According to Lee Sherman (Gamertag, Toxic Daywalker), who sent us details of his horrible experience, his Xbox 360 had been sent to Prague for repair, which has extended the repair time considerably.

He talks of how three weeks and repeated phone calls yielded no further clues to the status of his repair, with customer service representatives merely telling him that it would be “returned shortly”.

Lee even claims that when he asked to speak to the repair centre direct, he was told this wasn’t possible because they don’t have phones... However, using a directory enquiry service he was able to obtain the number for the repair centre, where he was shocked to learn that his console was actually in Prague, not Havant as Microsoft customer service reps had claimed.

Additionally, the call to the Havant repair centre revealed some other worrying stats: “A shocking statistic we found out though is that between 1,500 to 2,500 consoles get sent to Havant by three UPS lorries per day, to then be shipped to Prague for repair,” Lee told us, going on to add, “[We] phoned up Nora the [customer service] supervisor again, who then admitted my console was in Prague and hadn’t been looked at yet – she seemed amazed that we knew!”