kinds of madness. Eventually visiting Canada again with the original receipt, we took it there and explained what was happening. Costco refunded the full price of the camera. No fuss. No muss. In cash.

I always try to get my electronics gear there because I know with absolute certainty that if the products acts up, I can get my money back, no questions asked.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Flashbck]

what's wrong with taking it back to the shop and asking for a new one?

Questions like this make me sick! This just goes to show how much the typical American consumer (myself included) views product quality.

Sure he could return it, but why can't we expect the manufacturer to provide a quality product that will last longer than 1 year?

This is the wrong attitude people. Big business has, for far too long, operated under the premise that they can make average quality products that will break in a short lifetime and just replace the product when it breaks. This works great for them because a large percentage of people will probably never send the product in for repairs. Why do you think there are companies that have a "try it for a week and send it back for a full refund" policy? They can do this because people are inherently lazy and therefore will never return the product.

I say make the company who sells the product make something of quality that will not break in less than a year!

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[J. T. MacLeod]

Yeah, because obviously the inside of our mouths are completely impervious to burns.

If I spill hot coffee on myself, I expect a mild scald. I don't expect to lose skin and have nerve damage. If it's that hot, it's TOO hot.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[shepd]

A law like this in North America would cause warranties to default to zero. All products would be labelled "As Is" to reduce liability. Trust me on that. I'm a retailer myself and we get plenty of garbage products in from manufacturers that we know will welch on their warranty that get labelled like that by us as is (BIG fluorescent sticker, too). You'd think that would deter customers from buying them, but nooo... the customers demand them ($15 CDN power supplies, sub $180 CDN satellite receivers, etc, etc). I don't want to sell them, but I'm a store. I'm there to serve the public, and make a good wage doing that. So you sell what you're told (by customers) to sell.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[homebrewmike]

Same manufacturer. Same bad goods.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mediocubano]

There is only one manufacturer producing bad goods: Flextronics. They're the manufacturer! Every company in the world uses them when they need to actually *make* things.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

Oh a garage? Well, la-dee-da, Mr. French person. I call mine an x-hole.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[networkBoy]

Sure you can get replacements. One of the best things going is opening up boxes, stripping them, and selling the components seperately.
-nB

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[L0J46K]

Kudos. Microsoft has been selling mediocre software for many years. Its about time something comes back to bite them in the arse. Its not about the money, its the princpal of the thing. They obviously have no problem marketing the product. Maybe they should pull some of the marketing money back into the end product and for once create something solid.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Buelldozer]

Where did you get a 12 month warranty on an Xbox? Standard Xbox warranty in America is 90 days!

Where I live there simply was no place to buy it that offered an EXTENDED warranty for it either, and since I like to shop locally I couldn't get one.

A 90 day product warranty on an itme costing upwards of $200 (when purchased) is ludicrous; and it suggests to me that Microsoft KNEW these things were prone to this before they ever shipped them.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mark-t]

There are a plethora of retail stores that will take defective items back _LONG_ after their official return policy period, as long as the cause for the return is just, and there were no other terms of the sale such as "sold as is". A product breaking down well within what should have been its normal lifespan is by all rights a just reason to want to return the item.

Of course, they won't refund your money, but they will certainly exchange it for the same item. If they no longer stock the item, however... then there's not much that you can do unless the store has an official policy on the matter.

A recent example of this happened to me recently: we had a microwave oven that we had bought one time and literally within a month of the one-year manufacturer's warranty expiring, the thing went haywire. We were lamenting about this somewhat and comparing the costs of simply buying a new one to the estimated cost of repair when the girl at the store who had sold us the microwave oven in the first place told us to simply bring the defective one back and exchange it. So we did, and we got a brand new identical one that has been functioning perfectly ever since.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[jd678]

Just checked this out. There is an EU directive which in part calls for harmonisation across the states with regards to consumer protection. Some states were lobbied by their consumer groups to take this to mean offering a 2 year warranty in line with other countries.

Others just made law what the directive required.

You can find the directive here:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/consumers/policy/ develop ments/guar/guar01_en.pdf

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[THESuperShawn]

"Do you think a store would take a product back after a year? And give you a replacement?" Actually, YES. That store is COSTCO. They have a wonderful return policy. Basically, you can return ANY product at ANY time, no reason required- you just have to have your original receipt.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

That doesn't seem right. Was there something wrong with the shoes or was he just being dishonest?

Two wrongs don't make a right - even when it comes to multi-national corporations. And this person was an educator? Where and what did he teach?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[zakezuke]

Good grief! YES IT IS! Get this: hot coffee is not safe to spill on your groin! Twas always thus, and always it will be!

Spilling coffee in your groin should cause the same amount of damage as a mild sunburn.

There's a principle called assumption of risk

Yes, drinking hot coffee you assume the risk equivalent of being on a beach in the buff in the summer at high noon for an hour or so. You *might* get a 1st degree burn from it but this is considered to be an acceptable risk if you want to get a tan. This there is no question. But you don't assume there would be any risk of your skin melting off.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[filtur]

I was transporting an ice cream cake from Baskin robbins. The car I was in hit a bump and before I knew it I had a huge chunk of dry ice in my lap. Now that's cold! Luckily I was wearing jeans that day. So in closing, coffee hot, dry ice cold. No reason to sue.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[realdpk]

FWIW:

Most people consider the knee a part of the leg.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Stuart Gibson]

However, even if labelled "as is" it must still be "suitable for the purpose" and "as described" and the warranty will still be for a year. The only way around this is if you are a private seller of second hand goods, and even then the buyer has rights against the seller. Since the manufacturers are selling to the shops they are subject to the same laws.

The problem you get is customers who half know their rights and demand a new replacement three days before the warranty expires when the retailer has the option to refund, replace or repair, at THEIR descetion.

Stuart

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[glowimperial]

Regardless of Microsoft's policies, he may have a legitimate right to return his product. Anyone can legally return anything which they feel has not performed adequately as a product, withing any amount of time. All he has to do is demonstrate that 1 year of normal operation is not the lifespan of the product and the manufacturer must return it. In this case, it is painfully easy to demonstrate that "video game consoles" have an average lifespan longer than 1 year. In order to refute his claim, Microsoft would basically be forced to publicly state that their product has an unnaturally short lifespan, something that might be more damaging to them than the lawsuit itself, and definitely more costly than replacing a single defective unit. If they are stupid enough not to quietly replace the defective unit, they might find themselves in a very messy legal situation, like a class action lawsuit. Large companies perform service or replace products long after the end of warranties or service agreements like this all of the time, in order to prevent publicised legal action against them. This general legal principle applies to most mechanical products, as well as items like apparel and household goods. If you buy a belt and it keeps breaking, you can return it months, or years later, after purchase. Another good reason to throw all of your receipts in a box, and to make copies of ones for important and expensive goods, like your laptop or desktop computer.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[FictionPimp]

The situation is still the same though. You took my money, now give me what you promised.

But they never said it would last, so I guess its ok. I say expect something to only last as long as its covered by warranty. That way you wouldn't of payed 300.00 for a game system that only lasts a year. Then maybe the dying sales will force their hand to improve their product.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[rseuhs]

Yeah, because obviously the inside of our mouths are completely impervious to burns.

You aren't supposed to drink it without checking temperature first, either.

And of course the mouth has higher temperature tolerance than the normal skin, too.

If I spill hot coffee on myself, I expect a mild scald. I don't expect to lose skin and have nerve damage. If it's that hot, it's TOO hot.

May I ask you what you expect when you run over a street without looking? Will you also complain that cars are TOO fast?

If you akt stupid, it will sometimes hurt.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[can-o-worms]

There won't be any problems like this in japan, I've lived here for 8 years and the xbox is about as popular as a californian roll at a redneck BBQ. I don't know anyone with one. None of the kids are interested in them. They all have nintendo game cubes or gameboys or both. I also remember reading an article when the xbox was first released here about how they scratched disks. Japanese rarely buy any foreign electrical goods anyway... at least MS isn't selling them at a loss . Microsoft.... give em a little more rope.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Short Circuit]

Consumers frequently have specific things they want in what they buy. In this context, specific games come to mind. HDTV support. The ability to run Linux with a minimal amount of effort.

If there were generic clones of consoles, then, yes, a consumer would have a choice. You can choose from multiple brands of coffee makers that all do pretty much the same thing. But as long as manufacturers have monopolies on specific perks, a consumer set on one of those perks doesn't really have a choice.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[ZB Mowrey]

Coffee is typically served at 180 degrees or so...(snip)...Spilling typical coffee on your lap is going to hurt for a moment, and at worse you'll get a 1st degree burn i.e. sun burn. This is an accepted risk of drinking a hot beverage.

I beg to differ. When I was 14, I spilled coffee straight from a home-use (UL Listed) Mr. Coffee coffee machine... and got 2nd degree burns, blisters, and much pain. Spent the whole day in a cold-water bath. To this day (13 years later) I have a patch of leg that is darker-skinned than the rest. So you're entirely wrong when asserting that 'typical coffee' won't cause serious burns. I'd say that a Mr. Coffee coffee pot constitutes the De Facto typical cup of coffee, wouldn't you?

Now, I could have (in theory) sued over the temperature controls, but I was raised to have a healthy respect for personal responsibility, and I understand that accidents happen. How many other people got 3rd degree burns from McDonald's coffee? Was there a trend? If it was an isolated incident, you would be damn hard pressed to prove negligence. Juries often side with the 'little guy' because they don't like the looks of the corporate law team sitting at the defense table, and they want to help someone 'average' get some serious cash. They also have a perception that a company like McD's might not really miss a couple million bucks.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[OverlordQ]

Yes, *BREWED* at 195 to 205F not *KEPT* at that high temperature.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Henry Stern]

You are mistaken about why McDonald's served coffee so hot. It was not to satisfy the request of customers but so that the coffee would keep fresh longer before they would need to make a new pot [1]. Stella Liebeck was scalded because McDonald's wanted to increase profits by saving money on coffee grounds.

I know that in the ligitious society that you live in, it is popular (and probably deserved) to mock lawsuits. However, in this particular case, McDonalds willfully and knowingly did something dangerous in the name of profit. Had Liebeck not filed suit, the number of customers seriously burned would not have stopped at 700.

Big business does a lot of shady, dangerous things in the name of making more money. If anything, more people should sue when it is necessary.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[SiliconJesus101]

"It is unfortunate that companies run the risk of having to pay up millions of dollars becase really good lawyers are more than willing to act on people who burn themselves' behalf."

Unfortunately, the expense is passed on to you and I; companies NEVER eat the losses for things like this.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[rseuhs]

I recommend suing your parents.

It would put the level of legal stupidity on an entire new level.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Henry Stern]

Oops. Wrong reference. Here is the correct one.

McDonald's Scalding Coffee Case

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[eaolson]

Coffee is hot.

True. So's a hot tub. And since the word "hot" appears in the name of the product, it's reasonable to assume that anyone getting into a hot tub knows that it's hot.

If, however, said hot tub was hot enough to boil the flesh off her bones, then maybe something's not quite right with it?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[VeriTea]

For centuries coffee has been served right after brewing. It is perfectly reasonable to expect coffee to be very near the temperature it was brewed at.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[russint]

Not if it was a modded xbox

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[gfxguy]

You know what? I don't like being herded like cattle being led to the slaughter when I board an airplane, either, but you get what you pay for, and time and again consumers have shown they'd rather have low prices than good quality and service.

It annoys me, too, but I don't think the government should step in and start mandating things... the people are getting what they asked for: cheap crap for cheap prices.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Red Alastor]

If you give shoes to a kid, they obviously end up broken before a year (or at least a bit cracked). Especially if they play a lot of sport and like going in the wood.

He is teaching economy in Quebec.

And I was just saying that a perpetual warranty can exist with a real life exemple of it.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[calethix]

" Do you think a store would take a product back after a year?"

Wow, a case where spending $20-50 on that extended warranty scam may have been a good idea. :)

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[budgenator]

well maybe he didn't want to submit to the Extended Warrenty Extortion. Personaly I feel if a product doesn't last a year, it was defective fom the git-go.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[benzapp]

Actually third degree burns aren't painful at all. One of the defining characteristics between 2nd and 3rd degree burns is that the nerve endings are destroyed in 3rd degree burns, so that you feel no pain.

Sunburn is an example of a 1st degree burn. 2nd and 3rd degree burns are basically anything worse. And as far as the coffee is concerned, it has the same boiling point as water. I don't know how you make your coffee, but I use boiling water. It really does brew the best coffee. In fact, every coffee house I have ever been to uses boiling water.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kohath]

Neither was the McDonalds hot coffee lawsuite

Yes it was.

She spilled the coffee on herself. All the rest of the points you want to bring up about it simply don't matter. Even if the coffee was 1000 degrees (impossible of course, but...) she still spilled it on herself.

If a legal system lets you get to trial for damages (let alone win) because you spilled coffee on yourself, that legal system is broken. Period.

Not only should she have had her case dismissed before trial, she should have had to pay McDonald's legal bills for filing such a ridiculous suit.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[accelleron]

Where I live, it's
"guaranteed for life, and comes with a two-day warranty"

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[gfxguy]

Yes, consumers DO still have a choice. If you NEED a car to get to work, and there is only one car manufacturer, then you are screwed. If you want to buy a TV, and there is only one TV manufacturer, then you can always opt to not watch TV until that manufacturer starts making them better.

You DO have a choice, but some people just don't have the moral character to do without something as frivilous as games.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[J. T. MacLeod]

I'm glad you brought up the car analogy, because it's a useful one.

If you cross the road without looking and a car driving the speed limit, or slightly above it, hits you, well, your fault.

On the other hand, if the car was going so far above the speed limit that you *never could have seen it coming*, it's his fault.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kyani]

Eventually visiting Canada again with the original receipt, we took it there and explained what was happening. Costco refunded the full price of the camera. No fuss. No muss. In cash.

I'm not condoning this in any way, but I've got 2 better Costco stories. First is my friend who bought a window AC unit, used it for a season, stored it for the winter, then moved to a place with central air in the spring so brought the unit back. No receipt, unit dirty as hell, and they took it back and gave him a full cash refund.
Second story is a friend who worked there and told me about a person who returned a pie they bought. There was one small slice left (Costco pies are HUGE), and he told them he didn't like the pie. Full cash refund :O

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[RexCelestis]

1) Third degree burns are the least serious kind. They rarely require medical treatment.

Third degree burns are the most serious. First degree burns rarely require treatment.

Rex

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[calethix]

"It's not any harder than piecing together your own rig or seating a CPU. And every self respecting geek has access to a soldering iron any way."

Granted, I don't have a clue what's involved in fixing the Xbox and I don't have one so I have no desire to find out but you seem to be implying it requires the use of a soldering iron.
I can't say that I've ever had the need for a soldering iron when "piecing together my own rig or seating a CPU".

Besides, regardless of how simple it may be for some people, if the Xbox drive really is defective, why should it be the responsibility of the consumer to fix it?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[nolife]

In my opinion though, if a product fails all the time, it should be recalled or else the company should pay to replace them PROACTIVELY.

I do not know about "proactively" but I had an issue with a Sony AV reciever I bought back in like 1992. In 1995/1996 I was searching DejaNews for some issues I had with the unit, sure enough, I found at least 10 posts referencing the same exact issue. I called Sony and pointed out what problems I was having and what my usenet research found. They offered to fix the unit for free if I paid to ship it to a specific service center in California. I did and it was fixed. I would not expect that level of service but I squeeked and they oiled.

On that note.. I've been on the other side of the fence also. My parents owned an electronics shop themselves. When I was 16, I knew the basics of electronics and repair but was no expert. My job was pickup and deliveries and to fix "well known" issues. An example being a range of 2-3 year old GE models that had nothing but a bright vertical line in the center of the screen. Since different size TV's share a common main board, this effected quite a bit of their line I guess. It was a 50v 100mfd capacitor that went bad in the high voltage section of the system board. I probably replaced 50 of those in a two year period and got to keep 50% of our $75 repair charge. That specific example and a few others helped keep a decent amount of money in my pocket through high school.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[EtherAlchemist]

Ya pays your money and ya takes your chances.

No, no you don't. That's the whole point to consumer protection laws. Companies that mass produce faulty products and sell them to the public should be held liable.

This isn't simply a case of one guy getting a bad system, a lot of people are experiencing the same kinds of failures which would seem to point to either faulty components, bad design or substandard manufacturing. What if it wasn't the drives? What if shitty wiring lead to these people being shocked? Or a poor quality power supply caught fire and burned down their houses? "Hey, whoa- it caught fire and ruined your life AFTER the 90 day warranty, sorry!"

If you really follow the "take your chances" line, then I envy you. Most people can not afford to throw away cash and hope whatever they buy holds up for more than 90 days, much less hope it's a benign failure.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[hesiod]

> Wow, a case where spending $20-50 on that extended warranty scam may have been a good idea.

That's like saying insurance is a scam! Oh wait, it is...

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[johnnyb]

I agree. However, I think winning this case could be bad for Microsoft. If MS wins, it will likely be because people shouldn't expect products to last beyond the warranty.

The other game companies could extend their warranties and use that to keep customers away from the XBOX (if its a 90-day warranty, they could say it costs $150 ever 90 days to play).

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[nuxx]

I've twice been able to return products to Costco because I was dissatisfied with them. The catch? They were (mostly) software products which would have been next to impossible to return elsewhere.

The first was a $200 negative scanner. The thing just didn't hold the negatives flat enough, and parts of them were out of focus. The resolution was also too low to work very well. I took it back, the store manager seemed genuinely interested in why I didn't like it (I think he had been interested in buying one himself) and I got a cash refund.

The second was the National Geographic Topo! maps on CD-ROM set they are selling. Sure, the maps are great, and the box claimed various types of GPS compatability, but was kinda cagey as far as the description goes. I picked up the software, tried it, and found that it will only transfer routes, waypoints, and points of interest to the GPS, not the maps itself. This really wasn't what I was expecting, so I packaged it all back up, took it back the next day, and received a full refund.

That, combined with good prices, treating it's customers and employees very well, and a nice clean store makes Costco one of my more favorite places to shop.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[vfwlkr]

Some of us actually purchased it for $300 or more
For those of you harping about hardware lifespans, try asking an xbox owner who has purchased it for real?
I'm one and kept it in good condition,
except that it stopped playing DVD movies after a few months.

That's precisely what a class action lawsuit is for:
When everybody's having the same problem, the manufactur might be the real culprit?br /?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Short Circuit]

What would you say if someone "absolutely needed" the featureset of the PPC970 architecture, but merely "strongly desired" the featureset and application base of Windows XP? That they have a lack of moral character for being able to do without something as frivilous as Windows XP?

My argument is about the economics of choice, not the morality of it.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[bricriu]

actually, you're wrong:

Further, McDonalds' quality assurance manager testified that the company actively enforces a requirement that coffee be held in the pot at 185
degrees, plus or minus five degrees.

from here

Brewed and kept far too hot for human consumption. McDonalds, in short, ignored ten years worth of customer complaints to sell a product that was exponentially more likely to cause major physical injury -- because it would taste slightly better. Only after this lawsuit did their "reckless, callous and willful" behavior change. I'd say the public good was served.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[freaks_and_geeks]

People don't like frivolous lawsuits

That statement is misleading. If someone believes a lawsuit is frivolous, by definition they don't agree that it's valid (and thus, they usually don't like it). If the spirit of your statement is "People on juries don't like lawsuits that the majority of people in America consider to be frivolous", or "People on juries don't like to give out monetary awards that most of America considers excessive", you're dead wrong. The jury selection process is most likely to blame. By the time you actually get to the pool of people who aren't able/willing to get out of jury duty, you're generally left with a group that is a) stupid b) unemployed and thus c) looking to stick it to "the man" (in corporate tort cases like this).

Check out this: http://orig.clarionledger.com/news/0212/10/m02.htm l link (or google for "60 Minutes" and "jackpot justice"). The story in a nutshell: There's a county in Mississippi which is known for giving out obscenely large awards in suits against pharmaceutical companies. They are _so_ well known for this that lawyers in such suits make every attempt to get the case tried in this county. They do so by having a client buy a "controversial" drug in a drugstore in the county, suing the drugstore, and naming the manufacturer as a co-defendant. The drugstore typically drops off the case by the end, but only after having to spend time/money defending itself in the early stages of the case.

If you think that the McDonalds lawsuit itself was reasonable, that's fine. You and I just draw the line differently about what "personal responsibility" constitutes. But if you think that the damages awarded (almost $3 million) were reasonable -- and I think that this is what most people are really objecting to -- you're insane.

Oh, by the way -- the result of 60 Minutes airing this story? Some of the lawyers interviewed filing a 6 BILLION dollar suit against CBS.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[nospmiS remoH]

So, based on that logic, you should know the same thing and not buy one.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mlyle]

From the LectLaw link:

During discovery, McDonalds produced documents showing more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims involved third-degree burns substantially similar to Liebecks. This history documented McDonalds' knowledge about the extent and nature of this hazard.

People had gotten hurt in the past; the jury found that McDonalds was keeping the coffee 40-50 degrees hotter than it was typically served at to cut down on free refills. The woman in question had originally asked just for medical costs; but when the jury was confronted with the facts (including that McDonalds had still not decreased the temperature of their coffee), they decided to award large punitive damages, which were reduced by the trial court to $480,000 (3x what they found to be actual damages).

Is it so clear cut? No. I'm as much of a critic of frivolous lawsuits as anyone, but really, the McDonalds case is a pretty bad example.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[hesiod]

> I always wondered what they used all those copies of microsoft Bob for...

They sold them dirt cheap to AOL, who relabeled them & shipped them out. Seriously, it would either become a coaster/trash, or it would go to a potential AOLer -- would they know the difference?

"Gee this Internet thing's great: I don't get why people complain about the porn!"

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[tazan]

Yes, you do. Look up caveat emptor. That's the free market at work. Nobody's going to hold your hand and help you pick what you want to buy. If you want to buy a poorly made product that's your choice. What you want is a magic product that costs the same as one cheaply made but lasts forever. Good luck with that.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[NeoSkandranon]

I honestly don't see how Costco copes with its lenient return policy. The number of returns, esp on software that are just "Bought it, burned it, returned it" or "bough it, fucked it up, returned it" have to be astronomical

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[zakezuke]

I beg to differ. When I was 14, I spilled coffee straight from a home-use (UL Listed) Mr. Coffee coffee machine... and got 2nd degree burns, blisters, and much pain. So you're entirely wrong when asserting that 'typical coffee' won't cause serious burns. I'd say that a Mr. Coffee coffee pot constitutes the De Facto typical cup of coffee, wouldn't you?

I wouldn't call Mr. Coffee de facto coffee. I'd call it horrible burnt coffee my self. But I'm willing to believe you got 2nd degree burns from an entire pot of Mr. Coffee. Your Mr. Coffee pot is very large and as a result would expose your skin to a hotter temp longer than a 12/16oz mug of coffee. But you didn't require 7 days in the hospital, skin grafts, or anything along those lines. In other words, the skin did not melt off your body.

Now, I could have (in theory) sued over the temperature controls, but I was raised to have a healthy respect for personal responsibility, and I understand that accidents happen.

This is reasonable, I agree. You spilt a pot of coffee on your self and got a 2nd degree burn. This was a pot, and this was hot liquid. But the skin did not melt off your body.

How many other people got 3rd degree burns from McDonald's coffee? Was there a trend? If it was an isolated incident, you would be damn hard pressed to prove negligence

Stella Lieback didn't seem to have a problem proving negligence. I'm not aware of how many other people got 3rd degree burns. But read here.

The skin melted off her body in less than 3 seconds because McDonalds served their coffee at 200+ degrees. McDonalds was perfectly aware of the problem but refused to address the issue. I am personaly unaware of anyone else who had their skin melted off because of McDonalds coffee. But considering 200+ degrees, i'd wager it was a trend.

First degree burns, normal. Second degree burns, perhaps. Third degree burns, negligence.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Look at the Firestone tire recall...would you all be saying "Just use the tires even though they suck...when you crash and die, just return the tires for new ones". I thought not.

No, I'd say "Inflate the tires properly and they won't explode." Seriously, do you expect Firestone to pay for abuse at the hands of customers or distributors (Ford)?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[secolactico]

In fact, it does works. A teacher I had was always returning the shoes of all his sons to Nikes just before the warranty expired to get new ones

What did he teach? Ethics?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Politburo]

Pasta isn't the issue here. You don't drink the water you use to make pasta. Heaters aren't the issue here, you don't eat heaters. Spare me the anecdotes; they're the weakest argument in the world.

You're all missing the point of the McDonalds case. Coffee is designed to be consumed. Yes, it's a hot liquid, but it is still designed for human consumption. Liquid that can cause third degree burns within 5 seconds is not suitable for human consumption. This is what McDonalds was selling, and they were well aware of this. It was an unsafe product, with a history of being unsafe, and the corporation took no actions to correct it until the lawsuit.

Again, if this was so simple, why was the lawsuit successful?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[hesiod]

> Do you know what 3rd degree burns are? They are serious burns and do not normally result from hot fluids designed for consumption.

Have you ever drank coffee immediately after poured? It's certainly too hot for consumption as well, unless your coffee maker is broken. I'll admit that coffee shouldn't be hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns, but that lady has to take responsibility for her own idiocy as well. SHE PUT A HOT CUP OF COFFEE BETWEEN HER LEGS! If she doesn't realize that that's just asking for pain, she's too stupid to be driving on the same roads as us. For the price of two of those cups, she could buy a cup holder (assuming she amazingly had the only contemporary car produced without one).

It could have been a COLD drink, if she poured it on herself, got startled, and crashed as a result, would the company be liable for not having spillproof cups?

I've seen this dumb story trotted out every time someone wants to make an off-the-cuff remark about either corporate evilness or stupid users. Want to know where the fault really lies (lays?)? With both of them. The company was very irresponsible, she was a fucking moron. Both deserve a konk on the head.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mrjackson2000]

guess he shoulda bought that BestBuy Replacement plan

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Jucius Maximus]

"I honestly don't see how Costco copes with its lenient return policy. The number of returns, esp on software that are just "Bought it, burned it, returned it" or "bough it, fucked it up, returned it" have to be astronomical"

Some of the hardware just goes out on the shelves. About half of the Plextor PX-712A DVD burners at the Costco on Gateway Park Drive in Kitchener, ON, Canada are clearly not new. I'm talking dented, ripped up boxes, sloppily repaired with packing tape. This is a new thing, and I do not recall ever seeing something like this at Costco before the Plextor PX-708A burners. (I did return my own 708A there, as it suffered from problems reading all CD/CD-R/CD-Rw discs. This problem was reported by numerous people on CDFreaks, and there was actually a pinned thread about that problem in the Plextor forum.)

I guess one way that Costco can handle the rate of returns is through the profits on their membership fees.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[SlamMan]

Only if the car had a giant spike going through the seat, or the heater made the car hit 100 degrees Celsius.

She bought a product that was unsafe to use in its advertised from. Thats against the law.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[hai.uchida]

You really think he mentioned a faulty $149 device to his attorney? Especially when attorneys themselves cost nearly that much an hour?

It's a pissed-off consumer. One with some time on his hands and a grudge. He may have consulted an attorney after he had the idea, he may be hoping the publicity will shame Microsoft into extended the warranty or offering a repair program, he's probably hoping that others will join the bandwagon so Microsoft will actually notice... But I'm certain he was the instigator.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[nospmiS remoH]

If the company's own research showed this, why in the world would they waste the extra electricity trying to keep it so hot? I doubt their intentions were to burn clumsy people.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Have Blue]

The DVD drive can spin down after a game is inserted; whether it is given enough time to depends on how the game uses it. I know this because when my first Xbox died, the manner of its death was that the DVD drive became incapable of spinning back up after it had spun down. Games which used the drive for periodic random access tended to freeze, games which used the HD as a cache could play an entire level and freeze between them (when it tried to cache the next one).

Also, the drive will spin down if you leave a DVD movie paused. My Xbox couldn't recover from that either.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[hesiod]

> Consider, at least, that the jury that DID hear all of the facts unanimously found for the plaintiff.

I plainly disagree with that statement. All of the time, there is evidence that is left out/stricken from the record. That means that the jury RARELY has all the evidence. Big-money lawyers can get all kinds of good evidence thrown out. Of course, the ability to do that is based on sound reasoning though.

> McDonalds could probably afford better lawyers than she, so please don't blame the award on the gullibility of juries

That's an extremely good point that I hadn't considered when tiring of McD's coffee threads the last 30 times I've seen them. Amazing that new[*] ideas can be found on old issues.

([*] to me)

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[gfxguy]

They are intertwined. For example, if nobody bought pornography, most people would stop making it (not that I'm against pornography).

In the same sense, if many people buy pornography, people will make it - and if people buy cheap pornography, people will make more cheap pornography. And then people, like many of the people on slashdot, will complain about the cheap quality of pornography and blaim the makers of the pornography instead of themselves.

(I just wanted to see how many times I could write pornography in one post).

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[JediLuke]

My problem is that mine works fine with old games but not with new ones. Like SW: Battlegrounds, the Fourth disc in the SW trilogy won't work, but Halo, Mechassult, all work fine! So do i need to get my damn xbox "fixed" (they replace the drive) for $80 because of an issue that isn't actually related to the drive, but more so the disc compatability? sounds like a crock of shit to me.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Goobermunch]

Caveat Emptor-- That's the crap that inspired Congress to pass the Magnusson-Moss consumer protection laws. Modern American commerce has little in common with Adam Smith's captialism.

Today, you deal with a retail, who dealt with a wholesaler, who dealt with a manufacturer. Because the manufacturer doesn't know you, he doesn't give two shits about you.

In good ole' Adam Smith's day, you dealt with a manufacturer. If the product didn't work, you told your neighbors about the shoddy workmanship, sued the manufacturer to get your money back, and watched the bastard go out of business.

--AC

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[sgant]

we don't know that...could be the attorney was fishing for this kind of thing. You never know.

But come on...a 149 device that went belly up after a year? You buy a new one. Now, if it was like 500 or 1000 you have a case, but this?!?! This is nonsense.

Come on.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[cooley]

Yes, it should last longer than a year. My Atari 2600 still works. So does my Nintendo. So does my Tandy 1000 TL/2 80286.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[shepd]

However, even if labelled "as is" it must still be "suitable for the purpose" and "as described" and the warranty will still be for a year.

Then the sticker would be more detailed if said law passed here:

"Suitable as a deadweight". :-)

Seriously, there must be ways for dealing with this in your country because there is always a market for known-broken goods to be used for parts. I doubt anywhere would pass a law requiring people to warranty such parts... Otherwise, how do companies get rid of old junker cars, for example? :)

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Goobermunch]

Bullshit. Class action lawsuits are a vehicle for people with piss pot, chump change claims to band together and go after the bastards who've screwed them out of their money.

There's no way I'd sue MS over $149.99. Even if I did, MS wouldn't care. But when me and 10,000 of my friends get together and sue MS for $1.5M, and trebel damages under the relevant consumer protection act, they're going to notice (not much, but some).

Sure, I may have to give up 33% of my recovery to a lawyer. But for my $50, I've gotten an attorney to take my case to trial. Try doing that for less than $25,000.

--AC

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mdfst13]

"Look up caveat emptor."

Caveat emptor existed in a time when most products were shipped by selling to a middleman who knew nothing about the product. I.e. you make a widget; you sell widget to a transportation agent (e.g. a ship owner); the transportation agent sells to someone who actually wants to use the widget. A given transportation agent might sell a different product each trip. It made no sense to hold the transportation agent responsible for a product about which he knew less than the person making the purchase. "Hey, I just steer the boat; he uses widgets all the time; how come he didn't know that it was defective?" Further, the transportation agent would tend to leave (with a new shipment of product) soon after making the sale. It was generally not practical to find and sue them.

Microsoft is the manufacturer here. They have no presumption of ignorance here that would shield them from liability. Further, they refuse to let people open up their XBoxes and examine them (and even then, one can't open up a hard drive and examine it; it ruins the hard drive). The individual pieces (motherboard, hard drive, DVD) all usually come with year warranties. Why not here? Finally, it was Microsoft's choice not to sell the XBoxes at a more expensive price (or take a bigger loss per sale; remember that XBoxes are already internally subsidized).

The courts may or may not side with Microsoft here. I don't know the specifically relevant law. However, there are precedents for rejecting provisions from *signed* waivers if they are deemed unfair. For example, steamboats used to commonly have a clause absolving them from responsibility if the boat caught on fire and you lost your luggage. 19th century courts threw out those *signed* (as in actively agreed) waivers as unreasonable and allowed suits to recover damages. Similarly, this could be ruled as an unreasonable provision. Particularly if the XBox competition (Playstation 2 and Gamecube) have longer warranties.

As always, I will find it funny if Microsoft's penchant for shoddy work and dumping comes back to bite them.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Red Alastor]

The comment I replied to made no mention of any failed expectations of the shoes in question but rather, was seeking a replacement because the warranty was about to expire.

The shoes were broken but as you normally expect shoes that were worn by a kid. According to Nike's warranty, this is covered.

They have a very permissive warranty that is automatically renewed every time you use it and they don't discuss, they only ask you to send back the old ones.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Goobermunch]

Also consider how the jury reached the value of the punitive damages, and why they did.

McDonalds lowballed this woman on her medical bills. That's all she wanted from them; the cost of her stay in the hospital.

So, her lawyers asked the jury to punish McDonalds by fining them the profits they would have made on coffee sales for the amount of time she was in the hospital.

Punitive damages aren't about making the plaintiff rich. They are about punishing the defendant for unreasonably risky conduct.

--AC

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[bentcd]

Laws aren't computer programs and judges aren't computers. If a law is well written so that it is clear to the judge what the intent of the law is, he will recognize a computer retailer when he sees one and he'll say "defendent coughs up - next case".

It is the _job_ of a judge to make judgement calls. If a product looks like a new product, a plaintiff looks like a consumer and a defendent looks like a retailer then this is what the judge will treat them all as - regardless of what names they choose to put on themselves.

It won't take much more than perhaps half a dozen cases like this for the industry to catch on and stop pretending they're something they're not. Well, if your country has a functional legal system anyway.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[BlueCodeWarrior]

No, I mean that I said "Kay ell ..." and he punched in "Cl" That has nothing to do with phonetics.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Lonewolf666]

That's why manufacturers who trust in their products offer an extended warranty that's covered in the price of the product.
For a device like the XBOX, I would at least expect 1 year, otherwise I'd assume it is cheap crap.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[freqres]

So you didn't take advantage of the 90-day warranty Microsoft has on the unit? If 90-days seems like too short of a warranty period for you, then don't buy the item. Caveat Emptor.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Politburo]

Let me tell you something: the whole "suing everyone macarena" in United States appears so ridiculous to many other countries that it makes up for good laughs at dinner time, in front of a burning hot expresso.

So does the Iraq war.. yet I don't hear people saying how we need to stop that. Odd.

I'll respond to your other points sometime later. I just found it hilarious that you're going "Look at Europe!!!" when the general sentiment is "Europe? Ewwww SOCIALISTS!!"

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[accelleron]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=20385&item=8141284548&rd=1

$25 for drive + $10 shipping + 5 minutes of work = Solution to a $150 problem*

*$150 Problem, Microsoft, XBOX, and Piece of Crap are registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation and may not be used without written authorization

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[freqres]

Or just don't buy anything that has less than a 1 year warranty or buy the extended warranty the stores offer. Manufacturer's don't make up the warranty periods on their items arbitrarily. If the X-Box only has a 90-day warranty I'm suprised most of them last longer than a year.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mdfst13]

"B) it wasn't between her legs"

From your link: "Liebeck placed the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from the cup."

Please explain how one puts something between one's knees without putting it between one's legs. Remember that the knees are *part* of the legs.

The main reasons she won the suit were:

1. She had no reason to be aware that spilling McDonald's coffee would be so much more harmful to her than other coffee (it was roughly 40 degrees hotter than home brewed would have been and 30 degrees hotter than most other vendors).

2. McDonald's did (she wasn't the first to sue them).

3. McDonald's didn't do anything to decrease the danger, e.g.:

a) Make the coffee cooler (which McDonald's did post verdict).

b) Make it possible to add the creamer and sugar without removing the lid (i.e. make a safer lid).

c) Warn her that the coffee was much hotter than other coffee and would scald if spilled.

4. Finally, McDonald's made no attempt to negotiate with her. After all, she just wanted her medical (and later legal) bills paid. Instead, they let it go to a jury, who bent them over.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[bentcd]

You did a good job at completely missing the point. How many products are not suitable for consumption out of the box? Go in a high-enough class restaurant. Plates are always EXTREMELY hot so your meal keeps warm. You cannot touch them without burning yourself. Do you sue the restaurant because they knew you cannot touch the plate right away, even though the waiter told you it was too hot to touch?

If the plate gives you third degree burns, you most certainly do.

When I buy a cup of coffee, I expect a cup of hot coffee. I do not expect a cup of lava.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Nopal]

Normally I am all for personal responsibility, but maybe you should read the actual case before talking out of the wrong hole.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[LowneWulf]

Costco can cope with it's easily-abused warranty returns because it inspires customer loyalty. I've returned stuff to Costco from time to time, and they've never questioned it, always giving me the full price back in cash.

And you know what? I appreciate that so much that I buy more. When I buy my next appliance or electronic gadget, or even some bulk foodage for a party, I go rushing out (despite a long drive) to Costco, because I know any problem and they'll take care of me.

Also, the one simple fact is that the greatest volume of stuff they sell is consumable or something you'd not be likely to return.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[EtherAlchemist]

Look up caveat emptor

If you were an average consumer, how many of the products that you buy are you able to look at and truly assess the quality of? Especially in consumer electronics, how many people can look at the casing of something and determine it is a qaulity item?

What you want is a magic product that costs the same as one cheaply made but lasts forever.

No I don't. I don't give a damn how much it costs to make, and it doesn't have to last forever. I'll pay whatever I think it's worth by looking at the options before me on the market and choosing the one that meets my needs for my budget. If I were to shell out $300 for an X-Box or PS2 (unit plus extra controller and a couple new games) it had better work for more than a few months. We're not talking about a $5 knock off of a Mag-lite, which you would expect probably works, but if it doesn't you're only out $5.

Some things, like cars for instance, have parts that wear out, indeed they are meant to, and that is a known cost of ownership. You're going to have to pay for oil, brakes, so on and so forth. Whould you buy a given model of car if you had to replace the onboard computer every year or overhaul the engine because the maker skimped on vital internal components? Not intentionally, no, but again- could you look at or even DRIVE a car and know that components of it were substandard? NO. Thus, Lemon Laws.

Good luck with that.

Thanx! You too!

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[LadyLucky]

That's the same as in New Zealand. You even have the option to use either the retail place or the manufacturer's warranty, at your discretion. Either way, you get one year.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Nopal]

The crux of the case rests in the fact that McDonnalds had other serious burn incidents which they ignored. McDonnald's coffee-making equipment is custom-made because normal industrial coffee machines just can't get the coffee that hot. McDonnald's negligence was that they had been made aware several times that their coffee was unsafe and far hotter than the norm, yet the did nothing but stonewall and ignore legitimate complaints until the court slapped them with the veredict.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[flibuste]

"Europe? Ewwww SOCIALISTS!!"

You mean like in Soviet Russia...where..whatever?

Ah well...what's the problem with that?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Nopal]

Another thing, the lady didn't want millions of dollars. She just wanted some help with her medical bills as a result of the injury. When McDonnalds in essence told her to f*ck off, she took them to court to recoup some medical costs. The punitive damages were decided on by the jury, and later they were reduced on appeal.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[swimmar132]

If hot coffee is for drinking, and the supposed coffee that they gave you was 1000 degrees, how are you supposed to drink that?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[jmcmunn]

At least do some research before responding. A quote from the top google result for "Firestone Tire Recall"

Belt-leaving-belt tread separation failures of ATX and Wilderness AT tires manufactured by BridgestoneFirestone, Inc. (Firestone), have led to numerous crashes, injuries, and fatalities. In August 2000, Firestone determined that a safety-related defect existed in all Firestone P235/75R15 ATX tires and in Firestone Wilderness AT tires of that size manufactured at its Decatur, Illinois plant, and commenced a recall to replace those tires

Notice that indeed defects were discovered...inflating tires more is NOT going to solve the problem. So yes, I do expect Firestone to pay for that one.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[gcatullus]

LL Bean wil take back anything that they have sold. Electronics/Clothing/Etc. An acquaintance of mine found a pair of bole sunglasses in the surf at a beach on Cape Cod. They were originally from LL Bean. Just for the heck of it, he mailed them back to LL Bean and they mailed him back another pair of $200.00 sunglasses.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Nopal]

No, it's not supposed to cause third degree burns at all. Not unless it had been superheated by custom-made equipment. The lawsuit wasn't blaming McDonnalds for spilled coffee, it was making McDonnalds responsible for it's dangerously and unecessarily high temperature.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Viceice]

Simple, instead of calling it a car, you call it scrap metal.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Politburo]

Interesting example.. tell me, do you eat the plates when you go to a restaurant?

This is a product designed for consumption being sold in a condition unfit for consumption. McDonalds was very well aware of this fact for some time and did nothing about it. In our society, that means they are at fault. What other societies do is irrelevent. All the other examples don't matter, and I shouldn't have deflected the attention by including my last line, since it allowed you to conveniently ignore the substance of my post.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[NanoGator]

"Its not about the money, its the princpal of the thing."

Then why isn't Sony in Slashdot's cross-hairs?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[blueskies]

That's a silly strawman arguement.

If a legal system lets you get to trial for damages (let alone win) because you spilled coffee on yourself, that legal system is broken. Period.

If you think they got slapped hard by this lawsuit only because of spilled coffee then you are clueless.

She spilled the coffee on herself. All the rest of the points you want to bring up about it simply don't matter. Even if the coffee was 1000 degrees (impossible of course, but...) she still spilled it on herself.

It's so black and white is it? So if you happen to drive 1 mph over the speedlimit and the bridge you are crossing fails and you plummet into a river and become paralyzed, you should have no legal recourse. I mean if you weren't negligently speeding you won't have have been on the bridge when it collapsed. Does it not occur to you that there are levels of negligence? You've been working with binary way too long.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Viceice]

I was told this by a lecturer where I'm studying.

The reason why Costco can do this is because it is a very high volume sales enviorment. Manufecturers fight to get their products displayed and sold at CostCo, so this gives CostCo an advantage.

It can set it's return policy and manufecturers who want their stuff displayed there will have to agree to it. So effectively all CostCo does is do soem paperwork and benefit from customer goodwill, and the cost of the returns and other liabilities are shifted to the manufecturers.

The terms slant very much in CostCo's favour, but the sheer volume of sales justify this to manufecturers.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[bluekanoodle]

You can buy replacement dvd drives for them on ebay for about $20 bucks, that's what I did. Microsoft still screwed up on cutting these costs, but at least he can resurrect it from the footrest graveyard.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[rwiseman63]

I'm not sure which is worse: your teaching blatantly lying to you or you believing him/her.

Free Shoes from Nike

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[rwiseman63]

I'm not sure which is worse: your teaching blatantly lying to you or you believing him/her.

Free Shoes from Nike

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

If they were broken so badly that he thought he was entitled to a new pair of shoes, why did he wait until the warranty was about to expire? Why wouldn't he simply exchange them once he noticed that they were broken?

You specifically stated that this person waited until just before the warranty was about to expire - thus implying that they were still usable up until this point, when they suddenly become defective and had to be returned. The behavior you describe is unethical. Certainly, Nike's warranty system may accept this type of return but my personal morality system dictates that I only demand a warranty on a product that has failed to perform as expected during the warranty period - rather than simply trying to game the system and get a new pair of shoes.

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. I wish people would think more about ethics and morality than about the legal bounds and how much they can get away with for nothing.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Y0tsuya]

And there are stores like Home Depot. As long as they're still selling it, they'll take stuff back even without a receipt. Granted the economics of selling plywood is different from hawking mp3 players, but it's the very best return policy I've seen.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[flibuste]

Interesting example.. tell me, do you eat the plates when you go to a restaurant?

Unless you have a telekinesis talent, you can hardly avoid touching the plate. And if you pour the content of your plate on your knees...shit hits the fan (as well as you...).

When my kid burns her mouth because her pasta was too hot, she gets upset but she's been warned and she knows she should have waited for it to cool, or blow her spoonful to make it colder. She's 6, an age where she now gets replied "you've been warned - make sure it wont happen next time by listening to what we told you"

When your coffee says "hot content", maybe you've been warned enough and should have taken that advice into account? If you can't read...too bad for you...This woman apparently knew how to read enough to order a coffee and pay for it.

Not all people are as bright as a 6-years old apparently, but when you reach adulthood, you ARE responsible for your own stupidity (let's exclude the unlucky people suffering from mental disorder from that statement, that would not be fair)

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[RoundTop-VJAS]

Specifically:

1st degree) red skin, itching/aching, commonly sunburn or hot liquid

2nd degree) water blisters are the main sign, they hurt like hell and take a long time to heal. They can be caused by friction, heat, or other things (mine was from friction on a water slide+very hot sunny day, both of my shoulders)

3rd degree) this is effectively you have burned off your skin, including nerve endings. It can require grafts etc.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[a whoabot]

Yeah, I'm not actually familiar with the event too much. I was just trying to say that the same logic can be applied in the opposite direction, as I'm sure you can tell.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Paul Pierce]

My xbox was bought in Nov. '01. It stopped reading all games in Dec '02. I called M$ and they told me it would be $100 to fix. It only cost $200 for a new one at the time, and I could look at the product # to make sure I would get a Samsung drive instead of the crappy Thompson that I had. I did some research about xboxes bought around when mine was, and the amount of people with the same problem was remarkable, expecially since Mech Assualt kept coming up as one of the games that stopped working (which I had just purchased). I called M$ back and worked my way up to someone with a little more authority, and then even higher. I wasn't rude, but I did have a case # (or whatever its called) of someone who had the same problem recently, and got it fixed for free. Finally a supervisor or manager came on and told me that it was still under-warranty, and that it would be fixed promptly. It had been over a year, warranty? I was told 90 days. I had been on the phone for a while, so I didn't argue. I was sent a box to ship it in within two days, I shipped it back, and got it back within a week. It has worked perfectly ever since, even got 90 more days of a warranty.

It seemed as if they were trying to keep it quiet, but definitely knew about the issue. I still have a Thompson drive, but it works.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[homer_ca]

I agree a 90 day warranty is ridiculously short for an expensive electronic item, but nobody is hiding the fact of a 90 day warranty. If someone knew about it, bought an Xbox, and declined the extended warranty offered by the store, I really don't see why Microsoft would give him anything more than what was guaranteed in writing.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[cornjones]

well, probably both.

But you are right on this issue.

sorry, couldn't resist.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kohath]

First, don't spill it in your lap.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

"Caveat emptor existed in a time when most products were shipped by selling to a middleman who knew nothing about the product"

Yeah, Like the blueshirts at bestbuy know anything about the product.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kohath]

It's so black and white is it? ... [Very poor analogy used to (intentionaly?) confuse people deleted. ] ... Does it not occur to you that there are levels of negligence? You've been working with binary way too long.

It's her own fault that she spilled coffee on herself. "Levels of negligence" are irrelevant because she injured herself.

If she was burned by drinking the coffee, then it might be worth a second thought, but she spilled it.

Maybe you think McDonald's should be responsible if she filled a needle with it and injected it into her arm?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[TheHonestTruth]

They offer extended warranties on console systems? And people actually pay for that?

Yup. I paid an extra $30 when I bought my PS2 (at launch) and got the 3 (2 maybe?) years extended warranty. One year, 2 months later, my PS2 died because something was wrong with the fan and it overheated or something. I took it back to EB, showed them my warranty, and they gave me a new one. Not a refurb, either. Brand new. Worked great ever since.

These days, my metric is: would I be willing to pay full price again after a year for this without being majorly pissed? If the answer is no, then I get the warranty. I bought my Gamecube for $99 and didn't get the insurance because if it broke after a year, I'd be annoyed I'd pay another $100, but I'd cross that bridge if I came to it.

It's like any insurance. You hope you never need it, but you are glad you have it when you do.

-truth

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[SnappleMaster]

>> If the plate gives you third degree burns, you most certainly do.

That is retarded. Suppose you order fajitas. Fajitas often come out sizzling on a metal skillet with a wooden base. The waiter says "that skillet is real hot so don't touch it". You press your hand against it for 5 seconds and give yourself a third degree burn.

You are telling me that you would sue?

You are what is wrong with this country, my friend.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Red Alastor]

Learn to read. From your link :

I love hoaxes like this -- good, old-fashioned greed dressed up to look like altruism!

February 1998 saw the following e-mail show up in many an inbox:

Just a quick note to tell you about a program that Nike started to help make fields and playgrounds for the underprivileged from old tennis shoes.

All YOU have to do is send in your old tennis shoes (NO MATTER WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE) with a piece of paper that has your name and address on it, and Nike will send you a brand new pair back FREE OF COST!!!

The tennis shoes you send DO NOT have to be Nike. Just as long as they are tennis shoes. It really is a worthwhile project, and it's helping a lot of young kids. Here is the address:

Nike Recycling Center
c/o Reuse-A-Shoe
26755 SW 95th Street
Wilsonville, OR 97070

They don't take "old" shoes, only those under the warranty. They don't take shoes from other vendors and they don't recycle them.

But like all urban legends, it started with a bit of truth : Nike have a too permissive warranty policy.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Queer Boy]

Sure he could return it, but why can't we expect the manufacturer to provide a quality product that will last longer than 1 year

Exactly. Besides the fact that if I were to take the product back, I would be sticking it to the retailer that I bought it from instead of Microsoft. The retailer had to pay for the shipment in of the original dud XBox as well as having to pay to send out the defective XBox if Microsoft will even take it back, then most likely at a discounted rate.

It should not be the retailer's responsibility for quality control. Most hardware manuals state in their instructions that if there is a problem you should not take it back to the retailer.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Registered Coward v2]

A law like this in North America would cause warranties to default to zero. All products would be labelled "As Is" to reduce liability. Trust me on that. I'm a retailer myself and we get plenty of garbage products in from manufacturers that we know will welch on their warranty that get labelled like that by us as is (BIG fluorescent sticker, too).

In the US, you can't declaim all warrentees - there is an implied warranty that a product will function as it is intended - i.e. I can't sell taosters that don't toast and then say tough - it was an as is sale. Of course, those laws vary by state so some have more protections than others...

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kent Recal]

C'mon, leave moral out of a discussion about Nike.
Nike shoes (and clothes I guess) are assembled by children in third world countries, earning less than $5 a day.

Go to a shop in your city and check the price tags on these shoes to get a rough idea of Nike's profit margin. This is how nike can afford to offer such a "generous" warranty. And be assured that this warranty has more to do with marketing efforts than with good faith of nike management.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[scot4875]

A jury awarded the settlement. Apparently the jury agreed with the plaintiff.

Which could mean a couple of things:

a) they were a bunch of morons that don't believe in personal responsibility
b) they're actually reasonable people who knew something that you don't

Since you can't seem to deal with anything but analogies, I'll try to adjust yours a bit to fit the circumstances:

you order some fajitas; they come on a hot plate, you expect them to be hot, so you treat it with caution. Instead of being merely hot, the plate is actually nearly molten. It catches the table on fire, burns through and lands in your lap before you have a chance to react. You get badly burned in the process.

Whose fault is that? Yours?

We all know what hot coffee is, and that is not what she got. Once you understand that, you'll understand the lawsuit. Another analogy: she ordered a tame pit bull, she got a wild, rabid, starved wolverine. One of them might hurt you if not treated with care. The other will hurt you no matter what you do. Whether your 6-year old blows on it or not makes no difference -- the thing is going to fucking shred her.

Can you see that now? Can you begin to understand? God I hate repeatedly explaining this case to clueless people.

--Jeremy

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[swv3752]

Liar.

Liebeck placed
the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from
the cup. As she removed the lid, the entire contents of the cup spilled
into her lap.

Emphasis added. She wasn't driving no, but she was in the car. The claim is that the car was stopped. It could verily easily be that the car was in motion. The jury also found that she was 20% at fault.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[jacobhoupt]

Right on brother. I'm still rocking a 2600 and a NES that are in perfect working order. My freaking MarioPaint mouse is still good, so is my Superscope 6. WTF can't an Xbox work for 25 years?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[BreadMan]

LLBean (a clothing & outdoor gear retailer) accepts returns at anytime if you're not satisfied with the merchandise. I bought a pair of pants from them that I returned something like a year later because I didn't like how they wore. They were exchanged with an appology. I'm a loyal customer.

This is just smart marketing on the part of these companies. LLBean and Costco (CDW too) don't sell to cusotmers who want the lowest price, they sell to customers who want the best value. Part of a good value is after-sale service.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Oh, so because the folks at Nike are operating without morals, that means you're going to operate without morals when dealing with them? That's one way to go through life, I guess.

Funny thing is - I don't have situational ethics. If I have the chance to rip off two people - one of which is a convicted felon and another who is an upstanding citizen, I choose not to rip off either of them. I guess you'd stick it to the felon, right?

Again, that's one way to go through life - just not the way I choose to do so. So "c'mon", only rip off the bad people.

Why do the police arrest people who murder drug dealers? Certainly drug dealers are bad and we can point to reports and demographics showing this evidence so why not just let people off?

Didn't your mother ever tell you that two wrongs do not make a right?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[HybridJeff]

(kind of off topic)

I love that Costco!

A few years ago I worked at Sportsworld (an amusement/water park) wich was a 5 minute walk from the Costco in Kitchener. I'd go there all the time for lunch. They had a really cheap hotdog/drink deal that Id always get. Just walk right in the exit door to the food area, and get some good cheap food (well good compared to the McDonalds near by, and cheaper than any other fast food). Fill'd p my water bottle with ice from the soda fountin evrey time (defenitaly a requirement when your stuck running the ferris wheel for 5 hours in 35 degree heat).

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[SnappleMaster]

Read the post I was responding to, please.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[alw53]

Microsoft has a business policy of starving its competition out of business. They call it "cutting off their air supply." Microsoft will give away its product, if necessary, in order to accomplish this. I think they also have signed distributors up to exclusive agreements (don't carry any of our competitor's products, if you want to carry Microsoft). The Feds are unwilling or unable to change this situation. So for many products, consumers only have one choice.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Registered Coward v2]

When my kid burns her mouth because her pasta was too hot, she gets upset but she's been warned and she knows she should have waited for it to cool, or blow her spoonful to make it colder. She's 6, an age where she now gets replied "you've been warned - make sure it wont happen next time by listening to what we told you"

When your coffee says "hot content", maybe you've been warned enough and should have taken that advice into account? If you can't read...too bad for you...This woman apparently knew how to read enough to order a coffee and pay for it.

You completely missed the point why MCDonalds lost; they:

Knew the coffee was too hot to consume;
There customers generally bought coffee to drink right away;
Never considered the safety ramifications of serving coffee that would cause 3rd degree burns in 2 - 7 seconds (most stores serve coffee at much lower temperatures);and
Had nearly 700 customers over a 10 year period made burn claims.

I nshort, they were well aware of the dangers their product presented to unaware customers (McD's admitted its customers didn't know they could get 3rd degree burns) and so shared responsiblity for the damage it ciused. The award was reduced because the court found teh lady to be 20% at fault.

To use your child anaolgy, if you serve pasta that would acuse 3rd degree burns and tell your kids to be careful 700 times (including suffering severe burns during that time); I'd bet someone would question your parenting skills - would you think a reasonable argument would be the kid should know better?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[shepd]

In the US, you can't declaim all warrentees - there is an implied warranty that a product will function as it is intended - i.e. I can't sell taosters that don't toast and then say tough - it was an as is sale.

Of course you are correct on that. Misrepresentation is illegal.

And that's why I tell people, it's in As Is condition. Does it work? I don't know. I wouldn't sell the product and tell the person it works if it has an As Is sticker on. As a gesture of goodwill, though, I do let the customer give it a whirl in the store, see if it works to their satisfaction.

I once did look up some laws on this, but I can't remember where the heck I found them, sorry. However, I do know they were quite specific that writing "As Is", or, more specifically "With All Faults" on the product and allowing the customer to decide (without telling them it works -- which wouldn't make sense to do anyways if you are labelling it as possibly broken) is completely legal and does protect one from warranty issues (not from some negligence / safety type stuff, though, of course).

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kyani]

Normally I wouldn't bother replying to a coward, but I just don't get it and can't stand brain dead idiots. My friend (and that's singular btw, since the other friend mentioned was working at Costco when the pie was returned, NOT the one returning the pie) returned the AC unit and they gave him cash for it. He didn't say it was defective, he didn't lie about anything, he just said he didn't want it anymore and they gave him his money back.

Now where exactly is the lying or thieving in that you karma whoring coward?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kyani]

Bleh, read my reply above to the other karma whoring coward if you care. It's nice to see that you're so sure of your opinion you're willing to put your name to it and stand behind it -- oops, wait a sec....

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[ShawnDoc]

Always buy products at CostCo and save the receipt. They have an insane return policy that lets you return anything you buy from them for just about any reason. I've seen CostCo take back several year old *computers* and issue full refunds. They recently modified their computer return policy, but its still insane (I think its now a 6 month limit on computers).

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kent Recal]

When Nike begins to feel like they're getting ripped off by too many people taking advantage of their generous offer they can take it back - any time. But while the marketing effort is in effect (supposedly aimed at branding their target demographic) I see no reason why we shouldn't take advantage of it. Can you provide one?
Didn't poor nike managers do the math before coming up with that offer?
Hightly doubt so. As I understood OP their warranty says no more and no less than that you can turn in broken shoes and get a new pair. So when I do exactly that then I'm ripping them off, on their own terms?

I'll just ignore your drug dealer "analogy" here. Try again when you're back in the real world...

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[edwazere]

What's your point?

Possibly because the EU agrees with the parent poster. Not with you.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[adachan]

Are you kidding? Have you seen return policies these days. 14 days for most electronics!!!! Thats not even enough time for a working person to make sure something works properly. I dont mean a toaster -- I mean a fancy Amp or a HDTV. XBOX is no different. The DVD-Rom is well known to be crappy and it does fail fairly regularly. The trick is with the xbox is that even though it is just a regular computer with extra protections the DVD-ROM cannot be purchased and replaced. I had the same problem, the XBOX just stops reading DVDs (games and movies) after a while. I know of many other people that have had this problem as well. If the drive was replaceable, I wouldnt care. I would just replace it, but its NOT thats the point.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[edwazere]

Also, if the coffee is that hot I bet it tastes like shit.

Not that I'd even consider drinking anything called coffee that's supplied by a company like macdonalds.

Of course none of that is relevant in the slightest.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Actually, since this warranty doesn't actually exist - we haven't been talking about the real world for awhile.

The point is, let us suppose that your shoes are defective and don't satisfy you. That's a reason to seek replacement shoes as a condition of the imaginary warranty. But let's suppose nothing is wrong with the shoes and the only reason you want to send in for a replacement is because the warranty is about to expire. Then, on the imaginary warranty form - what will you put down for the reason for the return? Please, tell me what the reason for returning the shoes would be. And please consult the start of this thread just to make sure you're up to speed on what we are discussing.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Bryan Gividen]

3rd degree burns involve all skin layers. Skin is either white and soft (appears cooked), or black, charred and leathery, Because the burned area is pale, it may be mistaken for normal skin in fair-skinned people, but it does not blanch on pressure. There may be no pain in the initial stages and the burnt area may have no feeling when touched. Third degree burns are usually not painful because the nerve endings in the skin have been destroyed. Burnt areas cannot heal spontaneously.

I'm thoroughly impressed that your stove managed to burn you and you continued exposure of your body to it so that it could then burn another layer of skin. I'm even more impressed that for that to have happened, all the nerves would have had to have been destroyed immediately and you would have felt nothing for moments. Or you're just full of it.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[TClevenger]

I bought a pair of Bolle sunglasses and had prescription lenses put in them. I broke the arm off after about a year of abuse and threw them in a drawer.

Now, four years later, I found them and decided to see if my eyewear shop could fix them or buy a new arm. They said that the frames were no longer made, but I could send them to Bushnell (Bolle's parent) with a description, and they would call me with an estimate. If they couldn't fix them, I could get them back for a $5.00 shipping charge.

I boxed them up with my name, address and explanation that they were prescription lenses, and to send them back if they weren't repairable.

A week later, I got a box back from them. Brand new next generation frames, my lenses, a note to have my eyewear shop install the lenses, and a bill for $5.00 for return shipping. I popped the lenses in myself and they're great.

There are still companies that believe in customer loyalty out there. Bolle is one example. Johnny Rocket riding wear replaces or fixes broken zippers on their riding wear long after the warranty is up. Lexar has replaced damaged 512MB CF cards, no receipt required.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[American AC in Paris]

When my kid burns her mouth because her pasta was too hot, she gets upset but she's been warned and she knows she should have waited for it to cool, or blow her spoonful to make it colder. She's 6, an age where she now gets replied "you've been warned - make sure it wont happen next time by listening to what we told you"

Good grief, do you understand the difference between an irritated palate and a third-degree burn? [links go to images of 3rd degree burns--not for the faint of heart]

What would you say about a parent who knowingly and without warning served their daughter pasta that was hot enough to give her a third-degree burn in a matter of seconds? Would you call that responsible parenting? Would you call it child abuse?

What would you say about a restaurant that knowingly and without warning served food that was capable of inflicting a third-degree burn in a matter of seconds?

Is this really the same thing as "Ouch, I burned the roof of my mouth!" to you? Is the concept of "degrees of severity" foreign to you?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[EEBaum]

My usual policy with extended service plans is that I'll spend less replacing the occasional item than I'd spend on all the extended warranties, and in the long run I think I've come out ahead. To each his own, I suppose.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kyani]

I'm posting A/C because it would be modded troll/flamebait if anything and isn't worth wasting a point or two on.

Thus the karma whoring -- you'd rather hold onto karma than stand behind your argument...shows some great character.

Since you asked, I still say you're the brain dead one. Theft is taking something that doesn't belong to you. He took nothing. The store policy was to give him the money back -- if you have a problem with that then blame the store that sets the policy, not the person who follows that policy.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[TClevenger]

I had a Philips CD-R drive (2620?) that was defective. We're talking 8 coaster in 10 burns, and it wasn't because of underruns. I took part in the class-action, not expecting anything.

A couple of months after I had forgotten all about it, I got a package in the mail from HP. WTF? I opened it up and found a brand new CDRW drive. I guess class action suits CAN work... once in a while, anyway.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kent Recal]

Well, according to OP the warranty does exist. I have never heard of it either but I wouldn't be surprised if it exists (maybe only in some states or for some "premium" shoes).

And as I understood the OP the warranty is not limited so I wouldn't have to put down anything. Just send in old shoes, get new shoes. That easy.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[isil]

...and the result of a successful lawsuit would be a silly coupon worth $.50 off your next purchase of a microsoft product...if you sign a document accepting terms.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[smeenz]

In New Zealand, all goods sold to consumers (ie, not businesses) must be fit to last for a reasonable period of time, regardless of what the manufacturer's warranty says. This guarantee is provided by law as the NZ Consumer Guarantee Act

In practice, this means that if I buy, for example, a DVD player with a one year warranty on it, and it dies after 18 months, which is not a reasonable length of life for a DVD player, then the retailer I purchased it from is responsible for replacing or fixing it, and within a reasonable time frame as well.

In fact, although a number of retailers here offer to sell extended warranties with their more expensive products, most of the cover you receive with those warrantys are already afforded to consumers under the Act.

In this case, it would be trivial for the guy to return it in NZ, and the retailer wouldn't have a leg to stand on if they tried to claim it wasn't their responsibility or that the warranty had expired.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

But all along I have been discussing a situation where you have to put down a reason. You argued that morality had no place in this discussion.

So, I ask again, what would you put down as the reason for the return?

Okay and just to clear this up this is straight from Nike,

"At Nike, we stand behind all of our products for both our retail accounts and consumers.

We have made arrangements with our authorized retail accounts to accept returns for products with material or workmanship flaws. In the event that you have a Nike product with a material or workmanship flaw, for fastest service, we advise you to first check with the place of purchase for their assistance. Retailers do have their own particular return policies however. If you are not able to return an item to the original place of purchase, you still may be able to receive service for the item directly through Nike.

Nike product return guidelines:
Some Nike products have specific guarantees and/or warranties. Please read the label, hang tag or packaging material for specific return information. - No refunds. All refunds must be obtained through the original place of purchase only.
- No exchanges due to size, fit, or style selection problems.
- For Niketown.com purchase returns click here.
- Products purchased through Nike Factory Outlet stores must be returned or exchanged through a Nike Factory Outlet store. Visit Nike Outlet Stores for a listing of outlets in your area.

To avoid unnecessary delays in processing, select your Nike product type below for specific return guidelines and procedures: "

Okay? It's pretty obvious from that return policy that the original description provided is false. They're not going to let you trade up to a larger size and they are clearly not going to take your shoes back without any reason listed. So when you try to return those Nike shoes what reason are you going to give them for the return?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[chgros]

A law like this in North America would cause warranties to default to zero. All products would be labelled "As Is" to reduce liability.
I would think this kind of law would also imply a minimal required warranty.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Fallen_Knight]

its also members only and if you keep returning things i think they will notice and do something

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Fallen_Knight]

i find sony's stuff pretty reliable, nothing of theirs i've ever baught has failed yet

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kyani]

Why? You'll find that it would be quite difficult to come up with a store policy that would both keep the customers with defective products happy and simultaneously prevent 'renters' since, if nothing else, the renters could intentionally disable the product before returning it. Tell me how the store policy could be changed so that people could still return their products (such as in the case of the original poster who used Costco's policy the way it was meant to be used) while preventing people from doing what your friend did or a simple variation of what your friend did (ie, one that could not easily be circumvented).

Simple, put in a timeframe and require a legitimate reason (i.e. damaged through normal use, 'just doesn't work anymore', etc) for the return to be accepted. Sure there's some grey area on the return reason, but no way my friend could have returned his unit the way he did with these conditions (he actually did tell them that he got central air and didn't need it anymore).

Anyways, I'd written up this paragraph about what obvious actually means and how your 'confident' beliefs don't even approach logical, but then erased it. I can't believe I've allowed myself to be baited so much by a coward -- I'm done.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[dstyle5]

My old roommate had the same problem. His XBox started giving read errors all the time so he bought a new one about 4 months ago. Not sure if his was a launch model or not. With Microsoft losing so much money on each XBox, they probably are not using the highest quality components out there.

I've heard of this happening with PS2s as well and the first Playstation was known for failing. They overheated so to get them to work you have to stand them on their side so the vents on the bottom can breathe or flip them over. This worked with a different roommates old Playstation which was a launch model.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[NanoGator]

A LOT of people have purchased Playstations (1 and 2) that have failed within a year. I know from first hand experience, I used to sell the stupid things.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[KarmaMB84]

Why? I know they definately work for CD players, the concept is more or less the same for a DVD drive.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[winwar]

"I have an ethical dilemma:
I've spilled Mc Donald's coffee on my XBox. The XBox no longer work, and, the coffee is now undrinkable. Who should I sue?"

Well, if you are in the US, you sue MS and McDonald's.

Everywhere else, well, I guess you are SOL :)

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[winwar]

"The main reasons she won the suit were:"

The jurors were idiots? Her lawyers were better than McDonalds? And I really believe that. I don't see any GOOD reasons for a lawsuit among your points. Sure there were reasons FOR suing, but that is different.

Okay, your points:

"1. She had no reason to be aware that spilling McDonald's coffee would be so much more harmful to her than other coffee (it was roughly 40 degrees hotter than home brewed would have been and 30 degrees hotter than most other vendors).

2. McDonald's did (she wasn't the first to sue them).

3. McDonald's didn't do anything to decrease the danger, e.g.:

a) Make the coffee cooler (which McDonald's did post verdict)."

Coffee when brewed is just under boiling. Certainly in excess of 180degrees F. That could cause 3rd degree burns easily. Coffee IS inherently hazardous. Hell, people are told to turn their water heaters to 120 degrees (from 140 and above) to prevent accidental scalding.

Other than not selling coffee, what do you propose? Brew it improperly, keep it under 120 degrees F (ugh!), put idiot warnings on the cup?

"b) Make it possible to add the creamer and sugar without removing the lid (i.e. make a safer lid)."

So, don't sell to idiots? I don't know, perhaps put the cream and sugar in the hole you DRINK out of? The lid on the cup put there to prevent you from spilling HOT liquid on your person?

"c) Warn her that the coffee was much hotter than other coffee and would scald if spilled."

Huh? Warn her that hot coffee is hot? Ours is brewed properly? See previous point about not selling to idiots....

"4. Finally, McDonald's made no attempt to negotiate with her. After all, she just wanted her medical (and later legal) bills paid."

Yes, and this is why I carry health insurance. So when I do something stupid, or something bad happens to me ("bad things happen to good people all the time") I only have to pay for a fraction of my medical bills. Heck, if I can't afford insurance, I likely won't be charged....

"Instead, they let it go to a jury, who bent them over."

This we agree on.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[TheHonestTruth]

A fair assessment. Truth be told, I've rarely bought it. There are only a few items I would be really pissed about croaking on me: PS2 at launch (different story now), an HDTV if I had one. I also consider the use. I got Applecare for my iBook because the iBook's always in my backpack. Same for my iPod. But if I bought an Apple desktop I probably wouldn't get Applecare because I expect to abuse it less. Ideally the dektop machine would just sit there.

Despite the fact that many plans claim not to replace it if you damage it, as long as it is not overtly wrecked by a human, I've never had a problem with a return.

-truth

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[winwar]

"For practical purposes, it was as dangerous as a cup of concentrated acid, with no warning attached."

You are extremely ignorant. Spilling a cup of concentrated acid on you can result in DEATH. 3rd degree burns would be a GOOD outcome with concentrated acid.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[winwar]

"Even coffee at 155 degrees wouldn't give you serious burns."

You are WRONG.

"It takes 2 seconds for a child to receive third degree burns from water at 150 degrees. It takes 5 seconds if the water is at 140 degrees, and 30 seconds at 130 degrees." -From the National Ag Safety Database.

I find similar information for adults.

"Your pot of coffee at home is more like 140 degrees."

And if it is, you can't brew a good cup of coffee....

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[n0nsensical]

So I guess it makes no difference if companies make shoddy products--as long as they can't kill you.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mdfst13]

"Coffee when brewed is just under boiling. Certainly in excess of 180degrees F. That could cause 3rd degree burns easily. Coffee IS inherently hazardous. Hell, people are told to turn their water heaters to 120 degrees (from 140 and above) to prevent accidental scalding."

Yet McDonald's was able to drop the temperature of their coffee from 185 degrees to 155 degrees. Something that their competitors had already done. McDonald's *admitted* (proclaimed even; they felt that it was one of the selling points of their coffee) that their coffee was significantly hotter than that of their competitors or of home brewed. Are you saying that McDonald's was wrong?

You're arguing the facts on which both sides agreed, rather than those in dispute. *BOTH* sides agreed that McDonald's coffee was 30 F degrees hotter than that of their competitors and 45 F degrees hotter than typical home brew. Are you telling me that McDonald's was just too stupid to know how most people brewed coffee?

"Heck, if I can't afford insurance, I likely won't be charged...."

Obviously, you've never been injured without health insurance. She likely had insurance; it simply wasn't good enough to cover the care she needed (which probably cost at least $100,000, given that her compensatory damages were set at $200,000). Yes, she could have gotten out of the medical bills by declaring bankruptcy, but is that really a reasonable punishment for spilling coffee on herself?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Giranan]

Actually, Microsoft will take in older consoles free of service charge (you still have to pay shipping). I sent my launch Xbox into the repair center just a few weeks ago, bought just around the same time this guy's was bought. Works perfectly now that they replaced the DVD drive.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kohath]

I have an ethical dilemma:
I've spilled Mc Donald's coffee on my XBox. The XBox no longer work, and, the coffee is now undrinkable. Who should I sue?

Slashdot.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Lish]

I had a broken stereo and was in on the Aiwa settlement. It wasn't just one specific model, it was a whole list of basically every stereo they made for a few years. In the end rather than send it in to be fixed (it's long since replaced, it's been broken for years), I took the $50 cash option. Good deal.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[putch]

no, but it might make you kill yourself.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Pofy]

>A law like this in North America would cause
>warranties to default to zero. All products would
>be labelled "As Is" to reduce liability.

Actually, looking at Sweden which also has the "two year", such laws are non negotiable, that is, you can't in any way contract them away or change them if it tirns worse for the consumer. So there is really no way arround it (you can make it longer than 2 years if you want though).

In addition, "as is" don't change anything since what is important is what a consumer could expect from a product. If it is worse, the seller has an obligation to tell so. Claiming "as is" would put an additional burden on the consumer to try to investigate a product figuring out if it is different from what one could expect (trying to figure out if the hard disc is of a type that breaks within a year as oposed to normally working for many, many years. That is not something a typical consumer can do or have the knowledge about, hence the reason for not letting "as is" mean anything at all. There is actually a law here specifically saying that even if it was sold "as is", the product is considered faulty or damaged if it does not live up to what the consumer could have expected. So the "as is" doesn't really have any importance or meaning at all and doesn't let the seller get away with anything. At least not here in Sweden and perhaps other EU countries as well. Appearantly USA seems different.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Pofy]

Of course there is a way arround it, telling what is wrong with the product, selling it at a bit lower price and so on. As long as you tell about the product, you can of course sell damaged thing or things that doesn't work. What you can't do is just say "as is" and in effect have the customer figure out what might be wrong.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[J. T. MacLeod]

There are things in the road called "curves". See also: "hills".

In places with sane speed limits, they're set so that, among other reasons, a person obeying the speed limit will be clearly perceptible in appropriate time to anyone near the street.

The risk above that speed exceeds normal expectation.

Now, just like a speed limit, there are laws that dictate how hot you can serve a beverage. That includes temperatures that can cause minor burns. It doesn't include temperatures capable of causing third degree burns.

The risk incurred by serving the coffee that hot exceeded appropriate expectation.

Imagine that you bought a mouse trap. Now, we have no sympathy if you get snapped by it. Woops, should have been more careful. You can't have hard feelings for the mouse trap manufacturer if you bruise your finger while setting the trap.

However, if the trap *cut your finger off*, that would be beyond appropriate expectation of risk.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kent Recal]

I'm not buying nike products so I cannot say what I *would* put down for a reason. I'd recommend others to put the shoe in water until it bleaches or breaks otherwise and use that for a reason, tho.

Yep, that's highly "immoral" but since the shoes cost only $5 to make you can repeat the procedure 20 times before it starts to "hurt" poor nike's bottom line. If some poor sucker manages to get some free shoes that way I wouldn't judge him.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kent Recal]

Well, you're modded troll but I still think you have more of a point than the acidic moralist. Yes, I am not buying nike products and think that's the best way to handle it. Still I don't see why poor people shouldn't take advantage of them if they can. It's not gonna make anything better but it's also not making anything worse (maybe cutting a few sub% into nike's profit).

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[bentcd]

When I receive a sizzling skillet that the waiter has told me not to touch, I _expect_ that skillet to be dangerous to touch. If I clamped my hands around it, got burns, and sued, I would expect to lose the suit.

When I receive a cup of coffee, I do not expect the contents to be outright dangerous. If the contents ends up causing third degree burns, destroying massive amounts of nerves, and turning my life into a waking nightmare for years to come, then I fully expect to be able to take them to the cleaners in court.

Coffee is _supposed_ to be moderately hot. Coffee is _supposed_ to cause no more than moderate pain if you spill it on yourself. It is _not_ supposed to destroy your life if you spill it on yourself. Since MacDonalds advertised "coffee" and not "coffee from hell" then what I expect to receive is _normal_ coffee. When they serve me something that is several orders of magnitude more dangerous than normal coffee, they are to blame and they should pay for it.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[mqx]

"A law like this in North America would cause warranties to default to zero. All products would be labelled "As Is" to reduce liability."

"Trust me on that."

I can't: that would not work, because the law would prevent the manufacturer from contracting out of the warranty. Don't you understand that's the reason for making it a law - to stop the manufacturer from getting out of a warranty period?

"I'm a retailer myself and we get plenty of garbage products in from manufacturers that we know will welch on their warranty that get labelled like that by us as is (BIG fluorescent sticker, too)."

This is _why_ such a law is needed: although the manufacturer would be liable, it also puts pressure on you as the retailer to stop accepting shonky goods.

"You'd think that would deter customers from buying them, but nooo... "

Customers are not always smart. Giorgio Armani famously said "my customers aren't rich enough to buy cheap clothes": in other words, quality ultimately pays for itself.

"the customers demand them ($15 CDN power supplies, sub $180 CDN satellite receivers, etc, etc). "

Customers demand lots of things, they don't get anything. If the extended warranty costs a bit more on the product, then tough, the customers have to wear it, because in the long run, it works out better for all of us (more reliable products, manufacturers producing better quality, less obsolesence, etc).

"I don't want to sell them, but I'm a store. I'm there to serve the public, and make a good wage doing that. So you sell what you're told (by customers) to sell."

You're mistaken: you're just a middleman between the manufacturer and the customer. You're only selling things to the customer because the manufacturer made them available. If the manufacturer stops making shonky goods available, then customers will just have to accept better quality.

It may be the customers "right" to buy low quality goods, but honestly, I think we're in a civilised world, and to make it a better place to live, it sounds entirely fair to set some minimum standards: 90 day warranties are simply too short, 12 months sounds more appropriate. How many people buy consumer electronics and only expect it to last 90 days? I certainly don't. And if I buy something that fails after 120 days, I certainly want to be able to return it to the manufacturer.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

So you're in favor of situation ethics. Fine. You think it's okay to lie, cheat, and be dishonest as long as the person or entity you are lying to has been judged to be "bad" by you. So you're judgemental and a cheat and a liar. How nice.

I try to live my life with a bit more morality but to each his own. I wouldn't trust you as a friend though.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kent Recal]

When you can afford it get out of your box a bit and visit one of them sweatshops. Then we talk again.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Hognoxious]

pres. drugs [...] b/c they're scared [...] I hang out w/ a gamer crowd

Yes, we cn tl by teh wy u rite.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[jonfelder]

It does make things worse. In order to take advantage of Nike, someone has to buy the shoes (most likely the poor people) and someone in a third world country is exploited when every shoe is made.

It doesn't really dig into Nike's profit because the cost of the warranty is factored into the price of the shoe. They count on some people doing this, and they charge accordingly. If enough people do it, Nike will just stop providing the warranty. Who wins then?

All doing this does, really, is raises the price of shoes for everyone else and forces people in the third world to produce more shoes.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[shepd]

Of course there is a way arround it, telling what is wrong with the product, selling it at a bit lower price and so on. As long as you tell about the product, you can of course sell damaged thing or things that doesn't work. What you can't do is just say "as is" and in effect have the customer figure out what might be wrong.

I see. So, basically, the legislation means you need to use different words. In North America, our legislation specifically requires we use the words "As Is" or "With All Faults" (read it, they're in there) to disclaim warranties.

From what I understand, it seems in your country I would need to label this item "Possibly defective goods -- untested -- use at your own risk". Whatever. I can still fit that on the label.

If it needs to be tested (why? That's impossible for some goods.) then I'd just have to write "Entire unit appears non functional. Use at your own risk."

Honestly, I've sold items with guarantees almost like that at full price (The specific words I've used are "The RF connector falls off and the power supply often smokes on these receivers, oh, and the DiSEqC support crashes the unit and sometimes erases the EEPROM in your motor"). People here are just that serious about buying junk.

Basically, in the end, if I'm at all correct, this law wouldn't make an inch of difference to me in your country, because I am basically "in compliance" with it as is.

Note that the reason I don't label these units in more detail like that is due to North American stupidities in law -- If I were to write on the unit that the power supply will smoke, I could be sued for negligence when it happens. Whereas, if I just say the unit is defective and untested, anything goes, and I don't get sued even if it starts a fire! Yeah, it's that stupid over here. :-)

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[shepd]

How many people buy consumer electronics and only expect it to last 90 days? I certainly don't. And if I buy something that fails after 120 days, I certainly want to be able to return it to the manufacturer.

I think, perhaps, you're not certain how serious I am about how low people are willing to go for that save-a-buck deal.

This is the a sign we have above a stack of power supplies we have in the store. I also have, under the sign, an open power supply that set on fire so customers can see. We constantly sell out of them. What does that tell you? Is there, honestly, in your opinion, anything I can do, other than lose business to the competition by refusing to sell them, to stop selling these power supplies to consumers? How much more babying do they need? If you don't believe me, I can take a picture of the stack. It's just in a corner, out of the way.

Consumers pretend they want quality and a 90 day warranty, but they are lying to themselves. Deep down, they are even willing to risk setting fire to their own homes to save $35 (we sell Enermax power supplies starting at $49.99).

I seriously don't know why. My store isn't exactly in a ghetto, this is an "average" Canadian town, and it happens to be located across from an auto manufacturer where wages start at $20/hr. I've given up on stocking many quality goods because people just don't want them. They don't sell, even when priced at cost.

All legislation would do is make sure I don't sell any more $15 power supplies. These people would *not* buy my $49.99 power supply. Then, because I am not selling enough, I go out of business. And our GDP goes down as more and more shops go out of business due to everyone buying their cheap junk as imports from the US (or whatever other country they can get their hands on it from). And then we have a recession, and etc, etc. Just don't go there.

Now do you see why I said what I said? I really am speaking from experience. To save myself from going out of business, I'd just have to hire a lawyer to find me a loophole in such a law.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kent Recal]

It doesn't really dig into Nike's profit because the cost of the warranty is factored into the price of the shoe.

Sorry but you are wrong there. Nothing is factored into the price that way. The price is the exact amount that their market research reported the kids will be able to squeeze out of their parents. Or, more bluntly, it is the amount that they conditioned the target audience to pay for the nike-image.

Remember, the shoe costs $5 to make in a cheap labor country.
Compare that to the retail-price (and add another $10 for package/shipping/whatever if you like).

The rest goes straight into advertising (to feed the loop) and into nike's pocket.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Pofy]

>From what I understand, it seems in your country
>I would need to label this item "Possibly
>defective goods -- untested -- use at your own
>risk". Whatever. I can still fit that on the
>label.

No, you can't get away it in that way. You would have to tell what is wrong with a product. Can't just go out telling "possibly wrong", that would be the same as "as is". As for the warranty, you can't get arround that at all really, you still have the minimum 2 years. The "as is", part was in reference that you can't get away from the responsability to tell about a product and its quality and so on. It has nothing to do with warranty.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Sunnan]

It doesn't happen like it does in US. People are asked to be responsible for themselves.

No, it's not because "people are asked to be responsible for themselves", it's because there are lots of good consumer rights organisations in place, so you don't need to sue. (Of course, with the currently increasing corporate power in Europe, the consumer rights organisations need to gain power, too.)

Let me tell you something: the whole "suing everyone macarena" in United States appears so ridiculous to many other countries that it makes up for good laughs at dinner time, in front of a burning hot expresso.

I know, but those people don't always realize the exposed position of the american consumer. Among europeans, the story often goes "Hear about that guy[sic] who sued McDonalds just because the coffee was a bit warm?" "Silly Americans, ha ha ha". Dismissed, just like that, without knowing any details about the case, or considering the american medicare system.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Deaper]

I assume you have home owners insurance, life insurance, and health insurance. Do you buy this because you're stupid and want to give your money away? No you buy it because you want to be protected in case something happens.

Do you *really* think that insurance companies would sell insurance if they weren't making them money? Nope. But just because they're making money for the insurance company doesn't mean that you're stupid for buying it.

Yes the manufacturer should be held responsible for longer than 90 days. However they don't.

That's why extended warranties and service plans are sold. And that's why people buy them. Cause they don't want something they buy to break on day 91 only to be told they're SOL by the manufacturer.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[DeadScreenSky]

Yeah, because other than for this woman, coffee is never, ever spilled. Hadn't been spilled for the whole history of its existence.

If you are planning to sell coffee (or anything else), you can't assume an extremely common mistake will never occur. That is negligent.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

So not only do you lie and cheat, you also make ignorant insults based on information you make up in your head! Amazing, you're a great guy. Your friends must love you.

By the way, is the electric company delivering juice to this box to run my computer?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[jonfelder]

Sorry but you are wrong there. Nothing is factored into the price that way. The price is the exact amount that their market research reported the kids will be able to squeeze out of their parents. Or, more bluntly, it is the amount that they conditioned the target audience to pay for the nike-image

Compare that to the retail-price (and add another $10 for package/shipping/whatever if you like).

This is only part of the story. Nike figures out how much people are willing to pay, then they figure out how much the shoes cost to produce, and they price accordingly.

For example a shoe might cost: $5 to produce + $5 to ship + whatever else (i.e. $x for the warranty, marketing, employee costs, etc) + X% markup at the shoe store.

So...for a shoe that Nike determines people will pay $100 for:

Nike sells the shoe to the shoe store for $80 and assumes/tells the store to sell for $100. From that $80, Nike knows that say...$40 is spent on costs for the shoe (including the warranty) and that $40 is profit.

That's what I mean by it's factored into the price of the shoe. Nike knows reasonably well the costs associated with shoe, warranty abusers and all. Nike is ok with that because they expect to make $40 on the shoe.

If they make $30 and determine it's because the warranty costs them an extra $10 over what they thought it would, Nike is likely to do away with the shoe, raise the price of their shoes,do away with the warranty, or reduce some cost associated with the shoe that's flexible...say layoff an employee.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[fvwmfan]

>>> These are the kinds of lawsuits that drive up the costs of everything

maybe not.

for one, if you pay heaps for something that breaks after less than a year, then that is a cost too. Sometimes it is better (and cheaper) to pay more upfront in return for superior quality. (No, I am not saying that price = quality)

On the other hand, you are talking about a corporation that routinely overcharges (80% markup is what I heard) on their software, and makes a loss selling the XBox. Seems to me the courtcase will have zero effect on the price of the consol.

If you are talking about the cost of games, I don't think the game stopped working after less than a year...

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Short Circuit]

I think they also have signed distributors up to exclusive agreements (don't carry any of our competitor's products, if you want to carry Microsoft).

They used to do this with Windows. But they were told not do do it anymore, and had their hand slapped.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Buelldozer]

Now what kind of geekly logic is it to NOT buy an Xbox? :-)

Cliff

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[shepd]

>You would have to tell what is wrong with a product. Can't just go out telling "possibly wrong", that would be the same as "as is".

So, you're saying that goods must be tested and all faults listed prior to sale, period, no exceptions, that's the way it is?

This explains why cars in Europe cost 2 - 5 times more than they do over here. I can't even being to imagine the amount of work that would have to go into checking over a used junker to list all the bad components. Better to trash it instead.

Did the environmentalists not have a field day over there with the amount of trash this sort of economy-choking law much be producing?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[LoverOfJoy]

At least you can replace tires with a different brand that works. Is there an alternative game system that can play my xbox games? If xbox breaks easily it not only makes the system unusable, but also all games bought for that system.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[blueskies]

It's her own fault that she spilled coffee on herself. "Levels of negligence" are irrelevant because she injured herself.

She would not have injured herself without having a dangerous product made by McDonalds.

The four pieces involved with negligence:

that there is a duty of care owed to a person;

a breach of that duty occurred;

there is a reasonably close casual connection that causes injury (proximate cause); and

that injury causes actual damage or loss.
Number 1 is broken because McDonalds has a duty not to disguise a seemingly safe product as a dangerous one. There was no warning that McDonald's coffee was way hotter than industry standard or that it would cause serious injury. They should know that it is highly likely that someone will spill their coffee on themselves.

Number 2 is easy because they obviously purposely sold super-heated coffee.

Number 3 is the one you are having difficutly wrapping your head around involves a close correspondence to the defendent's breach of duty that resulted in the accident. It is easy to see how mcdonald's superheated coffee was a proximate cause to the 3rd degree burns

You can figure out #4.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kohath]

Thanks for spelling out the rules. Those rules need to be changed. That's the point.

They need to be changed so you can't get paid because you spilled coffee on yourself.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[blueskies]

How exactly would you change the rules? Add a clause saying that if you spill coffee they don't apply? You don't seem to be able to abstract away the coffee and think in concepts. Thousands of people have spilled coffee on themselves and would not win a negligence case in a court of law. The current rules seem to be working to me. She would have been more careful or not have bought that coffee if she had known it to be as dangerous as it was.

According to your principle if the victim does anything negligent any other act of negligence no longer matters. So if you are speeding in your car (say 1 mph over the limit) and anything goes wrong with your car, it explodes, all the tires blow out, a truck cuts you off, etc. It is only your fault since you were negligently operating your vehicle? That would be cool and all. I mean I could run over jay walkers, since they shouldn't be negligently crossing the road outside of a crosswalk. Why should they have any rights if they are going to be negligent?

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kohath]

I'd change the rules so that McDonald's behavior had to be the primary cause of the injury, not just a factor. I'd also change it so that the injured party couldn't collect if their own actions were a significant factor in the injury.

1 MPH over the speed limit isn't a significant factor. Spilling the coffee all over yourself is.

Also, the temperature of the coffe wasn't the primary cause of the injury, the spillage was.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[blueskies]

argh. That's exactly how the current law is written. Everything you mention is a judgement call. The jury decides what the primary cause of the injury is.

The primary cause of the injury was the tempertature. The woman could have spilled starbucks, burger king, duncan donuts, any number of other stores' coffee on herself and not received 3rd degree burns. The fact that a reasonable person would not expect to be significantly injured by coffee played a large role in the determination. The fact that you don't here about thousands of other coffee related lawsuits indicates that the current system is working.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kohath]

That's exactly how the current law is written. Everything you mention is a judgement call.

If that's true, then it's extremely sad. It means the people involved in the system can't be trusted to exercise good judgement.

The only fix might be to just completely eliminate the ability to sue for negligence. Or make it so risky to file a suit that it's only done in the most extreme circumstances. Loser pays would help for the second one.

The primary cause of the injury was the tempertature. The woman could have spilled starbucks, burger king, duncan donuts, any number of other stores' coffee on herself and not received 3rd degree burns.

Coffee isn't for spilling. It's for drinking. McDonald's didn't make the coffee for her to spill on herself. It wasn't safe for spilling. They had no duty to make it safe for spilling.

I still don't see why she shouldn't be able to collect the the same damages if she injected the coffee into her bloodstream. Spilling it on your groin and injecting it are equally un-intended usages of the coffee.

Any system that allows for the collection of damages when you spill coffee on yourself is broken. If the system can't be changed to disallow that, then there ought not to be a system for collecting damages at all.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[blueskies]

Coffee isn't for spilling. It's for drinking. McDonald's didn't make the coffee for her to spill on herself. It wasn't safe for spilling. They had no duty to make it safe for spilling.

So she would have not gotten 3rd degree burns if she had drank the coffee--the intended way for her to use it? This ties in to proximate cause. Did they or should they have had knowledge that the average person might spill this coffee on themselves? The jury shouted out a resounding yes. Thousands of people every day spill coffee on themselves without serious injury. It happens during normal use of the item. Like I said thousands of other resteraunts were able to make coffee that doesn't give 3rd degree burns.

I still don't see why she shouldn't be able to collect the the same damages if she injected the coffee into her bloodstream. Spilling it on your groin and injecting it are equally un-intended usages of the coffee.

How are you using the word equally? Thousands of people a day spill coffee on themsleves each day while trying to drink it. This goes back to proximate cause. Injecting it and getting harmed is further steps away from Mcdonalds causing the harm. Once again this is a fuzzy judgement call (like most things in life), but I don't believe it's that hard to see that injecting is much further away from the intended use then accidently spilling it on yourself.

And no one is saying that she didn't accidently spill it on herself, it has more to do with McDonalds being grossly negligent (warned after many other injuries, way hotter then industry standard, etc). A normal person would not expect to be injured in such a way from the coffee. If this was common knowledge people would stay away from Mcdonald's coffee or be much more careful with their superheated coffee.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[blueskies]

Forgot a link.

Re:Why can't he just return it?

[Kohath]

So she would have not gotten 3rd degree burns if she had drank the coffee

What didn't happen didn't cause injury. Someone who got burned drinking it can try suing.

Did they or should they have had knowledge that the average person might spill this coffee on themselves?

Besides drinking it, they shouldn't have to care what people do with it. It's sold for drinking and for no other purpose.

McDonald's is exactly 0% responsible for her spilling the coffee and whatever the results were.

How are you using the word equally?

McDonald's sold it for spilling in exactly the same amount that they sold it for injecting. Zero.

Thousands of people a day spill coffee on themsleves each day while trying to drink it.

That's their problem. It shouldn't be my problem or McDonald's problem.

If they don't want to deal with the consequences of their mistakes, they should be more careful.

PS2 Class-action

[Liselle]

I didn't think history would repeat itself so soon. How many people remember the class-action lawsuit against Sony? They had the infamous "Disk Read Error" on the 1st generation PS2s. If I recall correctly, Sony has to repair or replace the affected systems, even if they are out of warranty (I'm sure someone will correct me if I am mistaken).

Reputable links are pretty sparse, but a quick Google search revealed a FAQ that has surfaced in several places. I usually despise class-action suits, they tend to only make lawyers rich, but as the owner of a failed 1st gen PS2, I have to say this might be a worthy use of it. IANAL, etc.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[destiney]

I took home 3 PS2s before getting one that worked. And even it is so ultra-sensitive to tiny amounts of household dust that I have to clean it 3 or 4 times a year for it to work.

I remember the old days with my Atari 2600. That thing took a beating and never stopped working.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[3terrabyte]

Except the joysticks.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[LanMan04]

I've had my 1st Generation PS2 repaired twice (by Sony via mail, for free). The neat thing is that if any of your games are damaged by the PS2 (I got some beautiful circular scratches ground into the discs, making them very unplayable even on OK PS2s), they cut you a check for the ORIGINAL retail price of all the games. Pretty good customer service, or fear of being sued again.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[ivan256]

I have to be one of the messiest people alive... I never dust. It's obscene. But my PS2 that I got on release day still works great after thousands of hours of play time. I do have to run the lens cleaner disc through it every 6 months or so, but so what? You had to clean the Atari 2600 and original NES too. Don't you remember those cleaning kits they used to have? The cartridge wiggle? I don't think the good old days were as good as you remember.

Take care of your stuff. If you've gone through four PS2s, you're doing something wrong.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[hh1000]

I had expected lower quality from Microsoft, so it doesn't surprise me.

The irony is that Sony has somehow portrayed itself as a quality company.

Sony should stand behind it's defective product. Even the people at the Sony store admit the failure rate is 40%!!!! on PS2.

But you have to give the people at Electronics Boutique credit for smarts. They took a defective product and turned it into a revenue stream by offering an extended warranty plan - so when it breaks you can get a refurbished one.

SHAME on you SONY!

Re:PS2 Class-action

[OverlordQ]

Oh no, 3 or 4 times a year that's just HORRIBLE!

</sarcasm>

Re:PS2 Class-action

[DroopyStonx]

Yep, and you can actually get a free PS2 out of this because they don't require that you send your old one in.

You just need to

1. call in and report the incident to Sony.
2. file a complaint with your state's Attorney General.

When Sony gets the complaint, they will look up your record to see that you did in fact call (and when you call, 99% of the time they'll ask you to send it in and will charge you, just decline).

They will ship your PS2.

Believe it or not, it's that easy... just like with the MS optical mice. You can buy an Intellimouse Explorer and the very next day call them and say it's broken. They'll just up and send ya a new one without question.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[American AC in Paris]

I remember the old days with my Atari 2600. That thing took a beating and never stopped working.

You were lucky.

Mine had a habit of turning "Combat", "River Raid", and "Pitfall!" into "Vertical Lines and Shrill Tone". That game sucked.

...on the upside, this meant I got to play "Blow The Gunk Out of the Cartridge" for free. I also got to play "Whoa, Dizzy!" a lot.

Good times.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[jmole]

I was carrying my original NES down to the basement. Next thing I knew it flew out of may hands, bounced down twelve wooden stairs, hit the cement floor, bounced up and hit the cement wall. Along with it went my Super Mario Brothers 3 cartridge. And to this day both the NES and SMB3 cartridge are still in perfecting working condition.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[0123456]

"I remember the old days with my Atari 2600. That thing took a beating and never stopped working."

I remember we used to pull the cartridges out and quickly push them back in to 'hack' the games by causing it to randomly trash memory locations :).

Re:PS2 Class-action

[rapett0]

Am I just lucky? I have a first generation PS2, that I bought used from Best Buy (open box?), so you know it was not nicely treated even before leaving the store. That was at least, eh, 4 years ago now and its never had an issue, not even one time. Do I have some sort of super PS2?

Re:PS2 Class-action

[wjsteele]

But, the Atari 2600 had no moving parts!

Bill

<RANT>What's with this Slashdot thing where I must wait 20 seconds before submitting... that's just plain stupid! If my response is short, why do I have to wait... and when I hit the back button, it still doesn't work... come on... fix that! Hopefully, this little rant is longer than 20 seconds</RANT>

Re:PS2 Class-action

[destiney]

Yeah, fully disassembled cleanings are quite horrible.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[LoudMusic]

And the cartidges had to be cleaned regularly and the slot they go into had to be dusted regularly also.

But that's all. ...

(:

Re:PS2 Class-action

[NotNormal23224]

One difference was the timing of the PS2 suit, wasn't it filed VERY early on in the systems life? Not saying that MS doesn't have a responsibility if they know of an active defect, which seems to be the case since a number of Xboxers have had out of warranty units replaced/repaired by MS for free (most of them, on TeamXbox forums, said they were nice and patient with the support line staff.) I can't see filing a lawsuit for mass defects on a product 3 years from initial purchase as being even remotely close to valid unless recently purchased units are suffering the same fate.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[nelsonal]

I've had a 2600, NES, and XBox, and while I certainly have to clean the NES cartriges occasionally (or just tweak how they are placed) I don't recall in more than 10 years of use ever doing anything to the Atari to get them to fire up. As another poster said I ran through plenty of joysticks, but games and the deck were fine for a considerable length of time. (I did grow up in a desert which may have explained the long life of my components).
The rumor was that the PS2 was not very tolerant of vertical placement, dunno if it's true but that seemed to be a common

Re:PS2 Class-action

[simcop2387]

I remember the old days with my Atari 2600. That thing took a beating and never stopped working.

you've never had kids, my parents had one, my brother and i played pong, and a bunch of other games, i think one was Keystone Kapers, we broke that thing from overuse (20,000+ hours, and 2 tv's), i've tried to repair it before but with no luck, an emulator is alot easier nowadays

Re:PS2 Class-action

[visgoth]

Computers and consoles these days can't take any abuse. I have a perfectly functional vic20 that was FLOODED with water. I had taken a day trip and left the windows open, the commodore and its tv were located nearby. A pretty serious storm rolled through and the rain pooled up on top of everything near the windows. I got home and poured the water out, let it air dry for a few days and the bugger worked fine.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[falcon5768]

Am I the only one who never had a disk read error on his 1st gen PS2???

Seriously it took 3 years for it to fail and it took me 1 hour to replace the read head.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[Skuld-Chan]

I must be lucky - I had a PS2 from the day they were released (yes I waited all night) - and it still seems to work just fine and I haven't done anything to it. In fact just bought the new GTA/SA game and it works just fine.

Same with my Xbox - I have an original one, bought the day they came out. Still works just fine.

And I do use them both for extended periods of time regularly.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[Phisbut]

I can't see filing a lawsuit for mass defects on a product 3 years from initial purchase as being even remotely close to valid unless recently purchased units are suffering the same fate.

RTFA... The plaintiff, Sean Burke, said his console stopped reading any and all discs after less than a year of use, whether those discs were games, CDs or DVDs. (emphasis mine)

Even though the console was available 3 years ago, the guy bought it recently...

I dunno about California, but up here in Québec, we have laws that force companies to offer a warranty that lasts for "a reasonable time" after initial purchase, based on the price paid for the object. Such things as "90 days parts and service" never hold up in court. Given the price tag of the Xbox, failing after less than a year makes it still under warranty, no need to file class action suit.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[kin_korn_karn]

For all their software failings, MS' hardware has always been pretty good stuff. They contract with good companies to build it and they hire good engineers to design it.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[ZX-3]

I have a super PS2, too! I got mine launch day (US) from Circuit City. I play games often, and it also serves as my DVD player. It has survived many trips in my backpack, and my apartment is very dusty and often humid.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[virid]

I've heard about this quite a bit. I must have been very lucky to still have a working 1st generation PS2.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[cdrudge]

Did I miss the news where morals, ethics, and laws no longer apply to anyone? Oh...that's right. You weren't actually saying to do this, you were just speaking purely hypothetical.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[DroopyStonx]

FYI - it's obnoxious when people spout off their opinion on morals. If you don't like it, don't do it. Simple as that, really.

I'm sure others reading my post are perfectly capable of making a conscious decision on whether or not to follow through with something.

Now, go back to living your life free of any law breaking or moral imperfections.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[sdo1]

Except the joysticks.

Yea, but they were simple to fix. It was those little button contacts on the PCB inside that seemed to fail. Tape a little shim on top of it (or even a couple of layers of tape would work) and you were good to go for another few months.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

-S

Re:PS2 Class-action

[mdfst13]

" Except the joysticks."

Yet they were still tougher than most other joysticks I used. High wear item, like brakes on a car.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[pjp6259]

That seems to be the typical attitude:

1) All lawyers suck.
2) Oh wait, I need a lawyer.
3) Thank god for my lawyer.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[Falrick]

That's funny. "Blow The Gunk Out of the Cartridge" is known as "Deposit Corrosive Agents On Metal Contacts" in my house.

Until recently, I was a devoted to cleaning my nintendo cartridge via a quick injection of air, err, blowing on the cartridges. Then I read a knowledge base article at Nintendo. It said that when you blow on the cartridge you're actually making the problem worse by coating with metal leads with fine particles of spit. Mmmm. Spit.

Makes sense when you think about it. The layer of spit may temporarily make the electrons flow, but a combination of moisture, electricity and metal leads to corrosion. Suddenly Mario explodes into hundreds of tiny blocks on the screen.

I recently pulled out my old NES, which I hadn't played since probably '94. None of my games worked, so I sat down and cleaned the contacts using a cleaning kit that I bought back in the day. I then cleaned all of my games. You've got to clean both or else there's no point. The result? My Nintendo works better now than I can ever remember it working!

Rock on cleaning agents. Now usefull for more than just sniffing punks.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[Tim Browse]

Or, in the immortal words of The Young Ones:

"Quick, Neil - call the Fire Brigade!"
"But you said they were fascists, Rik."
"Well never mind about that now!"

Re:PS2 Class-action

[SnappleMaster]

Droopy... I know you don't understand why I'm saying this but you make me weep for our future.

Sad.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[ivan256]

It's just a rumor.

My PS2 has been vertical the whole time.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[dAzED1]

never had much problem with the sticks, it was the knobs that always broke for me. The tension-spin things...had two controllers off one plug? Or is my memory starting to fail...

Re:PS2 Class-action

[DroopyStonx]

Why, because I told people how to get a free PS2? Shit, you're right! How did I not see that I was single-handedly ruining society? God, I'm dumb!

If you're truly concerned about that, you need to revise what's important to you in life. It's not like I'm telling you to steal money from the crippled children's tray.

As if I have to spell it out for you... people get ripped of all the time. The two items I gave were prime examples of shotty materials that frequently crapped out on people. I don't think you realize how many people they've screwed outta money.

Sony might have a deal as a result of a class action lawsuit to fix broken PS2s, but go ahead and try to get it done. See how long it takes, or better yet, you'd be lucky to get the request through.

If you don't believe in eye for an eye, then fine, that's your choice... but I do believe the consumer should get his every now and then.

I'm sorry you're unable to understand that others may hold a valid opinion that isn't what you agree with! Life is tough, isn't it?

Re:PS2 Class-action

[SnappleMaster]

See? I told you that you wouldn't understand.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[DroopyStonx]

Actually, that is the reason, but in any case, cut your losses and move on.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[American AC in Paris]

True enough. If only I had known this as a ten-year-old...

Re:PS2 Class-action

[MonkeyBoy]

Have you left it in the horizontal position instead of vertical (wide instead of tall)?

Most everyone I know who anally insists on placing their PS2 vertical has had a never ending string of drive problems. My first PS2 died after I did that for a while, my 2nd has been trooping along fine - which I attribute to always leaving it flat.

Just do that, run a lens cleaner through it every year or so (more often if you have pets), vacuum the front grill about as often (ditto), and it should survive until the PS3 is out and cheap.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[isil]

Paddles. They would snap when turned too far.

Man...I could really go for a 4 player round of Warlord right about now... :)

Re:PS2 Class-action

[Oloryn]

I'm sure someone will correct me if I am mistaken

This is Slashdot. Someone will correct you even if you are right.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[NotNormal23224]

Ah, then that would make sense if the unit did break and was purchased recently, from the sound of the lawsuit it was reaching back to 2001, which I found strange, since I would think that the court would have to determine if this was a rampant pattern to go back that far rather than the filer. Now of course the other factors have to be weighed in such as the condition of the unit, and weather or not it was abused (or even opened since that voids the warranty). Those facts we'd have to find out from the logs of the customer's calls to service.

Re:PS2 Class-action

[sjames]

My old C64 seems dead now, but that's after many many years. However, I still have the c64 monitor connected to my VCR. The sound is pretty poor, but the picture is great.

What is the Warranty Period?

[stecoop]

Rest assured that MS doesn't want their Xbox to die after a length of time. As /. has speculated in the past, MS is selling them at a loss. Supposedly, the money is in the support services and gaming. I bet it will get repaired if it is wihtin the warranty period.

Also, MS has rolled out the media center for Xbox. I speculate that MS is trying to enter the Movies Over IP (moops from Seinfeld ;). I thought that Xbox needed a TV turner but now I believe that the new market is going to be TCP/IP movie center rather than Rf coax.

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[TheRealMindChild]

Maybe I am just being silly... but why would an Xbox need a TV tuner when its hooked up to a... TV. Im sure the TV works just fine with what its got

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[erick99]

I agree. Microsoft has typically been very easy to deal with on the hardware side of their business. I have experienced this as a consumer and during 19 years working at MS authorized dealers. For example, if you have a defective mouse, a phone call generally yields a new mouse immediately shipped off to you. I know the cost is low on a mouse, but, it is indicative of my experience. I wonder what happened in the case of this xBox that kept the owner from working with Microsoft on a resolution - the article doesn't say either way.

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[strictfoo]

The warranty period for the Xbox and PS2 (and maybe the Gamecube?) is 90 days parts and labor. Other small electronics have this same warranty period.

Many TVs also have 90 day labor warranties (although they include 1 year parts... but the labor is the expensive part).

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[iocat]

Xbox warranty is only 90 days. Suck0rz. But they do offer an extended two-year one, which you have to buy at the time of purchase I guess. I don't know. I never have had a problem with any hardware, even my 9/9/95 PSX. -Chris

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[Kosi]

Geez, every time I stumble across such stuff, I'm happy to live in europe, our law implies a warranty of 24 months length.

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[Recoil_42]

To record TV. Right now, the Xbox only has A/V *outputs* -- you can only feed video into the TV, not vice-versa.

If you want to use the Xbox as a TIVO, it's gotta have inputs.

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[A beautiful mind]

Yeah, we've got one year of minimum warrantry for stuff like this here in central-yurop. :)

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[the_duke_of_hazzard]

Mine broke. They offered to fix it no questions asked, and sent me a box to send it in. Unfortunately it was so inconvenient to sort out sending and receiving it back again that I thought "sod it" and bought a new one...

They did all they could, though, and it was about two years old at the time, so I don't know what this guy is complaining about... unless it's differentin the states

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[afd8856]

Microsoft hasn't yet replaced the defective browser they put in their product (I'm talking about IE and PNG 24bit transparency). Is this an example of how you should treat your customers? Doesn't this say clearly monopoly?

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[stecoop]

europe law implies a warranty of 24 months

It good that the government has produced the law to protects the citizens from defective products. However, the cost will be passed onto the consumer. The warranties provided are not free. There is a risk and either the company has to allocate money to a risk fund or acquire insurance to cover defective products.

In the US, the cost of the insurance is left up to the consumer that can be purchased from certain vendors - a store such as Circuit City or Best Buy may offer to sell you such insurance if you want it. Most people forgo the cost and accept the risk; thus, reducing the initial cost of the unit. The consumer does enter an evaluated risk but that is a free choice.

The free markets even out. The product is popular and lasts, people buy it. If it continues to break than people avoid it. Which is better? As you might see I am biased towards the Free Market yet I will say that having government law seems popular at your locale.

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[networkBoy]

"it was about two years old at the time, so I don't know what this guy is complaining about... unless it's differentin the states"

It is different in the states. Here after 90 days M$ says send in your unit (at your expense) and $99.00 and we will fix or replace it for you.
-nB

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[Osty]

Xbox warranty is only 90 days. Suck0rz. But they do offer an extended two-year one, which you have to buy at the time of purchase I guess

That's correct, but there is also a range of serial numbers (no, I don't know the range of numbers or the build dates they cover) that XBox support will fix even outside of warranty. The problem comes from having the hard drive. For some insane reason, part of fixing the DVD-ROM (a simple replacement job you could do yourself without even a mod chip, if you were to buy replacement parts) involves wiping the hard drive. Now that many games have moved to being hard drive only (you can't copy their saves from the hard drive to a memory card), and others use very large files (a single KOTOR save game file is larger than the 8MB memory cards you can buy for XBox), that means you're going to be screwed on many games you're playing (and that's assuming that you do shell out for many memory cards to save what you can). Not to mention the huge inconvenience of re-ripping any CDs you've saved to the hard drive (the CD-ripping experience is so poor that I've never bothered to do it more than once).

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[macromegas]

Free market as in the freedom to sell crap? Bah ... there should be a possibility to sue them for crimial abuse of resources considering the sheer mass of electronic left-overs and the problems are already arising as most is simply poison. Europes even some recycling laws applying to all kind of electronics now (and right they are) and thats starting to have an effect on the chinese products already.

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[ikegami]

Nonsense. Every console they sell reduces the cost of overhead (developement, etc) per console, which reduces the cost of each console. Given that they charge more than manufacturing and distribution costs for each console (as required by law), every console they sell either reduces their loss or increases their profit (depending on whether they've crossed the break-even point or not).

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[cdrudge]

The XBox isn't getting a TV tuner to operate as a DVR. It's just an extension from a Windows XP Media Center Edition PC that does have the tuner. It's just a glorified official version of XBMC that has been around for some time and is free (mod chip excluded).

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[koreth]

There is a risk and either the company has to allocate money to a risk fund or acquire insurance to cover defective products.

Or change their manufacturing techniques to make the products less likely to break in the first two years. That's more the point of minimum-warranty laws. The cost will certainly affect the company's bottom line and will be reflected in prices, yes, but it's not a sure thing that the cost will exceed the cost that would have been paid by the company's customers if the law weren't there. (If one out of two widgets breaks, and it raises prices by 5% to change that failure rate to one out of a hundred, then you could argue it's a win for the public.)

I happen to agree that it's better to let people choose their risk level -- if they have ready access to all the pertinent information about the reliability of products from different manufacturers. But companies are not always forthcoming about their products' problems (big surprise) and for a lot of purchases, it's simply not practical to scour the library and/or the Internet doing extensive background research to make a perfectly informed choice.

Even with the law in place, consumers in Europe are free to purchase extended warranties or not, and they're responsible for gathering information about what they're about to buy. Some products are still much better than others. The law simply raises the minimum standard that's expected of companies. It says when you buy a product, you're going to get what you think you're getting, not a piece of junk that'll fall apart as soon as you pull it out of the box.

And even the US has product safety laws, which are really just another aspect of the same thing -- a way of relieving the public as a whole of the requirement to be walking encyclopedias of product knowledge just to function in day-to-day life.

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[TheSunborn]

Wow, that's news to me. Do you have any documentation on what the "proper" css filter actuelly is?

Martin

Re:What is the Warranty Period?

[afd8856]

http://life.org.ro which is a website that I did has this, you can look at the source code of the webpage to see how it's done. Hint: it uses an .htc file.

representation?

[edsarkiss]

'...unreasonably, unconscionably, unusually and unexpectedly short amounts of time,'

is he being represented by Jackie Childs?

Re:representation?

[i_r_sensitive]

He'd have better luck with Jackie Chan...

Set up John Woo as the Judge... ...Now that's a legal batlle!

Re:representation?

[cuzality]

"Your honor, the horrible performance of this Xbox is an infringement on my client's constitutional rights. It's outrageous, egregious, preposterous."

What about Sony?

[DaveCBio]

Bitch all you want about the Xbox, but the PS2 is just as bad and the older models were worse. Between crapped out pickups and fried power supplies quite few people are on their second or third PS2.

Re:What about Sony?

[argent]

The failure rate for hard drives, particularly in a machine that's liely to be perched precariously on a coffee table in a den full of rowdy teenagers, is far higher than for optical drives. Microsoft should have made provision for replacing the drives.

Re:What about Sony?

[DaveCBio]

Warranty does not and should not cover accidents. Lot's of electronic only have 90 day warranties it's a fact of life if you want lower prices.

Re:What about Sony?

[shundi]

I'm with you there... I waited till midnight at Wal-Mart to get mine, and it still works perfectly...

ok?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where to start...

ALL pieces of hardware are known to stop working for some amount of people. That's why people get WARRANTIES. The most common reason for things to stop working is due to misuse... e.g. putting it on the carpet so it collects dust.

Why do we have a slashdot story on a piece of hardware that stopped working? and why XBox (rhetorical question)? why not apple? i'm sure a fair amount of macs stop working within a year as well.

My computer stopped working after 6 months... what did I do? I sent it in to get it repaired... for FREE because of a warranty (i'm guessing XBox has a 1 year warranty, at least... but i don't know).

It made me angry that it was such an inconvenience to send it in, but you don't see me filing a freaking lawsuit about it. let alone class action.

Re:ok?

[EastCoastSurfer]

putting it on the carpet so it collects dust.

So where else do you put a game console that is supposed to hook to your TV? Do I need to build a clean room data center just to play video games now?

Even xboxes/ps2 placed on an entertainment rack still get dusty. Every other device on my entertainment rack seems to work fine, why should a game device be any different?

Re:ok?

[PitaBred]

You're a well-trained little consumer, aren't you?
Gone are the days of actually making robust products, no, we'll give them warranties. Chances are that even if it does break, people won't hit companies up for the warranties, especially if they're limited time. It's a profit increasing mechanism.
Ever seen the movie Tommy Boy? Warranties on brake pads? A warranty does a fat lot of good if the brakes fail. Give me a well-built product any day, even my consumer electronics. Enough of this throw-away crap.

Re:ok?

[matth1jd]

Yes all hardware does stop at sometime for some people but from what I know this is a fairly common problem.

Why is there a story on /.? Probably because it involves Microsoft.

I'm about 95% sure that the XBox warranty is 90 days long. You pay for a extra for a long term warranty.

I believe that there is reason to expect hardware to last longer than a year, after all most computers come with warranties that last at least a year, and an xbox is essentially a computer running a stripped down version of the Windows XP Kernel.

Do I think there should be a lawsuit over this, eh maybe not, but it'll be interesting to watch!

--JM

Re:ok?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

You are guessing XBox has a 1 year warranty? IMO, it should have a 1 year warranty, minimum, but a lot of consumer electronics only have a 90 day warranty, or 90 days labor, 1 year parts which is just as useless as often the cost of fixing the device is 80%+ of the street price of a new one.

I can't find info on Microsoft's site, but it looks like a 90 day warranty.

Re:ok?

[merphle]

When the PS2 came out, Electronics Boutique was offering a supplementary 2-year warranty (for something like $80), and would cover any and all damages incurred. They'd simply give you a new PS2 if you brought in a damaged one.

I happened to be browsing at the local ElBo one day and overheard a conversation between the store manager and a customer, whom was purchasing a new PS2. The former was trying to convince the latter into buying the warranty. His argument (paraphrased):

Manager: We had someone come in days before his warranty was up. He asked if the warranty covered all damages, regardless of the reason for the damages. I told him that it does. He proceeded to drop the PS2 on the ground and stomp on it, cursing [some game that I can't remember]. He handed the mangled PS2 to me and his receipt. I handed him a brand new boxed PS2.

See? Those warranties really ARE worth it -- stress relief!

Re:ok?

[Anonymous Coward]

My NES still works and I got it in the 80's. I purchased my new XBOX in April and sometimes I get a read error on perfectly good discs. I also have hard drives kicking around my house that are over 10 years old. My mom has even older hard drives kicking around that work (100MB - 250MB). A warrenty should be for people who bought the one in one thousand xboxes that had problem when getting produced. They will find their xbox is broken quickly and get it replaced. I don't expect electronics to stop working after a year nor should I have to buy a warrenty because I think my electronics are going to fail in a year. What kind of company produces products that are that faulty anyway? When my IBM motherboard capacitors started leaking IBM replaced it - no ifs ands or buts and without a warrenty. Why? Because it was their fault for producing faulty hardware. Now that's how these companies should operate. Maybe they should look at how it was built in the 80's and 90's because my hardware still works.

Re:ok?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Addendum: The warranty is apparently 90 days.

That is IMO a shit warranty and unacceptable. I don't care if Microsoft or whoever is losing money on a device, a 90 day warranty is no good.

I don't consider extended warranties to be acceptable either because the stores that try to sell them lie to get people to buy them and and use any trick they can to avoid paying a claim.

Re:ok?

[PitaBred]

I don't want to deal with the hassle of buying another XBox from MS, not to mention the fact that I am still spending money I could use elsewhere, as well as wasting time I could do something much more interesting with than dick with MS and the vendor over warranties. I just want something that works as advertised. But I suppose that's too much to ask.
Go troll somewhere else.

Re:ok?

[arose]

why not apple?

One word: battery. There have been other reports, but this comes up now and again.

Re:ok?

[blixel]

yeah, MS wants you to buy another XBox so they lose another $50... what an evil corporation.

Are they still losing money on each console they sell? The cost of electronics constantly goes down. When consoles are designed, this fact is taken into consideration. Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony may lose $X on the first million consoles they ship. Then they break even on the next million. Every console after that has an increasing profit margin.

But that really isn't even the point. They make money by selling games, X-Box live subscriptions, and peripherals. They will gladly trade a $50 loss on the sale of a new console to keep you buying games for the X-Box. And that is still less of a loss to them than it would be to repair your old product. By selling you a new console, at least they get some money back. By fixing your old one, it's 100% money lost.

I'm not suggesting that they are built to fail 1 day after the warranty expires. That's idiotic conspiratorial thinking. I believe it is in MS's best interest to sell you a console that works for at LEAST the life cycle of that generation of consoles, and preferably a few years beyond. During which time you *buy* lots of X-Box games, peripherals, and subscribe to X-Box Live.

But if it does fail after the warranty period, the manufacturer doesn't have much incentive to fix it. Maybe if you mailed photo copies that showed that you buy at least 10 games per month for the last year, and planned on buying 10 games per month for the next 3 years, that would provide them with enough incentive to fix/replace your console. But short of that, the manufacturer would prefer you just buy a new console. As said before, at least then they get some money back even if the consoles haven't hit an age of profit yet.

And lets not forget the whole concept of market share and units shipped. Those numbers are very important to manufacturers for selling advertising and getting other companies to back your product. Why fix thousands of broken consoles if you aren't legally obligated? Many of those people will undoubtedly buy another one which will increase the total number of units sold.

Re:ok?

[pipingguy]

That's why people get WARRANTIES.

Exactly how far up into my brain do I push the crayons?

Re:ok?

[geg81]

ALL pieces of hardware are known to stop working for some amount of people.

If they stop working for too many people, it's assumed to be an intrinsic design flaw or serious manufacturing problem, and then the manufacturer is responsible above and beyond the warranty.

Re:ok?

[cthrall]

> but you don't see me filing a freaking lawsuit
> about it.

Without freaking lawsuits, freaking warranties will dwindle to a freaking week...and freaking quality will be freaking non-existent.

This is the only way to keep corporations in line.

Re:ok?

[Niobium-41]

The Xbox only has a 30 day warrenty.

Re:ok?

[hendridm]

ALL pieces of hardware are known to stop working for some amount of people. That's why people get WARRANTIES. The most common reason for things to stop working is due to misuse... e.g. putting it on the carpet so it collects dust.

I'd be careful, otherwise Best Buy might sue your ass for infringing on their copyright by posting excerpts from their employee handbook. Aren't you supposed to be dusting shelves, or are you on your lunch break?

Re:ok?

[CAIMLAS]

I had/have an original Gameboy, Nintendo, C64, and Playstation. They all still work.

I haven't bought any of the new consoles, though. Why? Because I shouldn't have to pay extra to have a device - which has a limited useful lifetime of only 3 - 5 years, really - work that long. My gameboy has been dropped from a moving vehicles window and subsequently -run over- by an pickup truck. My nintendo has been dropped off shelves umpteen times. God only knows the abuse the C64 has gone through, and the Playstation has seen abuse by little boys (brother-in-laws) and their sticky hands and "eat while we play" habits for years, and they never had warranties. I know quite a few people with older game systems in just the same scenario - Genesis, NES, SNES, etc. etc.

As far as I know, warranties weren't even offered for such game systems. They simply worked, worked well, and didn't break. Why is it that modern consoles are such crap? Are CDROM/DVD drives such poor quality nowadays in general, do the companies pick the cheapest drives on the market, or are the drives reaching the threshold of their physical limits, reducing their accuracy? What? Nintendo doesn't seem to be having problems with their Gamecube, so it leaves me to wonder...

Maybe it's just that the Gamecube is oriented towards children, while the PS2 and Xbox are more focused on teens and young adults - who have much more expendable money than younger kids, and can thus afford the loss (and have likely grown accustomed to such inadequacies). Washers, dryers, fridges, and microwaves don't die like that. Game systems shoudln't either (especially when they're something that gets increasingly difficult to replace as time goes on, contrary to a fridge, TV, etc.)

Re:ok?

[anon*127.0.0.1]

If a consumers console breaks, and you refuse to fix it for them, there's a good change that the replacement unit they buy will be from another company. If I've owned an XBox for a year, I've probably bought and played all the most popular games already. If it failed on me suddenly, and if I was slightly irked at MS and whoever else because the unit was barely a year old, I'd certainly give serious consideration to buying a PS2 and trading in all my old XBox games for PS2 games. GTA:San Andreas... MMMMmmmmm....

Re:ok?

[kuma_act]

Well, I purchased the extended warranty on my XBox when I bought it, because I am Entropy Man (tm). Electronics randomly fail around me. Hard drive? Failed in two weeks. My stereo system? One week. My printer? Didn't work when I got it home. My scanner? Didn't work when I got it home. My XBox? Lasted one week, then the DVD drive failed. Honestly, all I do is hook these things up and use as directed! It's not like I'm throwing them around, or beating on them with sticks, or something. Fortunately, I realize I have these evil powers, and so on all of these items, I purchased the extended warranty. When it went bad, I just took it back to the store where I purchased it, and they replaced it. Mayhaps there is a less to be learned for this Plaintiff. Sadly, quality will cost you a bit more.

Re:ok?

[mrgreen4242]

Maybe if you mailed photo copies that showed that you buy at least 10 games per month for the last year, and planned on buying 10 games per month for the next 3 years, that would provide them with enough incentive to fix/replace your console.

I wonder who will be the first company to use this concept like BMG does/did with CDs... "We'll send you a FREE XBox2, all you have to do is buy 1 game now for $50, and agree to buy 6 games at $30-50 during the next 12 months!" It would be worth considering, about a year after launch, especially if the console maker were doing it. They take the loss on the console, get their cut of total games sold, plus get the retailers cut on games sold in the 'program'.

I might sign up for something like that...

Re:ok?

[Queer Boy]

There's no such thing as video game consoles as far as the law is concerned. Nintendo made the law clarify that video game systems are computers and video games are computer software.

I can't remember if it was Tengen vs. Nintendo or a class action that decided this. Google it.

Xbox 2 probably will use flash storage

[Samir Gupta]

Crashing is probably the precise reason why MS is rumored to be not having a HD in Xbox2/Xenon -- putting a hard drive in a console used by kids and likely to be picked up, moved, jolted, dropped, etc. is a bad idea.

Re:Xbox 2 probably will use flash storage

[hh1000]

There are also other benefits, like eliminating that pesky Linux distribution from being installed (www.xbox-linux.org) or to stem the pirating of games by copying them onto the XBOX hard drive.

NEWSFLASH

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has been fixing these problems even if the XBox is outside of the warranty period. I guess Sean Burke was too stupid to realize that MS has a suppost number.

Re:NEWSFLASH

[Atomizer]

I'm too stupid to know what a suppost number is.

This lawsuit

[macshune]

Is like shooting a .22 at Godzilla.

Re:This lawsuit

[Kosi]

You just need more ammo, what's the problem?

Re:This lawsuit

[milo_Gwalthny]

This lawsuit presupposes that the plaintiff believed that a Microsoft product would actually work as expected. To show that, plaintiff would have to have been living in a bubble for the past 20 years.

Case dismissed.

Re:This lawsuit

[stephenMF]

Not Godzilla... didn't you hear? It's just "Zilla" now.

Re:This lawsuit

[rbayles]

That could get under the skin and cause a very bad infection.

Re:This lawsuit

[ikegami]

In the handes of an expert marksman, the .22 could be used to blind Godzilla...

Re:This lawsuit

[ljfrench]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of .22s....

or how about a .22 caliber phalanx?

ljfrench

Warranty?

[LEgregius]

The article says nothing about the warranty on the xBox and if Microsoft is willing to repair or replace the unit. What is the warranty?

Re:Warranty?

[retro128]

The warranty is crap - Only 90 days. Obviously, the two biggest weak points on that thing are the HD and the DVD reader. I never understood why the decision was made to install a hard disk. I mean, it's a console - Kids play with it, and the thing is subject to a few bumps and drops. Not good for an HD. If you don't have the thing chipped and your HD fails you are basically screwed, unless you want to pay blood money for repair. If you're chipped you can just take that 10GB junker out and put in a $50 40GB drive.

As far as the DVD reader goes, there are sites on the net that sell replacement lasers for them and have tutorials for repairing the drive.

Re:Warranty?

[SlashDread]

"The warranty is crap - Only 90 days."

90 days? Holy crap. That wont hold in my country though (Dutch), lots of things are limited to bizarre short warrenty periods here too, but consumer laws dictate that a company must always garantee upto reasonable expectations of the product anyway. 90 days on an piece of electronics? It aint no ounce of cheese! Its -hardware-!
A year is completely reasonable to expect.

"/Dread"

Re:Warranty?

[Hockney Twang]

Speaking of "kids play with it," a friend of mine, in a drunken fight, picked up his Xbox and used it to beat an offending drunkard into submission. Magically, the hard drive survived the savage encounter. In fact, the machine still works fine to this day, despite living in some of the most hostile conditions in which I've ever seen a computer placed.

Re:Warranty?

[moonbender]

Actually, I'm somewhat certain companies in the Netherlands will have a mandatory 2 year warranty, with the exception of certain parts which can't be expected to work that long. E.g. my laptop generally has a warranty of 2 years, with the exception of the battery which only has 6 months on it. I'm not sure what kinds of parts they're allowed to reduce the warranty on, but it's probably defined clearer in the respective laws, and anyway it's fairly rare, the laptop battery was the first computing equipment with that restriction.

Now, I'm German and not Dutch - just half an hour ride away, though :) - so different laws apply, however the original German minimum warranty of 12 months was extended to 24 due to EU legislation, so I assume something very similar will apply to NL.

Re:Warranty?

[retro128]

picked up his Xbox and used it to beat an offending drunkard into submission.

Thank God the Xbox is ok ;)

Re:Warranty?

[MMaestro]

I mean, it's a console - Kids play with it, and the thing is subject to a few bumps and drops.

Considering hardcore gamers are willing to move their $2000+ PC gaming rigs just to SHOW OFF, taking the chance of damaging a $200 console is nothing. Oh my friend works tech support at a university, you should some of the stupidest things people do to their laptops. (Drops and scratches? Please, I've seenen people use their laptop cases as weapons while the laptops were inside and then wonder why the screen got knocked out of place.)

Re:Warranty?

[SlashDread]

You are correct, it depends on the type of hardware. 3 months for a xbox! I bet its legal in the US too, Silly Americans ;-)

"/Dread"

Dear XBOX User

[Letter]

Dear XBOX User,

That's what you get for using the mod-chip.

Letter

Re:Dear XBOX User

[MightyPez]

Heh, with the mod chip, I don't need no DVD drive to play my games!

Re:Dear XBOX User

[thatshortkid]

Dear Letter, With a chipped XBox, you can replace a fried default drive. Not pretty, but neither are lawyers. XBOX User

Re:Dear XBOX User

[kai.chan]

Dear XBox User,

That is what you get for buying a Microsoft product. Make sure to purchase more games to give us more revenue to deter innovation.

Re:Dear XBOX User

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Who signs a letter "Letter"...oh. Your name is Letter? That's got to get confusing.

Internal MS Memo

[gregarican]

Dammit I knew we shouldn't have picked up that lot of IBM Deathstar drives off eBay...

Warranty

[bobbis.u]

Surely X-Boxes are covered by at least a one year warranty? Couldn't this just be a warranty claim? Or is he going to claim "mental anguish" at the loss of his gaming time in the meantime?

I dislike MS as much as the next Slashdotter, but suing them because his particular X-Box broke seems ridiculous. I suppose people could claim that they have suffered with the loss of their saved games if the HD failed, but that isn't the case with this guy.

Re:Warranty

[dartboard]

90 days

Re:Warranty

[mzkhadir]

The warranty on an xbox is 90 days.

Re:Warranty

[Nitwits]

Nope, the Xbox warranty is a generous 90 days. Some lawsuites are frivilous, I feel this on has merit because the Thompson DVD drives used in so many Xboxes ar true pieces of crap - I know about 4 people that had Xboxes with them...3 of the 4 drives dies. Reading online, that's relatively comon.

Re:Warranty

[bobbis.u]

That is truly appalling! I have a lot more sympathy for this lawsuit now.

I'm no expert on consoles, but is that typical? Consoles may be cheap, but you deserve more support for your money than that.

If there is such a problem with devices

[jaguar5150]

perhaps M$ should consider a voluntary recall. This would save a lot of money, would it not? (lawyer fees, etc, etc.) Possibly OT - I have a 1st gen PS2 with that problem starting to appear, and if someone has any insight on whether or not I can still have something done about fixing this at Sony's cost or am I out of luck at this point?

Re:If there is such a problem with devices

[Lehk228]

I beleive Sony's response was the same as their response to overheating issues with the original playstation, repeated denials and refusal to do warantee repairs at their expense.

bad news

[Anonymous Coward]

this makes my ancient Nintendo64 game cartrages sound sweet...

don't laugh, mine still works :^)

PS2 owners should follow suit...

[kasek]

if this is successful, PS2 owners should pursue similiar damages against Sony. My PS2 stopped reading older games and some DVD movies. Having read about problems like this before, i knew what needed to be done. Fix it myself, since Sony won't recognize it as a defect in the system and repair it for you. Unless you want to shell out a ton of dough for shipping and repair costs, which almost cost as much as a new PS2 would. It is a common issue with the PS2s, and its simple to fix. Yet sony wont accept the responsibility for it.

Re:PS2 owners should follow suit...

[Cyph]

I believe there's been a class action suit against Sony for this exact reason already. They settled by giving free repairs for PS2s with DREs (disk read errors). Everyone I know has been able to get free repairs for DRE-related problems when their PS2s failed. You do have to pay for shipping, however.

Not my fault he's slow

[Anonymous Coward]

"his XBox system stopped reading discs (games or otherwise) after less than one year of use"

Numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in retail, for a company that sells both x-boxes and PS2s. I know there are a lot more PS2s than X-boxes, but I probably see 20 PS2s to every X-Box being returned due to being defective, and we honor manufactuer's warranty. I know that PS2s have had cooling problems in the past too, but I've never heard anything about a specific reliability issue with X-Boxes. Basically, are there any numbers or points that show otherwise?

Re:Numbers?

[KyleJacobson]

The reason people dont bring in their X-Boxes is because they dont want them fixed, I know I would never take mine in if its broke... In fact, I think mine might be broke, too scared to touch the thing, might eat me :/

Re:Numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. For the past five years I've run a small import/mod/repair shop. PS2 repairs have kept me in business for the past two years. 20 to 1 sounds about right, although I must admit I've started seeing more Xboxes in the past 3 or 4 months. It's probably only about 10 to 1 now.

Re:Numbers?

[mdfst13]

"It's probably only about 10 to 1 now."

Isn't that roughly the installed units ratio? I.e. there are roughly 23 million PS2s and only about 2 or 3 million XBoxes IIRC. You should see more PS2s than XBoxes just because there *are* more PS2s than XBoxes.

Have 4 Xboxes...some drives are just crap

[FerretFrottage]

Among the first things an xbox modder does is check out the dvd drive. Generally speaking, the phillips drives are the worse. The thompson drives can be okay, but the samsung drives are considered to be the best because they will allow for the widest reading range of media (cd-r, dc-rw, dvd-r, etc.)

In my experiences, the phillips drives are the hardest to read with, even just slightly scratched or dirty dvds give it problems...the thompson and samsung drives are able to read the same discs with no problems most of the time (some discs are just play unreadble). My thompson drive will read cd-rw disks but only from select media vendors, the samsung drive seems to read everything (hence the reason I've upgrade the 2 phillips drives with samsung drives).

Re:Have 4 Xboxes...some drives are just crap

[bandrzej]

I'm in the same Xbox modding boat with 2 Xboxs. The DVD drives in these things *DO* matter. There is a mod to put your own DVD-ROM drive in, but if you have a samsung, you should have no problems. In addition, Xbox's only have a shitty warranty of only 90 days. You crack it open, warranty is gone. Why be an idiot and sue when you can just fix it yourself?

Re:Have 4 Xboxes...some drives are just crap

[pipingguy]

In my experiences, the phillips drives are the hardest to read with, even just slightly scratched or dirty dvds give it problems...the thompson and samsung drives are able to read the same discs with no problems most of the time (some discs are just play unreadble). My thompson drive will read cd-rw disks but only from select media vendors, the samsung drive seems to read everything (hence the reason I've upgrade the 2 phillips drives with samsung drives).

I'm with ya buddy. Back a long time ago we had similar problems with Eyeball Mk 1. It wouldn't read document7 and had to be replaced by a newer version.

Re:Have 4 Xboxes...some drives are just crap

[Mhtsos]

Is there a way to know by the serial number? It would be great when buying a new Xbox so you can check before you buy what kind of drive it has.

At least his didn't catch fire!!

[gosand]

A friend had his son's Xbox catch fire. I don't know if there was actual flame, but there was snapping and smoke. Of course, calling MS support, he found out that the warranty was voided because he opened it up to see what might have burned up. So he is basically SOL, and has to buy a new one if he and his son want to make use of the games they bought. He can certainly afford it, and he actually bought another one the next day. But he checked on the net and I guess this wasn't the first time this has happened. I think the PS blew out or something. Kind of scary.

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[TravisWatkins]

The same thing happened to me. The Xbox would pop and crack but I never smelled anything burning. After an hour later it got really bad and a little bit of smoke even came out. I opened the box to see what was burning. The power supply was completely fried and of course Microsoft wouldn't repair it.

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[Nitwits]

You might contact UL. UL tends to be VERY interested in household products that show signs of fire. At the very least, it will probably get you a new Xbox. It might get an Xbox recall.

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[micromoog]

Next time it happens, move your valuables outside and let the motherfucker burn the house down. Be sure to get it all on videotape.

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[Xugumad]

Can I just say, I'm sympathetic, but electronics have had their warranties voided if you open them up for as long as I can remember...

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[Swanktastic]

It's people like that which make me happy to get the hell out of this country with it's rapidly declineing school systems.

The ironing of this sentence is killing me...

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[evilmousse]

I had this happen to me, but luckily I was able to fix it. As soon as I connected power, there was a small boom, and smoke came out the back of the xbox. Honestly I don't blame the xbox--I'm pretty sure there's something funny about the power in the place it happened (for other reasons). However, all I did to fix it was open the xbox and scan the board, and power source. When I looked at the power source, I saw what looked like formerly 3 identical big contact points, the center one now being a smoldering hole. I filled it back up with solder to match the other 2, and voila, my xbox has been back working for 6 months now. Your mileage may vary, I make no claims to really know what I'm doing on a circuit board.

-g

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[SoTuA]

The ironing of this sentence is killing me...

The ironing is fine, but the starch is a bit over the top.

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[Jorrit]

Well except for computers. You have to be able to open those to insert new cards and stuff like that.

Greetings,

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[Phishcast]

Reminds me of the scene from Fight Club. Replace "cars" with "xboxes".

A (Number of cars in the field) x B (Probable rate of failure) x C (Average out of court settlement) = X. If X is less than the cost of a recall then we don't do one.

I've never heard of an XBox catching fire, but I'm sure some version of this equation is applied to these situations.

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[geg81]

Say that the smoke and fire scared you so much that you threw it out the window; that's when "it must have popped open". You would gladly send them the pieces if they like. They can hardly argue with that...

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[Overzeetop]

Oh, your friend should know better. I've learned that this is the time when you put on your best dumb-blond smile, walk into the store where you bought it, and say, "I don't know, it just stopped working." I've yet to get much resistance when pleading ignorance on a CE item. OTOH, trying to suggest the type of failure that mimght have occured is almost always greeted with suspicion, and often ends in an argument about how (whatever it is that went wrong) is the consumer's fault and is not covered under warranty.

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[NeoSkandranon]

No you don't.

Most (all?) ready built computers come with a sticker over the case that clearly says you void the mfr warranty if you break it. Problem is as you said, if you want to expand. Best buy told my father "Just bring it back here instead of emachines" but of course he didnt buy the extended warranty (all we needed to open it for was to upgrade the ram) so if it breaks he's SOL.

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[stanmann]

Actually, if you read the sticker it may say nothing of the kind. Every sticker I've seen APPEARS to say that, but upon further examination what it actually says is that Upgrades are not covered by warranty. NOT that upgrading voids your warranty. YMMV, but that has been my experience.

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[TarrVetus]

Ok, this is pretty off topic, but I just have to throw this in:

A guy I know had his little brother shove a giant chocolate-chip cookie into his PSX. The guy was in another room when the kid did this, so he was startled by a noise that sounded like a lawn mower. He dashed into the room to see bits of cookie spewing out of the Playstation and the kid cackling with glee. Guess what? It didn't play games anymore.

Needless to say, the warranty didn't cover that.

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[SnappleMaster]

Agree. Or just say "I jumped up and down on it to put out the fire. In my workboots." If they ask for the pieces, put on your workboots and get busy.

Some people just have NO imagination.

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[AK Marc]

Because we'd ship something that was wired not to even be able to start up...

Well, you haven't bought any Cisco routers recently. I've had a 50% failure rate with the latest batch of Cisco 1711 routers. Things not screwed down that were rattling around inside and breaking things off. The screws were completely missing.

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[mgblst]

Ah, so that is why the Xbox is so big. Each one comes with there very own PS (PlayStation).

It all makes sense now.

Re:At least his didn't catch fire!!

[lachlan76]

I have 5 pre-built computers, from 4 different shops, and _NONE_ of them have any restrictions of that kind.

If you get computers from Dell or A&R, and others like that, then there is something like that, but if you buy from the smaller shops, which try to cater for nerds, then you get a warranty no matter how many times you open the case.

unconscionably...?

[cymraeg]

i return my hardware when it develops a conscience.

the last thing i want is my xbox wondering about anything but its own meagre existence.

And if they win!

[Ambient_Developer]

We might get a whole 18 dollars back. While the lawers get millions.

Re:And if they win!

[ackthpt]

We might get a whole 18 dollars back. While the lawers get millions.

Not likely. Microsoft Home Entertainment Division will probably offer coupons for exchanges and a free game or something. Once they've got you hooked, you think they're going to let you get away?

Re:And if they win!

[lowe0]

Hey, $18 is almost the $30 or so it'll cost to replace the drive. I probably wouldn't complain if they sent me the money.

And I'll bet MS is getting the drives cheaper than we are - perhaps they should just send all the out-of-warranty owners a drive replacement kit instead?

Another reason to be glad I didn't get one

[ackthpt]

Another reason to be glad I didn't get one.

Also, this is the kind of pre-Christmas advertising lots of money can't downplay.

"mom, my xbox brokeded... *sniffle* I can't kill people in games now. *whimper*"
"WELL! We'll just sue that Mr. Gates, how dare his company sell a shoddy product!"

DVD Drives failing is not microsoft fault

[mzkhadir]

DVD drives are thompsons drive which are prone to failing, I got a warranty on my xbox, lasted me one year and got it replaced at best buy.

Re:DVD Drives failing is not microsoft fault

[mdfst13]

And who bought that brand of DVD drive? I'm thinking that Microsoft may have had something to do with it. Just a guess.

Anti-Piracy measure.

[Nom du Keyboard]

And this is how Microsoft has prevented him from running pirated games and/or Linux on his XBox. The MTBF of the hard drive probably closely matches the point where the average XBox owner has reached their limit of pre-packaged games for his/her unit and is looking to do more with it.

Fortunately, it still works as a door-stop.

Or maybe it's just a forced upgrade. Nah, Microsoft would never do anything like that.

maybe....

[commo1]

Maybe Microsoft should go back to what it does best: Selling reliable, affordable and cutting-edge software. This hardware thing just isn't panning out as planned. Locution: The act of transforming Captain Picard into Locutus.

Re:maybe....

[PDHoss]

Yeah, the hardware thing has been a disaster.

Re:maybe....

[sqlrob]

What hardware besides Keyboard and Mice has MS not made a loss on?

XBox is losing money, they stopped producing their wireless gear.

Re:maybe....

[rseuhs]

AFAIK, the keyboards and mice are also doing losses (although small ones, not the billions that XBox is causing) and MS sees them as a means of getting customer recognicion - When they see the "Microsoft" logo everytimt they use the computer, they are more likely to buy software from them than from another vendor.

Plain as a day...

[Andr0s]

..is that someone is hogging for publicity. Is there technical grounds for this lawsuit? No. warranty should damn well cover the excuse for the lawsuit, malfunction in no way threatened user's well-being, health or personal safety (withdrawal shakes aside) and compared to the number of XBox systems on the market, it's easy to claim that this is 'acceptable malfunction rate'.

IMO, this guy is trying to get a spotlight, as well as maybe a bit of money for a settlement - perhaps Micro$oft would be happier to pay him off quickly than to get some (more) negative publicity. Then again, with all the negative stuff about M$ circulating these days, what's another minor hardware-related issue? They'll just blame whoever manufactured the drives.

Re:Plain as a day...

[Anita Coney]

"Is there technical grounds for this lawsuit?"

You answer no. But the answer is maybe. You may be right, the plaintiff may be right. But until a jury decides, we won't know.

I do know one thing for certain, I have quite a few friends who had to spend good money replacing their Xbox DVD drives.

Re:Plain as a day...

[Anita Coney]

I think you're missing the point because you might not be familiar with the problem: The Xbox DVD drive is prone to failure. Warranties are good for covering unexpected problems. But this suit (apparently, because I haven't seen the complaint) alleges that Microsoft knew, or reasonably should have known, about the problem, but continued producing the product regardless. When a company knowingly produces a faulty product you can sue for treble (a fancy pants way of saying triple) damages, regardless of the warranty, because the standard is different.

You might disagree with the law, but the law is what it is.

He gets my support

[Vampyre_Dark]

"The Thomspon Drive" is well known to XBox players. They break down after a few months of use, and microsoft has pretty much thrown their hands up in the air at the whole situation. In all these years they have never done or said anything about it. The only thing you can do is send it in for repair, at which they charge you for it full price as if it was your own fault.

That would be fine if a few failure, but this is a failure on a massive scale. Almost everyone who has an XBox with a thompson drive has a failing system. Mine has recently started to break down, and I'm lucky the new Baldur's Gate game has a save point every 2 minutes, because I had to retstart the machine 20 times in a span of 45 minutes the last time I played.

There goes a Halo 2 sale.

Re:He gets my support

[ad0gg]

I have both original xbox(bought 1st day), and psx2(bought 1st day). They easilly have built up thousands of hours of usage. Between me and my other roommate and collection over a 100 games, we never experienced any problems with both. We have experienced lot of software glitches, "ready to rumble" psx2 crashes on a regular basis and "morrowind"(xbox) my saved game became so large it no longer works. I had problems with crimson sky crashing, but then realized it wasn't smart idea to put the xbox on top of our dvr, too much heat. And it stopped crashing when I moved it by it self.

Only 1st hand account of problems with a gamesystem is my friends psx2 stop reading discs, he took it back under warranty and got a new one and hasn't had a problem since.

Re:He gets my support

[NotNormal23224]

My Thompson lasted for almost three years of heavy usage without a single dirty disk error until recently. I abused the hell out of that drive, used it for all my DVD movie playbacks, rarely (once durring the past 3 years) cleaned it. The only nice thing I did for my luanch Xbox was rarely move it (only uprooted it fro 3 lan parties and a vacation). The drive recently started having problems so since my system was so far out of warranty and despite hearing tales of folks who called MS and got their units replaced for free despite the long time owning the box based soley on the drive, I decided to fix it myself with a Samsung 616T drive. I been through the early PS2 days and held off purchasing that system until last year because of plethora of instant death reports I've heard about the early units, picked up a Gamecube second hand from a co-worker, so I have no biased in the system wars. Bottom line is all manufacturersget defective units, the most complaints I've heard have been on Sony, then Microsoft, and actually very few for my dust collector (the Gamecube waiting patiently for the next Zelda). I don't see what this guy or anyone with year + old elcectronics expect from a company. When it get's older than the warranty they really aren't to blame (that's why the biggy electronic stores pester folks to buy extended plans, I don't put faith in those, but for average folks they help). I don't know what this gent can expect beyound maybe getting a replacement unit, which from what I hear if folks are nice to support folks they have been more than happy to do so up to at least a few months ago despite age of the launch units.

Re:He gets my support

[Vampyre_Dark]

When the xbox was manuafactured, they had 3 different companies supply the DVD drives. You either got a Samsung drive, a phillips drive, or a shitty Thompson drive. The age of the system has nothing to do with it.

Only 1st hand account of problems with a gamesystem is my friends psx2 stop reading discs, he took it back under warranty and got a new one and hasn't had a problem since.

The problem is that these shitty drives last just long enough for the warranties to run out in most cases.

I had one of these drives..

[Recoil_42]

Microsoft fixed mine for free after i complained, but many people have problems with these drives, and i'm very happy that this guy is suing MS.

The problem stems from the Thomson drives used in the Mexican factories -- the chinese factories use Philips and Samsung drives which have no problems, but Thomson drives are notorious for failing in the Xbox community.

Just one look at the official xbox forums reveals hundreds of complaints about dirty disk errors, and on eBay and Xbox parts dealer websites like llamma.com, DVD lasers are the most often sold parts.

From what i understand, the drives themselves aren't really defective -- they're built fine, the problem is that the resistor on the laser is set too high, and as a result, the laser is too weak to read the disks -- thomson drives refuse to read CD-Rs, for that very reason.

Microsoft still won't acknowledge that this problem exists, but over the past few years, they've slowly but surely shifted to using more samsung drives, and less thomson drives, so i'm sure they're at least aware of the problem internally.

My old Mexico-Thomson Xbox works fine now after the repairs -- they replaced the drive with another thomson, which has given me no problems since. But it still doesn't read CD-Rs, whereas my Chinese-built Philips xbox has no qualms whatsoever reading the crappiest of CD-Rs..

Re:I had one of these drives..

[Capt_Troy]

Same problem here. MS fixed it for me for free in what was perhaps the smoothest customer service experience I have ever had.

They said it was a manufacturing defect and fixed it for free. I haven't tried to get it to read CD-Rs.

Re:I had one of these drives..

[Recoil_42]

Actually, i had to call them 8 times, contact the better bureau, and make 'nice threats', but yeah... whatever works for you... :P

Re:I had one of these drives..

[rikkards]

Is there any way of finding out which DVD drive your XBox has without voiding the warranty? I too have been getting "The disk may be dirty" errors every once in a while. I only bought it about a month ago.

Re:I had one of these drives..

[Keeper]

Yes. Eject whatever disk you have sitting in it and look at the tray.

http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Repairs/xbox_dvd_vers io n_comparison.htm

Re:I had one of these drives..

[Standmic]

How about being able to tell at time of purchase? I'm in the market for either ps2 or xbox (leaning xbox) and don't want to buy one with a shitty drive.

Re:I had one of these drives..

[Recoil_42]

Look for an Xbox with the last two numbers of the serial number being 06. Those are made in China, and are usually Samsungs or Philips. 05s are good too, but those are mostly Philips (nothing wrong with philips at all, but samsungs are slightly better -- so an 06 is preferable, but don't shy away just because all the store has are 05's)

Personally, my Philips is an 05, and my Thomson is an 03 or 04, i can't remember.

Re:I had one of these drives..

[Standmic]

Thanks!

Re:I had one of these drives..

[Standmic]

Thank you!

Re:I had one of these drives..

[Deliveranc3]

Sigh, mine is sketchy but I own a cracked Xbox... I guess I shouldn't be too upset I can connect another drive or go over the network... but I'd like some money.

Re:I had one of these drives..

[rikkards]

I found that shortly after posting. I checked and I had a Thompson drive. I ended up buying a used game yesterday from Electronics Boutique and renting one from Blockbuster. Neither would play on it. I ended up going to where I bought it and told them about the class action lawsuit and they were nice enough to replace the one I bought with a new one. As it was after the typical 30 day return policy I was supposed to contact Microsoft but they took it instead and labeled it as a defect and gave me a new one.

For the first time I have got an 2 year extended warranty (bought it today) and I think it may actually have been a good idea

Thanks for the help!

Re:I had one of these drives..

[rikkards]

Oh and the new one is a Philips and can read the new games that my old one wouldn't

Why not the same thing for Windows ME?

[toetagger1]

Sign me up!

Re:Why not the same thing for Windows ME?

[bleckywelcky]

My brother (also a fairly technical person) bought me a copy of Windows ME for my birthday one time (before he realized it was a piece of crap). I already knew ME was a piece of crap ... needless to say, I never even removed the shrink-wraping from the box. I meant to return it, but it has been a while now; perhaps I could sell it on eBay...

In Soviet Russia..

[eagle3fox2]

..Microsoft sues you! ....oh wait

Re:It's Microsoft, which means of course:

[Phoenix-IT]

I was joking actually, not trolling.

My experience

[thesandtiger]

My Xbox stopped reading discs a couple of months after I got it. Other Xboxen were able to read the discs, just mine had the error.

I got mine replaced for free, and paid only the shipping costs. So, it wasn't any kind of unreasonable situation, MSFT refusing to support their product, at that time - they just replaced it.

However, it's been awhile since then, and I imagine that at some point they saw this was a much bigger problem, and at that point shifted into a different mode.

Presumably, some number cruncher figured out that the number of people who'd just cough up or forget about it compared to the people who'd demand a freebie or sue would work out in such a way that it was to their advantage to handle it this way rather than issue a recall/replacement announcement.

Re:Class action, huh?

[InfiniteWisdom]

So now you're hoping for a -1 off-topic?

NES

[o0congee0o]

Anybody remember the bad contacts on the old front loaded NES. The famicom didn't have that problem. Stupid design. Can I sue for all the times I injured myself by jamming the cart in with excessive force? Because it only works when you use excessive force. but you gotta give it to the NES, it still works after all the abuse I unleased upon it.

Point taken XBOX owner

[SetupWeasel]

But why isn't anyone suing Sony for the same thing?

I wish those console sales trackers would publish statistics on reliability. I know it would be impossible to do it perfectly. Maybe do a test study to get some idea, because I have a feeling that the true market share numbers are much different than the % purchased that they give now.

return it to the store

[rnd()]

Just return your x-box if it breaks. Don't demean yourself by claiming all sorts of absurd damages.

mine croaked

[dmh20002]

the dvd laser in mine went out after about 9 months. the cost for a do it yourself repair was about $100. since the drives have a special pinout. So I just gave up on it and stuck with PS2.

i still have the useless hulk so I hope this suit goes somewhere. but probably I will get a $10.00 off coupon for MS products and a few lawyers will get even more rich.

The Microsoft Brand Promise:

[vettemph]

stop working after minimal usage, after unreasonably, unconscionably, unusually and unexpectedly short amounts of time

What did this guy expect????

Only an idiot would think that "The Microsoft Brand Promise" was something other than that.

XBOX DVD drive problems

[rufus t firefly]

I had a friend who bought an original XBOX (v1.0), and after using it for a few years found that the DVD drive would only sporadically read discs.

Upon taking the case apart and starting the box, I found that the top plate of the DVD drive had warped over time, and was no longer pushing the top spindle down on the disc. This was causing the disc to fail to spin with the motor. It was fixed by removing the top plate of the DVD drive and bending it back into place, then using some foam to sit between the top of the XBOX case and the top plate of the DVD drive. As hacky as this sounds, it actually works, and his XBOX hasn't given him any problems of that nature since.

I wish I had bothered to remember the brand of drive. In their defense, I don't think he ever left the XBOX off ...

Re:XBOX DVD drive problems

[dema]

That's not suprising. While working at a used video game store, I saw the same type of thing happen with PS2's (and we got XBOX's with it as well). The temporary solution for most people was to simply flip the system over and it would actually work much better, although that wouldn't apply as well for XBOX's.

In their defense, I don't think he ever left the XBOX off ...

I think that's a very important point. The systems that displayed these problems the most were ones that people would just leave on all the time.

Re:XBOX DVD drive problems

[greg_barton]

As hacky as this sounds, it actually works...

Hey, I once fixed my mom's Mac by wedging a dime between the motherboard and the case. (There was some odd contact going on there.) That worked for about four years, until the beast was replaced. :)

Hrm? Defective what?

[SkankhodBeeblebrox]

I have a Thompson drive in my xbox, and I have had absolutely 0 read errors... Of course, I play all of my games from the HDD, and never use the optical drive at all :)

Outsourcing...

[kevx45]

All I have to say is this is the sort of thing that happens when you outsource to Mexico. I mean, c'mon folks. They built THE Volkswagen Beetle for 30 years after they took it off the market. Or something like that. Anyhow, I know people who have sent there XBox's in and the same thing happens a year later. Freakin' figures... Microsoft.

Re:Outsourcing...

[FurryFeet]

Read. Comprehend. Post.
The Xbox is not failing. The Thompson drive inside is failing. And, yes the Thompson drives are made in China.
Idiot.

Most Likely

[OverlordQ]

The plaintiff, Sean Burke, said his console stopped reading any and all discs after less than a year of use, whether those discs were games, CDs or DVDs.

He probably scratched the hell out of the lens.

XBOX has the worst warranty ever...

[xarius76]

3 Months from date of purchase. Can you imagine buying a PC that was only warrantied for 3 months against any and all defects or failures?

Fails in less than a year?

[krunchyfrog]

...and people make webservers out of those? Sorry, I'll stick to my good ol' RH webserver.

Unless it goes class action

[hotspotbloc]

Is like shooting a .22 at Godzilla.

Unless it goes class action then it's like one person (ok, not a person, a lawyer) shooting 100k .22 rounds at Godzilla at one time. Then the legal staff will feed on it's rotting carcass.

My PS 2 just stoped working

[gremlins]

I have never heard of xbox's breaking but I have heard a whole lot of horror stories about ps2's just dieing and i just got that first hand. I haden't played my playstaion 2 in a while and I saw GTA: San Andreas was out so I bought it only to turn on my playstation 2 to see squiggly black lines. Now I got a game that I can't play (and a bunch of others) and a playstation 2 that i can only hear sound on. Oh and it works some times but it suddenly reboots. Consoles suck, I wish these companies would test these things more instead of rushing them out the door to beat the other guys. ps. if you know what is wrong with my ps2 and how to fix it please inform me, i don't want to shell out another $150 for a ps 2 that will be replaced fairly soon with newer consoles

Palm

[nuggz]

And your palmpilot was made where (mine is mexican)
My car has over 75k miles and it hasn't had problems.
I think they're still building the new beetle (and lots of other VWss in Mexico). Actually I think many of the major carmakers have plants in Mexico.

Re:Palm

[pknoll]

The New Beetle and the Jetta are assembled in Mexico, from parts manufactured all over the world. The Golf and Passat are made in Emden, Germany, again from parts manufactured all over the world.

kevx45 (the grandparent) is either badly misinformed about manufacturing in Mexico or a deliberate troll; the old-style Beetle was a good car and remained one throughout its life, regardless of where it was built.

To reinforce nuggz's point; manufacturing has become very global in nature and will continue to do so. There's no such thing as "Buy [Local/National]" anymore.

It happened to me too...

[JojoLinkyBob]

I had the same problem, too, then I discovered this huge web forum and discovered that I....wasn't alone :|

Following the forum's advice, I notified Microsoft of the problem, and they "unofficially" replaced it for free, even though it was out of warranty.
My take on it was that Microsoft clearly knew about the problem early on, but figured it was much cheaper to make discrete replacements to complaining customers, than formally announce a recall.

Re:It happened to me too...

[dougmc]

To quote a phrase ... Mod parent up.

it was much cheaper to make discrete replacements to complaining customers, than formally announce a recall.

Recalls are typically done for safety issues -- this hardly qualifies. Applying The Formula (scroll down to `I'm a recall coordinator.') will pretty much guarantee that they're unlikely to do a recall on something like this unless it because a big embarassment (a class action lawsuit like this has the possiblity of doing so, but it seems unlikely.)

But apparantly, if you ask nicely, Microsoft will fix them for you for free, even out of warranty. And I'll bet the guy who filed the lawsuit knew this when he did so. My guess is he wants more than to just get his X-Box fixed.

Re:It happened to me too...

[IKnwThePiecesFt]

I had this issue as well, but I can tell you, they didn't just fix everyone's xboxes "under the counter". I read lots of forums about this. Apparently it was 50/50 whether or not they would just fix it. I was in the half that was forced to pay.

MS could we get a DVD drive that works?

[xtremeubergeek]

If you go back and look at all the different dirves MS has used since the launch it is obvious they dont know how to come up with a solution. The first generation couldnt read hardly any burned cds and or dvds. Then as it moved to the second to the fourth you began to see an increase in compatibility, but still not what it should be. Now with the most recent version, it will read some burned dvds but forget certain cds!

Re:MS could we get a DVD drive that works?

[mnemoth_54]

The point was not to provide the greatest compatibility, but rather just the opposite! MS requested that the lasers be designed in such a way to not read CDR/CDRW/DVDR/DVDRW, but still manage to read most retail pressed media.

This, I believe, is the root cause for the premature failures of the drives. The drives that most closely met what MS wanted (Thompson), are also the drives that most commonly fail . The drives that have the least problems (Samsung), can read the highest varity of disks. I think this is due to the fact that they have a retail brother (616T) and thus share many of the same parts.

I feel sure MS was warned of this possibility when they made the requests to manufacturers, and probably assumed that QC on retail discs would be high enough to not pose a problem. Just another case of copy protection at the cost of quality, or in this case longevity, of the product.

IMHO MS knowingly and intentionaly used substandard hardware with an unreasonably high rate of failure, and should be held responsible for it.

Just fix it yourself

[vrone]

Having helped many people replace a faulty DVD drive on the XBOX, I can say with confidence that anyone with $32 and a couple of torx screwdrivers can easily get their Xbox going again.

Step one: Purchase a new replacement drive on eBay from this guy. (He always has an auction running, even though this one is about to end). Cost: $24 + $8 S+H
Step two: Open up your xbox (many tutorials available on xbox-scene.com)
Step three: Replace the drive. You'll also need to remove the front bezel of the old drive and put it on the new one.
Step four: put it back together again.

Time for repair: 15 minutes.

Remote Deletion

[sepluv]

I was hoping this lawsuit was about Microsoft remotely deleting the contents of the hard drives XBox GNU/Linux users.

Re:Remote Deletion

[macromegas]

... yes thats going to be fun. Considering some accusations refer to felonies under german law and the mere fact that it, by its very nature, is a repeated offence that's likely jail time for whomever commanded that specific procedure.

This is a valid suit IMO.

[blackicye]

I'm not sure if it warrants the starting of a class action suit, but I have to concur that the Xbox (as well as PS2) have problems with reliability.

Whilst I haven't had any problems with my PS2 (I was a late adopter, purchased my PS2 ~9 months after US launch)
I did have one friend who experienced the problem of his PS2 ceasing to play DVDs and certain titles because the laser went out of alignment.

The first Xbox I bought (from SoftwareEtc) was DOA, brought it home, and it failed right out of the box, wouldn't boot up. I brought it back and exchanged it at, the second xbox lasted for 10 days, after which it also stopped booting.

The third one I'm presently using has been functioning without problems for almost 2 years, with moderate usage.

Another friend of mine had to recently replace the optical drive on his Xbox, after a year of light usage (10 - 20 hours a month) the drive stopped reading certain games.

None of these systems were modded.

give the people what they want

[Doc Ruby]

You can have it >Cheap, >Good, >Fast. Pick any two.

Re:give the people what they want

[PhrostyMcByte]

Good and fast, please. I can get the cheap from suprnova.

Re:give the people what they want

[rxmd]

You can have it >Cheap, >Good, >Fast. Pick any two.

Or >Sane, >Hot, >Smart, in other circumstances.

Re:give the people what they want

[pipingguy]

Problem is that everyone always wants all three.

Result? Everyone promises top-quality everything (looked at a lame "mission statement" lately?) at zero cost RIGHT NOW.

Hilarity abounds as the true nature of real-life (not just computer) projects emerges, reality (like gravity) strikes yet again.

Does the following sound familiar?

1 Enthusiasm
2 Disillusionment
3 Panic
4 Search for the guilty
5 Punishment of the innocent
6 Reward of the non-participants

Re:give the people what they want

[Kyn]

I got all three. I bought myself a Gamecube. :)

Re:give the people what they want

[anethema]

Sane and hot please

Re:give the people what they want

[evilviper]

Pick any two.

I'll take "Good" first.

Then half of "Cheap" and half of "Fast".

That wasn't very hard.

I bet most people would choose "Cheap" first off, and be happy with it being only partially "Good".

These are the people that keep crappy companies like "PC Chips" alive.

Re:give the people what they want

[Flyboy Connor]

You can have it >Cheap, >Good, >Fast. Pick any two.

Usually followed by:

If it is in computers, pick one.

If it is from Microsoft, pick none.

Re:give the people what they want

[Tropaios]

It's been my experience you can only pick one of those.

Re:give the people what they want

[Phroggy]

Enjoy your job, make a lot of money, work within the law.

Just wild speculation here...

[hencethus]

...but I wonder if Microsoft purposely designed the Xbox's hardware to have a short life to prevent piracy (mod your Xbox, lose your warranty, your Xbox takes a shit, your're screwed).

Free Xbox 2 Game coupon coming...

[ajservo]

I can smell the settlement already.

I'll take one copy of Halo 3 please.

Re:Free Xbox 2 Game coupon coming...

[lukewarmfusion]

It's in the mail. Expect delivery in 4-6 business years.

Re:Free Xbox 2 Game coupon coming...

[NotNormal23224]

ROFLMAO Yes the great Nintendo Anti trust settlement! For all you youngsters out there the N was sued for anti competitve/monopolistic conduct way back, the settlement was a $5.00 coupon sent to Nintendo owners good for their next Nintendo purchase! That was the STUPIDEST settlement I ever heard of since it sold more Nintendo product.

They did.

[mcc]

But why isn't anyone suing Sony for the same thing?

They did.

Re:They did.

[SetupWeasel]

I stand corrected, or sit rather.

What do you expect?

[gone.fishing]

Why, if MS software crashes, shouldn't MS hardware do the same?

I don't own an X-box and really can't weigh in on facts because I don't have any and don't care enough to make 'em up (unlike many of our politicians).

But I can float some questions:
1. Has MS ever delivered a reliable gen 1
product?
2. Is this a through and through Microsoft
product or are they just the marketers
of someone else's (custom) design, built
in a contract manufacturers plant?
3. Why are so many slashdotters buying
Microsoft X-Boxes?

Re:What do you expect?

[mrm677]

1. Has MS ever delivered a reliable gen 1 product?

The first version of Microsoft NT was rock-solid and reliable. I can't remember the first version number off-hand

2. Is this a through and through Microsoft product or are they just the marketers of someone else's (custom) design, built in a contract manufacturers plant?

They are manufactured by Flextonics which is quite reputable. However Microsoft probably speced the design.

3. Why are so many slashdotters buying Microsoft X-Boxes?

Why not? It is a great system. Most cross-platform game reviews that you read (gamespot.com, ign.com, etc) claim that the Xbox version has the best performance and best visual quality.

And here is a reason that will likely get me labeled as a troll: I will assume that you are American. Forgive me if my assumption is wrong. Microsoft is an American company, that employs a substantial number of American citizens, and whose stock is held in mutual funds part of my 401k, my parent's 401k, and numerous other retirement accounts of _normal_ hard-working Americans. Give it some thought before you a) complain about the lack of jobs in the U.S., and then b) purchase Japanese products when there is a comparable U.S. product.

Re:What do you expect?

[gone.fishing]

I am an American but you have to realize that we live in what has become a global economy. Microsoft has it's headquarters here and does employ many software developers here but they are traded on a stock exchange where people from everywhere can and do buy shares of them. Ditto for Sony (although their stock exchange is probably in Japan). For what its worth, I don't own a Play Station either.

From what the other article said, the Xbox is made either in Mexico or Singapore so, the wages paid to the people who build them (an most likely most of the components) are deficit dollars just the same as the Sony Playstation.

Anyway, to a degree, I was kind of making fun of the Slashdotters who love to bash MS by asking the question about why do so many Slashdotters own Microsoft Xboxes. Don't you see the humor in that?

Xbox Drive failure

[Agent_Eight]

My girlfriends Xbox failed earlier this summer. The unit was just under 2 years old. Xbox wanted $120 to fix it eventhough I knew it was just a failed DVD drive. After some research, it turns out that most early Xbox's used a drive manufactured by Thompson. As a general rule the Thompson drives fail at exactly 2 years. I dug around and found as many direct numbers to the support company and harrased them daily for about a week. I finally mentioned the idea of a class action suit ... and like magic, they offered to replace the drive for free with a new warranty to boot. I actually had fun tracking down employees based on personal websites listing resumes.

Microsoft's Dirty (Disk) Policy

[AgentJose1]

Of course I know that hard drives and drives will fail. Especially with drives that use a laser to read the information off the disc, eventually the laser would burn out. It happened to me literally a year and one month after I had purchased the xbox, so my "warranty" had expired...(Maybe it's because I left it on for 80 hours straight once...not always playing but when I would go somewhere I would pause it and just leave it running) But I called up Microsoft and they said "Sure, it'll be $100 + shipping" to fix it! I was like "You're kidding...well, don't you guys have an extended warranty?" "Sure, it costs $50." So I hung up the phone, called back, purchased an extended warranty and then said "I'd like to enact my warranty please." It covers me for 2 years *and* I only had to pay like $8 in shipping. Better than spending $149 clams(at the time) for a new xbox. Normally it would have been more adventageous to throw out the xbox, but I own more than the cost of the xbox in games, most of which I play fairly frequently. What I *do* have a beef with, is the way in which their communicator for xbox live is designed. If you've never seen it, the earpiece/microphone is attached to the headband which holds the unit on your head by a flimsy piece of plastic. So far I've had 2 of them break on me by just picking them up and having the communicator cord snag on something. I was *really* mad about that, because that's not excessive abuse, it's just normal use. I called MS and told them their product was defective, and they said "Well, sorry, there's nothing we can do about it." My solution: Buy a third-party xbox live headset. Logitech sells one for not much more than the xbox one, and it looks a little sturdier. Of course, I need something called "money" to buy one, of which that is really scarce at the moment.

un

[Mr_Silver]

The defective XBox's stop working after minimal usage, after unreasonably, unconscionably, unusually and unexpectedly short amounts of time

I can't believe they missed out understandably, unashamadily, unauthorized, unavoidably and 614 other possibilities!

Like there are people not modchipping x-boxes???

[SpaghettiPattern]

Like there are people not modchipping x-boxes and not upgrading the disk??? It's a strange world (best line in Blue Velvet by Jeffrey.)

Its not that hard to clean

[sgeye]

My Xbox lasted a good 3 years before it started having these problems. It took all of about 10 minutes to fix too. http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Repairs/cleaning_your_d vd_drive.htm

Oxymoron

[erykjj]

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, "unconscionable" is defined as "An unconscionable size, amount, or length of time is too great and is unacceptable". So, it seems a bit odd using "unconscionable" and "short amounts of time" in the same sentence.

and the Sony PS2

[glazed]

How about this POS too. Mine died just out of warranty and Sony was cool enough to send me a refurb which worked for about 9 months. I had to open it and replace the drive mechanism.

I have NEVER seen electronics built so incredibly cheaply. I got it back together and it works, but superglue is holding the PAPER backed wires for the reset and power button. I doubt I could open it again and have it survive.

My PS1 on the other hand is a brick.

I guess with the NHL Lockout Sean Burke...

[arock99]

I guess with the NHL Lockout Sean Burke of the Philadelphia Flyers had to find some hockey to play. When it comes to hockey I guess the XBOX delivers with NHL2k5 :) With nothing better to do he probably had his XBOX turned on 24 hours a day 7 days a week for the last few months. Any Microsoft System is doomed to failure with uptime like that!

We all know

[Alci12]

only Bambi can win a fight with Godzilla.....

Re:We all know

[geg81]

Watch it here. You need to use slowcat or it's over a little too quickly to enjoy.

Re:This should really be cleared up:

[jejones]

I'm curious about where you found a reference to the brewer being defective; no other web site I've seen on the subject has said anything other than that McDonalds kept their coffee hot.

That said, the lady suffered from third degree burns as a result of not thinking. She held the styrofoam cup between her legs and then removed the lid, the main thing keeping said legs from squashing said cup and drenching her in hot coffee, so she could add sugar and cream, for [insert favorite deity here]'s sake!

It's as if you were at your favorite steak restaurant and decided to hold the steak knife under your arm while you used both hands to unscrew the A-1 sauce bottle lid and pour some on the steak--anyone who would do that is a danger to him or herself, and I would say that's a fair characterization of the hot coffee lady.

Sean Burke's free time

[SamSeaborn]

I guess with the NHL lockout, Sean Burke has a lot of extra free time on his hands. ;-)

SLL

Microsoft lawsuit

[demon_2k]

Good on people for taking action however, what are their chances of suceeding???

I mean, Microsoft was been in lawsuits for years. Against other big companies and they managed quite well. So, what are the changes that a few unsatisfied people will win against a huge company which with out a doubt emplays permenant lawyers?

Could this be just a waste of time?

Sort of OT, but help appreciated

[ezzzD55J]

My xbox recently stopped wanting to play DVD's; instead of starting the DVD, it would give me the 'service required' screen with an error code indicating an 'application error' (that's a crash right?). Anyone know how I can fix this? "It may be modded", not sure if that's relevant.

(Otherwise I'm really happy with it btw.)

Bad wording

[hollismb]

Technically, the article is all wrong. I've never heard of an Xbox hard-drive crashing, although I'm sure it's probably happened. Specifically, it should be referring to the faulty disc drive, which is a common problem, and normally refers to Thompson drives that were in most launch Xbox's. The warranty is 90 days, just like on most consumer level electronics. Why file a lawsuit though, when he could have just called Microsoft and bitched about it? I've read many accounts where people have complained about a faulty disc drive a few times and gotten their Xbox fixed for free.

Sales Numbers

[Askjeffro]

This is a perfect reason why you can't trust sales numbers of consoles. Half the xboxes sold were to alreay existant owners!

(Bonus tidbit: I can attest to the xbox being faulty, had two go bad)

no, probably

[Run4yourlives]

Al Sharpton. (Is he a lawyer?)

I agree, but then there's that pesky EULA:

[Ingineerix]

From the Windoze Eula: "To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Manufacturer and its suppliers disclaim all other warranties, either express or implied, including, but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, with regard to the SOFTWARE and the accompanying written materials. Without limiting the foregoing, Manufacturer does not warrant that the operation of the SOFTWARE will be uninterrupted or error free." But hardware doesn't have one of those, or does it?

I'd join the suit

[aztektum]

Unfortunately my Xbox functions, I just don't have anythin' all that fun to play on it.

The law and why he can sue ...

[gp310ad]

The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act is outlined here for the benefit of business owners.

The bottom line is that there is always an 'implied warranty' that a product will perform.
This implied warranty supersedes any limited (i.e. 90 days for the XBOX) warranties.

One could reasonably expect a computer or CDplayer or car radio to last 5 years. If it craps out in 6 months, one has recourse. This is true even if the limited warranty says 90 days. Push hard and the seller will come around. Sometimes all it takes is a copy of the referenced URL and sometimes it takes a lawsuit.

Re:The law and why he can sue ...

[Keeper]

You might want to try reading the act first.

"If you offer a 'limited' written warranty, the law allows you to include a provision that restricts the duration of implied warranties to the duration of your limited warranty. For example, if you offer a two-year limited warranty, you can limit implied warranties to two years."

Re:The law and why he can sue ...

[gp310ad]

You are correct, under federal law you can say anything you want about the implied warranty.
Why? Because implied warranty is STATE LAW. Every state recognizes implied warranty. In some states there is no restriction on implied warranty. This means the disclaimer is meaningless. Most states have a merchantability basis for implied warranty.
If that sort of product in that price range is expected to last 5 years and your's only lasted one, than it is not merchantable because it comes no where near meeting the implied performance. I was remiss in not providing this information. On top of all, local jurisdictions may recognize implied warranties that are stronger than those recognized by their state. Personally I find the hassle of dealing with implied warranty a pain in the ass and would never purchase an Xbox or any other piece of electronic equipment with a 90 day warranty. Why? Because there is too little overlap with statistical spread of infant mortality for electronic components to suit my wallet. I was given a full refund on one major purchase that crapped out after the warranty expired. I could have made that money in the time spent securing the refund but I was also pissed and the satisfaction was well worth the time. Three repairs under warranty and then the vendor says, 'tough shit'.

Thank you

[Tribbin]

A friend is always asking me if he should buy an xbox or something else. (but he never gonna buy the damn thing anyway)

I never had any good reason to tell him not to buy an xbox, except that is made by Microsoft.

Finally I have a good reason to tell him not to buy an xbox.

Maybe they now stop teasing me...

My Own Personal Horror Story . . .

[Goobermunch]

My wife and I registered for an Xbox for our wedding. She wanted a DVD player. I wanted Steel Batallion, Halo, and JSRF.

Six months after the wedding, it died. We were watching some dumb movie we'd rented, and it froze up. From that point on, it wouldn't re-boot, and it wouldn't eject the disc drive.

Remember how we were watching a rented movie?

It cost us $153.00 to have it repaired. This was just after the Xbox mark down, so a new Xbox would have cost only $199.99.

Fortunately, the folks at Blockbuster were quite reasonable, and decided not to charge us late fees for the two months it took for the Xbox service center to figure out that the logic board had died. Eventually, we got the Xbox and the movie back.

Also, we were fortunate because once the repair work was done, the extended warranty period re-opened and we were able to get more coverage.

Still, $153.00 extra to get a gift fixed within six months is obnoxious.

--AC

Re:less than a year? Guarantee? - Only 90 Days!

[dindi]

Ohh, did not know it was 90 days.
Here in central america Xboxes come chipped with 90 days, and in larger stores they come (unchipped) and 1 year warranty (I think)

Yes 90 days is a joke, but when I buy a computer I expect at least a FAN to die within a year, on the other hand when I buy an entertainment component I expect not to touch it for at least 3 years (not even open it for cleaning)

how much is the in store extended warranty ?

umm, You get what you pay for?

[tazan]

Caveat emptor? Buyer beware. Did somebody change the laws since I was in junior high school? You bought something that should have cost $250 for $150 and now your complaining because it broke instead of lasting forever? Since when can you sue somebody for that? What's wrong with you people. That's how the free market econmy works. Some companies put out good products that cost more and some people buy them. Other companies put out junk for less and other people buy those. Next time buy from a reputable company if you want a product that lasts forever. Duh.

Warranties are NOT free

[rev063]

My computer stopped working after 6 months... what did I do? I sent it in to get it repaired... for FREE because of a warranty

This is such a stupid statement, but I see it all the time. Warranty repairs are NOT free. The cost of supporting the warranty is already factored into the price you pay at purchase. And this doesn't even count the indirect costs of making a warranty claim: the time you are without the product for which you've paid, the time spend to ship it and fill in the forms, the cost of interim replacements, etc. etc.

When I buy a car, I generally look for the one that has the highest reliability rating, and NOT the one that offers the longest warranty (all other things being equal, which they never are, of course). I'd rather have a product I can depend on, rather that one the manufacture is implicitly stating is likely to fail.

Remember kid: there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Re:Warranties are NOT free

[js3]

of course it's free. He already PAID for it. Jesus use your brain for a second. How is that different from you searching for a more reliable product and paying 50% more? same shit. There are choices. Buy the 400$ good tv that is very reliable or the 200$ crappy one that everyone complains about breaking in a year. You go to the store and offer you an extended warranty for 50$.

250$ with a free exchange if it breaks or 400$ known reliable product? Either choice and you still paid for it.

I'll be watching.

[jasenj1]

(Not that anyone will read or pay attention to this post, but I'll post so I can track this topic in the future.)

My wife bought me an XBox last Christmas (2003). Right out of the box it had trouble reading a new copy of Project Gotham 2. It usually takes the box 2 tries to boot up with this disc. Occasionally other discs will choke at startup, too.

I don't use the XBox heavily, and the problem hasn't gotten worse that I can tell. But if this does become a class action suit, I may partake. And if the drive ever does go completely south it's nice to know it can be swapped out.

With Halo 2 and MechAssault 2 coming out this year, I anticipate the machine will be getting a LOT of use in the near future. B^)

- Jasen.

ummm...?

[Ender Ryan]

This guy bought a product, and it failed after an absolutely unreasonable timeframe. And you're saying he should have _purchased_ (ie. PAID MORE MONEY!) to protect against such an occurance. So... In other words, it's not the manufacturers responsibility if the product doesn't work?

No. Fuck that.

We are a litigious society because we have no useful consumer protection - here, consumer protection is usually insane over-protection, and a complete lack everywhere else - and our legal system is completely fucked, and encourages frivilous lawsuits. Other countries don't have this problem, and they have much more useful consumer protection.

Re:ummm...?

[nospmiS remoH]

Please define your use of "unreasonable timeframe." According to Microsoft, that timeframe is 90 days. It IS the manufacturer's responsibility if the product doesn't work, within the warrenty period agreed to by the customer when s/he bought the product. Just because someone thinks something should last longer, doesn't mean it will. The terms of the warrenty were made very clear up front. Upset that your X-Box broke after 91 days? Tough shit. Try getting a warrenty repair on a car that has 50,100 miles on a 50,000 warrenty and you will also be SOL. Don't like the terms, DON'T BUY IT!

Re:ummm...?

[Johnny5000]

Please define your use of "unreasonable timeframe." According to Microsoft, that timeframe is 90 days

So basically Microsoft is saying that all you can expect out of your XBox is a lifespan of 3 months, and anything over that, you're playing with borrowed time?

Re:ummm...?

[tazan]

That's because the dealer you purchased it from was concerned about his reputation and good will. I don't think anyone has accused MS of this.

Re:ummm...?

[nospmiS remoH]

That is pretty much how I see warrenties.

Re:ummm...?

[bluekanoodle]

Except that in this case, it seems many of the CD-roms drives on the original batch of of Xboxes were prone to premature failure. I know mine was. A class action suit would allow all owners, like myself, who experienced this failure to prove that this is more then just a few bad apples, but systematic of all the particular drives in those Xbox's and thus should be covered, warranty or not.

There is no reason that such a large portion of Xbox owners should experience the same component failure in a short period of time, when that same type of component has been proven in other systems over a period of time to have an longer avergae life. (DVD_rom drives)

Re:ummm...?

[Johnny5000]

That is pretty much how I see warrenties.

That's pretty much how I see warranties as well- which is why I think 90 days seems like an unusually short time to claim as the expected lifespan of an XBox.

I'm not saying they need to give it a lifetime guarantee or anything, but a reasonable person should assume that an XBox will last longer than three months.

Re:ummm...?

[EvilAlien]

Essentially, yes. What I'm saying is that if the product fails out of the period for which it is warrantied, then yes... you should have taken that into consideration like you would for other pieces of technology. If Microsoft only covers the damn things for 90 days, then a consumer has the responsibility to ask themselves why that is the case... and make their purchasing decisions accordingly. 1 year is NOT an absolutely unreasonable timeframe. It is the same timeframe that harddrives are warrantied in most cases. 1 year is entirely precedented and reasonable for what is essentially a PC built for gaming, especially one sold at less than hardware cost.

When I bought my (refurbished) Xbox, I declined the opportunity to purchase extra coverage. If the damn thing fails out of the 90 day period it is covered, then I know I'm out the creek without an Xbox and its my own damn fault for not buying extra replacement coverage. That is how this works.

BTW, I buy extra warranty coverage when I get a car and would never dream of suing the manufacturer for failure outside of the time period in which they guaranteed it would't fail.

Re:ummm...?

[freaks_and_geeks]

This guy bought a product, and it failed after an absolutely unreasonable timeframe.

Agreed.

And you're saying he should have _purchased_ (ie. PAID MORE MONEY!) to protect against such an occurance.

Not necessarily.

We are a litigious society because we have no useful consumer protection - here, consumer protection is usually insane over-protection, and a complete lack everywhere else...

Nice to see some good research backing up these sweeping claims. I'd like to see another country that has more effective consumer protection laws than the U.S. But I digress...

The core of this issue is how this case should be resolved. Unfortunately for us, things break. It's a fact of life. Oftentimes, this is due to a manufacturing error. That doesn't mean that every such error should be resolved in court. For most of these types of cases -- and by most, I mean cases in which the product failure doesn't cause other property/health damage -- the free market should resolve the problem. These issues are too hard to decide in court. It's very difficult to say what constitutes a "reasonable" timeframe for failure. For example, what's a reasonable timeframe for a towel? Does the price you paid for the towel matter? What if it's a super-cheap one made in China? What if 30 people are sharing the same one? Imagine having to answer these types of questions for every product on the market.

The free market is what typically decides these things. The free market is why American cars lost their popularity in the 70's and 80's. People realized they were crap, and went with a better-made option. Using the legal system to abitrate these types of issues is not only unfair, but it places a lot of strain on a system that already is under pressure. While I agree that the customer in the story has a right to be angry, he should let his future purchasing dollars rather than the courts express that anger.

Re:ummm...?

[swv3752]

Except that you are not aware of warranty coverage untill after the purchase. It is reasonable to expect an electronic device to have a 1 year warranty (and may be required by law depending locale).

Besides, you wouldn't sue a car manufacturer if there was a design flaw?

Re:ummm...?

[EvilAlien]

I was aware of the warranty coverage BEFORE the purchase because the retail outlet made me aware proactively. Failing that, there is also the option of asking or researching before making a purchase. I consider that to be due diligence on the part of a consumer.

As for expectations, I agree that it would be reasonable to expect 1 year of coverage for most computer equipment, such as harddrives or optical drives (as this case relates to). However, expectations and reality don't always coincide, reasonable or not. At most, this guy should get the optical drive replaced if the Courts decide that this reasonable expectation should be upheld.

Oh, and there are design flaws in vehicles all the time. I wouldn't sue if my transmission failed after the warranty period because it would be outside the warranty period. I also wouldn't buy a car that is covered for only 2 years when the standard is at least 3. Its not a fair comparison anyways, you don't trust your life to an Xbox when you use it.

Re:ummm...?

[zaffir]

Exactly. My XBox's DVD-Rom shit the bed, or started to, about 90 days after i got it. it would have read errors on brand new games etc. Thankfull replacement drives are cheap on ebay and easy to install.

Re:ummm...?

[DLR]

The problem here is that every game console I know of is sold below what it costs to manufacture it. GameStop makes $5.00 on selling a new Xbox, and they only make that much because I'm sure they wouldn't sell them if they made any less. The manufacturer (MS, Sony, Nintendo, et. al) loses money on the platform expecting to make it back on the software (i.e. games) and peripherals.

Knowning this, I always buy the extended warranty. Or at least I did until recently. Now I buy repair guides and just plan to fix the thing myself if it goes out and I want to keep it.

Re:ummm...?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'd like to see another country that has more effective consumer protection laws than the U.S. "

I expect Iraq has better consumer protection laws than the US!

I've always been incredulous of the lack of consumer protection in the US compared with the UK and the EU. No way could you sell a product such as a game console over here with only a 90 day warranty. NINETY DAYS?! As you may have read, the EU stipulates a minimum 2 year warranty period, although not every EU country has implemented that, the others usually have 1 year.

I find it entirely logical that as a consumer I should buy a product and have it last for a reasonable amount of time. If it should break within that reasonable time, then it should be repaired by whoever is liable, either the store that sold it to me, or the manufacturer. 90 days is not a reasonable time for a games console. Extended Warranties aren't the answer either, unless they are no-fault and last for a significantly longer time (e.g., 10 years for a TV instead of 2).

Simply put, if I buy a game console, and it fails within a year and I didn't pour a pint of beer over it by accident, then I fully expect that I should be entitled to get it fixed or replaced. I don't see why I should be down on the money I paid for it.

To me, a 90 day warranty screams "This product is so dodgy we won't even stand by it" ... in other countries our laws prevent companies releasing hardware that dodgy (otherwise they'd lose a lot of money fixing broken hardware) in the first place. That's why Seagate with their 5 year hard drive warranties are now going to be getting my custom even if they cost 20% more than other manufacturers. It screams "quality" at me. And Quality is much better than shit. At least you can choose HD manufacturer, you can't choose XBox manufacturer.

Re:ummm...?

[Hognoxious]

I'd like to see another country that has more effective consumer protection laws than the U.S.

Well, Britain has the concepts like "fitness for use" and "merchantable quality" written into its consumer laws ... so there's one to start you off.

This should be settled quickly

[davidwr]

There are three obvious remedies:

1) Replace the X-Box with a new or reconditioned X-Box with a warranty the same as a new X-Box. Small cash award due to downtime.
2) A complete refund for the unit. The customer is on his own for non-bundled software though. In theory, he can buy a new X-Box with his refund and keep his software investment.
3) assuming MS doesn't go for the full refund, a coupon good for the full purchase price good towards MS gaming hardware or software
4) a pro-rated refund based on how much "useful life" he got out of the product. Basically, he gets, in cash, the value of a used X-Box on the day before it started having problems.

If MS is nice, it will offer 1, 2, or both. If it's greedy, and offers 3 AND 4 to all affected customers, it will short-circuit any lawsuits and save a boatload of legal fees on all sides.

If MS does NOT offer any remedy quickly, I hope the Federal Trade Commission steps in and leans on them.

The XBOX in our store Display

[Lemental]

has been running for over a year now, it just recently developed the "cant read discs" problem. The XBOX rep came in, formatted the hard drive somehow, and, it works now.

I know there is a way to reformat your home hard drive, some set of controls to press on some dashbaord screen, but, I dont know what, anyone care to spill the beans?

Re:The XBOX in our store Display

[xombo]

We've got a Thompson drive in our display Xbox too and it's been running for 10 months now with no issues whatsoever. I use it as an example when people come in complaining that one of their systems broke. Not just that, but the controllers are hardy as hell. The Xbox gets at least 20x's more play than the Cube or PS2 and yet those two systems' controllers have broken twice while the two Xbox S controllers work perfectly fine.

Which Sean Burke?

[fo0bar]

The hockey player?
The perl guy?
The dead guy?
The author?
The VP of Iomega?
The musician?

Think about it

[WebCowboy]

ALL pieces of hardware are known to stop working for some amount of people. That's why people get WARRANTIES. The most common reason for things to stop working is due to misuse... e.g. putting it on the carpet so it collects dust.

True enough, but when does it become unreasonable? Is one percent or ten percent premature failure rate acceptable? Also, ALL warranties are limited in some way, and more often than not do not cover damage due to misuse. Guess who defines "misuse"--the manufacturer. Is it really reasonable to consider operation of a home game console on a carpeted surface misuse?

HELLOOO...I think engineers would've figured out that even since before the Atari 2600, home video games are used mostly by kids, teens and college students in carpeted or otherwise "harsh" environments like basement rumpus rooms, dorm rooms, etc? The damn thing is usually hooked up to a big screen and has wired controllers for cryin' out loud...if MS wanted the XBox to sit on a clean, well ventilated shelf or desk like the PC it really is, then it should've come with wireless controllers so players could sit back from the TV without taking the machine and setting it on the floor.

Why do we have a slashdot story on a piece of hardware that stopped working? and why XBox (rhetorical question)? why not apple? i'm sure a fair amount of macs stop working within a year as well.

Because it stops working too quickly and too often? It isn't unique to /. or to computers. 60 minutes has done stories on shoddy products as well. Canadian TV watchers might remember two newsmagazine shows CBC's "Marketwatch" and CTV's "Live it Up!" that were almost exclusively dedicated to the quality of goods and services (like "Consumer Reports" for TV). People want a heads up when they could be buying a potential lemon. Because of this story, I know that if I ever get an XBox it might acutally be worth getting Future Shop's extended warranty for a change.

Why XBox? Becuase it is proving to be flimsy. Why not apple? Because they build quality products at this very moment. Apple HAS received a slagging from /. before (Remember the early powerbooks with the flakey power connectors? Hot cube machines? Earphones on some iPods?). The thing is, Apple got bitten by this and now when there are failures, they promptly and properly respond, even if the cause of the failure is questionable. With the latest iMac, most components are even user serviceable so you don't even have to send in your machine--Apple will overnight the needed parts at no cost to you. It's not always when it breaks down--it's the service you get when it happens.

My computer stopped working after 6 months... what did I do? I sent it in to get it repaired... for FREE because of a warranty

I'm glad your experience was relatively positive. I know of a builder here who (if possible) will immediately give you an identical replacement machine at no cost to you (and will even swap the hard drive from your machine, if the hard drive is not the cause of failure--so you don't even lose your data). Unfortunately, many companies are not so generous with their warranty policies. All too often, the warranty terms are in two columns of fine print on an A4 sheet that accidentally gets thrown away with the packing material--and the manufacturer follows it to the letter looking for any reason not to help you out. I'm not sure how Microsoft handles warranty claims, but if someone wants to sue maybe its more like the latter case.

I agree, it seems that the US is far to litigous and that the lawsuit seems frivilous. However, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say there MUST be a reason this person wasn't satisfied with just taking it in for repair. Are these machines consistently failing during warranty coverage? Did he get grief from Microsoft over the failure because they claimed he abused the product? Anyone out there care to relate their experiences?

As so

Redistribution of wealth.

[Aetrix]

The more and more of these large and broad class-action lawsuits that I see, the more freightened and encouraged I become. As someone posted before, yes, class-action lawsuits make very little money for the plaintiffs, but boo-queue (boo-koo?) bucks for the lawyers involved.

It wouldn't take much legislation at all to resolve that problem. What if there came a day where the class-action lawsuit was a means for redistributing the wealth that corporations amass back to the consumers they swindle? If, for example, PalmOne makes $100 pure profit (an unreasonable figure, I'm sure) off the sale of every high-end palm. The palm purchasers band together, whine, and get a refund of $100.

Egads, It could become like the crappy mail-in-rebate system. Buy this product which someone says has this major flaw, get a big refund from the ensuing class-action lawsuit!

Elderly widows begin to join thousands of class-action lawsuits to help supplement their fixed income.

Defective and flawed products have increased sales due to the possible rebates from the class-action suit. Product quality drops to an all-time low.

Corporate tax reform is dropped in leu of class-action suit reform.

I think I have the idea for my next novel...

Re:Redistribution of wealth.

[SysKoll]

As someone posted before, yes, class-action lawsuits make very little money for the plaintiffs, but boo-queue (boo-koo?) bucks for the lawyers involved.

That's beaucoup (pronounce "boh-coo"), French for "a lot". One should say "beaucoup de bucks" or "beaucoup of bucks" just like you say "a lot of bucks".

And you are absolutely right, class-action lawsuits make very little money for the plaintiffs. Typically, such class-action lawsuits end up with a multimillion settlement, of which the lawyers keep 33%. The rest is divided between the X million people who joined as co-plaintiffs in the class action bandwagon. They will be able to download a 50 cent coupon off Halo 3 or something. Whoohoo.

Class-action lawsuits only exist for the trial lawyers. They are not benefiting consumers. Consumers are slapped with the cost of manufacturers having to apply stickers saying "don't bang with head" on every brick.

I have the same super PS2 batch

[SuperKendall]

I bought my PS2 launch day and it has yet to have an issue. Guess we are in an exclusive club!

Re: Warranties

[delphin42]

This guy bought a product, and it failed after an absolutely unreasonable timeframe. And you're saying he should have _purchased_ (ie. PAID MORE MONEY!) to protect against such an occurance. So... In other words, it's not the manufacturers responsibility if the product doesn't work?

Yes. There's a tradeoff between the cost of the product and the support burden on the manufacturer. If you want to require Microsoft to warranty their product for a "reasonable" timeframe then you have to be willing to pay more for your XBox.

As much as I hate having an extended warranty shoved down my throat at a retail outlet, I do appreciate the fact that at least I have a choice. If I want insurance that my product will work for 3,4,5 years then I can pay more and get it, but on the otherhand I also have the freedom to buy the product with the manufacturers rather limited warranty and not pay any more than I have to for the product. Nothing is free, reliability costs money and so does support. At least making the extended warranty a separate purchase gives the consumer the choice.

OT: your .sig

[rco3]

Dude, update your site. I've got a 13b vert, and I'm dying to hear how your 20b comes out.

Microsoft is very aware of the problem

[moofrank]

My short saga is a bit interesting: I only use my xbox for games. Proper licensed ones. The drive was a Thompson, and had been progressively giving me more and more disc read errors until it flat out refused to read most games. This was 14 months after purchase. I called Microsoft, got the $130 price for repair that it was out of warranty, told them I was upset. During the dialogue, I gave them my work address. And was planning to buy a new Xbox. I work for a major metropolitan newspaper, however. I received a call back from Microsoft in about 90 minutes. I believe it was the same CS rep with a second person sitting nearby. She would stop and whisper to him occasionally. The dialogue went something like: "We understand that you have a problem, and since the box is so near the warranty expiration, we can replace the system at a reduced price. $50 and you cover shipping." Whisper. "Actually we can do as a customer appeciation replacement if you just cover shipping." Whisper. "It appears that your Xbox is still under warranty, so we can just go ahead and replace it. I'll send you a prepaid shipping box to your address." It was the most amazing backpedal I've ever encountered from a company. Moo, Frank

By what measure?

[SuperKendall]

You hear more XBox owners complaining about this stuff than PS2 users, even with an order of magnitude more PS2 consoles around. So by that quick measurement, it would seem the PS2 is doing a lot better durability wise.

I have my original PS2 from launch that has yet to have an issue.

Re:By what measure?

[jimi the hippie]

I've had my PS2 sinch launch also. However, it stopped working more than a year ago. Yep, Disc Read Error. Just got off the phone with Sony, they're going to fix it for free tho.

Re:By what measure?

[AlexMax2742]

You hear more XBox owners complaining about this stuff than PS2 users, even with an order of magnitude more PS2 consoles around. So by that quick measurement, it would seem the PS2 is doing a lot better durability wise.

I have my original PS2 from launch that has yet to have an issue.

Really? Do you have anything to back up what you 'heard' or are you going on inaccurate heresay?

I've had an Xbox since May of 2003 and a PS2 that's a few months older. My Xbox is still in awesome working condition, and my Playstation 2 is sitting in a corner broken and unplayed. Not that I miss it anyawy.

It doesn't work

[Craig Ringer]

Unfortunately, that model doesn't seem to actually work. The reason everything used to be well made and often sold with lifetime warranties - but rarely is now - is that people started buying the cheaper option no matter what.

People buy on price. So long as that persists, there's only a small market for quality products.

Would you really pay probably five times as much for a system you can expect to run vastly more reliably and run for, say, ten years? If so, would you, by the end of the second year why you didn't buy the cheap one?

I do agree that it's gone too far (6 month HDD warranties and 90 day warranties on products that cost several hundered - WTF?!) but usually where it makes sense you have the option of a decent warranty. You also, again where it's practical to make one, usually have the option of a better made product that will last longer.

So tell me, do you have enterprise class SCSI or SATA drives in your PC? Or did you buy the cheap 120GB PATA ones?

I'll put my money where my mouth is when I care. I just bought a very nice bike with a lifetime warranty on the frame - and don't ever expect to have to call in the warranty. It doesn't cost that much more to make a bike frame _much_ better, and it's worth the premium.

On the other hand, if someone told me SUN were making dual Opteron workstations with a lifetime warranty (and build quality such that SUN didn't expect it to be used much) so why don't I get one - it's "only" $10,000 - I'd laugh in their face. To me, my PC dying is acceptable compared to the price tradeoff I get in exchange for that risk - I have a functional brain, I keep backups and know how to recover quickly so it's not that big a deal.

I often wish it was possible to buy better quality products, and am increasingly irritated by the tendency of quality to equate with overpriced wank - to pay for quality, often you're forced to pay for stupid wank factor too. Sometimes you just can't seem to get quality (I've been through three kettles recently, and have just given up hope of finding one that doesn't suck). Still, indestructable and expensive isn't for every situation, much as crap with a warranty or cheap with no warranty are both also unsuitable for many situations.

Re:It doesn't work

[PitaBred]

An XBox is currently $150 at Worst Buy. It was $300 new, IIRC. I would GLADLY pay $300 right now if I could be reasonably sure I'd get a piece of hardware that worked like my old NES, or Atari 2600, both of which are still running like champs.
The problem is that they don't give me the option of buying something that's durable and functional. They add features to increase the price, not reliability, like you said.
And I have PATA drives in my computer because they're actually pretty functional, and wear exactly as I'd expect them to. Almost all of my hard drives have lasted for over 5 years, many of them longer than that. That's about what I expect for a $150 piece of hardware.

Re:It doesn't work

[blueskies]

I just bought a very nice bike with a lifetime warranty on the frame - and don't ever expect to have to call in the warranty. It doesn't cost that much more to make a bike frame _much_ better, and it's worth the premium.

Does it cover the transmission and power train or just rust? How exactly does a bike frame end up failing? Car running it over? I don't see getting run over as a failure of the frame.

Re:It doesn't work

[the Luddite]

I too would much prefer to buy quality at a higher price. The problem is that production is driven by two factors, demand and profitability. Cheap items are made out of bargain materials with cheap labor. Thus break sooner and therefore sell larger quantities generating profit. Most people can't think past their own wallet and therefore buy the cheapest thing on the market. They cannot remember when the world was not a throwaway society so they don't see the problem. Hence, supplying the demand.

Those of us that do think are a tiny minority and our demand for quality items does not even make the tiniest blip on the radar of large corporations. I strongly suggest soliciting small, owner-operator businesses when ever possible. Obviously, in the context of this thread, you can't stop by Steve Job's garage anymore and pick up his version of an Xbox but you can for many other types of goods.

The more money we spend at large box stores them more of the damn things will show up in every neighborhood and the fewer option we will have in the future. Let the sheeple shop at super-mega-crapbox-mart. Small businesses can afford to have a niche market like the quality-minded shopper. Support the independent producers and keep the option to buy quality open.

Re:It doesn't work

[Y0tsuya]

So a piece of hardware should last 5 years since it costs $150? How long would you expect a $150 automobile to last? I still remember paying $500 for a 30MB RLL drive back in the mid-80's, and they didn't last all that long.

Re:It doesn't work

[SnappleMaster]

Bike frames can crack (pretty much just manufacturing defects) or the welds can fail (manufacturing defect or high stress, i.e. you fall down go boom).

Warrantees on the frame are for manufacturing defects. If an aluminum frame cracks it generally cannot be repairs. Steel can be fixed but you'd still rather have a new one.

Re:It doesn't work

[Queer Boy]

'll put my money where my mouth is when I care. I just bought a very nice bike with a lifetime warranty on the frame - and don't ever expect to have to call in the warranty. It doesn't cost that much more to make a bike frame _much_ better, and it's worth the premim

Lifetime warranties are usually a gimmick. I remember my little brother getting a mongoose bike with a lifetime warranty on the frame. It was supposed to be some great alloy, forget what it was. Anyway, he cracked 4 frames. Eventually they wouldn't replace the frame anymore, they just refunded the price of the bike. Like I said, they're just gimmicks.

Re:It doesn't work

[ampathee]

A bike frame is one thing - but who's gonna pay for a lifetime warranty on a piece of computer hardware that will be replaced in 2 years anyway, because it's now unbearably slow and out-of-date?

Re:It doesn't work

[Craig Ringer]

Only for work. Please look in my comment history for discussion on that matter, including why I'm not interested in conducting it on Slashdot - especially with an AC.

Re:It doesn't work

[westlake]

I would GLADLY pay $300 right now if I could be reasonably sure I'd get a piece of hardware that worked like my old NES, or Atari 2600, both of which are still running like champs.,

The Atari 2600 sold for $200 in 1977. I'll let you do the math for 27 years of inflation. But it was a leap in the dark for retailers like Sears to market so expensive a toy.

I have a transistor radio from the late fifties that still works. There is no particular difficulty in achieving extreme longevity with electronic devices that have almost no moving parts.

I hope he fights and he wins

[hine_uk]

because in Europe the standard for warranties is 1 year, be it a new PC, an xbox or a stereo. I know its still not a long time as far as fair use and build quality goes but it is still better than a meagre three months. It might be worth letting a leech of a lawyer get his claws into a fat paycheck if the US customer ends up an eventual winner.

Infamous "McCoffee"

[WebCowboy]

Somewhat OT but you asked.

McDonalds kitchens are designed so a monkey could almost make your meal (the typical cook at McDonalds knows about as much about cooking as a monkey). All temeratures and timers are pre-set and all the food is prepared to the point that it just needs cooking ans assembly.

In the case of it's coffee makers, according to the facts they were fixed at 185 degrees farenheit and cannot be adjusted except by a technician. "Room Temperature" is 70 or 75 degrees so there is a LOT of room to manoeuvre. OH&S experts recommend hot water heaters be set no higher than 130F to avoid scalding, over 50 degrees cooler than McJava. IIRC if you go to you local Tim Hortons the coffee is quite hot too, but still no more than 150 to 160F.

So yeah...there is room temperature, hot and McF*cking Crazy (tm). The reason McDonalds does not do anything about it is because it would cost more to pay technicians to alter thousands of coffee machines than it does to settle a few hundred lawsuits (which typically involve covering medical bills, not millions). Same reason Ford sold exploding Pintos (because despite the publicity, they did not explode and kill/injure enough people to make it worth fixing).

Re:Infamous "McCoffee"

[NonSequor]

Sorry, but coffee is supposed to be brewed that hot. The guideline I've heard is it should be no less than 170 degrees. If you go lower it won't absorb as much from the grinds. In fact, a little search has found that the Specialty Coffee Association of America reccomends brewing at 195-203 degrees.

Some people have been saying that even if it's supposed to be brewed that hot that it shouldn't be served that hot. The problem is, I've never seen a drip coffee maker designed to keep a pot of coffee below brewing temperature. Also, most coffee drinkers want their coffee served as hot as possible, even if it means letting it cool for a bit because if it cools too much it becomes undrinkable.

I have yet to see any evidence that McDonalds did anything inconsistent with the standard practices expected by their customers.

As for the coffee at Tim Hortons, I would imagine it is brewed at a higher temperature but the pot is taken off of the heating element more often allowing it to cool slightly.

Re:Infamous "McCoffee"

[WebCowboy]

Sorry, but coffee is supposed to be brewed that hot.

The brewing temperature is not in question. The serving temperature is. Industry standards recommend a serving temperature of hot beverages and soups of no more than 160F. That is still a scalding temperature, but it takes longer to burn at that temperature, so the heat will dissipate before injury could occur. Although in fast food kitchens it is common for settings to be non-adjustable, the hot plates of most commercial coffee makers have adjustable temperatures.

Coffee that is left in the pot for too long at too cool of a temperature does taste bad but that is why fresh pots have to be made periodically. Serving coffee in a little paper cup at its brewing temperature is rather ill advised.

Re:Infamous "McCoffee"

[sumdumass]

well i'm not all that certain the serving temperature alone was the final factor in the MCcoffee ordeal. From my understanding the cups they used didn't hold up to the heat of the beverage being served and frequently melted or deformed anough to make spilling an issue.

After being informed/recieving complaints several times and even discovering the same results in thier own tests. Mcdonolds still decided to serve a product at a temperature that made the container unsafe. This isn't like someone working with a knife and cutting them self, this is like someone working with a knife and the handle alows the blade to come thru and cut your hand while using it normaly. Baiscaly the temperature was an issue because it is what did the damage but in reality the issue was a defective product being sold to the public. Mcdonalds supposedly released a memo warning stores that the cups would only be safe at temperature almost 20 degrees below the temperature of the coffe.

If you like you coffe hot then get it that way. just make sure it is in a container that doesn't melt or distort making the lid pop off easily. thats the bottom line from the law suite.

I know everyone hates MS...

[nwbvt]

...but come on! He is suing because his toy broke. Thats it. This is the world when even 12 year old kids have ambulance chasers, er, lawyers following them around and filing lawsuits whenever something happens that pisses them off.

Re:I know everyone hates MS...

[Zebbers]

Because a product that was once 300$ dollars, though now is 150$ only has a 90 day warranty and there have been consistent identifiable flaws in the craftmanship?

Re:I know everyone hates MS...

[Cyph]

Actually, the Thomson drive problem is a very well known problem in the Xbox community. I'm surprised it took so long for the lawsuit to happen, as this is definitely something worthy of one. There are definite grounds for a class action, regardless of whether the Xbox died within the (lame) 90-day warranty period. Surely it's normal to expect such a product as an Xbox to function for at least a year? Thomson drives suck. Period.

Re:I know everyone hates MS...

[Cylix]

Indeed,

I recently replaced one of these drives myself.

I guess no one wants the flakey thompson drive, because I was able to find one for 17$.

Oh well... I just wanted to patch the system up and get it working again.

Re:I know everyone hates MS...

[nwbvt]

Ok, then ask for a refund, complain to them, write angry sounding reviews, etc. There are plenty of remedies other than suing and filling up our courts with frivolous lawsuits.

Re:I know everyone hates MS...

[nwbvt]

Ever heard of the phrase "Caveat Emptor"?

Besides, he isn't suing because they refused to give him a refund. He is just because his little toy broke (and the fact that it cost a few hundred dollars does not change the fact that it is, in the end, a toy). Nowhere in the article does it say that he was refused a refund.

Re:I know everyone hates MS...

[Zerbey]

Wow... I wish I had as much money to you where I could buy a $150 toy and not mind if it broke.

Re:I know everyone hates MS...

[nwbvt]

You mean just not buying the $150 toy (like what I did) isn't an option for you? How sad.

But in PR terms

[phorm]

It's more like shooting a bazooka. With XBox2 coming out, the last thing MS will want is tons of people bitching about how their XBox was an unreliable piece of crap within a year.

Other things to consider:

a) Sony has similar issues with disc read errors (see previous comments) and will fix PS2's with this defect for free. Somebody must have pulled the guns on them for this to happen too

b) MS wants to sell games. Supposedly the consoles come at a loss. You aren't selling many games to somebody with a problem console, hence no profit.

c) If world gets around that Xboxes are prone to early failure, will people gamble with Xbox2?

Re:But in PR terms

[scot4875]

If world gets around that Xboxes are prone to early failure, will people gamble with Xbox2?

If history is any indication (PS1->PS2 owners), Microsoft won't need to worry about scaring away potential buyers.

--Jeremy

UK law

[rikkus-x]

As far as I am aware, if you buy something in the UK (not services, or some other things that don't count, but goods) then legally you can to take them back to where you bought them within one year and you have the right to a full refund or replacement.

If I'm right on this, why is there no such thing in the US?

Rik

Bumps, drops, and drives

[phorm]

Laptops have hard drives, they're mobile and quite often subject to shocks/jolts.

Mp3 players have hard-drives/microdrives, subject to even more shocks/jolts (especially when used by joggers etc).

It's not about the shocks and jolts, it's about the quality of the manufacturing. If you put a drive in an item excepted to get roughhoused a bit, you make the drive more shock-resistant.

Re:Bumps, drops, and drives

[retro128]

It's not about the shocks and jolts, it's about the quality of the manufacturing. If you put a drive in an item excepted to get roughhoused a bit, you make the drive more shock-resistant.

This is very true, but the Xbox does not use a custom manufactured drive - mine has a stock WD with modified firmware. It's also true that modern drives can take a beating even during operation, but no matter what kind of HD it is, it's unlikely that it would survive a fall from a shelf on a TV media center when it's turned on. The use of a hard disk simply adds another point of failure. I think Microsoft agrees, since I've been hearing that the Xbox 2 will not longer have an HD.

Re:Bumps, drops, and drives

[Blakey Rat]

Not to mention the most basic flaw in reasoning: The XBox really isn't designed for kids. (Evident by the large controller at release, which was definately adult-sized, and the selection of games.)

Re:This should really be cleared up:

[azcoffeehabit]

The broken thermostat looks like it came from some newsgroups with no linking sources, I will no longer use that as part of the discussion.

but, here are a list of facts, about the case just incase you still think it was frivilous.

here

Re:I swear...

[jarnhestur]

Correct,

A trial court reduced the punitive award from 2.5 million to $480,000. McDonald's settled after that, presumably for a lesser amount.

Reference obtained from another post: http://www.atla.org/ConsumerMediaResources/Tier3/p ress_room/FACTS/frivolous/McdonaldsCoffeecase.aspx

Warrantee void if removed labels

[phorm]

How legal are these? I've heard in many circles that they're like many "rules" the come with purchases nowadays, and not worth the paper (or plastic) they're written on.

Are these "warrantee void if removed" labels really valid? If so, one would think that you can't install a new video card in your Dell unless you get Dell to do it (and I'm fairly sure that it's illegal for them to put you in a situation where you can only use them or their "trained technicians" for servicing)

Re:Warrantee void if removed labels

[NeoSkandranon]

Why would it be illegal to attempt to keep clueless people from messing with delicate parts? If those stickers weren't there I guarantee you more people would be poking around inside their computer (and subsequently breaking things, which increases Dell's overhead)

Re:Warrantee void if removed labels

[macromegas]

How about another attempt at playing dumb? What sticker, pretty please? :) Guess theyll have a hard time to prove its been there...

Re:Warrantee void if removed labels

[phorm]

So if Ford said that if a non-Ford technician does your next oil-lube-and-filter then the warrantee on your new car is void - that's OK. How about if they just say it's void if you do it yourself.

Yes, they should allowed to void the warrantee if it appears that you've done something to cause the equipment damage: mod chip, self-solder, etc. Just opening the case to check on the problem doesn't count.

I'm a technician for a large company. I crack cases and install parts on a regular basis. If I bought a Dell why should I have to send it to a Dell technician when I need a sound card installed?

Now if I sent a machine in for repair and the RAM slot is damage because I tried to stick the DIMM in backwards, or the AGP slot has a PCI card jammed into it, they can reject me. But if a little sticker is loose but there's a perfectly legitimate hardware fault, why would that void my warranty?

Re:less than a year? Guarantee? - Only 90 Days!

[CrazyNateMI]

Note: I was the one who posted the Anonymous message that you replied to. I finally got around to signing up for an account. Every place that I know of who sells an extended warranty, that warranty is 1 year from date of purchase(not from expiration of MS warranty). As an aside, if you purchased a system with one of these extended warranties, and then moved away from the store you bought it at, you aren't necessarily out of luck. The store I worked at near Detroit honored a warranty purchased in a Chicago-area store of the same chain. I can't speak for all chains, but it's worth asking...

It’s no different than big tobacco

[FecesFlingingRhesus]

It's no different than big tobacco, Microsoft a company known for inferiority in its product sacrificed for time to market and market share. It amazes a person goes out and buys a product from them, said product then brakes and that person is up in arms because the product lacks quality. My question is on what ground did they feel that they where going to get a quality product, Microsoft's past performance maybe? Anyway it is much like smokers suing big tobacco because the get lung cancer from smoking cigarettes, claiming that big evil tobacco did it to them. To me it is all hogwash as these companies have reputations for doing exactly what happened, don't get me wrong I am not an advocate for these companies and I believe that they are just getting what is coming to them but if you where not aware of what you are getting into when you deal with these companies then you may not be the swiftest boat on the water.

MS isn't right ... they aren't wrong, either

[hipster_doofus]

While I certainly have sympathy for this guy, I don't think a lawsuit is the answer here.

For starters, most "low-end" consumer electronics are not covered by what I would consider to be a long or extensive warranty, so this should come as no surprise to him that the warranty was already expired. Most of these devices are made to be disposable and/or have a fairly limited life span.

Most /.ers have read Bruce Schneier and know that he talks about trade-offs in security. Well, product cost vs. quality is a trade-off, too. Microsoft could probably sell me a $500 XBox that would have a 2 or 3 year warranty, but they know that I probably don't want to spend $500 for an XBox. Therefore, they decide to use lower-quality components in order to sell an XBox to me at a price I'm willing to pay. I might also add that since MS is selling the hardware at a loss, they have no incentive to use higher-quality components. This is also an area where extended warranties attempt to give consumers an option. If you pay me $X, I will ensure that you have a working XBox for the next X months/years. Depending upon the cost of the goods and your financial situation, an extended warranty may or may not be a good purchase, but I won't go into that here.

I don't think that this guy has a case against Microsoft because he was the person that made the trade-off that led him into this position (i.e. - not buying an extended warranty, not checking to see how long MS' warranty was before he chose not to buy the extended warranty, etc.). Being upset because something broke is understandable, but filing a lawsuit is simply not the answer - especially given the relatively low cost of an XBox when compared with many other pieces of home electronics. All he's going to accomplish by making this a class action lawsuit is enriching himself (possibly) and some lawyers - he's probably not going to do others in the class one bit of good.

To be blunt: expecting things to be cheap, always work, and be of high overall quality is just not realistic. There has to be a balance in the equation and for game consoles, price is what sells. The fact that he got burned this time around should be no surprise to anyone - himself included. He should just do what any other person would do: try to have it fixed, or just buy a new one. He's already wasted more than $150 of his time by getting a lawyer involved with this process.

Re:MS isn't right ... they aren't wrong, either

[DM9290]

For starters, most "low-end" consumer electronics are not covered by what I would consider to be a long or extensive warranty, so this should come as no surprise to him that the warranty was already expired. Most of these devices are made to be disposable and/or have a fairly limited life span.

Most TV sets, radios, DVD players, stereo systems and other home electronics last for years without failing. Consumer electronics tends to lasts years, not merely months or 1 year.

A disposable video game system should should be clearly marked on the package as such.
The advertising certainly doesn't make it clear that X-Box is a low end disposable device.

I might also add that since MS is selling the hardware at a loss, they have no incentive to use higher-quality components.

irrelevant. Microsoft has no right to sell crap which is known to be flawed from the onset, just because they are selling at a loss. If they know it is flawed they must disclose this information to the buyer.

The profitability of a product does not lessen or increase the responsibility of the manufacturer.

This is also an area where extended warranties attempt to give consumers an option.

An extended warantee does nothing to cause an inferior quality defective product to suddenly become high quality. This is simply a different price point for the same product. The same crappy defective product. The X-Box is not any less likely to fail (predictably) if you buy the extended warantee.

Now if microsoft had 2 versions. "X-Box - disposable" and "X-Box- normal", then you would probably have no complaint when the "X-Box - Disposable" died after the warantee because the word "disposable" clearly implies that the product is not expected to last a significant amount of time.

If microsoft is intentionally building a product which is designed or known fail suddenly without any misuse or harsh conditions just because of design or manufacturing choices made by microsoft, it should advertise that fact, otherwise consumers will rightfully expect that microsoft made a good faith effort to build a product with no fundamental flaws. It is dishonest and fraudulent to sell something knowing it has a flaw and not disclosing that flaw to the buyer.

1 month wear contact lenses are not sold as "contact lenses with a 1 month warantee", they are sold as "Contact lenses which must be replaced after 1 month".

game platforms are expected to have a market life of about 5 years. Does this mean that microsoft actually expects consumers to buy 5 to 10 X-boxes before retiring their system?

Re:MS isn't right ... they aren't wrong, either

[zakezuke]

For starters, most "low-end" consumer electronics are not covered by what I would consider to be a long or extensive warranty, so this should come as no surprise to him that the warranty was already expired. Most of these devices are made to be disposable and/or have a fairly limited life span.

This logic is faulty. Phillips and KDS both offered monitors for dirt cheap prices, and both offered decent warranties. I've had get a ton of them replaced, so it is true they were crap, but they were crap that were replaced for free. The sub $50 DVD players that I bought not only had 1 year warrantees, but have outlasted their more costly Sony counterparts. While some are 1 year parts 90 days labor, many are not.

An X-box is an X-box, a Microsoft(tm) product. They cost what they cost. There is no cheap knock-off version of the X-box (that I'm aware). It's not unreasonable for a product you spend hundreds of dollars on to last more than a year. If your consumer grade sub $50 made in China outlasts an X-box, there is a problem.

To be blunt: expecting things to be cheap, always work, and be of high overall quality is just not realistic. There has to be a balance in the equation and for game consoles, price is what sells.

That's the thing. If you have a choice between two DVD players, and you go for the cheaper one and it breaks, I'd agree with you somewhat. The end user has no control over what Microsoft puts in the X-box. The end user has no option to buy a good x-box or a cheap bad x-box. They can only buy an X-box. It's Microsoft's job to find their own balance between price and quality of materials. If the X-box fails on a regular basis under 12 months, they are selling a defective product. It's that simple.

Only 90 days?!?

[KAMiKAZOW]

A few years ago the minimun warranty required by law was 6 months here in Germany. A while ago it has been EXTENDED to 2 years (yes, two!).

Sign me up for the lawsuit...

[mpw2k]

But I want the same money the lawyer gets. He can have my part of the settlement. I actually did have the exact same problem. So I just bought another XBox because I didn't want to wait for the repairs. I wouldn't mind getting my money back for the second XBox.

Re:It's Microsoft, which means of course:

[Phoenix-IT]

I thought it was funny... Who gives a shit about karma? I was just wondering why the moderator seemed to overreact.

GCN failures?

[BlaKnail]

Throughout this thread, there are numerous claims of XBOX and PS2 hardware failures, but not a single mention of the Gamecube. Is it just the Nintendo fanboyism (I am guilty of this, myself), or is the GCN simply a better quality product?

Re:GCN failures?

[NullProg]

I've got three boys and three Nintendo systems here at the compound. Between the pulling on the controllers, stepping on the controllers and the three foot drop all the units have taken, I can honestly say Nintendo makes a quality product.

Hell, even all the game boys have survied the outside/stepping on/dropping/dog biting tests :)

It's funny about the three foot drop test though, when I went to purchase our game cube, the best buy shrill was really pestering me to look at the x-box. I told him fine, I'll buy it if you can drop it three feet and it still works. Needless to say, he would not/didn't do it :)

Enjoy,

Re:Flash storage is a poor idea

[Llama_STi]

but a terrible idea in itself as flash media has a much shorter lifespan than disk. While it would be neat and fast, over the lifetime of your console you probably wouldn't want flash media that you couldn't replace. at least if your HD stopped working you could by a new one if need be.

Guess Sony already got thiers...

[SuperKendall]

From reading more it seems like it might have about as much of a problem - but they also had a lawsuit already some time ago which I think is why you get the read error fixed for free. So, I was wrong about that... I know a couple of PS2 owners and I've never heard of problems from any of them.

I've always wondered though if most people with read errors keep the PS2's upright instead flat. I always keep my flat and think that may contribute to a longer life.

El Cheapo extended warranty

[np_bernstein]

I recently purchased a refurbished Xbox from electronics boutique. When doing so the sales guy recommended that I get the six months warranty. I stated that I might want to get the 1 year warranty instead -- "no problem", he said, "return it in six months and say there was a problem. When you get the new one, you'll be able to purcase a new warranty, and basically be able to keep it under warranty forever."

Re:Costco

[NeoSkandranon]

Right, forgot costco was membership only (there aren't any in this area I don't think)

I can see it now...."dear microsoft consumer..."

[rwrife]

I can see it now, in a few months we'll receive a letter letting us choose one of the following:

1) opt-out of the class action lawsuit, so we can file suit against Microsoft later.

2) doing nothing, which makes you part of the lawsuit and you forfeit your rights to file suit over Microsoft products, but you'll be entitled to a $1.20 rebate towards your next Microsoft purchase (lawyers will collect millions).

3) attend a public hearing about the lawsuit.

Class action lawsuits are stupid and the guy whining about his xbox not working doesn't realize he is being used by the lawyer for the lawyer's benefit and not his. He needs to just go to Walmart, spend $150 on a new XBox and return the broken one in the new one's packaging...problem solved!!

Best Buy has the key!

[RyoShin]

He could have bought it at Best Buy, paid $20-$40 for a 2-year replacement plan, and already gotten his brand new replaced XBox. Instead, he pays hundereds in lawyer fees for something he might not win.

If my laptop stopped working today, I could bring it into Best Buy and get it replaced with little hassle because I bought a service plan. Service plans have a consumer purpose, not just the main purpose of getting Best Buy filthy stinking rich.

I also note that no one is complaining about Gamecubes failing. Of course, with 500 posts, I'm browsing at +4, so take it as you will.

/ex-BB employee

What a joke!

[earthstar]

May be Consumer protection in US is not upto ur expectations ,but dont say other countries are better!!

Iam from India,and I can tell you that no matter what "big" brand you buy here,no one even dreams of getting a replacement after purchase.It just isnt possible here.

You guys are so much better off , that you can return the product atleast upto a year.Not many countries will be having consumer protection anywhere near the current protection US offers.

yOu guys are better off.

To Me Too, So I Screwed Em

[dbretton]

This happened to me as well. I had a PS2 for just over a year. After extremely light usage (at most 20 times over the entire 1+ year), the PS2 would no longer read my PS2 games.

Sure enough, this was a common problem.
Sure enough, the warranty had expired.
Sure enough, Sony wanted $130+shipping to fix it.
Sure enough, Electronics Boutique would not take it back.

This was ridiculous! I had spent good money on something which died with hardly any use!

So, I went to EB and bought a new PS2. Using a sharp razor, I carefully removed the serial number from the new PS2 and put it on the broken PS2 (the serial number is recorded on the receipt). I repackaged the defective unit, brought it back to the store, and got my money back!

Now for you younger folk out there (under 18), you can do one better. Once your PS2/XBox dies, you are entitled to a full refund! In most states, entering into a contract with a minor makes the contract viodable by the party of the minor. Just walk in and tell them you are a minor and wish to void the contract. Provided you still have the receipt, the store is legally bound to take the product back and refund your money. Best of all, unlike what I did, this is perfectly legal! Hell, you can stomp on your system, smash it, take a crap on it, whatever.

repeat after me

[dougnaka]

I will not file frivilous lawsuits regardless of the unfair amounts of cash I could get. I look down on those who perpetuate the deplorable state of the legal system in this country, especially the lawyers who gain the most from the abuse of this system. I will vote for change, recommend change, and work towards change for the betterment of the people. I understand that lawsuits are often the only recourse of an injustice and I support their use for these purposes. I do not support the use of lawsuits to pass my responsibilities onto others, and I accept full responsibility for my actions. I understand the inherit risks in daily life and that there are things that nobody is responsible for. I recognize that coffee is generally served hot, nobody can see around blind corners, complex medical procedures involve a certian risk, if I eat more calories than I burn I will gain weight, if I eat foods high in sugar/fat/cholesterol it is likely that I will suffer health consequences for this, if I smoke cigarettes I will increase my risk for cancer, and if I drink drano I will likely die.

Re:repeat after me

[forkboy]

It seems to me that this guy just wants an Xbox that works. Suing over defective merchandise for the price of what you paid for it isn't exactly frivolous now, is it?

Re:repeat after me

[dougnaka]

*frivilous* lawsuits

I'm all for suing people justly, but this guy is filing a class action lawsuit on behalf of all purchasers of xbox's s quote from the description

"The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, seeks to represent anyone who bought an Xbox in the United State since the console's November 2001 launch."

Maybe you should RTFA, this was a short one, so it shouldn't have been too difficult.

It is short on details, but I can't see how if you purchased an Xbox, it busted before the warranty was up, why you didn't just take it back. Do these only have a 90 day warranty? Maybe you shouldn't buy one if you don't like what they're selling.

Re:repeat after me

[winwar]

I (corporation X) will not produce cheap quality goods without making such fact known regardless of the unfair amounts of cash I could get.

I understand that if I use cheap quality parts in my products to save money without informing those who buy my products, my warranty or legal costs may be higher than expected.

Re:repeat after me

[darkmeridian]

This simplifies everything, but it's far from insightful. Read the coffee case; McDonald's was serving coffee heated to a temperature far hotter than normal. This extra-hot coffee causes second and third degree burns in 12 seconds. They did this to milk an extra few cups of coffee out of each batch.

Note that the weight case got thrown out of court.

Note that the suits for cigarettes cover periods when cigarette manufacturers claimed that smoking was good for your health; it cleared your throat and sinuses (ah, menthol). Remember when Big Tobacco leaders went on Congress and swore that cigarettes didn't cause cancer and weren't addictive? All the while, they were doping up their cigarettes to be more addictive.

Sure, you know Drano kills. But what if the cap isn't child-safe and your baby, who, through no fault of hers, probably doesn't read too well, eats the tasty crystals?

Why don't you ask about the thalidomide suits. Or the peeling lead suits? Why don't you just think?

Sigh. If only people could read.

Game cubes?

[nuknuk]

Just curious, for you store owners that do console repairs, what is the frequency of Gamecube repairs? I've beaten the hell out of mine, and it's never skipped a beat. Granted, I'm not putting burned media etc. in there, but it seems like pretty reliable hardware to me.

I agree

[llZENll]

I had to return my XBOX already once because of disk read errors, support and the fix was great, but having to do it is a pain. To top it off a little more than a few months after getting the fix the read errors returned, how can MS skimp on one of the most important pieces of the system?

Now I am stuck with the insert disc and cross fingers method of getting a game to work. Bah, back to PC Gaming :)

MechAssault no read ;(

[farmer11]

Same thing happened to me with my first XBox. It stopped reading about 80% of discs I put in it. I had to buy another XBox just to get my MechAsault fix. And now, 10 months later the same thing is happening. Sign me up!

Re:MechAssault no read ;(

[/dev/trash]

How many times will you do this?

this is a problem for more then a handful....

[Wellmont]

I'm deffinatley all for this law suit. The problem that almost ALL of these XBOX's have is so maddening that it make's computers look like the gaming platform of choice for intelligent people. I'm a light gamer, i've had the Xbox since 2002, and probably only booted the machine 50-75 times. However none-the-less my Xbox has started having disk read errors on these brand new games as well, and it has problems starting up. I've got nearly 10 years out of my sega and even more out of my nintendo, but my supposedly far superior Xbox has quit after nearly 2 years of dust-free, cursory use.

I'm not one who's usually for these law suits, let alone a class action one. However I welcome this little tidbit, because even if i don't get my money back I want a discount on the Xbox 2 or the ability to get my original Xbox fixed. This has flimsy written all over it, ask yourself why thousands of Xbox's are failing at a specified time from being "purchased" or "made". Also ask yourself why it seems to be a software problem instead of a major hardware problem. Can anyone say "purposeful Xbox bug, from a company known for releasing bugs"?

XBOX != Atari 2600.

[cbreaker]

Your atari 2600 or Nintendo didn't have a magnetic and mechanical hard drive, or a mechanical DVD Drive with an optical lense, did it?

Perhaps your Tandy has floppy drives, but unlss you use them, floppy drive *sometimes* last a long time. But the same could be said about a hard drive if you never plug it in.

Not saying that the Xbox shouldn't run longer then a year, but you can't compare a device with moving parts to a device with no moving parts.

Demean what?

[Tyndmyr]

An xbox that costs my dignity is still a free xbox!

The UK law ...

[Tim Ward]

... is that the retailer is responsible for what they sell - after all it is the retailer that has the contract with the punter, not the manufacturer. The punter cannot sue the manufacturer because they have no contract with the manufacturer.

If the manufacturer chooses to offer some sort of warranty to either the retailer and/or the punter that's up to them; they don't have to, it's a free market.

If the retailer doesn't want to bear the costs of remedying crap products that they sell they have a very simple solution ... refrain from selling crap products.

Re:The UK law ...

[Archangel_Azazel]

News Flash!

This just in, HE IS SPEAKING ENGLISH...just not AMERICAN. There *is* a difference ya know.

Thanks!

A.A

Re:The UK law ...

[shepd]

If the retailer doesn't want to bear the costs of remedying crap products that they sell they have a very simple solution ... refrain from selling crap products.

If only the customers would quit asking for them.

If I were only to offer quality components everything would cost twice as much in my store and nobody would shop here. People *want* junk. I have plenty of customers who come in and the first words out of their mouth are "Show me your cheapest", or, worse yet, they will have a junk brand in mind and that's ALL they want to buy. For example "Do you carry PC Chips? I want to buy PC Chips motherboards." Ugggggh. There's a reason why all this plastic junk that barely lasts a year exists. And it's not because manufacturers are forcing it on consumers. It's because consumers _requested_ it (indirectly).

Example: Would you buy a professional VCR for $700 that will, under household use, last about 15 years and is easily repairable by a technician, or would you buy a $40 VCR that lasts between 1 and 4 years? Well, maybe you would buy the $700 VCR, but for you there's another 100 who want to buy the $40 VCR, at any cost (pun intended).

So, you either sell it without warranty, or you go out of business because the customers won't buy from you. Even if everyone in the country stops selling it, in my case, the customers will drive across the border to the USA and buy junk there. I've seen this happen a lot for products which are tough to find here.

Re:The UK law ...

[edwazere]

Well,in your example, personally I'd probably buy the $40 vcr, 'cos even with replacing the thing once a year you still come out $100 better off.
Since you said it was 1 to 4 years that's a whole lot cheaper.

Back to the original topic, in the UK the responsability eventually ends up with the manufacturers. The people who make the "plastic junk".

Re:The UK law ...

[Cryogenes]

In Germany the minimum warranty period on any new product (with exceptions where it's unreasonable, such as clothing) is two years.

Yet VCRs are (almost) as cheap over here as they are in the US. What difference there is is mostly due to higher sales tax.

Re:The UK law ...

[AndyChrist]

If I understand correctly, it's "customer" with a little dash of "sucker" thrown in.

Re:The UK law ...

[admactanium]

NEWSFLASH! sarcasm discovered in slashdot post by all but one reader!

Re:The UK law ...

[operagost]

News flash - you just missed obvious sarcasm, even when he put the smiley at the end. Give your anti-American trolling a break for a few days - you're looking like an idiot.

Re:The UK law ...

[Mycroft_VIII]

Me I buy the $40 plastic crap vcr and DON'T cry if it behaves like a $40 crap vcr (I expect to get a few months of normal use at least though).
Back in 80-82is my dad bought a high end vcr (had hook-ups for pro/semi-pro cams, etc.) and paid almost $900 for it (closer to 1200-1400 in todays money at a guess) and it was still running like new at least ten years later, I think it finnally died in around '96. Mind you this thing had a detachable recorder unit that was portable for use with a camera that got taken to all sorts of things, including outdoor things like camping and took all sorts of abuse.
My MB and processor however I spent >$800 on and if eigther of them dies for no good reason before obsolesence I might be a bit peeved.

Mycroft

Re:The UK law ...

[Vegeta99]

And the crowd goes silent as the joke flies 30 miles above Archangel_Azazel's head...

Re:The UK law ...

[Hognoxious]

The punter cannot sue the manufacturer because they have no contract with the manufacturer.

I think you'll find that if the retailer has ceased trading, they can claim against the manufacturer and or importer.

Re:The UK law ...

[Starsmore]

I believe that was called humor.

Although you might know it as humour.

Obviously an elusive thing to you.

Re:The UK law ...

[gonzoxl5]

exactly, and the retailer is not allowed to back off the obligation to the manufacturer.

A qprime example is a problem I had with a pay-as-you-go (non-contract) mobile phone :

The phone was a few months old and started cutting out, I attempted to return the phone to the retailer who quoted a standard £8 repair charge unless I took out a maintenance contract, alternatively they said they could provide me for free with the manufactuturer details.

I queried this with the local branch of trading standards, they confirmed the following :

Under the Sale of Goods Act, a retailer has a legally binding contract with the customer that cannot be superceded by any warranty supplied by the manufacturer, nor by policy of the retailer.

This contract entitles the customer to expect their goods to function for a 'reasonable period of time' after they are purchased, with no fixed definition of the term reasonable.

For a reasonable period of time (could be years for TVs etc and maybe just a year for stuff like walkmans/phones), the retailer has an obligation to fully repair the item, as the item becomes older a shared obligation is expected, a reasonable period under the act can be up to 6 years after the item has been purchased.

If the retailer refuses to play ball then under the terms of the act the customer is entitled to have the item repaired elsewhere and charge the retailer for the repair cost.

Many UK firms deliberately device store poicy to brief against this as the act leaves so much up to interpretation, thats why you have store managers claiming things like "manufacturers warranty comes into force after 28 days".

As for my phone - After a visit from my local Trading Standards officer the retailer (Orange) capitulated and waived the repair cost.

If you are in the UK then this can be a very powerful act to have on your side, awareness can also save you spending money needlessly on extended warranties for items that should 'reasonably be expected to last more than 12 months'.

a DTI fact sheet can be found here http://www.dti.gov.uk/ccp/topics1/facts/salegoodsa ct.htm/

IANAL

Re:The UK law ...

[potcrackpot]

Looks like the mods don't get the joke either.

Yeah...

[Cyno01]

The Xbox console makes quite the effective bludgeon. (1) (2)

Don't complain about Xbox quality

[mrm677]

Do you really expect a $150 console to have top-notch DVD and HD drives?? When Microsoft speced the XBox, they probably carefully chose components with MTTFs such 99% of Xboxes will work for several years. In fact most retailers I speak with say that Xbox returns/failures are quite reasonable

Now you can fault them for only providing a 90-day warranty, but I'm curious to know how long the warrenty period is for competing products.

And you might fault them for putting a HD in the machine which typically has lower MTTFs than the rest of the system.

But come on people. The machine costs $150. If you can't stomach a 1-5% risk that it will die in the next couple years, then purchase those silly extended warranties.

Flextronics does all the manufacturing for Xboxes. They are a very reputatable manufacturer...just ask Cisco.

Extended Warranties

[scot4875]

Why can't I get option b) buy a similar appliance for an extra $100 that is built with better QA and better components, and has the extra warranty 'built-in'? That way, I'm actually getting a better *product* for the extra money. I could buy something that I could expect to last 5 or 10 years instead of 1 or 2.

The problem with extended warranties is that, once they're up, you're still stuck with the same crappy hardware that's just as likely to die as it was when it was under warranty. And if it *doesn't* die in the extended warranty period, then you get *nothing* out of the deal. If you'd bought better hardware, that can't "run out." It'll always be better.

--Jeremy

Re:Extended Warranties

[miskatonic alumnus]

I'm only guessing here, so take it for what it's worth. Gizmo manufacturers come out with new models all the time. If the old model was reliable for a long time, they would put themselves out of business. I'm not saying all products are designed with a built-in expiration date (although that may be true sometimes). However, all products do in fact fail at some point. Almost surely, quality control has estimated a mean failure time, and adjust the time period covered by warranty accordingly.

Re:Extended Warranties

[grainofsand]

Buy it once, own it forever.

I've spilled coffee on myself.

[DM9290]

Have you ever drank coffee immediately after poured? It's certainly too hot for consumption as well, unless your coffee maker is broken.

To hot for comfort or too hot for safety?
Why do we lower the standards of safety when it comes to food and drink? It is common courtesy to WARN PEOPLE WHEN YOU SERVE THEM SOMETHING WHICH IS TOO HOT.

Have you never been told "watch yourself the plate is hot"? or words to that effect? I personally ALWAYS warn people when I'm handing them something which I believe is too hot.

McDonalds does not get off the hook, because it's employees are poorly trained.

We have a duty of care to people to whome we are selling products, to not hand them drinks which are so hot as to cause potentially fatal consequences if they drink them.

I think the little warning label on the cup is quite insufficient. If the coffee is still 20 degrees hotter than standard you should be warned verbally.

Quite frankly, I've spilled hot coffee on myself at home. On my groan as well. I didn't put the coffee between my legs, but it was early in the morning, I had just gotten out of bed and I was half-asleep. I misjudged how close I was sitting to my table and when I put my cup down, I missed the table, simply dropping the coffee right on my lap.

The result?

A lot of pain, and some superficial 1st degree burns. This was absolutely freshly brewed coffee. And that was coffee spilling on bare skin.

If this lady has simply spilled the coffee by accident and suffered 3rd degree burns, then would you find McDonalds liable? Who cares if she was holding the coffee in her lap? The issue is: Was the coffee dangerously and negligently or recklessly too hot for its intended purpose.

Why should anyone expect McDonalds coffee would be 20 degrees hotter than the industry standard?

If the McDonalds coffee was so hot as to cause 3rd degree burns and 7 days of hospitalization, it was TOO HOT.

Food is commonly served too hot for comfortable immediate consumption, but it is vary rarely served so hot that it would cause serious injury. And in those cases it is normal to recieve a warning from the food server.

Had the lady simply drank that coffee and suffered 3rd degree burns inside her body she would probably
have died.

Sure.. The lady accidentally spilled coffee on herself. So perhaps she should be liable for her cleaning bill. But spilling food on yourself should not result in a 7 day hospital stay.

And a company which sells millions of coffees daily should know better than to serve its coffee 20 degrees hotter than industry standard.

You nailed it.

[Gldm]

This is why I quit trying to sell computers. I had a DBA from 97 to about 2000 or so by the name of Kick@ss Computers (everyone at PC Expo loved it). I sold maybe 2 machines to friends and made less than the late fees I got from my quarterly tax fillings being lost in the mail.

People, even good friends or family, would come to me and ask me what to buy. Then they'd go by some piece of crap from gateway, or worse some whitebox from a place that doesn't have a single employee that speaks non-broken english.

All because they wanted to save $150 on a $2000 system.

BTW, my computers including my laptop were all SCSI from 1992-2001, at which time I replaced the drives with IDE RAIDs on hardware controllers. And I have my really critical stuff mirrored to multiple machines. And backed up on a cd/dvd at least monthly, if not more often when I make a major update like a new program. And I keep multiple copies with friends in case the house burns down. I'm probably going to buy a 1GB flash card (I have about 550MB in source, documents, and old pictures) to keep in my wallet as a master copy for syncing and because flash is extremely durable (even if nailed to a tree).

Can you make a reliable PC? One of the few I built is still running. I built it in early summer 1998. Yes it was a SCSI machine, it had a lowend but extremely well supported tekram controller, a 7200rpm ultrastar, and an ultraplex. The first part to fail on it was the power supply in 2002, due to the house having bad power. I tried getting them on a UPS, but it didn't work. APC says the voltage must be dipping below 90 or over 130 for that to happen, which explains why the PS died. The rest of the machine works fine. It's a win98 machine that's had a broadband connection for 4 years. I suspect it's about due for a cleanout or replacement soon. I'll check it when I'm visiting this thanksgiving.

If you really want a reliable game console, buy 2 and save one in a closet or pick one up on ebay after yours dies. The old ones weren't necessarily more reliable. I went through 3 NES, 2 colecovisions, and 2 playstation 1s, but I'm still on my first xbox. And my first vectrex. =)

Seems...

[Fringex]

frivolous to me. How much could you really sue them for without looking like a money hog? The price of the X-Box when you had purchased it? Sueing for any amount over 400 dollars would just make the guy look money hungry and striving for a reason.

Grievance? Hardly. His X-Box broke and I am sure it is repairable. How long is the warranty on one of these things? Or did he violate his warranty with one of the many many hacks for the X-Box and is now upset?

To me this seems very very very frivolous and I am surprised it made the front page news of slashdot.

What brand of DVD drive is in the box?

[503]

I've heard people complain about the Thomson DVD drives used in the Mexican-built Xboxes and praised the Samsung drives used in the Chinese-built Xboxes. Is there any way to tell where a particular Xbox was built of what specific parts are included prior to purchasing it? Is there any indicator on the packaging?

Re:What brand of DVD drive is in the box?

[Current Shunts]

Here is a great site for determining your drive type and addressing the Dirty Disk Errors. Link

Re:why should there be?

[ymgve]

Here's the point: Over in Europe, we don't pay for our warranties.

Re:

[operand]

So, are we to assume that every defective piece of hardware is basis for legal action? I had a HP printer fail after two months. There have been engines in cars that fail after minimal use. Technology isn't going to work every single time - so why sue? If you are past your warranty with minimal use, tough - pay the money to get something else or buy the competition. I can't get mad at a car manufacturer because the tires blow, brakes fail or the engine craps out AFTER the warranty expires. I am using a used product. There are lemon laws in certain states that protect from happening on cars - should the same be done to technology products so lawsuits like these don't continue? If its within the warranty and YOU DID not void the warranty (ie modding), than I think the company will gladly refund or then you can sue...

Warranty?

[nurb432]

Isnt there a warranty on these things? The last consumer product i bought had at least a 1 year warranty on it..

Bicycle

[Craig Ringer]

Bike in this case == pushbike , not motorcycle. Sorry.

Possibly language differences AU <> US<> UK ?

As for how it can fail ... manufacturing problems mostly if the frame is good. Lower quality frames skimp on materials and use cheaper construction techniques that can make them weaker than one would expect and more prone to failure.

Having snapped my first bike's frame (the rear wheel attachment point fell off - a clean break in the metal on both sides - while accelerating across an intersection), I care about this stuff. Also, given the option I like to buy quality.

In addition to all this, a better frame tends to be lighter - which is always nice.

Difference between 'hot' coffee and...

[Dogtanian]

You boil water for pasta and accidentally spill it off all over you. Whom do you sue? The pasta company who requires boiling water to cook the pasta, Mother Nature for having water boil at 100 degres Celsius or...your own stupidity?

Your own stupidity. Reason being that (a) Pasta *normally* requires boiling water to cook anyway, and (b) the person who would have heated the water to boiling point would have been you (or someone you know) and not the company, so you can't claim you didn't know it was boiling hot.

Although (B) would be the main factor in your example, (A) has more relevance to the subject under discussion (McDonalds' extra-hot coffee).

More specifically; coffee can *reasonably* be expected to be hot on serving- possibly a bit *too* hot to drink for some people. But 'hot' is a relative term. The temperature McDonalds served their coffee at was far higher than anyone should reasonably expect 'hot' coffee to be.

Arguably, the woman was careless. Had the coffee been the expected temperature, she might still have been burned (but nowhere near as badly); in that situation, the outcome of the court case should have been in McDonalds' favor. This was not what had happened, however.

Cue lame example; if I buy a portable radio, and ignore the advice to install the AA Duracells the correct way round, would it be acceptable if the radio overheated, threw out blobs of molten plastic and metal, and burned the house down, if the manufacturer knew about this problem? After all, they printed clear advice not to install the batteries backwards.

If someone wants to take a risk, they should accept the consequences; but in the absence of further advice, it is reasonable to assume limits to the consequences of these actions. These assumptions should be based on social norms and/or past experience.

If McDonalds had put half-inch high warnings on fluorescent labels on every cup of coffee and had the woman sign a waver saying "This coffee is way more hot than normal and will cause severe burns if you spill it on yourself", she would have had fair warning. Alternately, if it had been the norm (for some reason) to serve coffee at stupidly high temperatures, then her case would have been severely weakened (at best).

However, neither of these situations apply in the McDonalds coffee lawsuit.

I don't like lawsuit culture. I don't have any unreasonable dislike for McDonalds (I eat there on average 2-3 times per month). But they were absolutely right to get slapped down in that case.

'Hot' is an extremely broad term

[Dogtanian]

When I buy a cup of coffee, I expect a cup of hot coffee. I do not expect a cup of lava.

Part of the problem here is the use of the word 'hot' for both cases. Hot could mean (just) drinkable coffee, or it could mean something far hotter (as with the McDonalds example).

This allows people to use arguments along the lines of... "you should expect coffee to be hot".

Yeah, but not *that* hot....

US$300

[Craig Ringer]

I'm not sure it's possible to make a modern console for US$300 that'll work like your old Atari.

Modern consoles are a _lot_ more complex, unfortunately. Some, like the xbox, also borrow from PC tech - including the "cheap and nasty" aspect.

Of course, I suppose the Atari was pretty cutting edge and complex for the time too, so perhaps I'm just talking hot air.

While it would be interesting to see an "Xbox Premium" - think good quality SCSI disk set to operate at lower RPMs, quality DVD-ROM, faster CPU running under spec to keep it cool and quiet, etc - I doubt many would buy it. Almost certainly not enough to cover the costs of making the two different variants.

Worse, MS couldn't form a viable market around a quality console - volume and market share are king, and if you want those you _must_ win on price.

As for PATA HDDs... you lucky bastard. I use SATA disks in a RAID array at work for our main storage array (fairly static "live" archival data, backed up). I had a 60% failure rate on the first batch. When I recently upgraded the array to 250GB disks, I again had a 60% failure rate. I lost three disks in the first two weeks. I've also had less than stellar results at home. I've since discovered that the first round was a bad batch of disks - the three with sequential serial no#s died, the other two were fine, and that batch was confirmed to be bad. The more recent round ... nfi.

All the disks were well cooled and carefully installed. All were confirmed to have serious media failures using S.M.A.R.T and mfgr disk tools.

With a failure rate like this, we'd be better off spending 4-5x as much to get something like WD Raptors. Of course, I'll probably use consumer SATA again next time because I won't be given the budget for anything else. Grr.

Exactly

[Craig Ringer]

Agreed. That's exactly why I said that while I'll pay for quality in some things, computer equipment is not one of those things. Not for personal use, anyway - work is different because the cost of failure is more than "Bugger, off to the PC shop again tomorrow."

Costco's policy may be changing

[fitzsimj]

Costco recently had problems with some scooters they were selling. I think they may have been electric ones.

Parents were buying them, letting the kids beat the hell out of them for a year, then returning them for new ones or for cash when the kids' interest died.

I know they were planning to revise their return policy due to this, though maybe they just stopped carrying products prone to this sort of abuse...

Obviously he just needed to run NOSMOKE.EXE

[emarkp]

He should have checked if there was an XBox version of NOSMOKE.EXE. It's a documented problem.

clean the lens...

[Tek Tekson]

The same happened with my XBox no less than 4 months after I bought it. I called MS, assuming there was at least a 1-year warranty. I was advised that, no, in fact it was only a 90-day warranty (lame!). I asked if there was a repair service and was told no.

So I opened the XBox and cleaned the lens with a cotton swab and some alcohol. Works fine, cheaper than a lawsuit.

Re:Warrenty Shmarrenty

[Psykechan]

I had a similar problem and had purchased the Extended Warrenty Extortion. I sent it back to them and instead of fixing it, they responded with a letter saying it wasn't broken. It was a photocopy of a form letter; How's that for service?

I figured that it just wasn't worth my time to fight it. I'm sure lots of people do the same.

If this gets tried as a class action suit, I'll help. I'll dig up the letter and scan it in.

Extended Warranties are bullshit...

[HawkeVIPER]

Have you ever actually tried to use that piece of paper called an extended warranty?

Firstly you have to remember NOT to push any buttons when you call the number... just hold for an operator, thus running the gauntlet of being diconnected as soon as said out-sourced non-english-speaking operator answers... if you try to push button for a department, you will be entered into a process of random selection, where you will be faced by options including disconnection after 31 minutes of waiting, deafening by overly loud classical music pumped out at around 14kbps, or, the above.

In the event that you actually do get through to someone, you will find that you are in the wrong department, and need to be transferred. If they can actually transfer you, refer yourself to waiting another 30 minutes only to be cut off. Once again, if you get through, to an even worse english speaker, you will be confronted with noise along the lines of "'Alloh, Bzzfsdjkh Tuchnekil Sport, Jzembah spukin"... you will spend 45 minutes just trying to get across to him that the piece of shit you bought doesn't work he will tell you either "hunforkumaneleh, junri brokdun ag rimpair not clivd buh rinty" (Unfortunately, general breakdowns and repair is not covered by your warranty), or will force you to go through a flow chart process he has in front of him. Only, you don't have what you're calling about in front of you, so you say "Let me go get it", or, if it's a computer "let me go check", and he disconnects your call as soon as you put the phone on the table.

You finally give up, when you realise that the cost of the above phonecall(s) is roughly the same price as a brand new whatever you bought+another extended warranty.

Aside from that, extended warranties are totally worth the £299 (2 years) or £399 (3 years) extra that you have to pay. Hell, if you take out the warranty, we'll throw in this digital camera (that isn't covered by the warranty and is designed to break after 367 days (+2 to account for the possibility of a leap year).)

This could really cost MS a lot...

[techstar25]

This suit may seek to recover a percentage of Microsoft's profits from all XBox's sold -- which amounts to roughly zero. Well, good luck with that.

Re:This could really cost MS a lot...

[Ziviyr]

I actually understand its a negative number.

Mine Broke (but they're fixing it!)

[Jerivix]

Just thought I'd chip in. After having way to many problems getting the XBox to read Fable, and wanting it to work perfectly for Halo 2, I got on the phone with tech support. They gave me various instructions...blah blah blah...Yes I already did that...blah blah blah...No that didn't work - Ok, we'll fix it. Just like that. They processed the repair, gave me an adress and a refernce number. Didn't cost me a dime past shipping it to someplace in Kentucky.

As a side note, I've had my Box for about two and a half years. I've never done a thing to mod/hack it(that's what my computer is for, no?). Recently it's had trouble playing my older discs, and within the last couple of months, it's stopped liking new discs as well.

Maybe everyone should stop yelling about the warranty length and just call the people - they are paid to fix problems. Most of the time.

All about the benjamins

[KrackHouse]

Tell them you write for a games magazine and that you're pissed, it was true in my case. I didn't get it fixed free but it was $50 and no shipping instead of $100+. Also the first guy I talked to said they wouldn't deal so I hung up, called back and the next person helped me out. They're all about the bottom line and they lose money on every Xbox sold(hardware only) so if you can convince them that you can affect their bottom line it's in their interest to be customer centric.

NZ Consumer Law

[smeenz]

I know I'm replying to my own post, but there was something important I forgot to add to the original.

This is something that many people are unaware of - the NZ Consumer Guarantee Act states that if a product is replaced with a new one, the reasonable period of life clause applies to the new one just as it did to the original product.

In other words, if I buy that DVD player, and it has a one year warranty, dies after 18 months, gets replaced with a new one, which then dies after another 18 months, I'm still entitled to another replacement (or refund), even though 36 months have elapsed since the original purchase.

This is quite different from what most manufacturer's warranty says - where the warranty applies to the original purchase date, and not to the date of replacement.

Optical mouse

[Anthracks]

I always wondered about that optical mouse thing. A few years ago, when MS' version was relatively new, I bought one that stopped working pretty quickly. Went through their tech support process, and after trying a few simple steps (like "is it plugged in?") they just told me they'd send a new one, no questions asked. Best support I ever got from MS :). Interesting to hear that others had the same experience.

and this is why extended warranty plans make sense

[rawr79]

I know of a few electronics chains up here in Canada that offer extended warranties on game systems for this exact reason. The system comes with a 90 day warranty and you can up the warranty to 2 years with the extended warranty. Benefits of the extended warranty at some places include an over the counter exchange if the system goes bad in that time frame. I know I am glad i got it on my PS2 because I replaced it in the first 6 months.

my system never died

[luther349]

i have a first gen 1.0 xbox referbished and this system has lasted 2 years and the dvd drive shows no sighn of dying out on me. and i got a 1 year warrenty couse it was a rebuild. but being my warrenty is over with i have no problem disassembling my xbox every year and cleaning it with a air compresser to blow the dust out. i also got a cd lens cleaner cd ment for a xbox i run once every 3 months. and my xbox even being a first gen rebuild runs perfctly. most peoples systems die from dirty lensis and lack of care dirty lens = drive working 3 times as hard to read a disk and evetly burning it out. my brother bought a new 1.3 xbox but he never took care of itand withen6 months the dvd drive burned out and he lives in a roach infestid aperment so it probly also had a infstation. so my point is if these people with dead systems never cleaned the drives with simple cd cleaner you can buy froma game shop for a $1.99 then whine why did there system die well they have no case. if its people like me who take very good care of there system and do perfentiv matence on them and it dies in under a year then they have a good case.

Re: Warranties

[winwar]

"If you want to require Microsoft to warranty their product for a "reasonable" timeframe then you have to be willing to pay more for your XBox."

Really? Then why do other people in countries with better "implied" warranties get to purchase the unit for the same price? Perhaps because it doesn't cost MS much, if anything?

"As much as I hate having an extended warranty shoved down my throat at a retail outlet, I do appreciate the fact that at least I have a choice."

My fundamental problem with extended warranties is this: I don't know the failure rate of the product I am buying. The manufacturer knows-this is how they set the warranty in part. The manufacturer isn't going to tell me (likely), or if they do tell me, I won't be able to compare rates between different manufacturers, or to trust that their rate is correct.

In other words, they are withholding important information needed to make an ACCURATE assessment of which product to buy. Which means, it is to their advantage. Equal information is rather important for capitalism to work properly. So I see no problem with legislating improved "implied" warranties. They are needed because "consumers" are being taking advantage of by manufacturers and there is nothing a "consumer" can realistically do about it.

"At least making the extended warranty a separate purchase gives the consumer the choice."

Yeah, kind of like asking someone in a dark cave if they would like a lighter after telling them it is potentially filled with explosive gas and dangerous pits....

YRO

[jbridge21]

What the fsck does this have to do with "Your Rights Online"?

I wouldn't

[Craig Ringer]

Personally, I wouldn't - I'd just buy the cheap crap one if there was a choice, unless the price on the better one was sufficiently reasonable.

That was intended to be part of my point - some things are worth paying top dollar for, some aren't. Perhaps I failed to make said point - it was 4:00am when I posted that after all.

class action suits aren't the answer...

[TheHonestTruth]

and truthfully, I don't have it either. First, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a law student, so I am generally pro-lawyer. That being said, I have also been a member of several "classes." I was a sprint customer for a couple years after 1998, I bought contacts from Bausch & Lomb during 2000 or something too and a couple others. As a member of these classes I got two things after our side won: jack and squat. I think I got a $10 credit off a Sprint bill and like $20 off one pair of contacts.

Now I realize a little multiplied by a lot equals a lot, but these were all little coupons for more of the offending party's products. And, again to be truthful, I never felt injured by either company so I wasn't really miffed about my lack of compensation.

But it all just proved to me that class actions might hurt the company (and I say "might" assuming everyone cashes their coupons in, which they won't) but they do not compensate the injured, which is the idea behind our civil system. Punishment is generally reserved for our criminal courts, compensation for our civil ones. The fact is, class action suits really don't benefit anyone.

Except maybe the lawyers. There. I said it.

-truth

Re:class action suits aren't the answer...

[Audguy]

Well, you may have not benefited, but I have. A few years back I had purchased a laptop from Fujitsu. According to the documentation the batteries were supposed to last 2 hours, but even brand new you were lucky to get 45 minuets. A class action laws suit was brought up, and everybody who had purchased one receved a memory upgrade, new Lithium ion battery or a travel adapter. So in my opinion they do work.

Re:class action suits aren't the answer...

[TheHonestTruth]

Good to hear they work for some. Seriously. I hope that if I am ever shafted by a company, one will work for me. So far though, no such luck. But like I said, I wasn't really "injured" as a consumer of the companies I was adverse to, so I can't and won't really complain.

-truth

Re: uk consumer electronics

[Mycroft_VIII]

Actually NO don't buy a service plan. At least usually. Most 'service plans' (insurance is how thier treated as in some states) have a out for 'abuse' or 'improper use' in them. Guess what they call it if your product breaks.
Now if the 'service plan' is a 'no fault' (as in you are covered no matter how it broke) then weigh the other restrictions (who pays shipping, how much lee-way they have in replace/replace with simular/pay cash, ect) vs the cost and your best guess on how likely you are to need it.
Believe me if they have an out, the insurer will use it.

Mycroft

90 day Warranty

[r00td43m0n]

I work for a retailer and the 90 day warranty is actually pretty sneaky. It is 90 days from the day it was manufactured, not sold.

It's better than free

[rsilvergun]

if you're tech savy enough to test hardware, you'll get a good deal because most OEMs don't, and pass savings on to you. Plus, you get cheaper hardware thanks to all the marks buying the broken stuff and keeping it because they don't know any better.

Re:Best Camera Ever

[Ayaress]

Screw the store. Microsoft fixed my harddrive after more than TWO years for just the cost of shipping the Xbox there and back, which overground only cost me around $25.

Re:MicroSOFT, not HARD

[Loonacy]

In related news, MicroSoft has changed its name to MegaHard. They had to buy out a little known pornographic movie company to do so, but correspondance suggests they believe it was "worth the price." A leaked memo reveals Bill Gates originally wanted the movie studio just so he could sleep with porn stars on film, but then he found out they only produce homoerotic movies.

I wish I could sue somebody (sometimes)

[Fallen Andy]

One year is pretty good for a crappily produced consumer box ... Think of what the kids and dogs do to it. Replacement? Eh. Get a life.

Re: Warranties

[lazyl]

If you want to require Microsoft to warranty their product for a "reasonable" timeframe then you have to be willing to pay more for your XBox

That's insane. Customers expect a product to work propery for a reasonable amount of time. That's what they're paying for. I'm not buying a decorative black box for my living room.

So are you saying that if I go and buy a toaster and it works for a week and then stops then I'm out of luck if I didn't buy some stupid 'extended warranty'? I hope not because that would be asinine.

The only difference, and the only real debatable point here, is what is a 'reasonable amount of time' to expect the product to work. The 'extended warranty' is supposed to extend beyond that basic amount of time.

90 days (I think that's Microsoft's warranty period) is NOT a reasonable amount of time for a console. It should be at least 3 years.