I’ve been meaning to put up a brief testimonial on this guy for a week or so now.   Its pretty rare these days that my standards (not expectations) are met, and even rarer that they are exceeded.

Yeah, I set my expectations lower than my actual standards.

When it comes to services being provided, I have high standards for quality and customer service.  Experience has taught me that realistically, my standards are too high for many people to actually meet.   So I expect I’ll get less than I want, but at least I go into it knowing that… which keeps me from getting to irrate.

So as you may or may not know, the Xbox 360’s (well the orignial ones anyway, I hear the newly redesigned consoles fix this) have a critical design flaw in that they tend to run too hot.    Basically, the Xbox 360 splits the power its drawing into two different voltages:   5  and 12.    

The problem is, the fans run on 5 volts.    This makes them underpowred to handle the heat that the Xbox is generating.   So over time, the heat gets to sensitive areas, and your Xbox stops working.

Mine started overheating about six months in…   mind you, it was a replacement for the one stolen, and as a 360 Elite, I would have expected they’d have fixed that.   They were mucking around adding an HDMI port as it was.

Obviously they didn’t.   For a good while the Xbox would sense it was overheating and try to shut down before damaging itself.     Gabe and I even went so far as to mod our entertainment center, equipping it with its own fans to keep the cabinets cooler, by improving the heat dispersal from the appliances in there.   (That Charter box is super hot.)

We took a serious attack on the overheating problem.

Unfortunately, its still poorly designed.  Just can’t get cool air to all its parts.  its fans are simply under powered.    So recently it went from shutting down, to locking up.  The frequency that occurred increased quite rapidly until finally, i couldn’t even get the dashboard to not crash on me.

It melted some of the soldering, and ultimately damaged the video card.

This right after Dragon Age 2 comes out…

So I turn to craigslist hoping to find someone who wants to get rid of their used one on the cheap.   The first ad caught my eye though… XboxGuy775 who offers in-city repairs.   Prices looked reasonable.   $40 for most repairs.  I knew this was a common issue and figured the fix was likely in that $40 dollar range.

So I called him up, told him what was going on, and he confirmed that yes, he could fix that for $40.  

So off I go to his office.   (Kinda neat he’s not working out of a garage.)

Drop the Xbox off, and he suggests I let him upgrade the fans while he’s in there to 12 volt ones that will do a better job of keeping it from over-heating.   Only $20 more.

Why not?   I know its an issue that will happen again… so eventually I’ll have the same failure and need it repaired again.   Why not try and be proactive?

So all in all, $60 total to get a working Xbox 360 again.   Plus I get to keep mine, where I know its history, instead of some foreign one that may or may not be more of a headache in the long run.

What completely pushed this beyond pleasant experience to me being wowed is that he got it fixed the same day.  I was only out my Xbox for something in the tune of 3 hours.

Beat that Xbox Support.

He’s pretty cute too, which certainly made my experience all the more pleasant.

Since the Xbox has been upgraded, its really like getting a new one for only $60.

The only unnerving thing.. I twit while its in the shop that I miss it.   @XboxSupport replies.. and now apparently follows me on Twitter.    Gotta say, Microsoft, that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that you are not spying on your customers.   Kind of a big brother moment.   Not entirely cool.

But XboxGuy775 is pretty awesome.   If you live in the Reno area, and have a broken 360, you should definitely hit him up.   Low cost and extremely quick turn-around  (he had like six other consoles sitting there when I walked in… at least three of which he worked on before mine).

I know @SkyliaEmber also knows someone… not the same guy… which is to say… you’ll probably be better off getting it fixed by them than you will Microsoft.. simply because with MS… its a lot of shipping time.   Plus they charge you more.    (I’ve had mixed experiences with them fixing my original Xbox console… it was a launch console and thus had the faulty DVD-drive in it that would keep breaking…   so I got to deal with them on that a few times.   Again, mixed results… they did wow me the first time getting it back within the same week… but that seems a fluke since my post experiences were significantly longer… hell the last time the 360 launched before they got the old one back to me…. pretty crappy when your customer happens to be an employee of Xbox.  Just saying.)

At the end of the day though, XboxGuy775 provided a level of service I just don’t enjoy much these days.   When that happens, I feel compelled to tell people about it.