19 producer

I am tired today. My Xbox is broken so I can't play any games, I haven't had the opportunity to go shooting with my new gun yet, and the TiVo I got for Christmas is in a holding pattern because the cable company doesn't know yet how I can get a cablecard decoder for it.

So I've spent the morning on YouTube. And let me tell you, if you think "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?" is an odd concept for a show, you haven't seen some of these gems.

You may not get this one right off the bat, but stick with it. It'll make sense. And then you'll be asking yourself: Who's the bigger freak, the contestant or the guy who dreamed this show up?

This is a Japanese game show. I think it's called "Silent Library." There's a bunch of them on YouTube, but I think my favorite is this one with Ernesto Hoost in it.

And then there's this clip from a British show called "Balls of Steel." This is one of the funniest things I've ever seen, and it has the Raising Arizona yodeling music in it, so it's automatically a favorite with my fellow producer Tracy. Be warned, this one has a little salty language in it that's not fit for American TV, but is apparently cool with British censors.

Strange shows, from countries you'll probably never visit. This is the glory of the internet.

(edited)

I'm kind of ashamed that I have a problem with my Xbox 360, and I'm immediately taking it to the Internet. It feels so cheap to just start blasting them after all the enjoyment I've gotten out of it.

But I'm still going to do it.

With both barrels.

So the damn thing just freezes up on me after I got home from a long drive to Ohio. I called early the next morning and was told it's this common "red ring of death" problem that has hit thousands of Xbox owners. It's covered under a 3-year deal through Microsoft; no cost whatsoever. But their system is updating at the time, and the girl I talked to says to call back in an hour. No reference number needed, she said, all I needed was the machine's serial number.

An hour later, I'm talking to someone who tells me it's NOT the red ring problem and I'll have to pay $99 to get it sent in and repaired, because it's FOUR DAYS out of its 1-year warranty. That's crap. Even more so since it was a Christmas present and I technically didn't get the damn thing and hook it up to something until Christmas Day, which is tomorrow (you know, a YEAR later).

Wait, it gets better? Yes, a little bit.

Turns out, the person I spoke with the first time, the one who said I had to call back and I didn't need a reference number? There was no record of me ever calling in with a problem.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened to me this month. My wife's iPod nano had a screen issue, and I called Apple support about it. Even though the screen was fried for no apparent reason (she didn't even listen to it much) and it wasn't even a year old, that's apparently not covered under their 1-year warranty. So I had to pay $40 for an extended Apple care program, which let them just send me a new iPod within three days of me calling.

So this is how that conversation basically went:
Me: Hi, this iPod nano I have is broken. The display won't show anything but some repeating horizontal lines.
Apple: That doesn't sound like it's covered under your 1-year warranty.
Me: Oh really?
Apple: Yeah. It could cost you half what you paid for it, or more, for us to fix it. But you can give us forty bucks and for a whole year, you can throw them under the feet of rampaging herds of Black Friday shopping soccer moms and we'll just keep sending you new ones.
Me: So the iPod that Apple obviously didn't put together right is going to cost me lots of money to fix, or I can pay a cheaper, flat fee to make Apple my personal iPod dispenser for a year?
Apple: Yep.
Me: So no matter what, I still have to pay money to get your defective product taken care of.
Apple: Yep. What's your credit card number?
Me: xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx.

So the message I'm getting this holiday season is that warranties don't mean jack. If something breaks, it's YOUR fault and never theirs. And they can give you the best customer service ever ... if you're willing to pay them to fix their own inadequately-constructed product.

Edit: I just got off the phone with Microsoft again, and they've offered to fix my Xbox for free with a 90-day warranty. Asking for a supervisor works wonders. That also gives me the option of buying a 1-year warranty for $25, instead of paying $99 four days out of warranty. I will be buying that warranty.

Apple's service plan scam still sucks.