It's been a long time since I last wrote about feeling dirty about my PS3 purchase. However, that's not the topic of this entry. feel free though to read the previous blog post as well for some background on the whole "dirty" thing.
My launch 360 finally died a hot death a few weeks back. It just stopped displaying anything at all, and despite trying to use different cables, and on a few different sets, it still wouldn't work. It however, did not show the red ring of death as many have done to others... it just stopped working.
I figure I bought one of the first boxes, have purchased (and subsequently sold) over 100 Xbox 360 games as well as the HDDVD kit, not to mention about 12 HDDVD movies and 4 controllers... plus those damn Scene It controllers and a dance pad for my boy. All told around $6000+ worth of 360-centered merchandise. As someone who has spent that kind of green on a company's product, I expect a little leeway with the customer service department.
I call up 1-800-4-my-xbox and encounter one of the rudest customer service reps around. I tell him my problem, and he says "Huh. Sorry to hear that. Send it to us and we'll fix it for $179." 
I explain that I have spent a large wad of cash on their product, and that since the 360 is known to have some hardware quality issues in general, I don't think it's good business to refuse a solid customer a simple repair. He replies "Yeah... do you have the three red lights?" I told him I did not, and he said "Then it's going to be $179."
So yeah... I purchased the 2 year warranty from GameStop, and naturally it was outside of that warranty too so I was pretty much screwed. After looking at all of my games, accessories and everything else that would be worthless without a 360, I opted to use some store credit and a little cash to get a 360 arcade and just snap my HDD onto that instead of having the monkeys at MS have my machine and charge me $179. The thought did run through my mind to trade all the accessories and games in for something else, but I already have both a PS3 and Wii so there wasn't anything big to go for.
In any case Now I feel bent over a barrel by two companies... and I might have even said all three if the Wii didn't grace us with Super Mario Galaxy recently. hehe... That alone justifies it's existence at this point.
In the meantime, I'm writing a pretty scathing letter of complaint to MS and see if they won't fix my old machine for free. If so, I'll probably box one or the other up and eBay it, if not I'll probably crack the box and see what I can do inside with the parts. 