About a month ago, I bought a Play & Charge kit for my Xbox 360. In short, it’s a Lithium-Ion battery pack for the wireless controller that charges via a USB cable. It’s pretty handy, and saves on AA’s.
It came with a full charge, and I used it a fair bit during the month. Last night, however, it died while I was playing in the first beta session for 1v100 on Xbox Live. I plugged in the cable and forgot about it.
Fast-forward to this evening.
I decided I’d check out the new trailer for Halo 3: ODST via the Xbox Live Marketplace, so I unplugged the Play & Charge USB cable, hit the Centre Button on the controller (the ‘light-up X’ in the middle) and waited. And waited more. I hit the button a few more times, then just turned on the console via the button on the front. After it started, I tried the controller again. Still nothing.
After plugging the USB cable in again, I noticed the red ‘charge’ light come on. The controller was immediately detected by the console, and all was well. On a whim, I checked the battery level. Dead. However, the red charge light was gone and replaced with the happy green ‘fully charged’ light. Not good. Time to troubleshoot!
- Tried the original battery pack with some fresh AA’s – Worked
- Tried the Play & Charge battery with another controller – No Go
- Tried a different Play & Charge cable with the batter – No Go
- Tried cable with both the console and my PC (front and read USB ports on both) – No Go
Well, process of elimination dictates it must be the battery. Firing up http://xbox.com/support (and waiting five-bloody-minutes for the site to load – hopefully it’s just a temporary issue), I found the phone number (1-800-4MY-XBOX) and called support. After working my way through the voice menu system, I got an agent.
I quickly provided my name, then explained the issue and exactly what I did to troubleshoot. After confirming my serial number and address, he agreed the problem was the battery and promply filled out the form to send me a replacement. I thanked him, got my Service Request (ticket number, reference number, whatever you want to call it), and disconnected. Total call time: 12 minutes. That’s definately something to be impressed with, as I used to work for Zune customer support, and we used the same tools which constantly crashed.
Now to sit back and wait the 2-4 four weeks for the replacement battery to get here.
