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Angry Xbox Owners Signing Recall Petition

By Joseph S. Enoch
ConsumerAffairs.com

December 6, 2006

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As Sony PlayStation 3s and Nintendo Wiis are becoming basically impossible to grab before the holidays, parents are forced to rely on last year's Microsoft Xbox 360. But many previous consumers, including a teenager with a long list of signatures, are urging consumers to avoid the troublesome game console.

Darius Jahandarie, a 15-year-old from Storrs, Conn. has started an online petition to recall the Xbox 360. Microsoft has maintained that only three to five percent of 360s are failing. But after reading so many complaints and message board posts, Jahandarie concluded that that just wasn't true. So he started an online petition to Microsoft to recall the 360.

"After spending a decent amount of time on the official Microsoft Xbox forums, I saw hordes of these "3 Lights of Dead" threads in the Technical Support section," Jahandarie wrote in an e-mail. "I decided to do some investigation on the matter," he said.

"I found that Microsoft could be making millions of dollars off of broken Xboxs. So, I decided that it was necessary to do something about it, and started a petition to recall the faulty Xboxs."

Jahandarie started the petition in August after one unnamed individual left this post on a message board:

There have been about 8 million Xbox 360 consoles sold. So, let us fantasize that the failure rate that Microsoft gave us is in fact true, at 3%.

3% of 8 million is 240,000 defective consoles.

Let us say that half of these consoles have gone out of their warranty. Now, 120,000 defective consoles.

Let us say that 75% of these people pay to get it fixed. 90,000 people with defect consoles paying Microsoft $129.

$11,610,000 made strictly off of defective consoles using very low statistics in favor of Microsoft.

When ConsumerAffairs.com first found Jahandarie's petition about a month and a half ago, it had less than 100 signatures. As of this writing it has 557. ConsumerAffairs.com has received about 370 complaints as of Dec. 5.

"Every month I get more signatures," he wrote.

But it's not enough. He plans to collect 5,000 before he officially sends the petition to Microsoft. He hopes media coverage will spur more frustrated 360 owners to sign.

By the way, Jahandarie owns an Xbox 360 and as of this writing, it has not failed.

Microsoft's Public Relations company, Edelman, which unfailingly refers to itself as "powerful," did not return our calls and Jahandarie said they have not responded to him.

Consumers with faulty Xboxs are urged to file a complaint with ConsumerAffairs.com and to sign Jahandarie's petition.

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