News Xbox owner sues over dud drive

i bought my xbox 15 months ago and its works fine.

and as for congincey plans for us companies i think they would have been able to figure out that people = greedy money grabbing losers

 

Especially nowadays. No one is responsible for anything they do. It's always someone else.

If someone is a criminal, it is because of their upbringing and the society, not their own fault. If they slip on a road and fall because they werent watching where they were going, its not their fault. Its the city's fault for not maintaining their streets of whatever ....

Whatever the hell happened to the small amount of common sense that used to float around ?

 

it was consumed by greed and tried to sue everyone for mis-reprisentation

 

So I am to assume to MS knew in advance that the drives would fail and they would be sued. Further, any employee related to XBOX should be fired if they didn't know that fact. I see two huge problems with that statement. First; the warranty period is only 90 days and not 9 months so your “unlikely coincidence” doesn’t hold up.. Second and more importantly; WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT! If you think that MS is that unbelievably stupid as to produce a product that will break close to the warranty period expiring, then you have a really warped view of reality. Where in MS's business plan do you think they included the "lets make products that fail shortly after they are out of warranty so that consumers sue us and NEVER purchase another product from us again" "Further, any employee who knowingly makes a product that is NOT inferior is not welcome and will be fired." "Also, it is policy that all employees know about our plot to make inferior products so when we get sued we have no way to defend ourselves. “ Just because a company has lots of cash does not mean they should be sued. Producing an inferior product and knowing it is inferior before it is released is not acceptable, but rarely happens. Problem is that when it does happen it is a huge issue and everyone becomes aware. Can we say Pinto!

What happened to you to distrust any large company? Don’t give me BS about Enron, Global Crossing, etc. Those are large profile cases that represent a very, very small portion of the industry. Pick up a Forbes sometime and tell me that the 500 list is ALL corrupt and should be sued. NOT. Money does not = corruption. Bill and Melinda Gates donate more money through their charities then any other single person. Do I like his products, not for the most part, but I don’t sue him. I choose not to buy them. Read what I said I don’t steal them, I don’t hack them, I don’t sue him, I just don’t buy them. Enough people do that and he will get the hint.

Companies (the size of MS) always allocate funds for legal issues, and try to forecast potential losses. That does not mean they should have to. As stated before, the reason they do is because of BS like this lawsuit.

I’m passionate about because I have seen it from both sides. I have been “inside” billion dollar companies and know how it works. I have had my own business and know how it works. Guess what, it’s the same. Hate one, you have to hate all. I hope that’s not true!

 

i apologise if i wasn't clear enough in my last post, but you have missed somethings. first: yes, you are to assume that microsoft knew the drives you fail. this is what a R&D team is for. they should have taken the drive and ran it non-stop for a length of time to see how long the drive would last. And i bet they did, if they did not do this, then they should be fired (this is what i meant by fireing them) because a test such as this is just common sense. and i apologise that i goofed the warrenty period, but 90 days only makes things worse, a short warrenty period shows a huge lack in confidence in the product. take for instance seagate drives, they extended their warrenty period because they were confident. and no, i do not have a warped view of reality, its called planned obsolescence and businesses do it quite often and have done it for a loooong time. the idea behind it is, if my product becomes useless to the consumer after some period of time, then they will have to buy my product again, thus I double my profits. but the logic of comsumers suing and never buying another product doesn't hold up. because you see look at how much other consumers of the same product defend MS, when it doesn't really concern them. its because it hasn't happened to them yet and so since they are happy they're going to defend the maker of their super fun gaming console. not to mention that MS is just going to crush the kid with money and lawers. so suing is a non-issue, so is people not buying because they dont see anything wrong with the failure of their several hundred dollar toy, they just think they were 'unlucky'.

again i never said a company should be sued if it is rich, i think companys need to be corrected when they do something wrong. youre right about inferior products shouldn't be deemed acceptible but your wrong in saying that its rare, it happens all the time- they just cover it up with short warrentys. the real problem is that noone notices that they're being screwed.

what happened that i distrust large companys? i got educated and then i opened my eyes. i realized that i am in the lower middle class and companies constantly try to bleed me dry. better yet they constantly try to bleed really poor people dry. they dont care. its that captialism dictates that you do everything you can to recieve as much as you can while giving as little as possible-its greed. and im not saying that greed is evil because everything anyone has ever done is greed driven. but it does mean that i have to distrust companys so they dont take me for a ride. since i am also in the capitalist economy its my duty to do the same- get as much as i can for as little as i can. i have to try to not get screwed, if i am being wronged i have to try to fix that, or else im not being a proper capitalist. likely most, maybe all, of the companys on the 500 list are not corrupt but its also likely that 100% of those are doing their best to take your money. and its likely that some of those are doing it in a way that isn't so nice or right (like MS with the magical failing xbox). Bill gates and his wife have more money than any person will ever need. just becuase they donate .00001% of their money to charieties doesn't automatically make them good pople. if i donated that much of my money to charities i would never get labeled a hero, mainly because it would be like a penny a year. <carefull here comes some more socialist talk avert your eyes!> people that rich should be paying most of the taxes in the country, taxes that would go toward things like helping the poor, setting up free healthcare, free college/education systems, anything to better the community. and after all of that they would still have more money then they will ever need. </socialism talk> if you choose not to buy microsoft products then you are being greedy, and congratulations for being a capitalist. but you are also missing out on the super fun xbox, like i am.

no it doesn't mean they should always have to, but it does when they knowingly put out a product that dies in such a short ammount of time. they have to worry about legal issues when they do something shady. this isn't to say that no company has ever gotten sued wrongly, but that is when they shouldnt have to allocate money toward lawsuits.

when you had your own company, i'll take a wild guess and say it was... building computers for people. did you try to charge as much for your computer (or other product) as you could possibly get away with? to maximize your profit? did you ever put something in there of questionable quality? say, a really cheap softmodem? im not saying that doing that was necessarily wrong, but it is approaching the shady side of things. now i dont expect a small startup company to have a R&D team but if you did and you found that 20% of the cheap softmodems you stuck in the computers failed after about 15 months. then lets say you gave all of your computers a 12 month warrenty on parts and offered an aditional 12 months for $150. now after 15 months 20% of the modems fail, the people call you and you say "too bad, you didn't buy the warrenty. buy a new one, or pay me $80 an hour to fix it.". and the people who did buy the warrenty get a 'free' replacement, when you replace it you stick in the same $2 POS modem that may fail again. and for the people who choose to hire you at $80 and hour, you make sure to take at least 4 hours ($320) to fix the problem. Now let me ask you, was any of that wrong, not nice, kinda mean? if so then you have a potential problem, because the law isn't set in stone the law trys to say what is right and wrong but when we hit a grey area, thats why we have courts. in my opinion knowingly entering a product into the market place that may fail shortly after the warrenty period is wrong.

but hey, maybe its warped to think that its wrong for big rich people to try to trick poor people out of their money. it must also be wrong for me to think that a 17 year old boy shouldn't bully a 9 year old girl.

 

Missing the point

Am I missing the point here or isn't the X-Box, like most other consoles, sold as a loss leader in terms of sale price versus cost because the true profit lays within game sales direct or licensed. With that in mind, what is the incentive to provide an inferior product given that it is merely a shop front for further profit?

I have to say too that I'm amazed to hear that the standard warranty for the US is just 90 days after growing up here in the UK accustomed to a statutory 1 year warranty on all products, I find this amazing given the overbearing nanny state nature of the states and the sue 'em all attitude of their legislature.

 

i wish i was wake enought to make a decent point here but as i see it this is yet another frivilous law suite by some winey lil b***h but i do have to admit that at least here the xboxs do seem to burn out rather quik at least half the people i know that have owned one had problems with the drive....hell when you go to places like game stop and babages their sales rep tend to warn people not to use them to watch movies because this shortens their servicable life span...but then agin scince when in the history of video game consoles has there really been a system that stood up to the test of time...i seem to remeber haveing to stick a crat on top of a cart to play my old nes after a year or so...and who hasnt has a old ps1 that would play in it normal up right postion (not to many most work best upside down) and ive had at least 2 ps2's go balls up on me so i guess my point is we all know that console company dont build the highest quality hardware and we've known it for years so why whine about it so much ...just buy a new one and STFU...or save yer money for more important then this ( if such a thing exists )

 

Sadffffff,

Too much to reply to, but just a few points. First; Planned obsolesce has nothing to do with a broken product. If I plan for something to be obsolete, then I plan for it to be working when it is not longer useful. Broken products are not obsolete, they are broken. A broken drive that can be fixed and still useful is not obsolete. You still have not answered my question. Why would MS, in your opinion, produce a product guaranteed to fail? Even a company with the power MS has will not continue to be successful if they plan for products to break. Perfect products are not possible and a percentage will fail, but this is not by plan its just the nature of electronics.

Two; You cannot cover up a bad product with short warranties. The product is still bad and someone is going to complain. If I had a ten year warranty on a product and it failed every 6 months, I would complain. The warranty only allows me to correct the problem for free but I still have a bad product that I will never buy again.

Three; Not buying MS products is not being greedy. That makes no sense. Not buying MS products is my choice because I may feel their product is inferior. By the way, the top 1% richest people DO pay most of the taxes (at least in this country). It is then up to the tax collector (the gov) to spend it correctly. But then again, why should they. Wouldn’t it be fair for everyone to pay the same portion? Let’s say the tax rate is 10% for everyone. I make 1000 a year and pay 100. The rich guy makes 1,000,000 and pays 100,000. Isn’t that fair?

Four; I have owned many companies, but the closet to your question was a service company. We only built machines for customers when they requested. They picked the parts, not us. I would never put cheap or inferior parts into one of our computers because our reputation would suffer and eventually no one would use us again. Hey I think I made my point. I sell a product that has a high probability will fail, it does fail and the customer never calls me again. Why would I or anyone do that? Of course no one would. As a service company, we were in the business to service crappy computers and networks not create them. The guys that sold the crappy computers are out of business which is why we were called. We didn’t offer a warranty to anyone. The warranty was the manufactures warranty. If the drive dies and it was under manufactures warranty then you’re in luck. The reason was simple; it is not my equipment and I cannot vouch for the reliability. I can give you some feedback from prior service jobs as to what holds up the best, but that’s about all. Hardware is a s***y business and would never be dumb enough to try to make money from selling machines. Is it better to sell cars or fix them? If I fix them then I get ALL cars on the road not just a select group of buyers. Also, taking 4 hours to fix a modem would be dishonest and I and my employees would NEVER be dishonest. Again, you show complete distrust in anyone. I’m sorry you have such distrust for your fellow man. I hope I am wrong, but you seem to think everyone is out to get everyone and there is no good. I hope I can change your mind because I can tell you that I and the people I know are not like that. I provided a quality service at a fair price and NEVER took advantage of a client.

Well I wrote longer than I expected, but that last paragraph spook to my integrity and needed to be disputed. Enough said I am letting this thread die along with I hope the dumb lawsuit.

 

Oh, go on then, one more reply...

Product testing is actually a tricky business. You have to imagine what sort of use the product will typically be subjected to, and then somehow model that on said product in a rather compressed timeframe, seeing as you can't spend, say, five years testing something designed to last for five years --although that does actually happen sometimes, because there is no other way to do it --e.g. establishing MTBF in pumps. Non-stop running of a product is not enough however, to give a reasonably realistic simulation of its actual use. The aforementioned pumps need to be subjected simultaneously to extreme temperature fluctuations, vibration and shock, corrosive substances, power surges, etc. etc.

Or do they? Because you also have to decide what sort of (ab)use of the product is expectable and acceptable, and what would quite obviously be unreasonable use leading to inevitable destruction of the product (using CD tray as cup holder, anyone? ). No-one for instance will impact-test a laptop by slamming it into a concrete wall at 60mph (although that could be fun, I suppose), because that is not a condition or event that laptops would reasonably be expected to be subjected to and survive. Cars however, are tested in this way because they quite frequently travel at 60mph (that is their raison d'etre, after all) and the scenario of coming to a dead stop against a concrete wall, although being an undesireable use of the product, is not a completely unlikely one. Even then the car is not reasonably expected to survive --just its driver and passengers (although some injury is reasonably expectable, which is why drivers generally do not sue Ford or GM for a few bruised ribs when they have just survived a high-speed frontal impact).

However sometimes variables that were quite reasonably not considered turn out to be important --there is nothing like testing your product "in the wild", so to speak, with real consumers really using it. As such feedback from repairs/replacement goes back to the product development labs and alterations and improvements occur to subsequent releases of the same product. This is why, for instance, later WD JB1200 drives are quieter than the earlier ones, and why IBM laptop drives now "park" themselves when they sense a hard impact to protect the data. We now reasonably expect that laptops occasionally will get knocked about, although this is not a reasonably accepted regular treatment of the product.

Technology moves on too, with engineering fixes becoming available for unanticipated problems that weren't an option before. Eventually, combined with feedback on users wishes/needs, and to stay ahead of competitors releasing more recent products with newer technology, this leads to new generations of a product (say, the Game Boy advance).

So, just as it is very hard for MS to work out exactly how long the X-Box drive will last under what is "reasonably expectable and acceptable" use, it is equally hard for them to work out exactly when it will fail. There is no "conspiracy" to sell products that last only just beyond the warranty period, because there simply is no way to establish lifespan that reliably. You could make a drive that survives pretty much anything, and for the Military market, companies often do, but this is prohibitively expensive for a consumer product bought by Joe Public (and at least part of the reason why, say, a US military torch costs the proverbial $300,-- -it has to be a really robust and reliable torch). So the challenge is to make a product that stands up reasonably well to the (ab)use of the average household, with small kids, large pets, chain smokers, people who don't know the arse end of anything technological (or worse, hackers who do), while still keeping it cheap enough so people will actually buy the thing.

 

What would I do if On of my products failed or stopped working? If It was in warranty I would send it back and get a new one. If it wasn't, Pay what I need to and get if fixed. I don't think it is that hard.