My Xbox 360 returned to me last night, and there was much rejoicing.

As Euan had suggested, there was a card offering one month's free Live subscription included, which was nice. All told the whole repair situation took less than ten days (less than eight business days) and only one phone call.

Not only that, the console I received runs way quieter than when I sent it away! I'm assuming that this is actually a new console with the same serial number sticker on it, rather than my original box. Whatever the case, it's now near-silent rather than sounding like I had an operational wind tunnel in my living room.

The only hiccup I experienced was the fact that the Xbox Live Arcade game Undertow was made free while my 360 was in Sydney getting repaired, so I was unable to download it. Today I called the support number again and explained that problem, and within about ten minutes they had credited my account with 800 MSPoints - enough to purchase Undertow (or indeed, some other game I might prefer).

So if all you read are horror stories about how bad Microsoft's support for the Xbox 360 is, consider this some good news. Sure, it sucks that I had the "red ring of death" in the first place, but honestly I'm better off because of it.