Saturday, November 30, 2013

The replacement Xbox one has arrived


While I was impressed with the speed in which they shipped the replacement system, I was very disappointed that they didn't ship it overnight.  After-all, I went out to their store at midnight to pick it up, the least that they could have done was shipped it overnight.  Oh well, just one more disappointment in this whole affair.

As soon as it arrived, I hooked it up and I'm happy to report that everything is working just fine. I played some Battlefield 4, blu-ray, CD's, and DVD's just for good measure but I couldn't afford to spend too much time on it as I've got to get back to my weekend chores.

Once I've had the opportunity to use it more, I will post a new blog entry on my opinion about the two systems.

Please feel free to comment about any of the posts in this series, I'd love to hear of any other issues or non-issues, or anything else that you would like to share. 

Monday, November 25, 2013

XBox Optical drive DOA - 11/25/13 Update

I received an update from Microsoft today that the replacement XBox one has shipped.  Considering that you can't get one in stores at this time, I'm impressed that they kept some in reserve in order to be able to send replacements to the day 1 customers who had problems.

I don't have any information as to when I should expect to receive it as Fedex has not updated their tracking information for the shipment yet.

In the mean-time, I'm having a blast playing my Sony PS4!

Friday, November 22, 2013

Xbox one optical drive DOA

I went to the midnight launch of the Xbox one and picked up my shiny new Xbox one console last night.

After getting it home and installing it, you could imagine the disappointment that ensued when I found out that the game discs that I purchased would not play.  In addition, blu-ray discs would not play (even after downloading the blu-ray player from the Microsoft store, but standard definition DVD discs would play. I called Xbox support at 3AM only to find that there was a 3 hour wait time for support.  Frustrated, I went to sleep.

First thing this morning I called Xbox support and put myself in the support queue for a call back in "2 - 3 hours." While waiting for a call back from Xbox support, I called the Microsoft store, where I purchased the Xbox, only to find out that they couldn't tell me if they had any in stock that I could exchange for my defective Xbox. The only thing they could tell me was that I had the option to come down to the store to return the defective Xbox; without knowing if I was going to be able to get a replacement.  I opted to wait for Xbox support to call me back.

Once Xbox support called (2.5 hours after getting into the queue) and confirmed that it seems like the optical drive is defective, the support person was not able to order a replacement for me, nor was he able to tell me how long it would take to get a replacement.  Instead, he said that I needed to go to the myservice.xbox.com web site and place a replacement order myself.

By this point (about 12 hours after getting the system) I was so frustrated with the whole situation that I didn't even bother to pursue the option to return the system to the Microsoft store.  I placed the replacement order on the web site (which also didn't tell me how long it would take to get a replacement) and I will wait and keep you all posted on how long it takes to actually get the replacement.

In the meantime and perhaps from here on out, I will be favoring my PS4 over my Xbox one when it comes to this generation of console gaming and set-top-box functionality.