Xbox 360 rattling resurrection

Xbox 360 rattling resurrection
I finally received a replacement Xbox 360 for the one that suffered the red Ring of Death and, overall, my support experience was net positive. But there were a few wrinkles worth mentioning, including an odd little rattle in the new 360 when I lifted it out of the mailing carton.

WRINKLE #1: On Thanksgiving, the 800-4MY-XBOX telephone support person told me they'd ship my mailer using UPS and that it would arrive on Friday. It turned out they shipped it Friday and used DHL, which meant no Saturday delivery - so I didn't get the box until Monday. Since I had to work that day, I didn't turn it around in time for same-day pickup. So I lost two days in the process.

That said, they did replace the console and ship it back the day after they got it, so their three business day estimate once the package was received was correct.

WRINKLE #2: The support person also insisted that I must include my hard drive since I had a premium system. Fortunately, the system failed twice - each time with a different hard drive - so I took the liberty of sending the drive that had no real significant data instead of the one with all of my ripped music, Xbox Live Marketplace downloads and saved progress in several games. That was lucky, because when they swapped my system they did NOT send back the original hard drive.

I also found another blogger with the same Ring of Death problem who said he was instructed to include his power brick and AV cables too, where I was specifically told not to include them. Also, the sheet that came with the mailer had no instructions for including anything except the main console. So I think the 360 support team may need more training, since they're inconsistent on this point. I also think the instruction sheet should be explicit about what to include and what not to include.

If I had it to do over again, I would have kept the hard drive. What are they going to do, not fix it? Fortunately for me, there was no harm done.

WRINKLE #3: When I unpacked my new replacement 360, I noticed it had an odd little rattle like there was a loose part bouncing around inside. Needless to say, this worried me. Then, after I plugged it in and reacquired my wireless controller, I noticed the Ring of Light had the wrong quadrant lit for vertical orientation. It should have been the upper left one, but instead was the upper right - which would have been correct had the unit been laid horizontally. Great, I thought, my Ring of Light orientation doodad is broken. Am I going to have to ship it back again just for that?! [SEE UPDATE ON THE RATTLE]

I went through all of the setup steps and downloaded the required Xbox Live update. When it rebooted itself, the Ring of Light was correct. Whew!

So far, I've only messed with the dashboard and played a DVD movie with it, but so far so good.

Does anyone else have a strange rattle in their 360 when they pick it up? Any other interesting 360 support experiences? I'd love to hear about them and I'll share any good stories back in the blog.

-=Gamewatcher