I. Hate. Most. Things.

UPDATE: After a torturous two-hour journey to Maspeth, Queens; I got my XBox back! It was even a brand new one! However, it still came with the pandering one month free of XBox Gold as opposed to a real prize. Loving the shit out of Assassin's Creed 2 right now.

I had just popped open the neon-green clamshell to Assassin's Creed 2, anxiously ready to embark on one of 2009's hottest videogames a couple of weeks after I had received the game for Christmas. Ever since I was three years old, I've spent a large portion of the winter months holed up, sitting Indian-style in front of a TV while play videogames and keeping myself as caffeinated as possible.

I powered up my XBox 360, ready to kill shit. I'm perennially three years old when it comes to videogames.

Words could not express the fury I experienced when I received the Red Ring of Death.

My second one. In a year and a half.

A little bit of background for the non-nerds who happen to be reading this: the Red Ring of Death refers to a XBox 360 system failure. It is a widespread problem, and has cost Microsoft an estimated one billion dollars. Conservative estimates put the console's failure rate at about 30 percent, with some figures going even higher than that. This is patently absurd, when you consider that an XBox runs a couple hundred dollars.

It is expected that all first-generation consoles have problems - but with the 360, the problems keep getting worse.

Five months after I received my first XBox 360, my console ringed out. The dork in me was terrified about not being able to massacre zombies, slay otherworldly demons, or roll up garbage into circular trashballs the size of interstellar bodies for the next few weeks. I put my baby into my prepaid coffin, and received a refurbished console six weeks after I had sent it in. Microsoft had originally promised a repair time of three to four weeks.

This time around, I knew the drill: I called customer service and obtained the prepaid shipping label online before throwing my baby in a FreshDirect box and sending her off to Texas.

This time, I took my complaints to Twitter:

 I was a little surprised to receive a response from XBox 360's customer support on a Saturday night - but the crew runs on California time. The response they gave was pretty useless - by reading my Tweet, they could've easily inferred that I had already taken the initial steps in sending in my 360 for repair.

Let's start with the failures of Microsoft's social media and customer response teams.

Prioritize those who have had multiple console failures.
Dealing with a busted Xbox is one a minor setback, and it sucks. Dealing is absolutely absurd. The best way in which this would be accomplished is paying for rushed shipping both ways, so that the impacted user won't have to be without a console.

Stop sending refurbished units.
Given that most of the failed units are from the first few generations, on what planet does it make any sense at all to send us another old unit that runs the risk of breaking again? Send us new units. We deserve them.

Make your social media presence helpful.
You have a whopping seven people that manager your Twitter feed! Seven! That's almost as many as the entire staff of the last digital branding firm I worked for! With all those people, you should be able to dig into specifics, rather than talking points. Direct Message is your friend - with your staff, you should be able to personally engage with people who are having complications with their devices. With seven people on board, Microsoft needs to be able to offer more than a "Oh, sorry, that sucks" when your XBox breaks.

Enough with the booby prizes.
When I got my XBox back, it came with a condescending free one-month voucher for XBox Gold. Wonderful. One free month for a service I already pay for. What you Microsoft needs to do is give their customers an actual reward for dealing with this problem. Some XBox live points would be a good start.

I've had my XBox for almost two years years, and it's spent over two months in Microsoft's repair facility. That's about 8 to 10 percent of the entire time I've had the console - and that's unacceptable. If something you owned (say - your coffee maker) didn't work a few days each month, wouldn't you be pissed off? You'd probably just go out and get another coffee maker. Sadly, this isn't an option for a 300 dollar console.

One of the reasons I jumped ship and picked up an XBox as opposed to a PS3 this generation was because the PS3's price point was a hair higher than I thought was reasonable - but given my experience with Microsoft this time around, I may find myself back in Sony's camp when the console wars reset in a couple of years.