So Much for Clever

They seemed so clever. OK, the cleverness was only noticed because my stuff broke and that detracts from the clever part, but still, clever came through.

My Xbox 360 is apparently one of the "rare" ones that was in some way defective. I'm betting it has a bad cooling fan. Whatever it is, it stopped working and after following the suggested steps on the Microsoft support site, it became clear it was going to require repair. I called them, they confirmed it, and a box arrived in the mail so I could send it in.

The clever part is that inside the box was an insert designed just so to hold the Xbox, a UPS label that even has the correct weight pre-printed, and a piece of tape for sealing the box. This isn't the first time I've seen this kind of clever, but it's always kind of cool to me to see such things thought out in advance.

Unfortunately, it was blown by the instructions. I don't have them in front of me, but in essence they went like this:

1. Open the box
2. Remove the insert
3. Put your Xbox 360 in the enclosed bag
4. Put the Xbox 360 in the insert
5. Close the insert
6. Put the insert back in the box
7. Seal the box with the enclosed tape
8. Put the label on the outside of the box
9. Call UPS for pickup

Then, there were a bunch of pictures to illustrate the steps. Then, it all went to hell.

Below the pictures, it read something like, "To expedite processing your repair, please fill out the form below and enclose it with your Xbox 360." Then, there was a form with stuff like name, address, and serial number. Of course, I'd been following the directions from top to bottom and you'll notice that at step 7 above I'd sealed the stupid box already with the tape. I thought about slipping the form in folded, since there was room to do so that wasn't sealed, but the form wants the serial number that's on the back of the unit, inside a bag, inside an insert, inside a box sealed with tape.

They should have put a step 10 that read, "Notice the form below you should return, cut the tape, take everything back out, fill in the form, put it in the box, and do steps 1 through 7 again. You'll need to go find your own tape, because the tape provided should be ruined by now because you've either cut it or torn it back off the box. You should be grateful that where you put the label doesn't require that you somehow put that back on, too. Do this whole step before UPS arrives, since you've already called them."

So much for thinking it through and being clever.