Microsoft Skimps on Shipping Boxes For Owners of RRoD-ed Xboxes?

It's bad enough going through the hassle of shipping your Xbox 360 off to customer support, but now Microsoft won't even give you the box to ship it in. Updated.

A Consumerist reader complained that after his Xbox red-ringed – again – he called Microsoft to get a shipping box to mail his console in for repairs. But the customer service rep told him he'd need to find his own box. As he pointed out, this gives them a possible out. Who's to stop them from claiming the box was damaged in the mail?

My Xbox red-ringed for the second time this weekend. Which is almost a relief after hearing how bad my disc drive was sounding, but not so much after hearing the new policy. I was told that Xbox no longer ships out a box to you and you must find a box to ship it out in. Yeah I guess its not a big deal, but I think it gives them another thing to hold over your head; "We are sorry, Sir, but you didn't back it well enough and it appears the damage was due to shipping, we cannot help you."

Bummer move, Microsoft, especially over something that's very much your own fault.

Update: Microsoft is saying that they do in fact still ship boxes to customers with broken Xboxes (if the customers ask for one), according to Kotaku. Which would mean this whole debacle is just one case of one employee being terrible, rather than the entire company. Unless you count how people wouldn't need to ship their Xboxes in anyway if the company had bothered making them right in the first place.

[The Consumerist]