Kwazy
Shared on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 18:49What can Brown do for you?
My Xbox 360 was returned to me today. The UPS guy new exactly what it was, and exactly why he was handling it. "Red ring of death? Yeah, me too. Mine took a crap about three months ago." This is the UPS guy saying this. I ask him how many he's handled. He laughs, "Man, I've got no idea. Probably fifteen a day? I'd guess I've delivered at least a thousand repaired units, if you don't include the empty coffins."
Nobody can definitively say how many units were manufactured and sold with the inadequate cooling/soldered connections. Educated estimates are in the range of 10 million. And failure rates for these units again is estimated to be somewhere around 80%. That's actually a little bit generous, but we'll stick with it to ease the math. Call the total number of affected units 8 million.
I live in Indianapolis. When my unit failed, I was of course sent a coffin. The coffin weighed two pounds and was sent from repair center in McAllen, Texas. When I enter the pertinent information into the UPS cost estimator it comes up with $8.43 for shipment of the empty box. Sending the unit back via coffin raises the shipping weight to a prepaid eight pounds. Again, using the estimator the cost comes out to be $10.95. When they shipped the repaired unit back to me (yes, I actually got mine back repaired instead of a new unit with an HDMI...damn it!), we'll call that another $10.95. That brings the grand total up to:
$30.43 in shipping costs.
Now I don't pretend for a second to not believe Microsoft didn't cut some sort of a deal with UPS...corporate rates or some other back-scratching. Let's pretend they got a hell of a deal and are only paying 75% of wholesale shipping costs.
That reduces the cost to $22.75.
And for another huge conceptual leap, let's assume that Indianapolis, Indiana is about the average distance and reflects the average shipping costs of all 360 RROD repairs. Crunching the numbers reveals:
8 million * $22.75 = $182,000,000
That is $182 million dollars in revenue Microsoft has contributed to UPS over the past three years.
Somebody at Redmond deserves a thank-you card at a minimum. Probably even a fruit basket.
I've got the unit all plugged back in, but I've yet to turn it on and test it. Further details as events warrant.
My Xbox 360 was returned to me today. The UPS guy new exactly what it was, and exactly why he was handling it. "Red ring of death? Yeah, me too. Mine took a crap about three months ago." This is the UPS guy saying this. I ask him how many he's handled. He laughs, "Man, I've got no idea. Probably fifteen a day? I'd guess I've delivered at least a thousand repaired units, if you don't include the empty coffins."
Nobody can definitively say how many units were manufactured and sold with the inadequate cooling/soldered connections. Educated estimates are in the range of 10 million. And failure rates for these units again is estimated to be somewhere around 80%. That's actually a little bit generous, but we'll stick with it to ease the math. Call the total number of affected units 8 million.
I live in Indianapolis. When my unit failed, I was of course sent a coffin. The coffin weighed two pounds and was sent from repair center in McAllen, Texas. When I enter the pertinent information into the UPS cost estimator it comes up with $8.43 for shipment of the empty box. Sending the unit back via coffin raises the shipping weight to a prepaid eight pounds. Again, using the estimator the cost comes out to be $10.95. When they shipped the repaired unit back to me (yes, I actually got mine back repaired instead of a new unit with an HDMI...damn it!), we'll call that another $10.95. That brings the grand total up to:
$30.43 in shipping costs.
Now I don't pretend for a second to not believe Microsoft didn't cut some sort of a deal with UPS...corporate rates or some other back-scratching. Let's pretend they got a hell of a deal and are only paying 75% of wholesale shipping costs.
That reduces the cost to $22.75.
And for another huge conceptual leap, let's assume that Indianapolis, Indiana is about the average distance and reflects the average shipping costs of all 360 RROD repairs. Crunching the numbers reveals:
8 million * $22.75 = $182,000,000
That is $182 million dollars in revenue Microsoft has contributed to UPS over the past three years.
Somebody at Redmond deserves a thank-you card at a minimum. Probably even a fruit basket.
I've got the unit all plugged back in, but I've yet to turn it on and test it. Further details as events warrant.
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Comments
Submitted by jquack on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 18:53
Submitted by VenomRudman on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 20:09
Submitted by NotStyro on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 23:08
Submitted by Leviticus78 on Sat, 04/05/2008 - 00:08
Submitted by Go_Aachmed on Sat, 04/05/2008 - 12:22
Submitted by dkhodz on Sat, 04/05/2008 - 14:11
Submitted by AutumnRocks on Sun, 04/06/2008 - 00:42
Submitted by Kwazy on Sun, 04/06/2008 - 19:26
Submitted by Kwazy on Sun, 04/06/2008 - 19:27