Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Sued Over Alleged Xbox 360 Defects
richdun writes "Reuters is reporting that a Chicago man who was lucky enough to purchase an Xbox 360 has filed suit against Microsoft over the overheating and crashing some users have experienced. The man is seeking unspecified damages, litigation expenses, and replacement or recall of all Xbox 360s. While more suits or a class-action is probably on the way, others have sought less litigious solutions."
But it's going to set a dangerous precedent if this clown wins. He wants damages? With a defective product, the company isn't liable for anything beyond replacing it, unless there's some signed contract prior to purchase in which the manufacturer guarantees certain things.
I love that the submitter's comments seems to imply that it is somehow more noble for consumers to take the responsibility for defective products on themselves, as opposed to holding the manufacturer accountable.
If you aren't happy with the 360 why not just take it back? Why does everything have to resort to a law suit?
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
I think it is about time someone took a stand against companies pumping shit out to the customer before it is ready. Especially since it is obvious this was done to beat the Xmas season...
In addition, I don't like the way it was posted... "a Chicago man who was lucky enough to purchase an Xbox 360"... OH PLEASE!!!! "lucky enough" You make out to be some amazing thing... It's JUST a GAME BOX!!! Hello!!!
WoW!! When playing games is THAT important life must be truly sad.
First iPod Nano then Xbox 360.
Am I seeing a commercial trend where hardware companies are increasing confident to roll out their products even if they are not thoroughly tested, simply because these companies know they have enough fanboys to buy anything they sell?
It's also interesting to see that these hardware companies are also software companies, who are regularly rolling out "beta" software to the public.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Unfortunately it is a class action lawsuit. The individual(s) will recieve a $1.25 check 10 years from now while the lawyers rack up $400/hr fees. Microsoft will issue a non-mea-culpa and continue life as usual, short $100 million, a drop in the bucket.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
Is it a design defect if you're specifically told what the 'problem' is and how to avoid it?
FYI I'm not talking about chainsaws that can accidentally cut your face off, more like a car owners manual that says "keep your radiator topped off or else your engine will overheat." Or in this case, don't put your Xbox in certain places, or it will overheat.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If Microsoft just recalls all of the power adapters (which seem to be most of the issue), and replaces them with a different design that allows airflow underneath, they can basically stop this lawsuit and any others that are bound to come up. The other option would be to provide a free plastic base to all XBox360 owners that would snap on the bottom of the system and raise it up an inch from the surface.
People who sue over this stuff are worse than companies that unknowingly release a faulty product. There are better resolutions than calling a lawyer, like returning the system, waiting on a recall, or hacking it up with a string.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Have things really gotten to the point when everytime we don't like a product we sue the manufacturer? What happened to the days when if a product wasn't what we expected it to be we simply told our friends not to buy one and didn't buy from that manufacturer again? Are companies required to produce products that every single person in the world likes otherwise be victims of a lawsuit? Are standard defects valid causes for suits? We (well Slashdot population) all know that no process is 100% defect free, even a 6 sigma process still has 3.4 defects per million opportunities. Are we that litigious? How long before someone sues a restaurant because their steak was medium instead of medium rare?
This is absolutely insane.
I don't see how there could be any grounds for a case. There certainly is no way that this guy can demonstrate that Microsoft hasn't been acting in good faith with customers or that there's been any sort of cover up. The Xbox360 has been out barely a week.
Not to mention that the first generation of anything often has problems. This certainly isn't unique to Microsoft. This is what happens when consumers crap themselves over something new and have to be the first ones to get it. They get screwed waiting in long lines, paying more than they should and having a potentially defective unit on top of all that.
Anyone with a little sense would wait a few months until those initial problems were addressed and then waltz into any store and choose from one of the dozens of unclaimed units sitting there on the shelves.
Not that I'd ever waste money on an Xbox360, or a PS3 or a Revolution for that matter. They should all stop screwing around and just start developing for the PC directly, because thats what those consoles are turning into anyway.
I suppose someone always has to be an early adopter, and they're the ones who are going to encounter the problems first, and it's because of them that these problems are discovered. However, if you can't get rid of the ants in your pants then you'd better learn to deal with the consequences. Too bad you cant sue someone for stupidity.
then try this on for size.
The RIAA takes you to court, pays outrageous legal fees (which they can afford), files for extensions, appeals and whatever until you run out of money and can no longer defend yourself.
Then you lose.
Now you have your legal fees, plus theirs!
Do you still think making the loser pay all legal fees is a good idea?
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
I'm going to give up modding the parent +1 insightful in order to post this here, so please do so for me if you can.
The Parent is correct; If you get something hot enough on today's carpeting or by a wall a fire *will* start. And most gamers/computer people I know have stacks of paper - gaming catalogs, cheat code listings, whatever - by there gaming systems anyway so that only increases the danger.
The fact is Microsoft made a really bad mistake out of either gross incompetence or extreme criminal negligence, and instead of being something as benign to the real word as a BSOD that simply needs a reboot to fix, the over heating of the Xbox360 can and will burn your house down if it gets out of hand. Hell it could not just be your house, it could be your city block or your entire town because you do not even need to be an owner of a XBox360 to have a over heated unit start the fire that will end up destroying everythng you own or burn your family alive. Any of the great fires of Boston or Chicago are the perfect example of this.
I am personally glad he is asking for a full recall of every single unit based on these facts, they are unsafe and all should be destroyed, with the company that made them taking the loss for bad design. And I would feel this way even if I owned the company that built them, or if it was Apple or Sun or any of a million other companies. Its not about Microsoft bashing, its about safety and a company needing to take responsibility for a crappy product that was badly made enough to be dangerous to peoples lives and property.
- d
That's for a non-critical item. That's better service than we get on some computers here at work, and those are at least somewhat important. A console is entertainment only. If this was a life support device, yes lawsuit. If this was a critical server, maybe. A game console? Hell no. If the company is offering less than a week turn around on reparis, I'd say you have nothing to whine about. You can either accept that, or simply take the unit back (all units are less than 30 days old).
Talk about a lot of fuss over an entertainment device.
Whatever, calm down. I've been playing mine for sometimes 6+ hours a day since Nov 22nd with the power supply sitting on the carpet. No lockups ever, online or offline. The brick on the floor barely gets warm, hardly enough to notice much less start a fire. Those folks who are having problems probably have defective consoles that should be replaced, but by no means does this mean that they all are broken. Most of the 360s sole are working just fine.
Fiznarp
I think there are too many lawyers in the world.
This is just pathetic. Things go wrong. Life isn't perfect. Products have kinks. People who bring childish lawsuits should be sent to live on the sun. If they don't like the conditions there they can sue me.
Unless you were personally holding the defective power unit when it overheated, thereby causing 2nd or 3rd degree burns, not be able to play with your new toy for a week or two is not grounds for emotional stress or pain and suffering.
I've had to deal with the microsoft hardware department a couple times myself for my mouse (plus a few times for work but I'll keep the corporate support seperate). Because of the way the cable was fed into the mouse it had a nasty habit of breaking the wires and causing the mouse to behave irratically. Both times I called them they sent me a brand new mouse, free of charge, and never asked for the old one back. The last times I even got one of the newer styles and haven't had a problem since. I've never had a hassle from them and never once thought about a lawsuit. From the sounds of it, their XBox support is about the same.
Anyone aware of the XBox or PS history should know that by buying the systems on the release date they are just asking for trouble. Best to wait for revision 2 or 3 to come around. Thats being said, I haven't heard the same about Nintendo and depending on price I will probably buy a Revolution as soon as it's out, but I also wouldn't be too upset if something like this happened then.
When you buy leading edge tech, you've essentially signed up to be unpaid testers. A lot of problems can only be discovered when you move from a few hundred test machines in controlled environments to thousands of machines out in the wild.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
>Its called the warranty of merchantability. It basicly means that when you buy something, its supposed to do
>what its claimed to do, without known hazardous side effects. The Xbox360 may fail this due to the overheating.
Except the Xbox also ships with SOFTWARE, with the software there is a EULA that says there is no warranty or fitness of any kind given!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Yet all of these things have happened. Not too mention a person's xbox locking up has much less dire consequences then the things you have listed.
Come on...sure it sucks to get your xbox home and find out it's broken, but really all you have to do is take it back to the store (that is if you don't trust Microsoft to fix it, which they are doing).
Try taking a bridge back to the store.
Yes, these lawsuits are stupid, but there are two things to consider here (speaking in general, I don't know the specifics of this case, but I can say that this person _deserves_ no more than a replacement Xbox and maybe $100 or a few free games to make up for missing out on the launch day fun. What they'll ask for/get is, I'm sure, another matter): firstly, if any of us can make a significant amount of money from doing very little work - why not? The system's broken anyway, others are exploiting it, so maybe we shouldn't be so hard on these people for joining in. If someone told you that you could have $1000000 for nothing except exploiting a system that's getting fucked over anyway, would you really be that bad for taking it?
That leads to my second point: whose fault is it that the legal and social structures are fucked (i.e. a judge doesn't throw out ridiculous cases _and_ a jury sides with these people)? Could it be the big evil corporations that tell people what to think? I honestly don't know, but the likes of Sony, MS, McDs etc. who generally get hit by these lawsuits are all partially responsible for the state of the 'developed' world anyway.
Maybe I'm feeling extra cynical today, but it just looks to me like the system's screwed anyway, so just make the most of it. Corporations are the epitome of selfishness, and many people are going the same way. Perhaps it's time to give up and go with the flow, because I'm losing sight of any other way to 'win' here.
No .. actually this suit, as many others need to be filed.
... and this has been in the past 18 months.
If a company pushes out a faulty product, they should be legally obligated to correct the problem. We seem to have very high standards for say auto manufactors whenever there exists a problem. Why shouldn't a company who is pushing a electric consumer product be under the same scrutinty.
Bottom line, were are be bombarded with crap. Dell and there "bad" capacitors, Apples scratching nano screens, Sony's PSP and now Microsoft's overheating XBox 3-POS-0 powersupplies
Interesting enough the later three were suppose to be "big releases". And if these four "small underfunded" companies can not put quality products, who can?
I say sue them all. Teach them that pushing crap is not going to be had and if they continue to do it, they will have to continue to replace it.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Bottom line, were are be bombarded with crap. Dell and there "bad" capacitors, Apples scratching nano screens, Sony's PSP and now Microsoft's overheating XBox 3-POS-0 powersupplies ... and this has been in the past 18 months.
Many of these cases have to do with user issues. Nano's are small enough to put in the same pocket as your keys, do you're scratching them more often - you didn't do this as much with your bigger iPods. XBox 360's are working fine in the vast, vast majority of cases. There maybe be a few faulty units, but for the most part it is well known that these power supplies are hot and can not be placed on thick carpet. I'm all for the improvement of quality overall, and to an extent I share your sentiment that we need demand higher quality as consumers. On the other hand there are tolerances for faulty units and these tolerances are fairly low. They seem to affect so many people because you don't have 900,000 artciles on how the XBox worked, you only have one or two about a few people who are having problems. Without some tolerance for lower quality we would be paying through the nose for these products. Maybe the bar needs to be raised a little, but I personally do not want to be paying $1200 for a military grade Nano.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
I think the general issue here is you're putting an environmentally sensetive device in the hands of the masses, and as I'm sure 90% of the IT professionals here that have served tech support can tell you, the masses are flaming idiots.
The XBox360 itself does run very hot. Mine I keep in an open AV cabinet with plenty of ventilation and I keep the PSU in a cool area as well. The XBox360 itself is pretty much a super-charged PC in a space 1/10th a standard PC's size. So of course it's going to run hot, and people should take the proper measures.
The design of the XBox360 was one that had to meet a few goals.
1) Had to look cool
2) Had to be smaller or as small as original XBox
3) Had to have adequate cooling WHILE not producing excessive noise from fans and other cooling elements
So Microsoft had to compromise on #3. They had to have the fans run quiet enough so people wouldn't yell, "OMG, ITS TOO LOUD!".. yet have them run fast enough where people wouldn't yell "OMG, MY XBOX IS OVERHEATING NO MATTER WHAT!"
With any manufactured device, there are going to be failures, be it mechanical failure or failure due to the manufacturing process. I'm sure if someone wrote CNN every time one of their Hard Drives died, or every time they got a bad pixel on an LCD, you'd see many other CONSUMER ALERTS for MASS HARDWARE FAILURE, but you don't. Because we've all been using computers long enough to know that with anything, sometimes you just get a bum device and have to get a new one.
Why is the XBox360 different from other computer devices? Well, as I see it, two reasons:
Reason #1 -- It's Microsoft, easy target for hate from some people.
Reason #2 -- There's nothing we can do. The reason Intel doesn't get sued because their CPU's run too hot, is because as consumers we can crack open our case and swap out the cooling with a solution that better fits our needs. Unfortunately, we cannot do this with the XBox360 because there are no alternatives to the cooling and it would void your warranty.
What are we to do?
Well, personally, I haven't had a single issue with the Xbox360 that was worth even getting on the phone over. It has locked up twice, but this isn't the first time in my 24 years that a console game as locked up on me. I recall RC Pro-AM locking up on level 98 and almost having a stroke.
For those of you having issues, explore every option in making sure it's in the proper environment before immediately pointing to hardware defect. If this still doesn't work, just call Microsoft and open up an RMA. Their process takes no more than 4 days before you'll have a new Xbox360 in your hot little hands.
I doubt it's a design flaw. It's probably a manufacturing defect that pertains to a batch of 360's.
I've seen stuff like this happen before when bringing products to market. In a nutshell you design something; do environmental testing, build prototypes, seed prototypes to developers; select some manufacturers; do a small manufacturing run; seed final hardware to developers / testers, etc.
However, if you don't watch your manufacturer(s) like a hawk, they might screw you. Perhaps they deviate from your spec at the last minute; perhaps they get in a pinch and decide to replace "good component A" with "shitty component B;" etc.
And the potential for f'k ups like these only increase once you start outsourcing your manufacturing to people halfway around the globe. Communication becomes an issue, and specs are commonly not adhered to as planned.
Microsoft has been fairly open about the development of this console. Prototypes have been out and about for quite sometime and they've been holding prerelease press events with finalized hardware. If this overheating problem was a major design flaw, it would've popped up already.
I bet if we were to crack open a "bad" power supply and a "good" power supply we'd see some different components.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Since when is it cheaper to produce a flawed product and then fix it rather than producing a product that works the first time?
... nowhere NEAR as cheap. Like, so dissimilar as to be a laughable analogy if you didn't seem so serious about it.
Didn't you just lose money fixing the problem that could have been avoided in the first place?
Hardware repairs are not so cheap as a simple software patch that can be posted online and downloaded
You don't even consider the damage to a company's reputation which, though Microsoft is disdained amongst geeks, most consumer's expect quality from.