Ok, I know that I posted already today (hopefully you don't consider this overwelming), and I know that I work for Microsoft, but I gotta give these guys credit.
Stepping back for a second, let me start at the beginning. I didn't pre-order my XBOX 360, I thought perhaps from the first launch of the original XBOX, there were plenty left over, why pre-order? Well, come November 22nd, 2005, I was outside CompUSA at 3am in the dark with some other keen fellows. I was pretty happy with myself, I had gotten some sleep, and I was #22 in line! Sweet!
Five hours later, I was discouraged to find that only 16 XBOXes had arrived at this location and I was, for lack of better terms, SOL. My desperate hunt for a 360 (no we can't just buy them at the company store) managed to land me an XBOX on December 21st. I thought I had one from Gamestop, but it turns out they were hacked, and someone put their 360 webpage online without their knowledge. Finally, Circuit City came through. Then Fed-Ex lost the package, only managing to find it one day before I left for the holidays! I was done!
However, on the holiday's I started to quickly realize that there was a problem. Any 360 game I placed in the console reported a very nice animated graphic "Place this game into an xbox 360 in order to play it". Hrm, it was reading the games as a DVD, not a game.
Let me explain the process here, this is where I get REALLY impressed! I call 1-800-4-MY-XBOX, I get the tech after two or three pushes of buttons, the tech asked if I had a discrepancy between PAL and NTSC games and console. I did not.
Two days later, I had a box at my doorstep, with pre-paid shipping & packing instructions, I dropped it off at the local DHL and over-nighted to Microsoft (and no, it wasn't the Microsoft in my same state). This was Wednesady of last week. Tonight I was going to call to find out the status, but instead, I was greeted by a box on my doorstep and a note that says "Because we know you love your xbox, we've replaced it so you can get to playing it!" Sweet! I put it back in its place fire it up and bingo! I'm up and running again. Even the content I purchased from XBOX Live is readily available for me to download again!!!
Naturally, you're going to ask what about my saved games? I managed to transfer everything but my Perfect Dark Zero to my memory card, so I barely lost anything, and I was planning on finishing PDZ again anyways.
Well, you can call this gloating, but this post is meant to the folks at XBOX support, and Microsoft support in general. You guys Rock! Keep up the good work!