My 360 RROD'd.

My plan is to go to Xbox.com and clicking support, then working through their "check this check this" thing until I get to the part where I get the label for sending it in for repairs.

I spent a few days wasting time with tech support, by the way. Before it RROD'd, the screen stayed black and there was no sound, but I could still go through the motions (Guide, up, up, A) of turning it off, so I knew it was running. I sent an amazingly detailed email to support stating that I tried switching out HDMI cables that I knew were working because they work on my media center and laptop too, that I used the component cable to hook it up, that I turned it off and on again, that I tried to reset the graphics settings using Y+RT and everything, and the email I got back was "Check these knowledge base articles to make sure it's hooked up correctly and that your cables aren't faulty." Thanks a *ing bundle, Microsoft tech support.

Actually I haven't been as excited for holiday season releases as I have been for these couple of summer (!) releases. I wonder how long it takes for them to repair it/send me another one. Probably three weeks or so.

The weird thing is that mine wasn't even running hot when it happened. I had just booted it up and got one minute into the game, and it broke. I immediately felt the device, and both the exterior and the ports were as cool as when it is off. If it was overheating then it must be made of some mystery metal that heats up to solder-melting temperatures and cools down to room temperature within 20 seconds or something. Either that or overheating isn't the real cause but rather the effect of whatever problem the 360 has.

It didn't start RROD-ing until after I was forced to repeat Xbox Support's inane cable-checking steps ad nauseum, by the way. Weird. In a way I'm kind of glad, because now that it's showing the three lights at least Support will let me just send it in and not make me jump through their annoying hoops anymore. God I hate tech support.

It's weird that it's so cheap, yeah. It's a bit too expensive to just get a new one, but if it was gone for, say, a month or two, I wouldn't even bother with getting it repaired and would just buy a new one. Which only benefits them, but what the hell. But the whole situation with the quality of electronic devices and support you get on them is so awful that I'd rather spend money than go through the whole process. When my Acer laptop died I had to repeat the symptoms three times to a woman that hardly spoke a word of Dutch, and then managed to misspell every single part of my address. The street, the house number, the zip code, the city, everything. The best part was my name. She couldn't understand my last name so I had to spell it out using that name-alphabet thing you use when you spell over the phone, and she wrote down all those names as my actual first name. After that I had to pay €300 and do a month without a laptop until it returned. Three weeks later the problem also returned. Modern electronics suck.

I've never found that to work. No matter what you say or how much you explain that you realise what the problem is and explicitly state that you've already gone through all the "check if the cable is plugged in" motions, they'll still just stick to their script, and won't send you a shipping label until they've totally exhausted it by having you turn stuff on and off again.

Getting forwarded to non-support people has never happened to me, they just ask you to send it in.

I already know all this. The problem is that when you call support you can't just go "It's broken and it's not a cable thing or my tv" and get them to pick it up. You have to jump through inane hoops like trying a different HDMI cable (despite having explained that you already tried that) before they'll let you send it in.