So, it’s Thursday and, as promised, here’s the first update on GamerSquad’s unfolding "Red Ring of Death" adventure with Microsoft’s customer support system.

By way of quick recap, our trusty launch model Xbox 360 (24-11-2005) curled up its toes this past Saturday during Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, slapping us like a wet fish of doom with the dreaded, and wholly terminal, 3-light Red Ring of Death (RRoD), which signifies a complete hardware failure.

After a multiple CCed e-mail to US and UK support centres, and also the UKPRteam and German Kunden addresses, we received a cursory mail asking us to call the customer support service direct, which we duly did.

Surprised to find our deceased Xbox 360 to still be under warranty until February 2008, we duly acknowledged the offer of a UPS shipping label from Microsoft, wrote the first part of this ensuing saga to the GamerSquad main page, and have been waiting for the online horror stories to come to pass…

We’re cautiously delighted to reveal that Microsoft’s initial "within 3 working days" statement regarding the arrival of the UPS shipping label actually held water, and an extremely jovial UPS lady promptly delivered our label and whisked the stone cold Xbox 360 off to the service centre this past Tuesday (only 2 working days since the initial complaint e-mail).

Now, while we’re not best pleased that Microsoft didn’t also supply the packing box, which was an inconvenience, it is picking up shipping both ways and, of course, the hardware is under warranty and therefore repair won’t cost us a thing – apart from gaming downtime. Allowing 24hrs for shipping, the clock starts today on Microsoft’s claim that our console (OUR console, not a refurbished model) will arrive back in perfect working order within a maximum of 15 working days. According to our calendar, that means the jovial UPS lady should be magically reappearing on Wednesday June 13.

Somewhat oddly, we have received slightly conflicting information from Microsoft, which came after the software giant called US on Tuesday and asked if the UPS lady had received our package safely and everything was running smoothly at this juncture. Hmm, whether we’re getting extra attention as a videogame site remains to be seen on the condition of our returned console, but we thought an outbound call from Microsoft to be mightily odd under the circumstances. During the call, the happy chappy on the line actually informed us that our 360 was, in fact, under an extended warranty until 2009… not February 2008. Again, preferential treatment, or just an information mix up on Microsoft’s end? It’s too early to say, but we’ll get clarification on that before the story is over.

So, there you have it, our beloved cadaver of an Xbox 360 is now (hopefully) in the hands of the fat-fingered grease monkeys at Microsoft’s repair centre, where an emergency crash unit will be pumping gaming life back through its veins. Oh, we also popped a wee note in with the system cheekily asking for the broken controller port flap to be fixed. It’ll be interesting to see whether that falls within the warranty. We doubt it.

Until June 13 (or maybe earlier – Hah, who are we kiddin’), take good care of your 360s and pray, pray real hard that the Red Ring of Death doesn’t come calling.