MS hit with Red Ring of Death lawsuit
Californian complaint seeks refunds
Just four words can send a Microsoft Xbox 360 executive running for the hills. And they’ll be getting their trainers on now, because a Red Ring of Death lawsuit has been filed against Microsoft.
A report by DailyGamesNews states that the lawsuit alleges Microsoft knew about the infamous RRoD problem as far back as 2005, but that the firm chose to hide Xbox 360 RRoD failure rates so that sales wouldn’t suffer.
The lawsuit was filed at the Sacramento County Superior Court under California's consumer protection statutes. It seeks the introduction of a refund programme in California and a “disgorge all profits attributable” to Microsoft’s sales of the console.
Numerous articles on the subject of RRoD have apparently been cited in the lawsuit, including some that allege Microsoft was well aware of the RRoD problem back in November 2005 – just six months after the console was officially unveiled.
The lawsuit also makes reference to a report claiming that over half of the initial batch of Xbox 360’s was defective.
Electronics warranty firm SquareTrade has already found that, of 1040 examined warranties sold between 1 April 2007 and 31 July 2007, 102 of the 171 people who filed claims did so because of Xbox 360 RRoD problems.
Microsoft's Xbox 360 warranty extension plan, announced last year, may not count in its favour. Last year, the firm took an estimated $1bn (£581m/€746m) hit to extend the standard one-year warranty to three years - from date of purchase - to cover RRoD hardware crashes.
COMMENTS
Not good
I kinda assumed that Microsoft had fixed all this nonsense by now, as the 360 has been out 3 years.
Nope, picked up a new 60GB 360 the other week for the kids, and it failed within 3 days. Took it back to Morrissons and they refunded it, bought a PS3 instead (and so far, very impressed with it).
@ William
"Apart from extend the warranty, hopefully to prevent a class action suite."
Actually, i'm around 90% sure that Microsoft have had some hardware refreshes for the 360 to try and reduce the chances of the end user getting the RRoD.
How effective these hardware refreshes are though, I have no idea.
@DR
"thus this problem affect what, 1 in every hundred? one in every thousand?"
Nope, not even close. 1 in 3.
If you actually bother to read the Squaretrade article, and the update on it, it points out that the survey was done AFTER Microsoft had announced the 3yr RROD warranry, and given consumers a direct point of contact for repairs, SquareTrade openly admit their 17% failre rate is absolute best case, and the likelihood of consumers not contacting them, and phoninh Microsoft direct is very high indeed, thus making the 30-40% failure rate that retailers are seeing as much more accurate.
I don't know ANY 360 owner who has not had to send them 360 off on at least one occasion, I know 4 that have sent theirs away over 4 times.
Not good at all. The worst consumer product in history???
@ soaklord & the other fawners
If MS came and s*** on you, you'd find a reason to excuse them.
Talk about brown-nosing...
... and I've had a PS2 from launch which has NEVER failed me. I take care of my machines and don't drop doughnuts and coke all over them, as some of you probably do.
Couldn't stop my XBotch RROD'ing on me though. Great job Microshit.
@M
"My 60Gig version went red ring of death"
Nightmare! I'll just have to try to avoid too many marathon sessions & hope it doesnt get too hot. Luckily the missus normally has some *amazing* program with the fat faced twat Jamie Oliver to watch which stops me hogging the tv for too long ;)
