Xbox 360: Microsoft facing Lawsuits over Defective Design

Harrisburg, PABob Rowe purchased a Microsoft Xbox 360 in January, 2006. In February, 2006, he had to have it replaced because it had stopped working.

Now, he's starting to have trouble with his replacement unit. Unfortunately, he's not the only person having a string of problems with his Xbox 360.

"The first Xbox 360 lasted one month," Bob says. "Then we saw the red ring of death - that's what it's actually called - which is when three red lights appear at the front of the unit. That renders it useless."

After this occurred, Bob phoned Microsoft but quickly figured out that because the unit was only a month old, he could take his Xbox 360 back to the retailer and get a replacement unit, which he did. The replacement Xbox 360 seemed to work fine, until October 31 when new problems began.

This time, the Xbox 360 began locking up, which can only be remedied by restarting the unit. "It locks up consistently during game play," Bob says. "My son plays it the most of anyone and he winds up having to restart the machine. It's very frustrating when you're in the middle of a game to have to restart, especially with an expensive consumer item like the Xbox 360. It should be dependable."

Bob says that the problem this time might be with software updates that occurred October 31. "I'm taking a wait-and-see approach," he says. "It could be the updates that cause the lockups, in which case they might be able to fix it. There have been more complaints on the Xbox website since those updates were done. I don't want to knock the machine - when it works it works very well. It just shouldn't be having these problems."

Bob's problems are apparently quite common. Searchviews.com, a Search Marketing blog, notes that their most popular post was a four sentence article about a lawsuit against Microsoft because of defects in the Xbox 360. The website reports that hundreds of people who were unhappy with their Xboxes wrote in to report a number of issues including:

• That the unit overheats;
  
• That the unit consistently locks up or freezes;
  
• That Microsoft pretended to be ignorant about customer complaint issues; and
  
• That replacement consoles also break down (one unhappy customer noted that his second replacement unit only worked for two hours).

The website says that Microsoft seems to have three responses to customer complaints about the Xbox 360:

1. Have complainants call customer service;
   
2. Offer to fix the Xbox 360 for $130 or more; and
   
3. Pretend not to know about problems with the Xbox 360.

Furthermore, many people have complained about the same problem Bob Rowe suffered from: the "red ring of death."

Unfortunately, Microsoft seems either unwilling or unable to fix the problems with the Xbox 360, asking customers to pay for repairs that should be covered and sometimes outright ignoring complaints.

Meanwhile a class action lawsuit has been filed in Chicago against Microsoft claiming that the Xbox 360 was defectively designed which allows the power supply and CPU to overheat and cause the unit to freeze or lock up.

If you purchased an Xbox 360 and are having problems with the unit overheating, freezing, or locking up you may be eligible for damages from a class action suit.