I have to admit that I am digging this quest thing they have going on. Its getting me to look around the site at pages I never would have thought to. I hope they keep it an ongoing theme ... or at least on the weekends.

Consumer warning -  About a month ago, I sent my 360 back for repair ... again ... about two weeks later I received a refurb in the mail. Upon starting the system and inserting a disc I hear a crunching or grinding noise. I call Microsoft support and although the rep promises there is nothing wrong with the console he offers to send another pre-paid shipping box. So ... same story ... two weeks later I get another system. Within the first four days of using the console it freezes twice and I can't log onto Live. Once again I call Microsoft. After the rep runs me through some basic troubleshooting he mentions formatting the hard drive. I ask the rep "won't formatting the drive erase all my saves?" to which he replies "no, but were not quite there yet". After even more pointless troubleshooting the rep says, "lets go ahead and format your drive" to which I reply, "you're sure I won't lose all of my saves?" ..."Noooooo, don't worry" says the rep. After going trough the blades and system options I am now just on push of a button away from formatting the drive at which point I say "ARE YOU 100% POSITIVE THIS WON'T ERASE ALL OF MY SAVE INFORMATION!?!?!?!?" and without any hesitation to ask a co-worker or supervisor the rep calmly and confidently replies "yes sir, all of your saved information is stored via xbox live. Once you recover your gamertag, insert a game, and sign on to live your save will automatically load". Even though I should have known better ... I format the drive. When it comes time to recover my gamertag the rep no longer has time to wait on the phone, gives me a service #, and we hang up. Several hours go by with no luck on the gamertag recovery so once again ... I call Microsoft. Turns out, live is temporarily down, so the troubleshooting and reformatting was a waste of time. BEST OF ALL ... SAVES ARE GONE FOR NOTHING!!!! For the hundreds if not thousands of hours of my time and dollars, all I got from a Microsoft Support supervisor ... "Sorry =("

Here we are today, two days later, and I do plan to call Microsoft back and give them one last chance to save my business. I own all three current gen consoles but the 360 is by far my favorite. Never the less, if this is how Microsoft chooses to treat a longtime, heavily invested, loyal (used to be), customer ... I will have to take my business elsewhere. Keep your fingers crossed that they make this right.

Moral of the story: "If you think you know more than the customer service representative ... you probably do!"